I mean this gently but it’s only not good if you believe animals to be inferior or deserving of fewer rights. Then you would, by extension, believe it’d be calling disabled people inferior.
But as a disabled person who used to be very obviously so (my mom got pity-looks), I don’t mind being compared to other animals. I am an animal. We all are-we sure aren’t plants, protists, bacteria, etc.
I believe all sentient life has equal value. So no we aren’t on the same level as a sea cucumber but why should the dolphin or the chimpanzee have fewer rights than us?
That doesn’t mean we should prioritize other species over our own. Other humans are our family. If our family’s house is on fire, we put that out before we put out our neighbor’s fire.
Speciesm is so engrained in us that it sounds patently absurd to even point it out or suggest that it’s wrong. But it is. And we all partake in it. Myself included. I try to minimize it. But in 400 years my “radical” opinions on it will be seen as problematic and speciest which I will come out and admit is fair. But I’m doing my best in the times I live in.
Interestingly, because humans are animals, we are covered under animal rights philosophies. The ideal way to live is to avoid needless cruelty to anyone who is sentient. Animal rights must be intersectional or it’s useless.
If you earnestly live by that, pro equity and justice for humans comes so naturally. I mean if society teaches that all sentient beings are worthy of rights, then dividing that by race, gender, sexuality, etc makes absolutely zero sense. But in a speciest world, we already divide based on external attributes in an arbitrary way. Dogs shouldn’t be killed but chickens should. Stuff like that. There’s also racism entrenched in speciesm. White people rag on other cultures for which animals they eat and use it to discriminate when really it’s an arbitrary distinction.
And before anyone says anything, I have zero issues with sustenance hunting. It’s no different from a lion with gazelle. Not a nice reality but a reality.
I think speciesm will die when lab grown meat and dairy become big. Dairy for example is absurdly addictive to some of us. Today I had a very stressful time as the night shift nurse called out in the late afternoon. I was on call so I had to come in for the night shift on zero sleep, knowing I’d be back for day shift 36 hours later. I craved dairy so badly. Still do right now. But that’s because I want the casein. Get it somewhere else and those primal urges will be satiated. Then we will look more objectively.
But that’s just like my opinion.
