Best 135 quotes of Lisa Kemmerer on MyQuotes

Lisa Kemmerer

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Acknowledging and protecting nonhuman individuals places limits on human power, and will put an end to a host of ill-gotten gains – just as emancipation curtailed white power and put an end to the ill-gotten gains of Caucasian-Americans. Consequently, animal activists who push for change are often met with derision and indifference by those who wish to continue their accustomed diet, those who do not want to rethink their leather shoes, toiletries, or treasured forms of entertainment. Feminists and civil rights protesters who asked others to change for the sake of justice – to give up their ill-gotten gains – were and are met with similar insults and raucous rejections.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Activists must not work against one another in their single-minded dedication to one specific cause. Those fighting to protect horses must not eat cattle. We do well to specialize, but we do not do well if we specialize without knowledge of interlocking oppressions—or without the application of that knowledge.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    A lack of concern about the plight of a “breeding” sow on a factory farm is also a result of normative systematic oppression – speciesism.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    All human beings are systematically socialized to oppress cattle, chickens, snakes, mice, dogs, and all other nonhuman individuals. After the fashion of Sojouner Truth, might cows and chickens ask: “Ain’t I a female, too?” And would not dogs and snakes ask, "Ain't I a living being, too?

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Animals arrive at slaughter exhausted, thirsty, hungry, and terrified. Every year 100,000 factory farmed cattle arrive at slaughter injured, or too dispirited to walk; undercover investigators have repeatedly documented downed animals who are kicked, beaten, pushed with bulldozers, and dragged from transport trucks with ropes or a chain, though they are fully conscious, in pain, and bellowing pitifully. Cows exploited in the dairy industry, because they are older and their bodies have been exhausted by perpetual pregnancy, birthing, and milking, are among the most pathetic when they arrive at slaughter.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Animals (human and nonhuman) feel pain, can suffer, and ought to be treated accordingly – pain and suffering are always of moral concern.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Animals who are exploited for “organic” foods are raised, maintained, transported, and slaughtered just like their nonorganic” counterparts: They are debeaked, dehorned, detoed, castrated, and/or branded, and they are kept, transported, and slaughtered in the same deplorable conditions.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Another critical religious motivation for reconsidering diet is concern for human suffering—out of compassion—in light of poverty, malnutrition, and starvation. . . . Not only do we damage the environment with our choice of cheese and cutlets—burdening future populations with pollutants, dead zones, and global climate change—but we also feed tons of precious grains to hundreds of thousands of cattle, pigs, chickens, and turkeys while fellow human beings go without food. Food energy is wasted when we cycle grains through anymals. Rather than breed hungry cattle and chickens to consume grains, we should stop breeding anymals and feed precious grains to those who are already starving. If we did not breed and consume anymals, billions of tons of grains could be redirected to feed hungry human beings, alleviating and/or preventing starvation worldwide.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Anymal exploiters may or may not be religious, and those who are religious are likely to lack information in three critical areas (just mentioned). Perhaps most fundamentally, religious people tend to be unaware that chewing on a chicken’s body purchased at a grocery store contradicts the core religious ideals of every major religious tradition. Still other religious people do not take their religious commitment seriously and therefore do not care one way or the other about anymal suffering and slaughter. This book is about what religions teach, not about what religious people believe or how they live. There is often shamefully little correlation between the two.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Anymal liberationists do not target life—they target industries (and profits) that flourish at the expense of life—and they attempt to rescue the exploited. Terrorists kill randomly; anymal liberationists have never killed anyone. Anymal liberationists exemplify what it is to live into the core teachings of every major religion concerning rightful relations between human beings and anymals.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Anymal liberationists who release fox or chinchillas from fur farms, free veal calves from chains in abysmal crates, destroy transport trucks that haul terrified turkeys and sheep to their premature deaths, burn slaughterhouses that dismember pigs and chickens, or destroy computers in research facilities are not dangerous terrorists. Anymal liberationists simply believe that life is precious, and that an industry designed to manipulate and destroy life for the sake of profits is ethically and spiritually unacceptable.