Humanities Panel at the AT&T Conference Center

The Humanities panel at this discussion consisted of three very interesting and diverse speakers who present refreshing views on animals in literature.

Mr. Thomas Prasch was the first to speak and his discussion focused on the comparisons of expression in humans and animals. He believed that we could bring humans down to the same level as animals if we removed the concept of speceism. His supporting facts came from Darwin's study of expression that focused on a cultural difference between animals nd humans rather than the biological differences. Darwin saw expression as a legacy of the past with social influences. While some expressions are universal, they are learned through our environment rather than passed down genetically. Mr. Preach was a very interesting speaker. I just wish he would've expanded on his essay rather than reading aloud from it.



The second speaker was our very own refreshing Professor Bump. After the rather monotone lecture experience before, he brought some life to the panel and discussed cannibalism in the Alice books. He grabbed the interest of the audience through his quoting of the Bible and then questioning why animals are not understood to be included in the statement "thy neighbor." A brief discussion of The Alice in Wonderland movie where the difference between love of animals/good and hatred of animals/bad was portrayed in greater magnitude than the books. There was a chuckle amongst the crowd after he announced the IMAX 3D movie times for Alice at the Bob Bullock Museum.



Professor Stiles was the last to speak on the panel. She drew very interesting conclusions on the novel Dracula and its influence of vivisection through the author's brother. She explained that Dracula exploited animals and humans for the purpose of materialistic science and thus clearly supported vivisection during a time in history when animal rights were very strong. She cleverly proposed the idea that this novel may be revenge science fiction to the vivisection issue. The question of whether vivisection circulated around Victorian Society as a popular metaphor was then proposed and followed by the example of Dr. Seward in the popular Dorian Grey novel. My question for Dr. Stiles was whether or not society picked up on the anti-vivisection statements that she pointed out in the novel and whether or not it encouraged anti-vivisectors.

The Degredation of Man

The documentary entitled Earthings is one of the most emotionally powerful films showing the complete degredation of mankind around the world. As a southerner growing up in Texas, I completely identified with the issue of racism that was discussed in this class. The idea of speciest, however, is shocking to think that it applies to humans in every country of this planet. Watching this film left me in complete shock at the amount of pain we inflict on the animals we share earth with for superflous reasons. "Its nonsense to say that animals do not suffer because they ahve a lower order of intelligence. Pain is pain, conveyed by nerves to the brain, and tehre are other nerves than thsoe of inteliigence.... nerves such as sight, smell, touch, and hearing. And in some animals these nerves are much more highly developed than in man" (593). In India where the cow is sacred, natives sell their livestock so that they can be slaughtered in another country. Muslim faiths do not support humane slaughter and prefer to slit the throats of animals throats. Fur farms send electric shocks anally through animals to kill them that is not always sucessful the first time. In Europe and the US, we encourage these horrific behaviors by being avid consumers of leather and meat.





I spent half of the movie staring out our classroom window trying to avoid the horrific images portrayed on the screen. Halfway through, I realized that my actions mimicked that of most Americans. We avidly consume meat, purchase leather products, and wear fur, yet we refuse to see the reality of the pain that we inflict upon these animals. However, the words of this documentary pierce through your ears and demand your attention regardless if you see the images ore not. I feel as though if this film were viewed by every US consumer, meat consumption would drastically decrease. It's just that strong.



My reactions to this film would probably mirror those felt by locals who saw the reality of the Jews plight during the Holocaust. "Animals as victims are often 'voiceless,' with little or no attempt by others to advocate on their behalf. Historically, the Jews, for their part, were often silenced, ignored, and disenfranchised" (741). Like the image below, Earthlings contained startling pictures and video footage that will make the most immoral human question themselves. This image shocks us because we are killing humans. So why is acceptable for this kind of behavior acceptable for animals?

What is Sexism Really?

