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Bydlęce brzemię
Poruszający esej o tym, jak w nowoczesnych społeczeństwach stykają się kwestie uprzedmiotowienia osób niepełnosprawnych i zwierząt. Autorka podważa przy tym definicję "pełnosprawności", zauważa, że odnosi się ona do wzorca wysportowanego młodego białego mężczyzny i analizuje, jak społeczeństwo represjonuje tych, którzy do tego znormalizowanego modelu nie pasują. Żyjemy w kulturze, która każe myśleć o "niepełnosprawnych" jako ludziach niekompetentnych, niezrozumiałych, niewartościowych, niepełnych. Niepełnosprawnym ciężko zdobyć dobre wykształcenie i pracę, a co dopiero zrobić karierę; są społecznie izolowani, ich odmienność jest patologizowana. Ta refleksja nieuchronnie prowadzi do pytania o prawa zwierząt: dlaczego także im nie jesteśmy w stanie przyznać prawa do bycia sobą na równi z nami, a jeżeli już - to na twardo określonych zasadach?
392 pages, Paperback
First published October 27, 2015
152 people are currently reading
3720 people want to read
About the author
Sunaura Taylor
8 books41 followersSunaura "Sunny" Taylor is an artist and writer based in New York City and the author of Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation (The New Press). She has written for AlterNet, American Quarterly, BOMB, the Monthly Review, Qui Parle, and Yes! magazine and has contributed to the books Ecofeminism, Defiant Daughters, Occupy!, Stay Solid, and Infinite City. Taylor and Judith Butler’s conversation is featured in the film Examined Life and the book of the same name, published by The New Press.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 118 reviews
January 26, 2022
I avoid giving 5-stars so books like this can stand out…
Preamble
--When considering people at their worst, what bothers me on an eerie level is mass abstractions/rationalizations. The “War on Terror” (geopolitics) and the 2008 Financial Crisis (capitalism) shaped my explorations of this in political economy. Our abstract relationship with the environment is of course a dire concern.
…Ableism and speciesism have become increasingly glaring (to give a familiar, seemingly-innocuous example: the depiction of greedy capitalists or police as fat pigs), and when they are finally identified they seem to be niche “-isms” compartmentalized and appended to the end of the list.
…So, it is such a gift for someone to expand and synthesize these topics, then patiently guide us through the contours.
Highlights
--The speciesism of being “human” revolves around defining abilities and contrasting these with animals.
--Capitalism is work-based (defining normality on ability to labor for private profit) rather than needs-based; capitalism is also an externalization machine (externalizing the costs of social responsibilities ex. treating human labour, animals and the environment as commodities and free gifts).
--A few areas stood out:
1) Medical:
--The Medical vs. Social Models of Disability: the former naturalizes disability while the latter politicizes it within history and power relations.
--The medical view always becomes problematic once you push hard on reductionism because at the end of the road is eugenics. Prior to this are considerations on medical predictions (esp. at infancy), “quality of life”, etc.
--“Disease” classification vs. empowerment (this book focuses on disabilities, but we can add “fat shaming” as a contested topic especially in the medical field).
--Animal testing: I would still bring up the best-case scenario (i.e. I’m willing to give my favorite medical writer Ben Goldacre a listen) given that medicine is trialed in humans at a certain point (not to say there are not serious problems here! I just mean you pragmatically have to start somewhere in limited numbers).
...But the reality is there is so much clearly unnecessary animal testing to clear up first (not just non-medical tests but medical ones that are poorly designed or simply not published due to negative results, i.e. publication bias etc.): https://www.theguardian.com/science/2...
2) Dependency:
--A stark relation between animality and disability is the treatment of “domesticated” animals as lesser (“dependent”, “unnatural” and even harmful to “natural” ecosystems).
--The question of what to do with factory farm animals if factory farms are abolished is considered, i.e. extinction? The question is then raised: can we not imagine other relations besides extinction or mass breeding for commodity production? (citing The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics)
--As for dependency, we are all interdependent; capitalism is exceptional in abstracting these social relations away, i.e. commodity fetishism.