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Anymal liberationists who release fox or chinchillas from fur farms, free veal calves from chains in abysmal crates, destroy transport trucks that haul terrified turkeys and sheep to their premature deaths, burn slaughterhouses that dismember pigs and chickens, or destroy computers in research facilities are not dangerous terrorists. Anymal liberationists simply believe that life is precious, and that an industry designed to manipulate and destroy life for the sake of profits is ethically and spiritually unacceptable. They do not target the lives of random citizens—or the lives of any citizens. Anymal liberationists do not target life—they target industries (and profits) that flourish at the expense of life—and they attempt to rescue the exploited. Terrorists kill randomly; anymal liberationists have never killed anyone. Anymal liberationists exemplify what it is to live into the core teachings of every major religion concerning rightful relations between human beings and anymals.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Anymals do not exist to satisfy our desires and pleasures. Liberationists do not accept larger gestation crates because crates of any kind are oppressive and exploitative, and are therefore inconsistent with compassionate action. They do not accept slaughter, even with improved stunning methods, because there is no need for slaughterhouses or factory farms—we can easily feed ourselves without slaughtering anymals—and because slaughtering without necessity lacks compassion and reverence for life. Even if we raise and slaughter anymals with a minimum of pain and misery, farmed anymals are killed when they are mere adolescents—lives nipped in the bud to satisfy habitual tastes and preferences. Such practices also demonstrate a lack of reverence for human life and are contrary to social justice: We can feed more of the world’s many hungry people if we stop producing anymal products. Similarly, vivisection is a selfish exploitation of other creatures—and nonhumans are not here to live and die on behalf of our hopes. Anymal liberationists avoid consuming anymal products, and oft en actively lobby to close down exploitative anymal industries and to bring an end to human-anymal relationships that fail to honor each anymal’s physical and emotional health and well-being.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Anymals do not exist to satisfy our desires and pleasures.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Aside from respect for life and compassion for anymals, we ought to choose a vegan diet for the sake of the environment, to alleviate world hunger, to protect laborers, and on behalf of our own health. The consequences of our dietary choices are monumental.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    As long as we foster power-over—whether over pigs or turkeys or women—most human females will remain under the control of men, along with pigs and cows and chickens (who will generally remain yet lower on the rungs of power). In seeking to stand above nonhuman females, women help to maintain a hierarchy through which they are held below men. As long as we support a hierarchy, as long as we support a system which grants some individuals power over other individuals, men will dominate over women.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    At a minimum, it is clear that human beings who claim a religious tradition that is rooted in compassion and/or respect for the natural world must adopt a plant-based diet.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Authors in this anthology who are working on behalf of social justice immerse themselves in the horrors of oppression—they know what is going on, help those who are suffering, and inform the larger community. For the women whose essays are included in this anthology, immersion in the ugliness of injustice, in the hope of change, seems preferable to turning away. . . . there is a reward for courage and determination in the face of helplessness and suffering: Walking into pain in the hope of bringing change moves a person from helplessness and despair to empowered activism.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Because the oppression of nonhuman individuals is normative, it is largely invisible, and most of us are complicit in one way or another. While social justice activists now widely recognize that the poor, elderly, and non-white racialized minorities are harmed by patriarchy, few are willing to similarly recognize the harm of patriarchal dualisms and hierarchy on nonhuman animals – even ecofeminist theorists. Very few social justice activists have even a rudimentary understanding of speciesism, or of the harmful exploitation that stems from such marginalization and cruel domination of nonhuman animals.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Both women and nonhuman animals have traditionally been viewed as property—"things” to be owned and controlled by those in power. While the plight of women is linked with that of nonhuman animals through a single system of oppression, through their comparative powerlessness and invisibility, and through sexual exploitation, it is important to elucidate these similarities through concrete examples. Links between women and nonhuman animals are nowhere more apparent than through the vulnerabilities of mothers and their young, and the control of pregnancies and offspring; this particular form of oppression is nowhere more blatant than on factory farms.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    But activists must not work against one another in their single-minded dedication to one specific cause. Those fighting to protect horses must not eat cattle. We do well to specialize, we do not do so well if we specialize without knowledge of interlocking oppressions—or without the application of that knowledge.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Confucian traditions teach that all beings stem from one source, the Great Ultimate, and participate in the Great Unity. Ren (love or benevolence) is the essence of all that is good in humanity, and extends across species, as exemplified in the noble person (junzi).