Sexism is defined as "discrimination or devaluation based on a person's sex, as in restricted job opportunities; esp., such discrimination directed against women" (dictionary). I find it interesting that even in the dictionary women ar targeted as the victims of this term. Joan Dunayer's article discussing animal references to women is very eye opening and refreshing. She explaisn that women are referred to as foxes, cows, or chicks in derogatory terms. She also makes the connenction between gender and speciest when she accurately explains that "patriarchal men have depicted themselves as 'more human' than women because they have viewed 'human' as signifying everything superior and deserving"(791). Although it is not considered as great a deragatory term, we still refer to men as "jack asses" which associates them whith a donkey. Since we as humans use animals to refer to deragatory claims, can we assume that all Democrats are jackasses then? I think its interesting that using derogatory animal names for men is not nearly as popular or as culturally acceptable as those references when made towards women.



Although I support Dunayer's ideas, it seems as though she is putting the blame of human dominance over animals on the shoulders of men when women are equally as responsible. If you walk through Texas Roadhouse or Outback you will just a comparable amount of women eating a steak as the men. Dunayer explains that "Man divides all beings into two contrasting categories: members of our species and nonmembers. At the same time, it semantically assigns men to the first category, women as the second" (790).




I think that we need to accept that animal cruelty is inflicted by humans, not just man alone. We do not consider animals an equal species on this planet and that is a horrible misconception. We all feel pain. Unfortunately for animals, "being able to suffer is no longer a power, it is a possibility without power, a possibility of the impossible" (723). Our miscontrued idea of their subservience will eventually lead to the demise of several species in this world. We must change the way we percieve ourselves as one of the many species on this planet.

The Innefficient HMSLA & How it Should be Revised

American adults are currently utilizing the convenience of fast food to order three hamburgers and four orders of french fries every week. That's 90 grams of fat and 2,520 calories. The average person needs about 2,000 calories for a whole day. We have become obsessive meat eaters because of convenience even though we have a choice in what we eat. We continue this act even though we would be deriving more energy and lead healthier lives by eating food from the producer level. It is embarrassing that Americans support fast food restaurants, such as McDonalds pictured at the right, for their inexpensive convenient food without considering the inhumane slaughter animals suffer in order to keep prices low for consumers. They are able to inhumanely slaughter chickens because they are one of the many animals not protected under the Humane Slaughter Act. Prior to this course, I never considered where this meat came from or how the animals that were slaughtered led a despicable life and suffered inhumane slaughter. As Americans, most of us trust that our government in Washington is passing laws and enforcing them to ensure that we lead moral, safe, and respectable lives. However, the Humane Slaughter Act (HMSLA) is incredibly flawed to allow religious based slaughter houses to reap millions of dollars in profit at the expense of killing animals in the most inhumane and painful way possible.



The HMSLA is defined as a “United States Federal Law designed to protect livestock during slaughter.” It is expressed within this law that “animals should be stunned into consciousness prior to their slaughter to ensure a quick, relatively painless death.” However, the wording of this law allows for a “broad exemption for all animals slaughtered in accordance with religious law. This generally applies to animals killed for kosher and Halal meat market. Strict interpretation of kashrut generally requires that the animal be fully sensible when its carotid artery is cut.” Thus, we are using the excuse of a religious belief to inhumanely slaughter animals at little expense and reap profits. As pictured below, animals subject to kosher slaughter are placed in a metal holding device to keep their throats easily accessible to the slaughterer. Is it morally sound for animals to suffer in a kosher slaughter house to make larger profits while other slaughter houses that use anesthetic at the expense of the animals’ suffering? It is fairly obvious that animals sent to a kosher slaughter house have been dealt a vicious fate when compared to others sent to a non-religious slaughterhouse. Their slaughter is far less humane when comparing their levels of cortisol, a hormone produced in the body as a result of stress. “The cortisol range for both on-farm handling and cattle slaughter was to 63 ng/mL. The one exception was a kosher plant that inverted cattle on their backs for 103 seconds; those animals had 93 ng/mL.” Therefore, our government is endorsing animal cruelty through inhumane slaughter as long as it has a religious affiliation. Shouldn’t a secular based business feel some sort of remorse from financial gains earned by inflicting the largest degree of pain while killing an animal?



