OPRIG-sponsored conference leaves no exploitation unturned
On Saturday, Oct. 26, activists and left-leaning minds from far and wide attended the day-long “Human Rights are Animal Rights” conference in War Memorial Hall.
The conference was billed as a discussion on the “commonalities of oppression” and attendees sought to explore how different forms of oppression can “intersect.” Employing the term intersectionality, speakers used examples from their own activism to draw attention to instances, often overlooked, where one form of oppression compounded or pertained to another.
“Being mindful of these connections… keeps you from inadvertently harming other movements while you’re pursuing your own,” explained pattrice jones, a prominent ecofeminist and the event’s keynote speaker. “The classic example of this would be someone using sexist advertising to put out a message of some other issue.”
Animal rights was the major theme of the day, but speakers spent little time rationalizing the concept of animal personhood, taking for granted that the audience would share their sympathies.
Lisa Kemmerer, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religions at Montana State University, spoke about the intersection between speciesism (discrimination based on species) and sexism. She paralleled the exploitation of human females with the exploitation of non-human females, cows in particular. Cows, Kremmerer argued, are also violently exploited for their uniquely female bodies: for the production of milk and offspring, in their case.
“There can be no question: if you are a feminist you need to be an animal activist. And if you are an animal activist you need to be a feminist,” said Kemmerer.
But the discussion wasn’t restricted to animal rights. The speakers represented a far too diverse cross-section of the activist community. Speaking alongside anarchist mandy hiscocks – who was discussing her post-G20 prison experience – was Mary Fantaske, a disabled master’s student at Ryerson University.
“I remember this one instance in particular,” recalled Fantaske. “I was on campus – I go to Ryerson and I was using my cane at this point – and a guy yelled at me, ‘You’re too pretty for that thing.’ That, to me, really summed up the intersectionality between sexism and ableism because, for him, I was an object to be gawked at, to be looked at, to be enjoyed; but I couldn’t be enjoyed the way that he wanted because I wasn’t able-bodied.”
In the closing address, jones asked all in attendance to “extend their circle of compassion” to other oppressed groups.
“These different forms of oppression really are connected to one another in ways that are mutually supportive,” said jones. “They form the context for one another and if you try to understand the one… without at least thinking of the others, you are going to have an incomplete understanding.”
To the critics, jones said:
“There always going to be someone saying, ‘well, we can’t pay attention to everything, and [trying to] is actually going to siphon energy away.’ But it never ends up siphoning energy away. What [intersectionality] always ends up doing is enriching our understanding and enriching our possibilities for working productively and cooperatively together.”