The Washington Post has an article on interns at PETA. It describes a few of the protests that PETA has held recently. Many of which, of course, involve naked women:
This self-assured knowledge is useful when the PETA interns are naked, which happens occasionally, like at a recent Friday demonstration when Kelsey Jaye stands with another "PETA Beauty" in a makeshift shower on Pennsylvania Avenue by the National Archives. They languidly wash each other with cruelty-free soap and ignore heckles from the gathering crowd.
This isn't an unusual display, of course. PETA has a long history of objectifying women in the name of animal rights. What I found to be interesting about the article was a quote from one of the female interns. Jaye, from the shower scene above, has participated in many demonstrations. She describes another naked protest, this one against bull-fighting:
"There were 50 demonstrators in a big naked pile, with arrows sticking out everywhere....It was totally empowering. It's great to be able to use your body as a tool."
I don't like PETA's tactics, but THIS woman finds those tactics empowering. I am uncomfortable getting all paternalistic towards another woman regarding what she chooses to do with her body: "Honey, I know you THINK this is empowering, but that's because you're too cold to feel the sexism."
This isn't too far from the "sex work as empowering/degrading" argument. I don't have a particular point I'm trying to make here. I just wanted to put the article out there for the rest of the community to think about.
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I think it's clear that you obviously can use your body and sexuality without being taken advantage of or doing so because you're a tool of the patriachy. Clearly it's possible to pose naked for a magazine, to protest something, etc. and it IS empowering and it is NOT a negative thing.
It just becomes hard to tell the difference sometimes, which is why these discussions always generate so many comments. But I agree that here is an example of a woman who finds it empowering and feels fully comfortable with it. I say good for her!
I don't recall seeing anyone (at least here) bag on the women who take part in these ads for their choice to do so. It's always PETA for not finding a better way to get their message across.
Once in a blue moon PETA stumbles across something reasonably empowering and full of sense, but then again, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
PETA is highly misogynistic and they need to be stopped.
Personally, I see this as an example of how an unfeminist institution can actually help empower individual people in unexpected ways. It's like a stripper who becomes empowered in her own body and attitudes because of the experiences she has as a stripper.
The institution itself is sexist and misogynist, but the experience through that institution led to something feminist and stronger.
So, boo PETA but this woman should rock on.
Women know what they feel inside. However, they may or may not associate what they're doing with what is being projected onto them - consciously and deliberately, or otherwise. The nearest analogy I can think of is telling someone from Mars that wearing curtains on the street is empowering. The Martian goes out onto the street wearing the curtains and feels great. The person who told them to do that wanted a laugh and got one. People looking at the Martian wearing curtains will either laugh or feel it's very strange. As long as nothing happens to the Martian there's no problem. Theoretically. But the potential for a problem exists.
This.
Women are fed this lie their whole life that all that matters is their looks, and that the only way to accomplish anything is with looks. It keeps them from actually, you know, thinking and speaking in public in order to get things done, so when they want to accomplish something they give men a show and their message doesn't get very far. I'm sorry, but it's not sex that sells ideas.
"...so when they want to accomplish something they give men a show and their message doesn't get very far. I'm sorry, but it's not sex that sells ideas."
You're right on the money - when men see naked female PETA interns on the street, they are NOT thinking about the "political statement" the nude interns think they are making ...for the guys, it's just an open air peep show.
Some of the guys might go through the motions of pretending to listen to the slogans and pretending to read the leaflets - but they are a lot more interested in the bare bodies of the interns than the ideas in the flyers.
But if a fully dressed female intern hands a leaflet to these guys, then they might just actually listen to the issues at hand (they might still disagree with it - but at least it's about ideas, not a street corner striptease)
PETA seems to have the idea that men won't give a serious hearing to the ideas of veganism, vegetarianism and a meatless diet unless they dress it up with soft core porno.
Hell, there have been PETA protests where the dominant slogan was to sell men on veganism on the basis that they could get pretty female vegans to have sex with them if they gave up meat!
Basically, PETA has a very cynical view of men - not to mention the fact that they misuse the idealism of their interns by misusing them as streetcorner sex objects.
Look, I wouldn't agree with PETA's anti meat extremism no matter what.
I'm a meat eater, and I think that factory farming, while it does have some problems, is on the whole a good thing in that it enables American consumers to have large volumes of high quality low cost meat and poultry, which would be impossible any other way.
I also believe that medicines and other consumer products should be tested in animals (the alternative is testing on people - and, knowing America like I do, I know the'd be using Black people, the mentally disabled and prisoners as "volunteer" human test subjects if they didn't use animals) and, since we're above the other animals on the food chain, we should use their bodies and flesh to serve our interests and feel absolutely no guilt about it (does the lion feel guilty for eating the gazelle?)
But, as sharply as I disagree with PETA's extremist agenda, I would take them a lot more seriously as a political group if they didn't resort to cheap shock tactics.
As it is, they come across as a bunch of crazies, with no legitimate place in the discourse.
