By Daniel Salomon
September 2013
I am an animal rights activist and published environmental writer who
happens to also be a neurodiverse man on the autism spectrum. In recent
years, as a response to a very serious
personal and professional crisis because of multiple discrimination
situations based on my autism diagnosis, I have made it into a cause to
respectfully, humbly, sympathetically and generously confront the various
animal movements to rethink the relationship between the autistic pride and
animal rights movements, from the perspectives of ethics, critical social
theory, political activism and conflict resolution.
Because I am a graduate school educated scholar with extensive undergraduate
and graduate level training in the liberal arts (the humanities and social
sciences) I also do not easily fit into conventional neurodiverse responses
to institutional animal cruelty. As a result, I have also had to develop a
sympathetic critique of Temple Grandin.
In the process, I have helped to develop a social justice alternative to the
typical animal abolitionist or animal welfare approaches to the relationship
between neurodiverse humans and
nonhuman animals in Animal/Disability Studies circles through collaborating
with members of other disability communities through the Society for
Disability Studies (SDS), a professional
society which takes a more sociological, interdisciplinary, activist
approach to disability than the conventional psychological, apolitical,
educational response.
As one individual who is in solidarity with all animalkind, yet who happens
to be on the autism spectrum, I will use my “real life” experiences with
animals and involvement with the animal movements as a model, to show the
types of compassionate relationships possible between one neurodiverse human
and all animals.
My Sympathetic Critique of Temple Grandin
Some neurotypical (non-autistic, non-disabled) animal activist-scholars have
unfortunately used logical fallacies to refute famous autistic animal
welfare scientist, Temple Grandin, who is a
Professor of Animal Science at University of Colorado-Fort Collins. Instead
of challenging Grandin’s ideas and practices, they have used her diagnosis
as an “easy out” to easily discredit
her. Such a tactic has been personally and professionally marginalizing,
stigmatizing and alienating to members in the radical animal movements who
are on the autism spectrum. Not
everyone in the autistic community shares Grandin’s welfarist views on
animals. I am one such person.
Grandin basically contends that through significantly reducing fear and
improved environments
in captive farm animals, meat-eating and factory farming can continue, if
they become more
humane.
Grandin has accomplished this through using her autistic mammalian mind to
empathize with the
emotional needs of animals, combined with sound animal behavior science and
taking a
pragmatic, reformist approach. Grandin not only invented an operational
“humane” slaughter
system using the above criteria, Grandin even persuaded one-half of the
slaughterhouses in the
United States to use her system. She even has developed animal welfare
audits which
McDonald’s slaughterhouses uses and reveres.
Yet, some animal activist-scholars use both “ad homonym arguments” and
“straw man
arguments” to refute Grandin. Both are logical fallacies!
An “ad homonym” argument goes after the person, not their ideas. An example
is “her animal
intelligence insights are wrong for she lacks empathy towards other human
beings, for she has an
autism diagnosis.”
A “straw man argument” zeros in on weak arguments and disregards strong
arguments. A
handful of scholar-activists have been trying to disregard Grandin’s
disability social history and
non-disabled, normative world and compare Grandin’s methods to Nazi
executioners. They do
not “account” for Grandin’s strong scientific, economic, practical and
strategic basis for
reforming, yet preserving meat-eating, even factory farming, for the sake of
the animals
themselves.
This type of debating is considered completely unprofessional in academia. I
contend the only
reason why animal activist-scholars have stooped to this level is that they
see Grandin as an
“easy scapegoat” because she is autistic. Grandin is a member of an
oppressed minority group,
being one of the only autistic celebrities in the world.
Such scholar-activists do not dare compare a powerful poultry tycoon like
Frankin D. Perdue to a
Nazi or try to assassinate his character for fear of his army of expensive,
high-powered lawyers.
Yet, Perdue is far richer and much more politically powerful and his
agribusiness practices are
far more institutionally cruel to animals than Grandin could ever possibly
be. Trust me; I was an
undergraduate student at Salisbury University in Perdue country for four
years!