3) Philosophy and Hypotheticals:
--An interesting breakdown of Singer’s Animal Liberation’s two conflicting components of considering (1) suffering (in an anti-ablelist manner) and (2) rationality/complexity (ablelist).
--Plenty of hypotheticals: the aforementioned “extinction of factory farm animals”, “what if plants suffer?”, “would those with disabilities want to be cured?”, etc.
…I can add to the list “how do we relate to pests?” where I would start with considering rebalancing disrupted ecosystems (since the “pests” tend to follow human disruptions).
…I appreciated the author considering these hypotheticals and doing her best to address them without forcing rigid “solutions” onto contradictions that would only create further contradictions:
a) Those trolley problem hypotheticals are designed to set up a “false dichotomy” to bring the worst out of us.
b) We should not be so caught up in some daunting perfection and thus give up and not even try.
Preamble
--When considering people at their worst, what bothers me on an eerie level is mass abstractions/rationalizations. The “War on Terror” (geopolitics) and the 2008 Financial Crisis (capitalism) shaped my explorations of this in political economy. Our abstract relationship with the environment is of course a dire concern.
…Ableism and speciesism have become increasingly glaring (to give a familiar, seemingly-innocuous example: the depiction of greedy capitalists or police as fat pigs), and when they are finally identified they seem to be niche “-isms” compartmentalized and appended to the end of the list.
…So, it is such a gift for someone to expand and synthesize these topics, then patiently guide us through the contours.
Highlights
--The speciesism of being “human” revolves around defining abilities and contrasting these with animals.
--Capitalism is work-based (defining normality on ability to labor for private profit) rather than needs-based; capitalism is also an externalization machine (externalizing the costs of social responsibilities ex. treating human labour, animals and the environment as commodities and free gifts).
--A few areas stood out:
1) Medical:
--The Medical vs. Social Models of Disability: the former naturalizes disability while the latter politicizes it within history and power relations.
--The medical view always becomes problematic once you push hard on reductionism because at the end of the road is eugenics. Prior to this are considerations on medical predictions (esp. at infancy), “quality of life”, etc.
--“Disease” classification vs. empowerment (this book focuses on disabilities, but we can add “fat shaming” as a contested topic especially in the medical field).
--Animal testing: I would still bring up the best-case scenario (i.e. I’m willing to give my favorite medical writer Ben Goldacre a listen) given that medicine is trialed in humans at a certain point (not to say there are not serious problems here! I just mean you pragmatically have to start somewhere in limited numbers).
...But the reality is there is so much clearly unnecessary animal testing to clear up first (not just non-medical tests but medical ones that are poorly designed or simply not published due to negative results, i.e. publication bias etc.): https://www.theguardian.com/science/2...
2) Dependency:
--A stark relation between animality and disability is the treatment of “domesticated” animals as lesser (“dependent”, “unnatural” and even harmful to “natural” ecosystems).
--The question of what to do with factory farm animals if factory farms are abolished is considered, i.e. extinction? The question is then raised: can we not imagine other relations besides extinction or mass breeding for commodity production? (citing The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics)
--As for dependency, we are all interdependent; capitalism is exceptional in abstracting these social relations away, i.e. commodity fetishism.
3) Philosophy and Hypotheticals:
--An interesting breakdown of Singer’s Animal Liberation’s two conflicting components of considering (1) suffering (in an anti-ablelist manner) and (2) rationality/complexity (ablelist).
--Plenty of hypotheticals: the aforementioned “extinction of factory farm animals”, “what if plants suffer?”, “would those with disabilities want to be cured?”, etc.
…I can add to the list “how do we relate to pests?” where I would start with considering rebalancing disrupted ecosystems (since the “pests” tend to follow human disruptions).
