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What is Speciesism?

Speciesism is the belief that one species is more important than another.

We often see this in our daily lives yet not many realize it. For example, the news of the Yulin dog festival will make people fume but, for the same person eating a bucket of chicken wings would be a pleasurable activity. Even though in both cases many animals were slaughtered in merciless ways.

How is it ingrained in our society?

From a very young age, we are conditioned to see some species as worthy of care and compassion while others as unworthy. We are ingrained that our human desires, interests, and needs are way more important than those of any other species. So we follow this arbitrary human preference in which we see some animals as friends while others as food and some others as pests.

This concept is forced into our minds by everyone around us, it usually starts with our parents, then teachers, and even media and influencers. As a result of this conditioning, we learn to ignore our own conscience to a point where we ourselves start to mistreat the animals.

As the Result, Our desire to eat chicken wings has outweighed the desire of an animal’s life, even though that pleasure might last only a few minutes. So is, Killing animals for fur is then justifiable because your looks outweigh the life of a fox. Humans use speciesism to justify every kind of cruelty imaginable.

Is it Natural To feel this way?

No, our perception is never this way when we come into the world but it is made this way because we learn these behaviors from society. Society keeps following the things our ancestors did. Looking at an animal and deciding its worth is not our job.

How can you overcome it?

All animals deserve equal consideration, regardless of what kind of opinion we might have of them. If we think about this consciously we can overcome this flawed thinking.

We must realize that animals are thinking, feeling, and living beings just like you and me, with their own personalities and thoughts. Thinking about them as a product or an inanimate object is what starts this kind of mentality.

Rejecting speciesism also means looking at ourselves and understanding that our personal choices have consequences that hurt other sentient beings.

It’s high time that we realize that all sentient beings deserve to be treated with compassion and respect. We can reject speciesism by acting with integrity and consistency towards all living beings, and to do so we need to understand that every animal has a right to live a life free from human exploitation.

Reference - https://www.peta.org/features/what-is-speciesism/