The answer is that they do not. Agriprocesors is “the nation’s biggest supplier of kosher meat, [and] was raided by US immigration agents in May [of 2008]. Nearly 400 workers, mostly Guatemalans, were swept up and jailed and are likely to be deported as illegal immigrants.” At the time of this article investigators were suspicious of the company’s “annual revenue of $250 million.” In addition, “the influential Brooklyn rabbi Moshe Robashkin, pleaded guilty to bank fraud in 2002 after writing $325,000 in bad checks related to a family textile business.” A study of Jewish slaughter houses in France found that “none of the abattoirs (French word for slaughter house and the act of slaughter) practices slaughter according to the Jewish rite. This is because they lack the equipment required to respect the demands of the ritual as well as those concerning the humane treatment of animals. Slaughter in accordance with the Muslim rite poses similar problems.” It is morally and ethically unjust for the US government to continue rewarding religious slaughter houses with large financial profits under a religious exemption that results in inhumane animal slaughter.

The US government would see far more success for animal rights if they allowed inspectors to return to the slaughter houses to ensure that all laws and provisions are being followed. “In 1978, the HMSLA was updated and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspectors were given the authority to stop the slaughtering line when cruelty was observed. Officially, slaughtering was not to continue until said cruelty, whether as a result of equipment or abuses by personnel, was corrected. However, the USDA eventually stopped authorizing USDA inspectors to stop the line, since doing so incurs considerable cost of time for the industry.” Because there is no regulation at the slaughter houses anymore, the degree of animal cruelty has more than multiplied. An official with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union in Sioux Falls explained that “animal abuse is so common that workers who’ve been in the industry for years get into a state of apathy about it. Nobody knows who’s responsible for correcting animal abuse at the plant. The USDA does zilch. Especially in the hog kill, where you have hogs going through at eleven hundred an hour, the abuse is out of control.”
By keeping inspectors off the kill floor it seems as though the government is acting like the American public: they know animal abuse is occurring in the slaughter houses, but they do not want to regulate it in fear of rising meat prices or a decrease in convenience. Currently, inspectors work in offices where they are prohibited to inspect on the killing floor of a slaughter house. USDA meat inspector Dave Carney explained that if an inspector went to the kill floor today “he’d be subject to disciplinary action for abandoning his inspection duties. Unless he stopped the line first, which would get him into even more trouble.” Even worse, this inspector’s answer to the question of “So what’s the procedure for checking inhumane slaughter?” was that “there isn’t one.” If there were provisions and inspectors on the floor, then cattle such as these pictured at the right would not have been slaughtered while fully conscious. Therefore it is true and unjust that the HMSLA has no effect in the slaughter house and is merely a provision on paper to appease animal rights groups. Carney even admits that “The Humane Slaughter Act is a regulation on paper only. It is not being enforced.” It is unethical and shameful that our government approve a law to support animal welfare and then not enforce it so that those in the slaughtering business can receive financial profits at the expense of heightened degrees of animal cruelty.

The obvious and attainable goal for Americans is to encourage the US government to enforce the HMSLA by writing to their State Senators and House Representatives. By enforcing this act inhumane slaughter for thousands of animals could be reduced. On a day to day basis consumers should only by meat from markets who abide by humane slaughter. As a market based economy, boycotting meat produced by inhumane slaughter will result in decreased profits. As a hopeful result, slaughter houses will also push the government to allow inspectors on the kill floor so that they may endorse humane slaughter to increase their profits.

The largest constraint to the enforcement and revision of the HMSLA is that most American citizens are not aware of what it stands for, means, or what it lacks to regulate. Thus, educating the public on inhumane slaughter will be the largest component of gaining attention from Washington to make a real difference. Interest groups should educate young consumers on college campuses and those in the work force about the cruelty imposed on animals that do not experience a humane slaughter. Anyone containing any ethical or moral values will be distraught in hearing the true facts of inhumane slaughter that garnering support for animal welfare will not be difficult. Another popular misconception is the issue of feeling as though one person cannot make a difference. One person can join the PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) Action Team where members are informed of “upcoming events and demonstrations in your area, breaking news, urgent alerts, and tips for how you can improve the lives of animals every day.”