…I appreciated the author considering these hypotheticals and doing her best to address them without forcing rigid “solutions” onto contradictions that would only create further contradictions:
a) Those trolley problem hypotheticals are designed to set up a “false dichotomy” to bring the worst out of us.
b) We should not be so caught up in some daunting perfection and thus give up and not even try.
I would rather leave these uncomfortable questions unanswered than embrace theories of personhood that demean the value of intellectually disabled people and nonhuman animals. It is better to acknowledge such uncomfortable spaces—ones that may remain open indefinitely—than to limit our moral understanding simply in order to satisfy some need for hierarchies of values.
January 18, 2022
Edited to add Sunaura and Astra's important and amazing manifesto here: https://lux-magazine.com/article/our-...
Original review: This book is spectacular. Carol Adams told me about this book about a year before it came out when I was talking to her at a conference. I mentioned that I don't know a lot of people who write about the intersection of disability and animal liberation and she told me that "Beasts of Burden" was in the works. I also read Sunaura Taylor's contribution to the Ecofeminism anthology which completely rocked my world. From that point forward, I eagerly awaited the release date of Sunaura Taylor's book. So, I went into this with very high expectations that were difficult to meet. This book surpassed them.
Sunaura tackles topics of disability and animal liberation without separating them from each other or many of the other oppressions that are intertwined with them like race, class, gender, and so on. At the same time, she give the topics and members of these groups the individualized attention they deserve. One of the best parts about this book is that Taylor does not shy away from the difficult conversations such as forced nonhuman animal research for human health issues, abolitionist rhetoric of rewilding animals and the extinction of domestication (and in turn- the maligning of (inter)dependence), some animal rights activists seeing themselves as "voices for the voiceless," the barriers to accessing vegan food for some people with severe health struggles, and so on. She tackles these topics head on, having discussions about issues where nonhuman animal liberation and disabled human liberation seem to collide- and often shows that they are connected rather than at odds with each other. Taylor also does not shy away from directly and honestly addressing the works of people like Peter Singer and Temple Grandin who represent famous and damaging representations of animal liberation in relation to disability and disability in relation to animal liberation. She is able to parse out the things that have merit while effectively calling attention to the things that do not.
I really hope this book becomes one of the staples of animal liberation discourse and disability discourse. Sunaura Taylor argues quite well that the two and intertwined and that ableism is at the center of nonhuman animal oppression and that speciesism is part of the ammo used to demean people with disabilities. It is an invaluable contribution that will hopefully help us create more connections between our movements.
Original review: This book is spectacular. Carol Adams told me about this book about a year before it came out when I was talking to her at a conference. I mentioned that I don't know a lot of people who write about the intersection of disability and animal liberation and she told me that "Beasts of Burden" was in the works. I also read Sunaura Taylor's contribution to the Ecofeminism anthology which completely rocked my world. From that point forward, I eagerly awaited the release date of Sunaura Taylor's book. So, I went into this with very high expectations that were difficult to meet. This book surpassed them.
Sunaura tackles topics of disability and animal liberation without separating them from each other or many of the other oppressions that are intertwined with them like race, class, gender, and so on. At the same time, she give the topics and members of these groups the individualized attention they deserve. One of the best parts about this book is that Taylor does not shy away from the difficult conversations such as forced nonhuman animal research for human health issues, abolitionist rhetoric of rewilding animals and the extinction of domestication (and in turn- the maligning of (inter)dependence), some animal rights activists seeing themselves as "voices for the voiceless," the barriers to accessing vegan food for some people with severe health struggles, and so on. She tackles these topics head on, having discussions about issues where nonhuman animal liberation and disabled human liberation seem to collide- and often shows that they are connected rather than at odds with each other. Taylor also does not shy away from directly and honestly addressing the works of people like Peter Singer and Temple Grandin who represent famous and damaging representations of animal liberation in relation to disability and disability in relation to animal liberation. She is able to parse out the things that have merit while effectively calling attention to the things that do not.