Perdue in addition to raising and slaughtering chickens in fields of long
whitewashed warehouses
in cruel cages in mechanized factory farms which those of us in the animal
movements are all
familiar with by now, whenever there was a mass slaughter of chickens, I
could smell the stench
for miles around, even in the town where my university campus was.
Before I became a vegetarian during my first semester of undergraduate
school after taking a
course in “Animals and Ethics,” when I was still eating factory farm meat in
the school cafeteria,
most likely supplied by Perdue and Tyson (another poultry producer), I got
one of my most
severe cases of the flue which I had in my entire life. I had to be sent to
the emergency room, for I was vomiting so much, I was becoming dangerously dehydrated. Shortly
later, I stopped eating
meat, fish and seafood; I never got sick like this ever again. In fact,
despite all my disability
issues and other health related ailments, I hardly ever get “sick, sick”
since I became a
vegetarian. This gives new meaning to college students claiming college
cafeterias serve
“mystery meat!”
In fact, Frankin D. Perdue, when I was at Salisbury University at the turn
of the twenty-first
century, gave two-million dollars to the business school, as a result, the
business school was
aptly named the Frankin D. Perdue School of Business. Many of the buildings
when I was there
were named after contributors from various local factory farm tycoons. As a
result, even the ccampus radical political activist community would dare not say anything
negative about Frankin
D. Perdue and would address any problem of the world, around the world, but
the social issues
right in the local community. This gives new meaning to the environmental
slogan “think
globally, act locally!”
In fact, when I took “Animals and Ethics,” I persuaded my professor to lead
a fieldtrip to one of
Perdue’s slaughterhouses, so all of the students could test whether or not
all the claims made by
the animal rights movements were true. When my professor called Perdue
Industries, the lady
who worked there told my professor that “this is not a good time of the year
to come here for you
will not get an accurate picture of what we do.” As a result, the fieldtrip
never happened and
what really goes on “down at the factory farm” will continue to remain “a
mystery” to everyone in that classroom, including the professor. This may be
as close as it gets to agribusiness admitting that “we do in fact have
something to hide!”
Frankin D. Perdue is a non-disabled, non-autistic, neurotypical, privileged
white male and
member of the Corporate Class, the super rich, while Temple Grandin is a
disabled, autistic,
neurodiverse, self-made, woman in a man’s industry. Yet, none of this is
relevant to a credible
academic discussion.
Yet, I get where the radical complaint against Grandin is coming from.
Mainly, she’s too animal
welfare (cruelty like factory farming can continue as long as it is done
humanely) versus animal
abolition (cruelty needs to be eliminated). As a vegetarian and animal
activist myself, my
sympathies lie more with abolition than they do with welfare.
As a neurodiverse scholar with a strong liberal arts background, I have
concerns about Grandin’s
social conservativism and sociological naiveté which she seems to apply
consistently to both
animals and neurodiverse humanity alike. She takes an apolitical “blame the
victim,” “life is not
fair,” “these are the way things are” approach to animals, neurodiverse
humans, even herself.
Seeing society as this natural entity, which from a sociological perspective
is anything but
natural.
Grandin uses “machine” metaphors to describe animals and humans alike, even
making
comments like “this animal was ruined!” “This autistic was ruined!”
Especially when describing
our mistakes and misfortunes, implying that our lives are replaceable parts
in a complicated
machine.
The most disturbing flaw is not Grandin’s or the animal movements’ fault.
The neurodiversity
community has been hit particularly hard by the same “tokenism” which has
impacted the disability community at-large. Temple Grandin is now “the
token” for the autistic community.
In academia and popular culture, Grandin is allowed to speak uninterrupted,
as the neurotypical
appointed ambassador of the autistic community, on all matters of autistic
self-understanding,
including animals.
This is before the community at-large has had a chance to speak. As a
result, the animal
movements have gotten the impression, that every person on the autism
spectrum has views
about animals just like Grandin.
In reality, if the entire community had the opportunity to speak on behalf
of animalkind,
neurotypical animal groups would learn that some members go farther than
Grandin’s welfare.
For example, esteemed autistic pride activist Jim Sinclair is a vegan.
Grandin is not the only
autistic animal show in town.
