Comparing Humans to Animals

How often do animal rights activists trying to get people to relate to the suffering of animals hear a statement like this:

“Comparing humans to animals is offensive!”

But it’s weird that no one seems to get offended when the bible explicitly compares people to sheep. Even Jesus himself is called the “Lamb of God”. Moreover, there are plenty of animal comparisons in common English which are considered positive: “wise as an owl”, “happy as lark”, “as playful as a kitten”

Marjorie Spiegel makes the case in The Dreaded Comparison that many comparisons to animals are considered insults only because of the way our society views animals. Throughout history there have been insults based on comparisons to marginalized members of our society: “weak as a woman”, “stingy as a Jew”, “dumb as a n*****”. These comparisons are wrong not because they denigrate the target of the insult, but because they are based on offensive stereotypes of people in those marginalized groups, which arise because our society is horribly messed up. The same applies to insults based on comparisons to animals. Think for a moment about “stubborn as a ox”. The origin of this stereotype is people’s frustration with trying to force oxen to do hard labor. It wouldn’t even exist if people weren’t trying to exploit and control oxen for their own purposes, ignoring entirely the preference of the ox to live its natural life as it wishes.

But moreover, comparisons are useful. The Jews were forcibly transported to concentration camps in cattle cars. They were executed using chemicals produced by an agricultural chemical company. The Nazi theory of eugenics was developed from the selective breeding of animals. Not only do the systems of animal exploitation and human exploitation bear substantial similarities, they often overlap significantly and have common causes.

That doesn’t make all comparisons automatically OK. If they are done with the intention to insult, based off of harmful stereotypes, then they are wrong. But if you are making a comparison between two forms of exploitation with the aim of ending one of them, it’s perfectly acceptable.

That being said, it is important to consider the appropriation of the struggles of others, and be clear in your language. There is a risk when you use these comparisons recklessly, as it may diminish the importance of the very events you are trying to use to guide humans towards more compassion. Saying that a sports team being beaten badly in a tournament was “holocausted” would not be good use of the term. It is questionable whether animal rights activists should use the term “holocaust” to describe what happens to animals. While it is true that they are systematically confined, forced into horrible conditions, and slaughtered mercilessly, the intention is different: it’s not in service of a systematic genocide of farm animals to eradicate them from the face of the Earth. For this reason, it’s probably better to be more subtle in the way you make the comparison. If you are using the term just to shock people, you’re probably doing it wrong. The point of such comparisons should be to make people think.

The case of “slavery” is a bit different though. While in the US, “slavery” typically refers to the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, it has existed in many other forms throughout human history. The connection between slavery and agriculture is strong: agricultural work tends to be difficult, and both farm animals and humans have been exploited for the benefit of farm owners for thousands of years. You should still be careful when using the term, especially because black people are commonly the victims of insults which compare them to animals (this is so not only in the US). These comparisons are still harmful in our world, even if they wouldn’t be harmful in an ideal world where people didn’t marginalize and diminish animals. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make comparison at all, you should just be sensitive about how you make them. It should be absolutely clear that your analogy is to the cruelness of the oppressors, not the intelligence of the victims. The same whip was used on both labor animals and humans.