I really hope this book becomes one of the staples of animal liberation discourse and disability discourse. Sunaura Taylor argues quite well that the two and intertwined and that ableism is at the center of nonhuman animal oppression and that speciesism is part of the ammo used to demean people with disabilities. It is an invaluable contribution that will hopefully help us create more connections between our movements.
January 14, 2022
Czy już można coś wrzucać do topek 2022? Ja wrzucam to! To pełna troski, a jednak śmiała książka o intersekcjonalnym weganizmie i niepełnosprawności, bardzo przystępnie napisana (może poza rozdziałem o Singerze, który jest najbardziej teoretyczny i filozoficzny). Naprawdę niewiele wiem o badaniach nad społecznym postrzeganiem niepełnosprawności i ta książka otworzyła dla mnie wiele tematów i przemyśleń. Na pewno skonfrontowałam swoje własne ableistyczne podejścia i opinie, i na pewno będę chciała w tym temacie poczytać więcej. Wspaniale poprowadzona argumentacja łącząca ucisk i uprzedzenia względem zwierząt pozaludzkich i osób z niepełnosprawnościami.
June 27, 2018
Sunaura Tayler 'crips' animal liberation and critiques speciesist trends in ableism. The result is beautiful.
I've never encountered such a thoughtful, caring critical theory about other species. Those who care about other species need this: we need new ways to think about dependence and worth. I don't want to slide into that eco-theory that hates all domesticated beasts for being dependent. I don't want to slide into that veganism that idolizes thinness and health. And I also don't want to slide into an anti-ableism that carefully segregates us as superior to all other species out of fear that disabled people will be treated 'like animals.'
Instead I want this care, humility, open-mindedness, and fierce commitment to solidarity across difference.
I'm so happy this book exists.
I've never encountered such a thoughtful, caring critical theory about other species. Those who care about other species need this: we need new ways to think about dependence and worth. I don't want to slide into that eco-theory that hates all domesticated beasts for being dependent. I don't want to slide into that veganism that idolizes thinness and health. And I also don't want to slide into an anti-ableism that carefully segregates us as superior to all other species out of fear that disabled people will be treated 'like animals.'
Instead I want this care, humility, open-mindedness, and fierce commitment to solidarity across difference.
I'm so happy this book exists.
September 1, 2025
Ten intersekcjonalny esej pisany z wielką intelektualną swadą i polotem, a także niezwykłą wrażliwością na niuanse, naprawdę poszerza horyzonty myślowe. Spojrzenie na niepełnosprawność w połączeniu z zagadnieniem praw zwierząt samo w sobie jest już bardzo świeże i intrygujące, a sposób, w jaki autorka to robi i ile wątków porusza, czyni tę książkę zdecydowanie wartą uwagi. Zainteresował mnie temat weganizmu wśród osób z niepełnosprawnościami i wynikające z niego niekiedy konflikty interesów, międzygatunkowa, obopólna opieka i troska, połączenie gatunkizmu i ableizmu. Świetna rzecz
November 15, 2021
Nie ma co się rozpisywać. "Bydlęce brzemię" to wspaniały, głęboko intersekcjonalny, kompleksowy i pełen niuansów esej, w którym myśl pracuje pięknie i płynnie, a dwa dyskursy wzajemnie się oświetlają, dopowiadają i kondensują znaczenia. Sunaura Taylor dzieli się wiedzą z olbrzymim wdziękiem i czułością.
Cholernie to ważne, mądre i potrzebne. Proszę czytać.
Cholernie to ważne, mądre i potrzebne. Proszę czytać.
March 14, 2018
Wow, I learned so much from this book and realised that I have so much more to learn. A must read for sure!
