PETA deserves contempt for exploiting women, writes MELINDA TANKARD REISTPETA needs to be renamed.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals would more accurately be described as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals But Not Women.
While the group calling itself the world’s largest animal-rights lobby protests loudly and sometimes violently against the use of animals as meat, it has no hesitation in treating women that way.
The pro-animal lobby’s latest stunt is to offer a free picture of model Vida Guerra naked for each donation over $5.
That’s right, give us five measly bucks and we’ll pimp you a “full new naked ad!” PETA is now acting as a distributor of soft-porn images.
PETA has a long history of using porn-like images of women to promote its anti-animal-cruelty work. This raises questions about the organisation’s understanding of the words “ethical treatment”.
While its manifesto opposes the use of “living creatures” for entertainment, it’s apparently OK if the living creature is a woman in a lettuce bikini. Or if she is a naked cover girl or “video vixen” such as Vida Guerra.
A recent campaign showed models getting up close and personal with vegetables.
“Why don’t you pick a vegetable and show us how much you love it,” the casting director instructed a swimsuit model.
This was is just one of many of PETA’s creations that denigrate women and reduce them to objects for sexual fetish fantasy.
In 2006 PETA portrayed women as party animals with udders instead of breasts. In the Milk Gone Wild clip – a play on the “Girls Gone Wild” genre in which women are encouraged to flash their breasts for the camera, women are shown as eager to rip off their tops and expose themselves to a large male crowd who urged them on, chanting at them to reveal their breast/udders.
The “udder babes” then squirt milk on the faces of the enthusiastic men.
Women are reduced to milk-producing cows flashing grotesque milk-spurting udders – all in the name of animal liberation.
Other campaigns have featured topless Sydney women in cages protesting KFC, women in flesh-coloured bikinis covered in fake blood wrapped in cellophane with the label “flesh” on the wrapping, like meat in a butcher’s shop, a dead naked woman as a stole and various naked and stripping images of a range of celebrities recruited for the cause, including Pamela 
Anderson and a Playboy Playmate.
An anti-rodeo advertisement depicted a young topless woman rolling in the hay with the slogan “Nobody likes an 8 second ride”.
Other sexualised images show naked women in shackles in a campaign against circuses.
Big Brother housemate Brigitte Stavaruk was approached by PETA to strip because of her “big assets” and Australian pop star and actress Sophie Monk was filmed naked on a bed of red chillies for the cause. It seems women have to take their clothes off to prove they really care about animals.
Fortunately, vegans and other animal-rights activists have spoken out against PETA’s sexist approach.
Vegansaurus!, a vegan eating-living guide based in the San Francisco Bay area, described the vegetables-as-phallic-symbols ad as “softcore porn masquerading as an anti-animal-cruelty video”.
Another well-known vegan blogger asked: “Are there exceptions in the vegan manifesto about how living creatures aren’t to be exploited for our entertainment?”
PETA’s behaviour harms the animal-rights cause. It also undermines campaigns against objectifying and exploiting women.
Those who care about both animals and equality for women should send their five dollars – or more – elsewhere.
Treating women like meat is a poor way to promote vegetarianism
Nina Funnell
Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is in trouble again. This time a furore has erupted over a controversial campaign where people who donate $5 or more to the organisation are sent a nude picture of Cuban-born model Vida Guerra. It’s the latest in a long line of PETA stunts that use nude women to sell vegetarianism.
Last year a PETA ad was banned from being played during the American Super Bowl. The NBC listed a number of concerns with the sexual explicitness of the ads, but PETA’s website boasts that the ad was simply “too hot for the Super Bowl”, stating it featured “a bevy of beauties who are powerless to resist the temptation of veggie love”. And then there’s the range of “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” PETA ads, which feature various naked female celebrities. Read more>>
6 Responses
The ethical and humane treatment of animals is something we should all think about and take action on. It’s unfortunate that PETA thinks it’s getting its message across by objectifying women in the most abhorrent way. I just don’t get it. I’m vegetarian and if anyone wants to find out more about animal rights etc I encourage you to visit http://www.voiceless.com.au . It’s an Australian organisation that is making a difference and it does it with dignity!
PETA are prostitutors pimping out Vida Guerra for just $5 a time. So purchasing a naked photo of Ms. Guerra isn’t prostitution is it? No it is all about animal welfare.
But of course women’s human right not to be reduced to men’s sexualised disposable commodities is okay is it not ‘because no human was harmed or dehumanised’ since all women are just ‘sex’ are they not?
So PETA how about offering full frontal naked photos of a well-known male celebrity for just $5 a time because you know it makes sense does it not? Oh but wait – men aren’t ‘sex’ are they – no they are autonomous human beings and therefore it isn’t ethical reducing men to dehumanised sexualised commodities in the name of animal welfare is it?
No that is why women are exploited by PETA because PETA knows exploiting female sexuality is okay because it isn’t porn is it? It is just what the male Johns want – innumerable sexualised erotic images of women either totally naked or half naked with of course large breasts because that is what we women are – just meat for males to consume and then discard.
Do I really have to add the fact that I don’t find female nudity to be problematic? Sigh if I don’t I will be labelled a ‘prude’ when in fact prudishness is what I call the continued protection of the naked male body because men’s bodies are protected assets. Rarely do I see images of men showing their so-called assets because such images would supposedly frighten the horses!
But female nudity is not fine because it is always the same boring poses – women pretending to be so sexually aroused they can hardly contain themselves and even worse pretending to be sexually dominated by a pseudo penis vegetable – another male fantasy which says a great deal about male hubris (overwheening pride/arrogance in other words).
Male sexual objectification and dehumanisation of women pretending to be oh so transgressive and radical!
Not quite sure what’s making me gag more, PETA’s ads or all the comments on Nina’s article at smh.com defending PETA on the basis that ‘the models consent to what’s done to them, the animals don’t’ or ‘an extreme/provocative/offensive campaign is needed to get the seriousness of the message across’…
I never cease to be amazed at how low PETA will stoop. The more I learn about PETA the more disgusted I become.
I do feel a very small sense of relief to see vegans and animal rights activists calling them out on their unethical treatment of absolutely anyone, oh except animals. I have read a blog along the lines of “PETA does not speak for me”, with contributions from vegetarians and vegans who object to PETA’s revolting methods- such as encouraging becoming a vegan so you can be skinny and hot, as well as countless instances of denigrating women.
I am an animal lover who regularly bores people with my opinions on mandatory desexing, banning the sale of animals in pet shops and various other animal-rights issues, but I wouldn’t go near PETA with a barge pole. It has been obvious for a long time that they have a policy of ‘make the front page at all costs’ – in most cases, “all costs” being at the expense of women’s dignity. Their aggressive guerilla tactics are appalling at the best of times – and PETA’s ‘best’ is still pretty low – but this trend in recent times towards female nudity and objectification for EVERY campaign is simply disgusting. I’d be interested to know if any of their sexist stunts have actually resulted in increased donations. My guess would be no, but PETA doesn’t seem to worried about that so long as they make the news.
What’s next, PETA? Send us $50 and we’ll send you some cocaine? Probably not, unless it’s delivered by a naked woman…
Much as I admire what PETA has achieved for animals, I have to agree entirely with what you write. It puzzles me that anybody would think it a good idea to demean women to convince people that demeaning animals is wrong. It reminds me of the old bumper sticker against the death penalty: America kills people to show people that killing people is wrong. All animals, human and other, should have the right not to be publicly humiliated. Who thinks up these ideas and who thinks they are a good idea? As a former psychologist, I can’t help but be intrigued at the psychology of self-defeatism. Jeff Masson