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Cruelly exploiting and slaughtering human beings is widely recognized as spiritually problematic, but the veal industry is not, battery cages are not, foie gras and the use of farrowing crates are not, debeaking and slaughter lines are not. How can this be? Anymal suffering is extreme on factory farms, massive numbers of premature deaths are the expected end, and both are sanctioned not only by the government but also by the masses—including those who affiliate with a particular religious tradition and take their religious commitments seriously. The reason for this cruelty and indifference is obvious: With human beings creating the rules, anymals are the last to be noticed and the most likely to be discarded or exploited. Consequently, wherever humanity suffers, anymals suffer yet more.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Daoism also encourages people to love deeply and live compassionately (ci), to exercise restraint and frugality (jian), to seek harmony, and to practice wuwei (action as nonaction). Daoist precepts speak often and strongly against harming any creature, whether by disturbing their homes or eating their bodies. Guanyin, the most popular Chinese deity, exemplifies deep compassion for all beings. The Zhuangzi highlights basic similarities between humans and anymals, and encourages people to treat all beings with care and respect.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Diversity” too often diverts attention from the root problem: Normative whiteness.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Do the religious texts and exemplars support anymal welfare or anymal liberation? What do religions teach us to be with regard to anymals? A concise formal argument, using deductive logic, rooted in three well-established premises, can help us to answer these questions about rightful relations between human beings and anymals: Premise 1 : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach human beings to avoid causing harm to anymals. Premise 2 : Contemporary industries that exploit anymals—including food, clothing, pharmaceutical, and/or entertainment industries—harm anymals. Premise 3 : Supporting industries that exploit anymals (most obviously by purchasing their products) perpetuates these industries and their harm to anymals. Conclusion : The world’s dominant religious traditions indicate that human beings should avoid supporting industries that harm anymals, including food, clothing, pharmaceutical, and/or entertainment industries. It is instructive to consider an additional deductive argument rooted in two well-established premises: Premise 1 : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach people to assist and defend anymals who are suffering. Premise 2 : Anymals suffer when they are exploited in laboratories and the entertainment, food, or clothing industries. Conclusion : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach people to assist and defend anymals when they are exploited in laboratories, entertainment, food, and clothing industries. If these premises are correct—and they are supported by abundant evidence—the world’s dominant religions teach adherents • to avoid purchasing products from industries that exploit anymals, and • to assist and defend anymals who are exploited in laboratories and the entertainment, food, and clothing industries.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Do the religious texts and exemplars support anymal welfare or anymal liberation? What do religions teach us to be with regard to anymals? A concise formal argument, using deductive logic, rooted in three well-established premises, can help us to answer these questions about rightful relations between human beings and anymals: Premise 1 : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach human beings to avoid causing harm to anymals. Premise 2 : Contemporary industries that exploit anymals—including food, clothing, pharmaceutical, and/or entertainment industries—harm anymals. Premise 3 : Supporting industries that exploit anymals (most obviously by purchasing their products) perpetuates these industries and their harm to anymals. Conclusion : Th e world’s dominant religious traditions indicate that human beings should avoid supporting industries that harm anymals, including food, clothing, pharmaceutical, and/or entertainment industries. It is instructive to consider an additional deductive argument rooted in two well-established premises: Premise 1 : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach people to assist and defend anymals who are suffering. Premise 2 : Anymals suffer when they are exploited in laboratories and the entertainment, food, or clothing industries. Conclusion : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach people to assist and defend anymals when they are exploited in laboratories, entertainment, food, and clothing industries. If these premises are correct—and they are supported by abundant evidence—the world’s dominant religions teach adherents • to avoid purchasing products fr om industries that exploit anymals, and • to assist and defend anymals who are exploited in laboratories and the entertainment, food, and clothing industries. Such industries include, but are not limited to, those that overtly sell or use products that include chicken’s reproductive eggs, cow’s nursing milk, or anymal flesh or hides (fur and leather), as well as industries that engage in or are linked with anymal experimentation of any kind, and entertainment industries such as zoos, circuses, and aquariums.