"PETA seems to have the idea that men won't give a serious hearing to the ideas of veganism, vegetarianism and a meatless diet unless they dress it up with soft core porno....Basically, PETA has a very cynical view of men."
This is a really good point, Gregory, I hadn't considered it. PETA's persistence in objectifying women is simultaneously an insult to men. This is a good reminder that things that hurt women, rarely hurt JUST women. We're all in this together.
Not to mention PETA is ignoring the 75% of the population that is not a straight make who is attracted to white women.
"It was totally empowering. It's great to be able to use your body as a tool." ?!?!?!?!?
This to me is an utter contradiction. To me empowerment isn't really about power, or at least not power over others, but rather power over oneself, about freedom, about self determination. Certainly making yourself into a somebody else' tool doesn't help. I'm sure she's glad to be helping the cause, but why is using her body, her beauty, her sexuality any better? I can only guess because women are (as already mentioned) raised to use those specific things as their source of power.
I think her sensation of using her "body as a tool" comes from becoming physically involved in protest and activism. I think one can get an incredible high from physical involvement in a cause you support. Think about escorting patients to Planned Parenthood or even standing outside for a vigil: physical involvement in a cause creates a different sense of energy and POWER than, say, a debate in a classroom or writing a letter.
But you're totally right, she isn't using JUST her physical self in these protests. She (PETA) is primarily using her sexuality as a form of protest, which is an entirely different kettle of sea-kittens.
My feelings about PETA's tactics have less to do with the individuals who choose to bare all for them and more with the organization's official stance. The very fact that they are a social justice group makes it very egregious that they'd step on other oppressed groups in order to lift up theirs. Animal rights activism isn't like Playboy (which people are doing a very good job of analyzing on an institutional level on the front page right now), where the purpose of being naked is to be looked at - animal rights activism seeks to free animals from oppression. To play into the male gaze and the beauty standard and basically perpetuate female oppression to do so is just wrong.
I wish that the women who feel empowered by going naked for PETA would instead find a better animal rights organization and feel empowered by making actual progress with their activism.
I'd have a hard time participating in any activity that is directly connected with PETA and I say that as a vegetarian. I'd have to blind myself to PETA's history of misogyny, transphobia, antisemitism, etc. I'm not sure how taking a narrow, hurtful approach to an issue is empowering, unless you aren't aware of PETA's long, negative history in the first place.
I think labelling PETA as 'misogynist' 'anti-semite' or anything that specific is a narrow view. 'Misanthropic' says it: their literature says that they want animal 'liberation,' and they believe the more harm and privation humanity suffers in the process, the better.
They're motivated by a psychology of helplessness that makes them want to be conspicuous and shocking because it gives them a power trip. Lots of people, confronted by what they see as injustice, have the instinct to go to the opposite extreme for the rush and catharsis. Most of us just have the sense to rein that in...
As a vegetarian and an animal welfare supporter, they annoy the crap out of me because of their unreasonable demands and the bad name they give anyone who so much as doesn't eat meat...
What exactly is the purpose of posing naked for animal rights? To attract the attention that exoposed sexuality brings or to attract the attention that a non-sexual naked body brings? I think with PETA, it is usually the latter, and thats what people find offensive. What if PETA came out with a picture of a woman who was clearly not a "model", clearly not airbrushed/shaved/photoshopped, clearly not sexualized in any way? What if there were pictures of naked men too?
I think PETA is looking for the attention that a sexualized naked body brings to their cause. Their campaign advising women not to be "whales" by becoming vegetarian and losing weight was entirely focused on the idea that fat women look disgusting in bikinis, a.k.a. women should look appropriately sexy.
Or this ( http://tiny.cc/WdmM4) NSFW Mother's Day campaign. Why is she topless? Would a pregnant woman in a cage not get enough attention? Why is she thin and traditionally pretty and heavily made-up and making come-hither eyes?
Why are these (http://tiny.cc/pRp1G) women in spike heels and soaping each other up? What do those sexualizing details have to do with wasting water?
I am interested in any theory to explain how this (http://tiny.cc/Bkc8j ) possibly NSFW jab at pubic hair has nothing to do with sexualized bodies.
As for "what if PETA did these campaigns in an entirely different way?" well, then, they'd be doing it in an entirely different way. They're not, though, so I'm not sure how alternate-universe-PETA's hypothetical motives are relevant.
I forgot the most blatant proof that they're looking for the attention a sexualized body brings - for years they've been having a "sexiest vegetarian" competition, along side "sexiest vegetarian celebrity" "sexiest vegetarian next door" and "sexiest vegetarian over 50." They're not really being subtle about this.
I don't know. I mean, to say that these women are being "objectified by PETA" is really similar to saying that women sex workers are objectified by whatever institution they're a part of. People jump all over feminists who believe that the sex industry is harmful to women, but those same people hate how women are portrayed by PETA, when the women involved in the ads are doing the same thing. And these women are all choosing to do it-- I'd say far more than women who choose sex work. What's the difference, really?