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Oh PETA wants to go? Let’s go. Thread on why their campaign is ableist & their tokenization of a single disabled person is also, surprise, ableist.
The ad campaign in the mall featuring a disabled man, who is apparently an activist with PETA, relies on the ableist notion that disability is nothing but suffering & pain.
Rather than critiquing, for instance, our culture’s obsession w/ cure at all costs which has “justified” animal cruelty, PETA chose to perpetuate ableist ideas about disabled ppl suffering due to their disability alone & not because of some combination of oppression & bodyminds.
PETA has consistently chosen quick means to their end goals via comparison to atrocities against humans including lynching and the Holocaust. Their disregard for marginalized people is predictable. I truly don’t know how they still rely on these shock tactics.
Now let’s address PETA’s statement that my calling their ad ableist is in itself ableist since a disabled person willing participated in the campaign. Bringing out your token disabled person does not make you not ableist. Disabled people can perpetuate ableist ideas too.
Disabled people are not a homogenous group. So this one man may experience his MD as nothing but pain & suffering, but creating an ad campaign based on this personal understanding makes it more than about him anymore. One black Republican doesn’t make the GOP not racist, ya know?
And honestly, the fact that PETA would reply and tag this man as their evidence of not being ableist, accusing me of being ableist instead is laughable circular logic, like when folks say “you’re the real racist for calling me racist”. Major eyeroll.
I have no doubt that PETA has laudable goals. I fully believe that animal cruelty is an issue that should be addressed. But it cannot be addressed at the expense of further marginalizing oppressed people or using past violence against humans as rhetorical/visual aids.
In short, do fucking better PETA. Create work that is coalitional, fighting animal cruelty AND ableism & racism, rather than one over another. And stop tokenizing your marginalized members to excuse your history of racist & ableist campaigns.
