Geoscience Reference
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position, on religious grounds: 'Well, that's nature. That's an act of God. Man can't
do anything about [it]'—and even she considered it appropriate for humans to help
relieve animal distress in some fashion. Others, such as Georgia, advocated
assistance, not because the animals were important for human use, but because they
were other creatures who shared the planet with us and deserved consideration just
like other humans:
We can't do nothing about temperature change but we can help them out.
It's like if we, you're hiking somewhere and you get stuck in the snow, that's
nature but then we run to save you so why can't we run to save the animals?
The six women (Georgia, Vivian, Laura, Bernadette, Norma, Carla) advancing the
pro-animal rights commentary overwhelmingly agreed that it did not matter what
kind of animal was in distress; that life in distress warrants human intervention.
They were willing to dissolve inter-specific differences that might make it more
appropriate to help one animal versus another. This perspective appeared to be a
projection of anti-racist attitudes into a normative guideline for human—animal
relations.
NORMA: An animal is an animal and if they need our help, well, you know, we
should help them.
GEORGIA: Right. Just like humans, they're all different, we're all different in some
ways/
NORMA: In some ways, but, you know, we stay people/
GEORGIA: In some ways, but I would rush to help you. I would, I mean, you
know/
NORMA: Black, white, purple/
GEORGIA: Yeah. So why wouldn't I rush to help like a geese, a lion/
CARLA:
Animals are just like humans.
Some participants, such as Susan (who, as described above, had reacted so negatively
to dog-eating), went further in their biocentric attitudes, venturing into animal
rights territory. Susan, in her early twenties, had a more affluent childhood during
which she regularly watched nature programmes and was taken into the mountains
by her mother to hike and to learn about wildlife and plants. Looking somewhat
embarrassed and nervously laughing, she described the impact of witnessing an
animal being slaughtered on the formation of her attitudes and her resolve to become
vegetarian:
I don't think that we should even eat animals, no kind of animals. Because
animals cry, when they slaughter, they cry just like humans. They call out just
like humans, I heard it with my own ears and it made me look totally different
on a lot of different things.
