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[Thad]

They should come up with a way to treat diabetes that's animal-free!

A quick look at Wikipedia says that there's a company selling yeast-based insulin in India, but I think Gorgon's point is more about research than manufacture -- even non-animal-based insulin exists because of medical research performed on animals.

This IS a real dilemma -- research animals have miserable fucking lives, which often end in a very nasty fashion.  But at the same time, we're saving human lives with this research (best-case -- I'm perfectly happy to acknowledge some medical research is frivolous).

I'm not in the "stop medical studies on animals" camp.  But I AM in the "get people to think about where their pills come from" one.

PETA has this bizarre methodology where objectifying/exploiting women is okay as long as their point gets across.

If that's bizarre, then the entire advertising industry is bizarre.

[Pacobird]

Should I reconsider my stance on US involvement in the middle east because I drive a car? 





(spoilers: successful activism means learning to accept a certain level of cognitive dissonance)

[Thad]

Should I reconsider my stance on US involvement in the middle east because I drive a car?

I'm not in the "stop medical studies on animals" camp.  But I AM in the "get people to think about where their pills come from" one.

I would say it's less "reconsider" and more simply "consider".

I DO think about where the gas in my tank comes from and where it's going when I drive.  It's one of many incentives for me to ride my bike wherever possible.

[Brentai]

Oh, gah, the GYWO archives were impossible to navigate before and now they're literally impossible to navigate.  Just pretend I managed through some inhuman effort to dig up the panel where the one guy wonders aloud if people would stop driving if they had to literally fill up their cars with the liquified bones of murdered children.

[Büge]

Care to summarize a few key points for we plebs who cannot afford your "books"?

Rather than pretend I'm summarizing, I'll just hand you the best review I've found.

Here.

PETA has this bizarre methodology where objectifying/exploiting women is okay as long as their point gets across.

If that's bizarre, then the entire advertising industry is bizarre.

Most advertisers don't have the notion that they're fighting the good fight.

There's an intersection between exploiting women and animals. They're dismembered in media. Oftimes they are seen as property (even in the language we use, e.g. "that's my girl" could describe a number of different things.). Violence is done to them and overlooked.

The publicity stunts and advertising PETA use are as exploitative as other corporations, but this is a group who (supposedly) try to make the world a better place. You can't really do that if you're shoving women into cages on street corners.

It would be like... like... well, I'm bad with metaphors, so I'll leave that one alone.

[Romosome]

I know this may jinx it but I'd just like to give everyone gold stars for this thread, as this is a level-headed, rational, and informative debate we're having here.

Cigars all around.

(ps: where the hell is that uncle pennybags emote, or is that just in Rock's secret stash)

[Royal☭]

It's worth noting that those women willingly go into the cages.

[Brentai]

Tell me about it.

[Arc]

Mary Beth Sweetland is diabetic and injects herself with insulin daily.

Animal testing of insulin began back in 1889, and hit the market in 1921. Despite imagined characteristics, the organization is led by fully-functioning adults who possess the knowledge that the battles of yesterday are not the battles of today.

Penn & Teller did an episode of their "Bullshit" show on PETA

The mischaracterizations were layed on thick in this episode, even by Penn & Teller standards. PETA opposes guide dogs for the blind? No, they oppose the retirement schemes for working dogs, stress that each situation can be unique, and believe humans are more optimal for these roles. That chickens don't care if they suffer? The same slippery-slope case could be made of handicapped humans, or undereducated masses. PETA opposes humans having pets? The clip used as evidence said no such thing, and anyone with even a passing knowledge of the group knows this to be, yeah, bullshit.

The show relies on college professors and lawyers not affiliated with PETA for soundbites, pushing forward the strawman that they advocate releasing hundreds of thousands of animals out onto the street, right this very moment. For their opposition, they cite The Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, American exceptionalist Dennis Prager, and Ted Nugent, a nutcase who pays tens of thousands of dollars a year to cage animals, only to release them into an open field so that he and a dozen hired truck & jeep drivers can run the animal down for a trophy kill.

Lastly, the program attempts to construct an awkward conspiracy theory mentality concerning PETA's euthanization program, and then turns around and presents the fact that PETA is out in the open about their euthanization numbers. Huh?

It's worth noting that those women willingly go into the cages.

Which, frankly, throws Büge's notion that these women are being forced into cages out the window. The majority of these models are superstars or willing activists. Their tongue-in-cheek approach even mirrors the flawed notion of a body being seen as meat to be used and discarded.

For all that has been said of PETA's tactics as not being effective, consider that their membership has doubled in the last four years. The many unfounded vilifications of this group have naturally followed.

[Mongrel]

Oh man TED NUGENT?!?!

Seriously, how on earth ANYONE could EVER take anything The Nooge says seriously, I don't know.