A goal for the immediate future would be to revise HMSLA to give inspectors rights to inspect the kill floor and not permit exemptions to the law because of religious affiliation. Also, the law should be rewritten to include all the animals subjected to factory farming. All animals feel pain regardless of what anyone thinks. Humans do not have the right to determine which animals should be given ethical humane treatment and which should not. The public should show the powerful interest groups that have an established reputation in Washington of their concern with the current HMSLA. The easiest way would be to encourage people to express their concern to PETA or any other animal interest group so that this law can be revised to not allow inhumane slaughter at all.



Finally, a reach goal for our society and government would be to include provisions in the HMSLA to protect the entirety of animals’ lives rather than the few seconds it takes to slaughter them. Animals subject to factory farming have zero quality of life. Ethically, we have a moral responsibility to these animals that we bring into life for the sole purpose of consuming them. While they are alive on this earth they should be given a quality of life that allows them some time to act as an animal in their natural habitat. By granting a higher quality of life to these farm animals by allowing them sufficient space in pastures with open air, we would also be contributing to the profits of the American farmer rather than the businessman.

Word Count: 2318
WC without quotes: 1983

Racism at UT? No Way!

As an advocate for animal rights myself, I believe Alice Walker’s short story, Am I Blue?, deters readers from being persuaded to support animals. Instead, this story further polarizes readers into supporters and non-supporters with no grey area. If we are supporting Jeremy Benthem’s idea of Utilitarianism where “the proper end of all action is to achieve the greates happiness of the greatest number,” then this story is contradictory (756). I agree that Blue was not granted the greatest quality of life while living amongst his five acres alone and losing his friend Brown. It was the responsibility of his owners to insure that he was properly cared for daily so that he considered his comradary amongst other people and horses socially satisfying. However, to take the case of horse’s misfortune and apply it to all people of the equine industry is completely insane. Calling members of this industry “people who do not know that animals suffer,” is rather hypocritical coming from people who do not deal with horses on a daily basis (760). Communication and agriculture would never have advanced as it did without the domestication of the horse. Without them, the Mongols in Asia would never have been able to communicate across their vast empire and American settlers would have never been able to efficiently grow crops. One could argue that horses, as Blue, are not able to experience comradary amongst other horses and run free. However, human population has expanded into their territory so that their quality of life is greatest under domestication. You could argue that man has become the new friend to such domesticated animals as we share the same emotions with them as we do with human friends. Frederick Douglas accurately claims that "it should be the study of every farmer to make his horse his companion and friend, and to do this, there is but one rule, and that is, uniform sympathy and kindness" (783). Therefore, under Utilitarian principles, the domestication of horses has led to the greatest happiness.




In the case of considering the University of Texas as a racist campus due to its statues on the South mall is rather unjustified as well. As a visiting A&M Professor, Dale Baum believed that after “a stroll past the statues shaded by live oaks along the South Mall of the University of Texas suggests that the university has a soft spot for the Confederacy” (784). I would like to first ask Professor Baum if he had a complete campus tour to see the other stautes of MLK on the East Mall and Barbara Jordan on the North side of the Union. Although these statues are of African-Americans, it must be understood that associating the Confederacy with slavery is an innacurate and uneducated statement. The south fought for state’s rights and what they believed were individual liverties; however, following the unpopularity of the draft in the Union Lincoln delivered his famous Ghettsyburg address which gave the union a moral cause to fight the war, slavery. Lincoln’s prime concern of the war was to reinstate the union, not abolishing slavery. So to concede that the University of Texas is racist because they erected statues of civil war leaders is not only an insult but rather a statement of ignorance and disrespect. Yes, our founding fathers, such as George Washington, owned slaves; however, his statue is not overlooking the south malll because of that. Rather it is placed there because of his political importance in our nation’s history as the first president of the United States and his role as a revolutionary leader. So according to Professor Baum should Universities only honor leaders whose side was victorious? Would Baum be arguing that Robert E Lee’s statue was racist if he had accepted the Union’s offer to command their army? Should I see Professor Baum on campus one day, I would like to know where he earned his History degree and how he is authorized to teach it at a university level, even if it is TAMU, when he makes such unjustifiable claims.