As Critical Animal Studies scholars, it’s legitimate to challenge Grandin
like you would any
other academic, on the grounds of her ideas, e.g., her tacky machine
metaphors, her sociological
nativity and disagreeing with her animal welfare. As Critical Disability
Studies scholars, we need
to recover the full spectrum of views about animals in the neurodiversity
communities, provide
radical alternatives to Grandin and help other neurodiverse voices emerge in
academia and
popular culture.
The Animals and I
Now I am going to explore the relationships that are possible between
animals of all kinds and
myself, as a neurodiverse human
First, because as an autistic human, I rely more on my mammalian mind than
neurotypicals (nonautistic
humans) where I have special insights into the possibility of the existence
of animal
intelligence like Temple Grandin.
Also, like Asperger (Aspie) primatologist, Dawn-Prince Hughes, I “personify
inanimate objects.”
Prince-Hughes used her autistic propensity, to identify the individual
personalities of gorillas,
subsequently studying gorillas as “non-human persons.” I have used mine in a
Critical Animal
Studies context in ecological holism versus ecological individualism debates
like “hunting for population control” to argue that the individual nervous system of animals
is where pain and
suffering occurs and subsequently individual animals are “the subject of a
life,” meaning the
lives of individual animals do in fact matter when describing the Earth
at-large and stewarding
entire ecosystems. Animal death is morally significant also in ecological
contexts.
Also, similarities in my mannerisms, ritualized communication, keen senses
and ability to
compensate using other members of my brain, I have developed interspecies
communications
abilities with both domesticate and wild animals, especially birds, like
domestic parakeets and
wild geese.
Second, as oppression survivors, surviving being treated as “other” and
inferior,” some of us are
able to profoundly empathize with the plight of animals who also have been
“poorly treated” by
normal society, recognizing in animal suffering the patterns of our own
abuse. Grandin who was
bullied and isolated growing-up was able to recognize fear in animals,
identified “reducing fear”
and attentiveness to an animal’s “physical environment” as something animals
need.
Prince-Hughes who was also bullied growing-up had her conversion to the
animal cause when
she saw a captive troop of gorillas being teased and taunted at a city zoo.
She stood in solidarity
with the gorillas the rest of the afternoon and went on to become a
primatologist and ape
advocate.
Jim Sinclair, who is no stranger to all-around creepy professional
relationships, definitely saw a
contradiction between Grandin claiming to love animals and calling for their
deaths at the same
time, publically criticized Grandin’s “human slaughter systems,” comparing
them to modern-day
death penalty practices.
Knowing personally what it’s like to be targeted and scapegoated for being
different, I got my
start, witnessing how wildlife managers were welcoming sports hunters into
my suburban home,
to target and eradicate overpopulated yet native White Tailed Deer and
Canada Geese with guns
and crossbows, using propaganda to intimate the animal movements.
As a result, I became outspoken against such hunts, testifying at local
public meetings.
Becoming an ethical vegetarian in college and giving-up a promising career
in biology, partially
because animal experimentation was against my conscience, in the process.
The other reason for giving up a promising career in biology was because the
particular “shape
and form” of my disability also made certain types of abstract reasoning and
fast-paced classes
difficult like mathematics. As a result, I was not able to complete my
required chemistry courses
and could not major in biology. I was able to Minor in Biology and earn
however, a Naturalist
Certificate. Also, because I am hyper-sensitive to my surroundings, being an
interdisciplinarian
comes the most natural for me, meaning I am not good at compartmentalization
and hyperspecialization,
meaning I could not “tune out” extraneous intellectual stimulation, nor did
I even want to. To do so, would be life-draining and absolutely would impact
my motivations and my morale.
Also, I could not do what Grandin does, because in my 2005 neuropsychological report, I scored
in the mildly impaired range on “performance” (I have a motor planning
disability) meaning all
her career tracking of autists who have an interest in animals into
“performance-based” animal
welfare, animal training and other “hard” science fields would not have
worked for me anyway,
even if I wanted to.
I however scored in the “above average” on “abstraction,” the highest on the
“memory” subcategory.