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Ecofeminist analysis is generally much more expansive than environmentalism and feminism. . . . Ecofeminism draws on ecological, socialist, and feminist thought, incorporating a handful of social justice movements, such as feminism, peace activism, labor movements, women’s health care, anti-nuclear, environmental, and animal liberation.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Ecofeminists call attention to the fact that environmentalists, feminists, and those fighting racism and poverty, are pulling on different straws in the same broom.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Ecofeminists focus on interconnections between the domination/oppression of women and the domination/oppression of nature.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Even with the onset of contemporary animal advocacy, and the unavoidability of at least some knowledge of what goes on in slaughterhouses and on factory farms, most of us choose to look away—even feminists. Collectively, feminists remain largely unaware of the well-documented links between the exploitation of women and girls, and the exploitation of cows, sows, and hens.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Exploring sacred teachings from around the world demonstrates that nature, including anymals, is sacred, that anymals are central to our spiritual landscape, and that we owe them respect, justice, and compassion.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Exploring sacred teachings from around the world demonstrates that nature, including anymals, is sacred, that anymals are central to our spiritual landscape, and that we owe them respect, justice, and compassion. Religious texts remind us that we share a fundamental kinship with tabby cats, rose-ringed parakeets, and slender pygmy swordtails, and that anymals are understood to be remarkable and marvelous—superior to humans in many ways—in the world’s religious traditions. Sacred literature indicates that nonhumans and humans share the same fate after death; faiths that have a Creator teach human beings that the divine is personally invested in the life of every anymal, from the large flightless common rhea to each critically endangered Jenkin’s shrew, from a factory-farmed chicken to each bovine trucked to slaughter. Religious exemplars remind us that all species have personality and intellect—other creatures, whether insects, fish, reptiles, mammals, or birds, can offer much-needed spiritual wisdom for the betterment of humanity. Religions teach of a deep and fundamental unity on planet Earth. Interestingly, consistent with Darwin, the world’s dominant religions teach people that there is much more continuity than separation across species.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Failing to notice a lack of Latino and African-American representation in congress is a result of systemic oppression – racism. General indifference to the fact that white men dominate large corporations is part of the invisibility of both racism and sexism. A lack of concern about the plight of a “breeding” sow on a factory farm is also a result of normative systematic oppression – speciesism.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Females – sows and cows and hens and women – suffer because of their sex in Western patriarchal cultures, where female bodies are exploited as sex symbols, for reproduction, for breast milk, and/or for reproductive eggs. As such, farmed animals are at the very bottom of the contemporary, Western hierarchy of beings – and this is speceisism.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Feminists have often highlighted the “otherness” of nonhuman animals while highlighting similarities between women and the men who hold power. Biologically speaking, any two humans will be more similar than a human and any other species. But the position of most women in patriarchal societies is closer to that of chickens and cows than it is to that of the men who hold power.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Feminists lobby against sex wage discrepancies, gays fight homophobic laws, and the physically challenged demand greater access—each fighting for injustices that affect their lives, and/or the lives of their loved ones. Yet these dedicated activists usually fail to make even a slight change in their consumer choices for the sake of other much more egregiously oppressed and exploited individuals. While it is important to fight for one’s own liberation, it is counterproductive (not to mention selfish and small minded) to fight for one’s own liberation while willfully continuing to oppress others who are yet lower on the rungs of hierarchy.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    For most women (as for most men) links between sexism and speciesism are not readily apparent. We have been conditioned not to see exploitation. For example, men generally have no idea how patriarchy affects women—unless they go out of their way to learn. The same is true for women with regard to cows and pigs and chickens and turkeys. Both women and nonhuman animals have traditionally been viewed as property—"things” to be owned and controlled by those in power. While the plight of women is linked with that of nonhuman animals through a single system of oppression, through their comparative powerlessness and invisibility, and through sexual exploitation, it is important to elucidate these similarities through concrete examples. Links between women and nonhuman animals are nowhere more apparent than through the vulnerabilities of mothers and their young, and the control of pregnancies and offspring; this particular form of oppression is nowhere more blatant than on factory farms.

