Love them or hate them, PETA has a way of making people pay
attention.
But while there may be no love lost between meat eaters and
the animal rights group, PETA’s advertising tactics are stirring a
vocal dissent amongst some of its biggest supporters: women.
The controversial group’s tongue-in-cheek, but skin-heavy,
campaigns have many wondering whether PETA is more interested
in raising arousal than animal rights issues.
“PETA does a lot of great things,” says Carol Adams, author
of The Sexual Politics of Meat, “but when they use naked women I
feel that they, in a sense, acknowledge the intractability of the
problem of animal oppression and they also maintain the
oppression of women.”
Adams, a noted feminist and animal rights activist, believes
the treatment of women and animals is intimately related. What’s
more, she contends both are often absent from discussion about
their place in society, instead leaving their role to be defined –
and dominated – by outside perspectives which objectify and
lower their status. By appealing to the lowest common
denominator, PETA is complicit in keeping both animals and
women low on the totem pole.
“They take the traditional metaphors in western culture that
already exist about women being animal-like and they try to use
that liberate animals while leaving women’s status
unproblematized,” Adams says. “In a sense they are saying, ‘just
give up animals as objects. You don’t have to give up objects. You
don’t have to give up women as objects, just give up those
animals.’ So the process of objectification is unchallenged, it’s
just who’s the victim of the objectification.”
Adams admits PETA’s ads do raise awareness for the non-
prof, but it’s not without its price. “It’s very calculated,” she says.
“The thing is that for every person they gain, they loose a person,
and they loose feminists.”