This means careers in Critical Animal Studies and allied animal activism
fields which
rely more on “abstraction” and “memory” skill sets like research and writing
are actually better
“fits” for me than all the “performance” based skill-sets required to do
what Grandin does, like
architectural design and industrial engineering.
Most importantly, because of my anxiety/depression, anger/conflict
management and
trauma/sensory issues, I cannot psychiatrically stomach what Grandin
witnesses in an unsafe,
unsympathetic, unsupportive environment which I do not fit into, without
being destabilized.
Nor, could I remain silent indefinitely to all the atrocities which she
witnesses day in and day
out. Nor, could I work in such an environment with integrity.
There is another reason why the abolition movement is a better fit for me
than the welfare
movement. Ultimately, the abolition movement is a more democratic, more
academic, more
sympathetic, less rigid, less authoritarian, less hierarchical, less
dualistic and even at times
ironically, less extreme, saner environment. The worst which has happened to
me in the abolition movement is not fitting into particular groups or ending-up in bitter
falling-outs. I have never
been coerced into doing or saying things against my conscience nor have I
been professionally
blackmailed or intimated into silence unlike in some “mainstream” animal
groups. Most of the time, despite bitter disagreements, there is an
underlying sense of respect, missing in some of the
“mainstream” groups.
Third, we, the neurodiverse, bring gifts to the animal rights cause.
Grandin’s gifts to the cause
are unrestricted documentation of factory farm practices and malpractices
across the country,
reducing the most egregiously cruel practices towards animals in big farming
through putting
“absolute limits” on what these corporations can/cannot do to their own
animals, reducing out-and-out scandals, an economic argument for morally considering animals and
credible scientific
evidence for emotions and intelligence in mammals and birds.
Prince-Hughes’ gifts are standing in solidarity with animalkind, credible
scientific evidence for
personality and culture in gorillas, coupled with a passion for great ape
issues.
Sinclair brings the gifts of an Aspie who is a successful vegan, an Aspie
critique of Grandin and
a devastating critique of the key argument in-favor of animal
experimentation: “animal
experimentation ensures safe treatments for incurable conditions.” Sinclair
implies that in the
treatment of autism, animal experimentation instead projects animal cruelty
onto autistic
humanity, resulting in “treating us as animals,” applying Skinner-like
Behavioralism on rats and
mice to us, which is used to “violently socialize” us into normalcy.
The gifts I offer are consciously and systematically linking the oppression
situations of animals
and neurodiverse humanity which I situate into a liberal studies context to
include all animals
(birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates), as well as ecology,
environmental justice and
ecospirituality.
How Can Animals and Neurodiverse Humans Both Get The Social Justice We
Deserve
Through Engaging Conflict Resolution?
I am going to offer an alternative based on my hard-won experiences which
addresses the
conventional animal welfare/abolition responses to disability-animal
relationships which is not
helping anyone anywhere. My alternative also addresses the disability/animal
dualism which is a
false choice. I insistently believe it is a false choice, when making
ethical decisions, to choose
between animal rights and disability rights.
Such thinking has its historical and academic origins in Western philosophy.
Such Western
philosophies are immune to reality.
The Western logic behind choosing to save one life over another is called
causeries. Where one
is giving a hypothetical situation like: “You get into an auto accident. You
have a child and a dog
in a car. You can only save one life. Whom do you save?” According to this
logic, you always
save the child, for the child is more rational than a dog. This is the logic
behind speciesism
(favoring humans over animals).
This is also the logic behind Princeton animal ethicist Peter Singer’s
controversial “Argument
from Marginal Cases (AMC)” where he argues that some animals are more
rational than some
humans---such as peoples in comas, infants under a year old and humans with
developmental disabilities. When having to choose between saving a highly intelligent dog
and saving an intellectual impaired child with a developmental disability, it would not be
speciesist to save the
dog over the child, for “reason” not “species membership” is the criterion
for moral
consideration.
Social Justice does not necessitate that rational capacity be a perquisite
for receiving moral
consideration or acting morally. Social justice is giving everyone what they
need and some of what they want to survive and flourish, regardless of their
functioning abilities. Everyone then is
expected to contribute to society as they are able and take only their fair
share, so everyone gets
social justice through costs and benefits being distributed equitably.
