In its January 24, 2017 digital edition, the magazine Jara y Sedal presented us with yet another attack on the animal rights movement. The publication's title promised something good: "This is the interesting reflection on animal rights by Jesús G. Maestro, university professor." The subtitle heightened the sense of anticipation: "Professor of literary theory and criticism and author of Philosophical Materialism as a Theory of Literature, attacks animal rights activists and dismantles their arguments."
It seemed that this time, Jara y Sedal had finally found a qualified person who was going to present us with devastating arguments against animal rights in a 58-second video.
Jara y Sedal's videos typically feature men (or boys, as was the case with their December 2016 cover) killing animals or carrying weapons and corpses in a manly pose. The magazine's interviewees correspond to this same type of person, with an endocrine system overflowing with testosterone and a central nervous system that renders them with limited analytical capacity. But this time the approach was different; they had a university professor (director of the Cervantes Philosophy Chair at the Faculty of Philosophy in León, Mexico).
These are his statements transcribed verbatim:
“They (the animal rights activists) only respond to anything that goes against their slogans. For example, once they told me, ‘I defend animal rights.’ Animals don’t have rights! I mean, animals have the rights that human beings assign to them. Because animals can’t hold a council, you know, when the tiger stops eating the zebra. Because it’s completely childish to talk about animal rights. Because that implies not knowing what an animal is, nor knowing what rights are. And, of course, if you put yourself in these terms, you automatically get labeled a fascist, for example, a fascist, because supposedly by preaching to the tiger that it shouldn’t eat the zebra, right, by talking to the tiger about Erasmus of Rotterdam you can pacify the tiger. Well, fine. Fine. Fine. But universities aren’t asylums.”
Despite the literature professor's difficulty in expressing himself, his arrogant tone, and his disrespectful attitude, one could understand the simple idea he wanted to convey: "Universities cannot spread the idea of animal rights, because that theory is based on the idea that animals have cognitive abilities that only humans possess."
Professor Maestro did not cite any author of animal rights theory who defended the idea that non-human animals can assemble to debate whether it is right or wrong to kill other animals. And if that is the basis on which animal rights are founded, it shouldn't have been too difficult for him.
For an animal to be recognized as having rights, it is not necessary for that animal to possess the capabilities attributed to most adult humans. That is an anthropocentric and speciesist view held by those who question animal rights, not by those who defend them. And Professor Mestro, if he had read even a single book or article on this subject, would know this (just as he would know that tigers live in Asia and zebras in Africa, so tigers do not kill zebras).
Since other animals lack our capacity to reflect on the ethical implications of killing other animals, we cannot demand that they do so. But those of us who are capable of such reflection must undertake it ourselves.
The author claims that animals cannot have rights because they cannot fight for them. This idea is frightening. He argues that those in such an unfavorable social position that they are unable to organize and advocate for their rights are not subjects of rights. The teacher—consciously or unconsciously—thus excludes from the moral sphere those people who (due to age, illness, or accident) lack the cognitive abilities to defend themselves against injustices and claim their rights. From the teacher's words, the idea is derived that people with intellectual disabilities, children, or the elderly with dementia have no rights.
Mestro's statements do, however, lead us to question the role of the teacher as someone who presents ideas after rigorous analysis grounded in extensive documentation. The author—despite his impressive resume—is yet another example of a university professor, high school teacher, or elementary school teacher who feels entitled to offer opinions in the classroom on a topic, such as animal rights, that he knows absolutely nothing about. The danger lies in the fact that students with limited critical thinking skills may not realize that his words are based on prejudice and ignorance, and may therefore accept his ideas as valid simply because the person in front of them speaks with an air of superiority and is standing on a platform to emphasize who the authority is.
Fortunately, people trained in anti-speciesist theory and animal rights are gaining ground in universities, especially in philosophy departments. Among the student body, more and more people are organizing to fight for the rights of those who are unable to do so themselves.