User:Viriditas/Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows notes

Issues and errata

 * It is hard to ignore the obvious similarity between the Buddhist scholarly arguments of gradual and sudden enlightenment practices and the arguments made by abolitionist animal rights activists against carnism. I believe that Joy even uses the word "gradual" to refer to the process of changing perceptions to eating meat by focusing on the concept of carnism as the problem rather than pointing directly to the solution like abolitionists who insist that people drop their carnism and turn to veganism (sudden).  Joy makes the argument that there is no empirical data supporting either approach, but strategically, it makes sense to focus on the problem rather than the solution.  Further, Joy notes that the majority of people are resistant to sudden change, and that the small number of activists preaching the gospel of veganism may be self-selected as indidviduals who are able to change their beliefs on a dime.  Therefore, according to Joy, focusing on the problem of carnism instead of the solution of veganism would allow more people to come to the solution on their own, on their own time, rather than alienating people with arcane arguments prohibiting the type of glue on their shoes or the honey in their tea.
 * Joy compares the -ism of carnism with the -ism of racism, sexism, etc. She uses feminism as one example for turning carnism into a social justice issue that is not just based on moral ethics like veganism but on the underlying cultural beliefs and psychology that go unexamined and uncritically passed off as "natural" and "normal", while people who choose not to eat meat are marginalized.  Based on our own cultural values of caring for animals, should it not be the other way around?
 * Subset of speciesism
 * Thought experiment: speciesism has implications for extraterrestrial contact and speaks to the inherent anthropocentricism of human intercultural exchange. How would we begin to explain carnist ideology to sentient, spacefaring extraterrestrials who resemble the animals we eat and wear? Or what if they were vegetarians/vegans? Conversely, this ethical quandary (which according to Joy is at odds with our value system; Cf. Gary L. Francione's "moral schizophrenia") speaks to our deepest fears about ET contact in fiction. (For example, "To Serve Man", V, or even non-ET's like the machines in The Matrix.)
 * Carnism is the belief system behind the psychology of eating animnals