Singling Out Apes for Protection Speciesist

Singling Out Apes for Protection Speciesist

Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 100

The best-known proponent of this new-speciesist legal approach is lawyer Steven Wise. In his first book, Rattling the Cage, Wise says of chimpanzees and bonobos, “Whatever legal rights these apes may be entitled to spring from the complexities of their minds.” In his second book, Drawing the Line, he argues that nonhumans “most deserving” of legal rights have “certain advanced mental abilities.” By now, this should sound familiar; it echoes Peter Singer and other new-specieist philosophers.
FOCUS ON GREAT APES FIRST IS SPECIESIST

Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 106

Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 109

With good reason, Wise repeatedly compares nonhuman enslavement to the former enslavement of African-Americans. If opponents of African-American enslavement had adopted a racist approach comparable to Wise’s speciesist one, they would have advocated rights for only some blacks: those who most resemble whites.

Before African-American emancipation, a number of slaves sued for freedom on the grounds that they were white. Unable to prove whiteness, they had to demonstrate that they were so much like a white that they should be given “the benefit of the doubt.” These plaintiffs presented physical evidence of whiteness, such as light skin, eyes, and hair. They also presented behavioral evidence that they socialized with whites (for example, attended church with them) and conducted themselves in a ladylike or gentlemanly way associated with white respectability. Law professor Ariela Gross comments, “Doing the things a white man or woman did became the law’s working definition” of whiteness. For instance, a person might demonstrate accomplishments such as financial self-support. “People described others as white or black in terms of their competencies and disabilities.”

Ancestry also factored in. Evidence of African ancestry counted against the plaintiff; evidence of European or other non-African ancestry counted in their favor. In one case, the judge instructed the jury to award the plaintiffs freedom if the evidence indicated that they were less than one-fourth black: greater than 0.75 in whiteness.

Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 110

Demonstrating whiteness never had the power to free more than relatively few individuals. Although Wise’s approach would emancipate entire species, those species would amount to a select few.

Making freedom contingent on whiteness maintained white supremacy; it kept whites in the position of judge and superior being. Outside a racist context, no one would aspire to whiteness. Analogously, only speciesism could place nonhumans in the degrading, oppressive situation of having to demonstrate humanness. Wise’s approach would further inscribe human supremacy into law.

Singling Out Apes for Protection Speciesist

Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 113

Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 114-5

Cavalieri and Singer address the complaint that GAP shows speciesist elitism: “It might be said that in focusing on beings as richly endowed as the great apes we are setting too high a standard for admission to the community of equals, and in so doing we could preclude, or make more difficult, any further progress for animals whose endowments are less like our own. No standard, however, can be fixed forever.” Whether or not a standard based on endowments is fixed, it’s speciesist. And applying such a standard prolongs its existence. The very terms standard and endowments suggest that an individual must meet certain criteria to qualify for rights. Again, focusing on nonhuman great apes isn’t the problem; the problem is perpetuating the view that they’re more endowed, and therefore more entitled to rights, than other nonhumans.
GREAT APE PROJECT REFLECTS ANTHROPOCENTRISM

Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 116

Steve Sapontzis has observed of GAP, “We are called on to recognize that harmful experiments on nonhuman great apes are wrong because these apes are genetically so much like us or because they are so intelligent, again like us. Such calls clearly retain an anthropocentric view of the world.”
GRANTING GREAT APES PERSONHOOD ON SPECIESIST ARGUMENTS CREATES PRECEDENT ENTRENCHING SPECIESISM

Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 120

If a judge rules that a chimpanzee is a person because chimpanzees are so human-like, yet another speciesist precedent will be set. Such a precedent would fuel the type of approach proposed by Wise. Humans continually would judge nonhumans (especially captives) by the extent to which they demonstrate human-like capacities. Such a scenario is degrading to nonhumans and frightening in its potential to perpetuate nonhuman suffering.
GREAT APE PROJECT RISKS PRIMATOCENTRISM—DANGEROUS TO FOCUS ON “INTELLIGENCE”

Marc Bekoff, Professor of Biology, University of Colorado @ Boulder, 2003, The Animal Ethics Reader, eds. Armstrong & Botzler, p. 119