Conflict resolution, individualizes social justice, through refusing to
choose between lives, which
conflict resolution contends is an unnecessary “win-lose” solution which
perpetuates injustice
and violence, when a “win-win” solution is possible through the right
balancing: privileging
needs and wants over ideology and coming up with solutions which gives
everyone social
justice. Both approaches take seriously, reality, as a legitimate moral
category.
The implications for the animal and disability movements cannot be
understated. Not only are all
peoples with disabilities and all animals entitled to social justice, but
even the Natural World is
entitled to social justice, addressing disconnects with the environmental
movements, which I
have encountered in my involvement with various branches of the
environmental movement.
For example, I have encountered the imperative to choose between respecting
individual rights
or consideration for the common good in my involvement with the Christian
environmental
movement, the deep ecology movement, the anti-sprawl movement and the
anti-hunting
movement which leaves very little room for animal rights, disability justice
or wilderness
preservation.
Also, I have encountered in the ecofeminist argument from “embodiment” which
despite their
call to respect the body and their systematic deconstruction of the
mind-body dualism, seem to
keep intact the Plutonic residue of an immaterial mind, which they use to
favor the needs of the
body over the needs of the mind, without engaging modern brain science to
situate the mind as
an embodied, material-based organ system in the body, in the process,
excluding the embodied, neurological experiences of pain, suffering and fear
in nonhuman animals and neurodiverse
humans alike.
Justice is made possible through engaging conflict resolution like
negotiation, reconciliation,
mediation, arbitration, coalition building and nonviolent activism.
Some religious traditions even contend that some of their holy people have
been able to engage
in direct, unmediated interspecies conflict resolution with other animal
species. Including my
own, Christianity, where Christian saints such as Saint Francis of Assisi
(the patron saint of
animals and ecology) and many of his earlier followers like Saint Anthony of
Padua, as well as
many of the Celtic Christian saints and Desert Fathers of the early
Christian church were able to
engage in direct, unmediated interspecies conflict resolution with other
animal species. The
Hebrew Bible of the Jewish religion, makes similar claims, like the stories
of “Noah’s Ark”
(Genesis 5-10) “Balaam’s Ass” (Numbers 22: 22-40), “Elijah’s Ravens” (I
Kings 17: 1-7), “The
Peaceable Kingdom” (Isaiah 11) and “Jonah in the Whale” (Jonah 1-2).
Even many First Nations religions around the world also claim the power to
engage in direct,
unmediated interspecies conflict resolution with other species, while
postmodern animal
behavior science and ecopsychology has corroborated, even replicated some of
the possibility of
premodern humans engaging in direct, unmediated interspecies communications
and conflict
resolution where one “reasons with” versus “eradicates” a “nuisance” animal.
So social justice and conflict resolution has the power to not only resolve
conflicts between
different factions in the animal movements and between the animal movements
and the various
factions of human society, conflict resolution with social justice even has
the power to resolve
human-animal conflicts themselves.
I have applied social justice with conflict resolution very successfully,
professionally, in my
relationships to the various animal and disability movements, especially
in-regard to the conflict
between the various neurodiversity movements and the various animal
movements, which I ended-up in the middle of, being both neurodiverse human and having an
intense passion for the
animal libratory struggle because I am neurodiverse. This is how I came-up
with my “linked
oppressions” argument as an alternative to either Peter Singer’s “Argument
from Marginal Cases
(AMC)” or Pope John Paul II’s “dignity of man” argument and why I submitted
my proposal to
the Journal of Critical Animal Studies (JCAS), which was published in their
2010 issue.
Although my proposal was extremely well received by the animal movements and
disability
community at-large, I became estranged, isolated and alienated from the
neurodiversity
communities as a result. They insisted upon a carte blanche rejection of the
entire animal cause
“lock, stock and barrel,” while I was only asking scholar-activists like
Singer and Tom Regan to
reframe their arguments for animal liberation from being at the expense of
human beings with
disabilities to focusing on the inherent fallacies of speciesist thinking
and practices endemic to
Western civilization. This is because I too am in solidarity with animalkind
and animal rights and
animal liberation. I am on your side! I am on the side of animals
everywhere!