While reading The Dreaded Comparison, I really thought it was another bleeding heart author using points way to abstract to persaude the reader. His comparison of a dog's quality of life to that of a dairy cow who "despite her years of service, when output drops below a certain point of profitability she is sold and slaughtered" (769). The above complaint that dogs "learn to win approval - and avoid future beatings or other punishments by - by suppressing his own desires and conforming to those of the omnipotent human who legally owns him" (768).





However, should you continue reading on to the section on Vivisection, you will be completely convinced and mortified at the racism and specism that exists not only in this world, but our own country. All examples of vivisection are repulsive to hear about, period. But to hear about the Tuskegee Syphillis Study where "white scientists, working with the racist hypothesis that syphillis affected whites and blacks differently, observed teh course of untreated syphillis in black males for forty years, until the experiment was exposed by a journalist and finally ended with investigtion," is disgusting and embarresing (779). This is an incredible article that could make any Caucasian person in the United States feel ashamed and embarresed. However, if we have learned anything from this class we know that our feelings after hearing, seeing, or reading the cold hard facts mean nothing if they do not lead to action. Rather than crying over these horrific things of the past, Majorie Spiegel uses these examples to persaude reader like you and I to change the cultural and social landscape of this country.

The Importance of Literature and Motivation

I believe that all written words contain a certain power that motivates individuals to an action. Whereas Philosophy and non-fiction contain facts that surprises readers, it is the poetry and non-fiction that pulls at the heartstrings of readers and instills a great sense of emotional connectedness. The most effective way to persuade a reader to sympathize and or understand your rhetorical purpose is to begin with the non-fictional cold hard facts to get their attention and follow it with a related fictional story where the emotional impact will encourage the reader to never forget and possibly act.


After reading selections from Elizabeth Costello, I learned the power of non-fiction and have gained an emotional involvement in the inhumane practices of slaughter houses. I believe that Coetzee's novel is effective because he includes non-fictional facts to get his point across. He explains that "We have become too many. There is no time to respect and honour all the animals we need to feed ourselves. We need factories of death; we need animals to feed ourselves" (97). While providing the facts that the human population has grown to the point that we rely upon factory farms to survive, the eloquent diction of these sentences has a powerful emotional influence upon the reader. By calling these factory farms "factories of death" it leads the reader to feel shameful of the way these animals are slaughtered for human benefit. Coetzee drives his point home with his famous analogy to the Holocaust by stating "it was from the Chicago stockyards that the Nazis learned how to process bodies" (97). Rather than crying over the world's misfortunes, the mix of fact and fiction encouraged me to act on this issue when I read these words.


Franz Kafka's "Report for an Academy" explains his personal viewpoint as an ape on intellectual understanding and human interaction. His report reiterates the idea that apes do not seek freedom when confined, "only a way out" (660). When confronted with a problem these animals want to simply find a way out to live day to day. However, Kafka explains that "one learns when one wants a way out. One learns ruthlessly" (662). I bring up this point to encourage people to understand that animals are extremely intelligent. Like Kafka, they think, feel, and plan. Costello claims that "the only organism over which we do not claim this power of life and death is man. Why? Because man is different. Man understands the dance as the other dancers do not. Man is an intellectual being" (99). This statement is glaringly included to shock the reader to see that there are some people in this world that believe this. As she says one page earlier, "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts" (98). All organisms in nature are equal and to be considered in the "whole" she is referring to. Like Red Peter, we are all intellectual human beings.



