I'd heard of racism. Sexism. Ageism. Even sadism, though I was (sadly) a little bit more fuzzy about what that meant. But I don't think I'd ever heard anyone explicitly use the term speciesism. I mean... I'd heard of the idea. But I didn't realize that it was like... a real thing.

Wow. That came out wrong. To explain... we grow up, go to school, make friends. We learn to share, to say please and thank you, to treat others as we wish to be treated. But when we learn these things, we learn them in relation to other people. To other human beings. And we learn about racism, and sexism, and ageism in accordance with how these prejudicial practices apply to homo-sapiens. Sometimes, we'll learn to be nice to animals, to treat them with respect. But it seems to me that as we grow up, we are given a list of Things We Should Care About, and animals are placed very near the bottom of it.

When we're young, we learn to share, just as these ducks are sharing an umbrella.

http://imagecache5.art.com/p/LRG/16/1649/SVAGD00Z/lopez-ducks-share.jpg

I think that as we grow up, we rearrange this list, based on what we learn about the items it contains. Like... everyone learns about slavery, and the racial prejudice that this country has been through. And as we learn about this, over and over again was we grow up, in more detail every time, we are able to make educated decisions as to how we view the practice of racism, and how much of an issue we have with it. So, when we are rearranging out Things We Care About list, we generally tend to put racism pretty high on it. But since we're generally not taught about speciesism and the treatment of animals in such detail, since we're not told over and over again growing up that “99% of US chickens spend their lives in crowded confinement” (anthology, 389), that “dairy operations each hold thousands of cows, year round, in crowded dirt lots” (anthology 390), we're not able to make as educated a decision about where to place it on the Things We Care About list, and its doesn't really register for us how grave of an injustice it is. It's not that our educators “hasten to cover the obscenity” (anthology 399) of speciesism. It is more that they never give us a clear view of speciesism, an perhaps more importantly, never attempt to reveal to us “the passion of the animal” (anthology 400)s, the small things that animals do that make their mistreatment a terrible thing.

Though we often think of cows as grazing in a large field, dairy cows are crowded onto dirt lots.

http://paddyk.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/expensive-cow.jpg

I don't know if this is on purpose, or if maybe in grade school, they concentrate so much on our treatment of other humans, trying to make sure we become productive members of society and don't let some of our baser evil instincts, such as being fine with inflicting pain on another as long as we are “not held responsible” (website), manifest themselves in dangerous ways, that they run out of time and don't get to the speciesism dilemma, but I think its wrong. Regardless of whether you decide that animals are equal to humans, I feel that it's ridiculous that it took until I was 19 years old, in my freshman college english class, for me to become informed about exactly how speciesism is being acted out. I'm not saying that it's not partly my fault. I think that somewhere, in the back of my mind, behind the curtains of my heart, I sort of, maybe knew. However, that doesn't make the lack of attention this issue is given in our moral and academic education any more acceptable. As Chris Cacciatore says, “With ignorance comes the silencing of sympathy and the roots of cruelty.” So if part of the reason we are educated is to, as I said before, keep us from giving in to our more base instincts, our “'genuine, sadistic tendencies” (website), why aren't we taught about speciesism?

Years passed an I remained uninformed about speciesism.

http://www.designbliss.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/2008_yearly_calendar.gif

It doesn't make any sense.