What Is Wrong with (Animal)
Rights?
KELLY OLIVER
Vanderbilt University
 Philosophical debates over the status of animals have exploded such that a
 survey of the literature is overwhelming. With the exception of a few Continental
 philosophers, a gander makes it clear that today most philosophers discussing
animals still do so in terms of animal suffering or animal intelligence, which in turn
leads to discussions of animal rights or animal welfare. 1
 Most of these discussions
revolve around the ways in which animals are—or are not—like us and therefore
should—or should not—be treated like us. Throughout this literature, animal rights
are likened to (or distinguished from) civil rights for women and people of color.
What these philosophers do not consider when developing analogies between
women and animals is that the exploitation and denigration of people traditionally involve viewing them as animals, treating them like animals, and justifying
their “inferior” status on the basis of their supposed animality or proximity to
the animal. This was (and is) the case with women, who traditionally have been
considered closer to nature and to animals, especially in their reproductive and
child-rearing functions. This was the case with slaves, who were treated like cattle
or oxen to be bought, sold, and used on plantations. This was (and is) the case with
people of color who have been stereotyped as hypersexual, immoral, or irrational
like animals. The proximity between oppressed peoples and animals is not just a
contingency of history but a central part of Western conceptions of man, human ,
and animal .
2
 As a result, overcoming the denigration of oppressed peoples, and
revaluing them on their own terms, may require attention to the man–animal
opposition as it has operated within the history of Western thought.
The Right to Remain Silent
 Considering animal rights points to the limits of rights discourse and to the need to
revise our thinking about rights. Animal rights and animal welfare arguments are
usually based on analogies with human rights and human welfare. For example,
Peter Singer argues that all animals are equal and that “the ethical principle on
which human equality rests requires us to extend equal considerations to animals” because animals, like humans, have interests, pains, and pleasures (1975, 1, 5, 7).
Singer does not argue for animal rights but, rather, for animal welfare and animal
liberation based on analogies with women’s liberation and the civil rights movement. He argues that disregard for animals is “speciesism,” just as disregard for
women or African Americans is sexism or racism. As many feminists have argued,
however, there is more than an analogy among sexism, racism, and speciesism.
Even today, the patriarchal association between women and animals is evidenced
by the various names used to degrade women, including pussy, kitten, bunny,
beaver, bitch, chick, fox, vixen , and cow (see MacKinnon 2004; see also Adams
1990; Adams and Donovan 1995; Dunayer 1995). The connection between the
degradation of women and traditional views of animals existing for man’s use
complicates any easy analogy between women’s liberation and animal liberation.
If women’s subordination is in part justifi ed by comparing them to animals, then
perhaps one reason why women’s liberation has continued to meet with resistance
and continued to bump up against the “glass ceiling” is because of our attitudes
toward animals and the deep patriarchal associations between women and animals.
In other words, the relation between the exploitation of animals and the exploitation of women and other oppressed groups is not just a matter of analogy. Rather,
the conceptual opposition between man, on the one side—the civilized side—and
animal, on the other—the natural or barbaric side—plays a central role in the
oppositions between man and woman, white and black, civilized and barbaric, and
so on (see Adams 1990). Until we address the denigration of animals in Western
thought, on the conceptual level, if not also on the material economic level, we
continue merely to scratch the surface of the denigration and exploitation of
various groups of people, from playboy bunnies to prisoners at Abu Ghraib who
were treated like dogs as a matter of explicit military policy.
 Unlike Singer, Tom Regan explicitly argues for animal rights. Like Singer,
he bases his arguments on similarities between animals and humans; insofar
as they are like us, they deserve rights like us. He (1987, 2004) maintains that
 animals—although not all animals—are subjects of lives, which is to say they
have experiences. And, insofar as they have experiences, they are like us and
deserve respect:
 It is the similarities between those human beings who most clearly, most noncontroversially have such value [inherent value and a right to be treated with
respect] (the people reading this for example), not our differences, that matter
most. And the really crucial, the basic similarity is simply this: we are each of
us the experiencing subject of a life, a conscious creature having an individual
welfare that has importance to us whatever our usefulness to others. We want and
prefer things, believe and feel things, recall and expect things . . . . [T]he same is
true of those animals that concern us. (Regan 2004, xx)
 In this passage, Regan presumes autonomy, individuality, and sovereignty,
if not rationality. First, he assumes a norm of personhood (the noncontroversial
cases), which excludes the most diffi cult issues involving the concept of person. 
Moreover, he does not consider how certain norms of personhood have been
part and parcel of oppressive logics from slavery to sexism and racism. Indeed,
traditionally, norms of personhood have been used to justify treating some groups
“like animals” because they were considered more like animals than people.
Next, he insists that we ignore differences—differences that might be critical in
considering the specifi c interests of any given species or individual animal—and
look at what he calls “the really crucial, the basic similarity,” which is delineated
in terms such as experiencing, subject, conscious, individual, preferences, beliefs,
feelings, memory , and expectations . Behind his reasoning is a commitment to the
notion of individual autonomy and subjectivity such that all creatures that have
value—which may not be all creatures—possess these qualities. The same could
be said of Peter Singer’s equality arguments; creatures deserve equal protection
or equal consideration, if not equal treatment, because they possess certain qualities, namely, having interests. Within this logic, rights or equal consideration are
deserved if one possesses certain characteristics. The connection between rights
or equality and identity is a mainstay not only of animal rights discourse but also
of rights discourse more generally