Human Viewpoint

How humans see non-human animals is what produces how they treat them. Speciesism is a word to mean an attitude of a species of seeing itself as superior to another or others. The word was first used in 1970 by Dr Richard D Ryder.  

Definitions of speciesism show some variation. 

Cambridge Dictionary gives its meaning as ‘the idea that one species (= set of animals with the same characteristics that can breed from another), especially human beings, is more important and should have more rights than another’. 

Oxford Languages defines it as ‘the assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of animals’.  

Collins English Dictionary’s definition is ‘a belief of humans that all other species of animals are inferior and may therefore be used for human benefit without regard to the suffering inflicted’. 

PeTA, whose mission statement is ‘ANIMALS ARE NOT OURS to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way’ depicts speciesism as ‘the human-held belief that all other animal species are inferior.’ Then continuing, ‘Speciesist thinking involves considering animals - who have their own desires, needs, and complex lives - as means to human ends. This supremacist line of “reasoning” is used to defend treating other living, feeling beings as property, objects, or even ingredients. It’s a bias rooted in denying others their own agency, interests, and self-worth, often for personal gain.

This toxic worldview also leads humans to draw non-existent distinctions between animal species, based solely on the purpose that those animals might serve. For example, most humans wouldn’t dream of treating their dog the way pigs are treated in the food industry, even though pigs are able to experience the same, pain, joy, fear, and misery that canines do.’ 

Humans having a speciesist attitude towards non-human animals - seeing them as inferior - will perceive those non-human animals as not as same value and importance as themselves. From this attitude, conscious or unconscious, will be delivered humans viewing those non-human animals as less worthy than themselves, as suitable for treating less well than themselves, as appropriate for use for human purpose and gain, as representing humans’ property for doing with as they will and want. 

As the quote above from PeTA portrays, different non-human animals can have differing levels of value to humans. Clearly dogs are high on the scale of human regard. (It is perhaps no wonder that so much sheep worrying by dogs occurs.) Sheep appear not to have at all high esteem in the human mind; they are regarded of much less stature than they deserve, and despite that they are gentle, intelligent, and of very good nature: and with the sad outcome that sheep are not - by a long way - treated as well as they ought to be.   

Humans seeing non-human animals as property, results in those non-human animals not being treated well as, or as ‘equals but different’ to, humans. Of we humans Gary L Francione remarks ‘When we recognize that animals have a right not to be used as property, we reject treating them exclusively as means to ends. We recognize that we cannot justify imposing any suffering or death on them incidental to their use as resources. We stop our institutionalized exploitation of them.’ Francione is of the opinion that, as sentient beings, non-human animals should be treated as persons (Why Veganism Matters: The Moral Value of Animals, 2020).

Humans’ speciesism, their arrogance and superiority towards non-human animals, results in the latter being treated by humans as their property, for their use, and in a manner to meet those humans’ requirements. If they saw non-human animals as their equals, and of equal worth as themselves, humans would not be treating non-human animals inhumanely and inappropriately.