Joan Dunayer

Joan Dunayer is an American writer, editor, and animal rights advocate.

Quotes

• When a woman responds to mistreatment by protesting "I'm a human being!" or "I want to be treated with respect, not like some animal," what is she suggesting about the acceptable ways of treating other animals? Perhaps because comparisons between women and nonhuman animals so often entail sexism, many women are anxious to distance themselves from other animals. Feminists, especially, recognize that negative "animal" imagery has advanced women's oppression. However, if our treatment and view of other animals became caring, respectful, and just, nonhuman-animal metaphors would quickly lose all power to demean. Few women have confronted how closely they mirror patriarchal oppressors when they too participate in other species' denigration. Women who avoid acknowledging that they are animals closely resemble men who prefer to ignore that women are human.
  • "Sexist Words, Speciesist Roots", in Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations, edited by Carol J. Adams and Josephine Donovan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), p. 19.

• Speciesism: "A failure, in attitude or practice, to accord any nonhuman being equal consideration and respect".
  • Speciesism (Derwood, MD: Ryce Publishing, 2004), p. 5.

• Only veganism respects nonhuman rights and rejects nonhuman enslavement.
  • Speciesism (Derwood, MD: Ryce Publishing, 2004), p. 156.