  • By Anonym
    Lisa Kemmerer

    For most women (as for most men) links between sexism and speciesism are not readily apparent. We have been conditioned not to see exploitation. For example, men generally have no idea how patriarchy affects women—unless they go out of their way to learn. The same is true for women with regard to cows and pigs and chickens and turkeys.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    For the sake of farmed animals, who suffer terribly in their artificially short lives, please do not reject red flesh in preference for poultry flesh. Please do not replace flesh with eggs or dairy products. Please do not buy animal products that try to disguise cruel exploitation behind meaningless feel-good labels such as “free range,” “cruelty free,” “organic,” and “natural.” For the sake of your own health, and for the sake of farmed animals, please eliminate (or at least reduce) your consumption of all animal products.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Given these five compelling reasons to reconsider dietary choice—anymal suffering and premature death, environmental degradation, world hunger, labor injustices, and our own health—it is not surprising that the world’s most commonly celebrated religions require and/or encourage a diet of greens, grains, fruits, and legumes, while simultaneously forbidding and/or discouraging the slaughter of anymals and the consumption of anymal products.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Health provides an important final reason to adopt a plant-based diet. Westerners are choking their arteries, fattening themselves up, and fostering cancers by consuming anymal products. How many people who live on bean salad and vegetable soup are obese? How often do those with a steady diet of vegetables and rice suffer from colon cancer? How many people living on broccoli and tofu suffer heart attacks in their middle years? Obesity, heart disease, and cancers are just three common health problems that are linked with the consumption of anymal products. To look after both our spiritual and physical health, we must adopt a vegan diet.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Humans who are in positions of power make the rules, and therefore their interests almost always come first—no matter what the cost to anymals and less powerful human beings.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    If one cares about the earth—if one respects nature—it is better to consume vegetables, fruits, nuts, and grains. If you care about the planet and wish to adopt an earth-friendly lifestyle, it is advisable to focus only secondarily on the car that you drive, or recycling, or turning off lights and turning down heat, and primarily on what you buy at the grocery store. What we eat has a much greater impact on the environment.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    If one focuses on foundational religious texts and core teachings from any of the world’s major religions, it is much easier to defend anymal liberation than it is to defend anymal exploitation. Moreover, it is easier to champion anymal liberation than to defend other oft-claimed religious ideals, such as human rights or equality between the sexes. This is understandable when we realize that anymals tend to be extremely vulnerable when compared with human beings. Children, women, and minorities are vulnerable, but even children can (and might) destroy a healthy chicken, while it is rather preposterous to imagine a chicken destroying a healthy child.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    I have often wondered how empathetic women have the courage to repeatedly expose themselves to trauma—entering animal labs, factory farms, and slaughterhouses to witness and record insidious treatment of nonhuman animals—while maintaining a semblance of emotional and psychological equilibrium. Authors in this anthology provide an answer: empathic people face misery head-on, not only to bring about much-needed change but as a means of coping. In a world where unconscionable violence and pervasive injustices are the norm, they have come to see activism as the lesser of two miseries. These women have found that their only hope for peace of mind is to walk straight into that pervasive misery and work for change

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Immersion in the ugliness of injustice, in the hope of change, seems preferable to turning away. . . . there is a reward for courage and determination in the face of helplessness and suffering: Walking into pain in the hope of bringing change moves a person from helplessness and despair to empowered activism

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Inasmuch as animal products in Westernized nations are brought to the table only by exploiting those who are less powerful—usually in an extremely gruesome manner—those who stand against exploitation of the less powerful by the more powerful will need to select vegan food options whenever possible.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Indeed, although the world’s religious traditions differ in many critical ways, there is much of commonality in core moral teachings with regard to nature generally and anymals specifically. Religiously sanctioned morals around the world encourage a gentle, benevolent, service-oriented relationship with anymals.

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    Lisa Kemmerer

    Indigenous religious traditions around the world continue to provide an ancient yet living vision of nature as sacred, requiring human respect and entailing human responsibilities. Anymals are understood to be “people” living in community as humans live in community—all of whom are part of a larger community of living beings. Indigenous religious traditions teach people that we owe respect, responsibility, and compassion to our nonhuman kin, and remember a time of great peace, before predation began. Most indigenous peoples believe that all beings are endowed with souls. Anymals are generally thought to hold exceptional abilities and remarkable powers.