However, should you be a reader seeking persuasion, non-fictional works will encourage you to truly understand and have an emotional attachment. Rilke encourages the reader to understand the emotional pain a caged Panther feels by opening his poem by stating "his tired gaze-from passing endless bars-has turned into a vacant stare which nothing holds. To him there seem to be a thousand bars, and out beyond these bars exists no world" (665). Do we as humans really want to rip the nature, disposition and life out of these animals by placing them in a cage? Not only are we placing them in cages at zoos for sticky ice cream coated children to poke at, but we are sending others to factory farms to lead a miserable life before they are killed for the sole purpose of feeding the human population.


I am not suggesting that we all become vegetarians. Rather, I urge readers to consider looking at the facts and non-fictional accounts to understand the effects we have on other animals. Why could we not simply begin to act by improving the quality of life of the animals living in factory farms.

Coetzee's Dynamic Characters

Coetzee’s powerful prose stand up for animal rights in a completely different viewpoint in his novel, Disgrace, that he has already presented in his Nobel Prize winner Elizabeth Costello. Disgrace shows us how an animals’ influence can change even the most corrupt of humans. Our protagonist is a person who believes that “normal humans have capacities that far exceed those nonhuman animals, and some of these capacities are morally significant in particular contexts” (638).



It is interesting that Coetzee brings up the common idea of avoiding the act of slaughtering, yet enjoy the benefits it provides. Wendy Doniger points out that “to treat animals compassionately is ‘very recent, very Western, and even very Anglo-Saxon,” because non-Western religions use their faith as an excuse for slaughter (641). She states that there is a “submerged guilt at the slaughter of animals” and that “another common ploy to assuage guilt – which is to say, to silence compassion – was to assert that the animal willingly sacrificed itself” (642). In Coetzee’s novel, David prefers not to see the slaughtering of animals but does not mind consuming them. He asks Bev, “Do I like animals? I eat them, so I suppose I must like them, some parts of them” (674). David begins representing the multitude of people who do not have strong feelings towards the treatment of animals because we push the negative ideas out of our mind. Lucy asks David “What would you prefer? That the slaughtering be done in an abattoir, so that you needn’t think about it?” (678). Unfortunately, this is the thought of all common people with regard to slaughterhouses and animal treatment. They would prefer to keep it out of sight and mind so that they can enjoy the meat they purchase at the supermarket. However, this character is changed by animals to gain a sense of compassion and sympathy for their well being at the end.


David’s transformation into a compassionate human being for other species completely defies Wendy Doniger’s point that “language is, I think, the place from which compassion springs. We cannot torment (or eat) the people we speak with” (647). Although she does refer to the Alice in Wonderland scene of The Red Queen telling Alice that we do not eat anyone we have been introduced to, this is still a horrifically false statement. Since we cannot torment the people we speak with, then she is implying that the human species has never engaged in warfare for personal gain, the innocent people of Darfur do not experience death every day, and the Holocaust never happened. Rather, compassion is the relationship that Barbara Smuts has with her dog when she describes it as “Safi and I are equals” (653). Doniger’s naïve statement encompasses the thoughts of most people who should understand the Holocaust analogy that “Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and things: they’re only animals” (725). Peter Singer is correct in stating that animals are “entitled to equal consideration of their interests, whatever those interests may be. Pain is pain, no matter what the species of the being that feels it” (638). Unlike Elizabeth Costello, David is changed for the better to feel compassion towards animals. Elizabeth Costello had great ideas, but “vegetarianism and compassion for animals are not the same thing at all” (643). Whereas she never acted upon her ideas, David buys a house close to the hospital so that he can continue his volunteer work at an animal shelter striving to put a humane end to the lives of animals that are doomed by their sheer numbers. It is fascinating that the same author can create opposing views and affects of the treatment of animals to appease to his diverse audience of readers on a difficult ethical matter.

In my opinion, we are all animals and share the same planet. The animals we eat, keep as pets, and seek to protect are no different than humans. I agree with Smuts that "the limitations most of us encounter in our relations with other animals reflect not their shortcomings, as we so often assume, but our own narrow views about who they are an the kinds of relationships we can have with them" (655). Just as Coetzee illustrated with David, animals will only enrich our lives.