Ending sexism is one of the goals that PETA is working toward. Why?
Today, on Women’s Equality Day, women across the country are talking about issues that affect us all, including the wage gap, the glass ceiling, rape culture, and the lingering assumption that women should still assume the lion’s share of home and family responsibilities. We’ve come a long way, but there’s still plenty of work to do.
Ending sexism is one of the goals that PETA is working toward. Why? Well, for starters, we’re an organization co-founded by a woman and run predominantly by women—the kind of fearless, gutsy gals who can (and do) charge the stage during an executive’s speech to demand an end to tests on animals, go inside the facilities of one of the world’s worst animal abusers to get eyewitness footage, take over a business office and hold a sit-in, and strip off every stitch of their clothing to make a political statement.
The movement against glass ceilings now includes many who are for glass walls, particularly on slaughterhouses.
Many feminists now recognize that human females aren’t the only ones who are subjugated and whose reproductive systems are regulated and controlled. Female animals endure horrific abuse because of their sex.
Cows produce milk for the same reason why human mothers do: to feed their babies. So cows on dairy farms are repeatedly impregnated on “rape racks,” only to have baby after precious baby torn away from them so that humans can steal the milk. Most hens used for their eggs are crammed together in tiny wire “battery” cages so tightly that they can’t even lift a single wing. Their food and the light in the sheds are manipulated to maximize their egg production. For these animals, hell lasts around two years, until their egg production wanes and they’re slaughtered. Most mother pigs in the U.S. spend their entire adult lives imprisoned in metal gestation crates that are so small that they can’t turn around or lie down comfortably.
Female dogs are confined to decrepit outdoor crates at puppy mills and forced to deliver litter after litter of babies to be sold. Some of our closest relatives—monkeys—are imprisoned on deplorable primate breeding farms and forced to deliver babies who will be treated like test tubes. Female animals killed for their fur are often vaginally electrocuted. Captive orcas are raped via artificial insemination to produce offspring who will likely be taken away from them to fuel the captive marine-mammal entertainment industry.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We can end sexual discrimination and sexual violence in all its forms.
PETA President Ingrid Newkirk explains how:
Throughout history, women have had to fight for what men have automatically had handed to them. And we have won over and over again. We can keep winning—for our moms, our grandmas, our daughters, our sisters, and all the female animals who desperately need us to win for them, too.