[Arc]

The day immediately following this year's election, the right-wing echo chamber calling for Obama to govern from the center-right was in full swing. Numerous messages demanded Ted Nugent to be named Secretary of Energy since he was 'such a conservationalist'.

For exactly twenty seconds, I thought we had actually lost the election wholesale, so deeply serious were these messages.

[Zaratustra]

Penn & Teller did an episode of their "Bullshit" show on PETA, which is available on YouTube. They cover all kinds of other interesting tidbits, such as tax forms showing tens of thousands of dollars being funneled directly to a known ALF firebomber.

Penn & Teller also did an episode where they claim recycling spends more water and fuel and therefore is more polluting than, presumably, taking recyclables to the landfill.

[Büge]

It's worth noting that those women willingly go into the cages.

Which, frankly, throws Büge's notion that these women are being forced into cages out the window. The majority of these models are superstars or willing activists. Their tongue-in-cheek approach even mirrors the flawed notion of a body being seen as meat to be used and discarded.

Huh. I thought for sure they put on some kind of performance where they shoved a naked girl in a cage. My mistake.

[A²]

In the interest of full disclosure, who here has or has had involvement with PETA?

My only interaction was a crazy person shoving one of those buckets of blood in my face as I walked by a KFC and screaming something in half-spanish at me (This was in Texas)

[Arc]

I thought for sure they put on some kind of performance where they shoved a naked girl in a cage.

Chronicles of their naked misadventures can be found on the blog, including one in Thailand which is lifted directly from The Sexual Politics of Meat. Last Mother's Day, a pregnant activist went nekkid for the press (and random kid).

[Sharkey]

Penn & Teller did an episode of their "Bullshit" show on PETA, which is available on YouTube. They cover all kinds of other interesting tidbits, such as tax forms showing tens of thousands of dollars being funneled directly to a known ALF firebomber.

Penn & Teller also did an episode where they claim recycling spends more water and fuel and therefore is more polluting than, presumably, taking recyclables to the landfill.

That was a frustrating one. Partly because at certain times and in certain places, it's absolutely true. Some communities are really far from a proper recycling center, and some materials have a very narrow profit margin when compared to just making them new. Especially in the case of glass, which is heavy and whose necessary virgin resource is, you know. Sand. Recycling glass bottles when I lived on a back road in the mountains a few hundred miles from the nearest city? Absolutely fucking insane.

On the whole, however, this just isn't true anymore. A lot of their data came from a study that had pretty dodgy numbers almost a decade before they got to it. Even glass and paper are cheaper to recycle in most places.

There are, however, more complicated issues. Particularly land use in the case of paper. There are way worse things to be doing with land than growing trees on it, and it's probably good that the tree growing is more profitable. That, and a lot of plastics can't be recycled in a loop. You can shred them for stuffing or whatever, but that's the most you're going to get out of them.

It's not nearly so one dimensional.

[James Edward Smith]

The longer this stupidity goes on the more convinced I become that some portion of the organization is trying to set it up as its own strawman, because for fuck's sake.

Or you know, it could just be that an organization made up of people whose life work is to prevent cruelty to animals we eat - in a world where cruelty to humans is still almost as prevalent - isn`t made up of particularly bright individuals.

PETA`s goals are just for the most part in my mind, but their sense of urgency seems a little misplaced to me.

[Sharkey]

It's a commonly expressed sentiment, but their publicity stunts are so alienating that they consistently make me want to kick a puppy while eating a veal-and-foie-gras sandwich purely out of spite. Fuck those guys.

Meanwhile, I don't think it's an entirely bad cause. They've just got their heads too far up their self righteous asses to share anything resembling the same sense of perspective as anyone else, which makes communication pretty damn hard.

Now, we really wanted to make the world a nice place for animals, we'd be working on growing delicious, brainless muscle tissue in vats. Because really, critters taste fucking great. If your issue is with the suffering and not just having something to be a dick about, this would be the best thing in the world for everyone.

[Royal☭]

It's worth noting that those women willingly go into the cages.

Which, frankly, throws Büge's notion that these women are being forced into cages out the window. The majority of these models are superstars or willing activists. Their tongue-in-cheek approach even mirrors the flawed notion of a body being seen as meat to be used and discarded.

Huh. I thought for sure they put on some kind of performance where they shoved a naked girl in a cage. My mistake.

Was the girl forced, blackmailed or otherwise unwillingly coaxed into the cage?

[Detonator]

I pretty much echo the sentiments of Sharkey and others: they need to take a step back and see that many people who should be on their side think of them as crazy nutjobs.

You could say this is the fault of right wing smear centers, but things like the Cooking Mama parody play right into the expectations of us who think they're extremists.

Maybe the results disagree with me, but none of the radically left friends I have like PETA, even the vegetarian ones.  It should seem that even if we're not members, we should be willing to openly support their organization.  Regardless of their successes, I see a lot of room for improvement to reach out to people who should be on their side as Arc suggests.