I had my own personal relationships with real live animals which sustained
me through this
personal-professional crisis however.
I also saw clearly that the rational argument for animal liberation or
rights was so strong; it could
stand on its own without the “Argument for Marginal Cases (AMC). This
includes all of Singer’s
and Regan’s other robust arguments which includes the deconstruction of
speciesism as an
internal inconsistency in Western philosophy, the capacity to suffer as a
reason for mora consideration, insisting on the existence and rights of
individuals and expanding individualism beyond the human species. Putting
animal intelligence research in conversation with academic philosophy,
questioning treating individuals as “means to an end” instead of “ends in
themselves” and extensive investigation of institutionally cruel practices
towards animals like factory farming, animal experimentation and sports
hunting. Making rights and liberation language applied to animals a tenable
position ethically and politically and making animal ethics a legitimate
field of inquiry and credible position in the academy.
Many members of the neurodiversity community lack first-hand experiences
with real life
animals like I have and rely on on-line propaganda and other polemics to get
all their information
about animal issues and the animal movements.
In light of the gravity of my situation, so sympathetic allies in the
present and future do not get
isolated, marginalized and alienated from necessary social and professional
supports to live with
human dignity and sustain our commitments, I recommend three things:
• Sanction compassionate and responsible human-animal relationships.
• Create more education-based, non-judgmental, on-line campaigns, which
provide
credible information about animal issues and the animal movements, with
opportunities
to dialogue and ask questions, to counter propaganda, misunderstandings and
all around
confusion and disinformation targeted to the various disability and
neurodiversity
communities.
• Mentor and be in solidarity with respectful, sympathetic members of the
various
neurodiversity communities both socially and professionally.
Similarly, interspecies communications with members of different animal
species have sustained
me, at the personal, private level, through childhood, youth and young
adulthood as a
neurodiverse human in a hostile, unsympathetic neurotypical society, when I
did not have the
loving, life-giving support and companionship of members of my own species.
Animals and the Earth provided me safety, solitude, belonging and an alternative, “pattern
of living” which made
me who I am today as an environmentalist, animal activist and vegetarian.
The Natural World is
the closest I have to a childhood, best friend. The Natural World has never
judged me, has
unconditionally accepted me just the way I am and is always available to
bless me with beauty
and wonder. I also closely identify with the personalities of animals as
“other selves” which are
like me.
I also have the ability to receive direct, unmediated guidance from Animals
and the Natural
World on what they actually need and how they want to be treated. I talk
extensively about these
stories and experiences in my books. As a result, I am also a militant
proponent of the existence
of the animal intelligence argument and consider the investigation of the
possibility of animal
intelligences of all kinds, one of the most important and promising areas of
inquiry in the animal
behavior science field in the twenty first century.
Animal intelligence, in my opinion, is a research program which has the
potential to shake
Western assumptions about the uniqueness of human beings to the core,
creating a scientific
foundation for specific moral duties to nonhuman animals, in the process.
Scientific arguments
are especially important when animal activists are trying to make “in-roads”
with government
agencies.
Yet, my animal-based Nature mysticism and my deep, intense personal affinity
with and
connection to animalkind also made me vulnerable to animal-related childhood
spiritual abuse,
especially in Boyscouts. When I was in Boyscouts, the other youth would
tease me for my
interest in birdwatching.
One time, one of my scoutmasters took me on a fishing trip for a merit
badge. I began to feel
guilty for murdering the fish, as he let the fish slowly suffocate to death
on a piping hot summer
pavement. His response, “sin a little!”
Growing-up, I was pressured by adult authority figures to “become normal” at
all costs --no
matter its toll on my self-esteem, my physical health, my happiness and my
integrity. They only
wanted me to be pleasing to privileged non-disabled, neurotypicals.
As a result, I became isolated and alienated from the various animal
movements, as a result.
Three things the animal rights movements can do to reduce isolation and increase solidarity toward promising disabled, neurodiverse animal scholars and activists is to:
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