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March 21, 2022Co za zmieniająca w głowie rzeczy i przestawiająca schematy doskonała książka!!! Nie wiem co by się musiało stać, żeby nie była w mojej topce roku
May 16, 2023
So... turns out this is vegan propaganda, which I wasn't expecting. As a person reliant on animal fat and protein because I'm generally allergic to plant-based sources, it was really weird to spend hundreds of pages reading a disability advocate telling me I'm less-than because of one of my disabilities. She does have a paragraph towards the end acknowledging the existence of people like me (for "some people" it's "not as easy") before apologizing to vegans for doing so.
The whole thing felt more abstract and disembodied than I'm used to, at least when reading disability studies from disabled people. I think this is the first time where I've actively wished an author spent more time talking about people and less time citing sources? IDK, just a really weird experience that I'm still trying to make sense of.
Some thoughts that are still nagging at me - (1) talking about the relationship between animal oppression and racial oppression + dropping statements about intersectional veganism without acknowledging the very serious critiques of this line of argument from Indigenous peoples seems questionable. (2) I'm here all day for critiques of industrial farming and knowledgeable critiques of small scale farming (not present in this book) but you can't just ignore the role of racial capitalism or private property in all this. (3) she spends a lot of pages talking through scenarios that will never happen (magical disability cures) but refuses to answer practical questions. (4) I think it's fine she doesn't go in depth on research on plant sentience since that doesn't actually contradict her argument, but I'm a little surprised at the absence since it might actually support her argument? (5) if humans aren't superior to non-human animals, an argument I'm totally fine with, that also means we're not any better than non-human omnivores or carnivores; we're part of the same web; so holding humans to other standards confuses me.
I have at least seem another person complain about number 3 in this list. All these rapturous reviews on here were weirding me out 😅
The whole thing felt more abstract and disembodied than I'm used to, at least when reading disability studies from disabled people. I think this is the first time where I've actively wished an author spent more time talking about people and less time citing sources? IDK, just a really weird experience that I'm still trying to make sense of.
Some thoughts that are still nagging at me - (1) talking about the relationship between animal oppression and racial oppression + dropping statements about intersectional veganism without acknowledging the very serious critiques of this line of argument from Indigenous peoples seems questionable. (2) I'm here all day for critiques of industrial farming and knowledgeable critiques of small scale farming (not present in this book) but you can't just ignore the role of racial capitalism or private property in all this. (3) she spends a lot of pages talking through scenarios that will never happen (magical disability cures) but refuses to answer practical questions. (4) I think it's fine she doesn't go in depth on research on plant sentience since that doesn't actually contradict her argument, but I'm a little surprised at the absence since it might actually support her argument? (5) if humans aren't superior to non-human animals, an argument I'm totally fine with, that also means we're not any better than non-human omnivores or carnivores; we're part of the same web; so holding humans to other standards confuses me.
I have at least seem another person complain about number 3 in this list. All these rapturous reviews on here were weirding me out 😅
December 27, 2023
Świetna książka o niepełnosprawności oraz ochronie zwierząt pisana z perspektywy osoby niepełnosprawnej. Mam wrażenie, że jest to tytuł, który u bardzo wielu osób wywoła dyskomfort i skłoni do przemyśleń. Autorka skutecznie pokazuje jak postawa ludzi wobec zwierząt jest jednocześnie stosunkiem ludzi wobec niepełnosprawności. Trochę filozofii, polemiki z Singerem (w mojej ocenie nie do końca udanej) oraz bardzo wiele otwierających oczy argumentów. Bardzo solidna pozycja dla każdej osoby ciekawej innego spojrzenia na otaczający nas świat. Definitywnie świetna lektura!
February 2, 2024
que fuerte que fuerte que fuerte!!! este libro es perfecto. Tenía ganisimas de leerlo y simplemente ha superado todas mis expectativas. Completo, preciso y revelador. Chiques tenéis que leerlo!!!
ayer le dije a una amiga: este libro me está impactando.
Esta noche soñé que mis sarpullidos de ansiedad se convertían en sobresalientes tubérculos por mí cuerpo formado por diferentes partes de cuerpos de animales, en la ingle una pata en mi muslo el torso laterar de un cerdo en mis tobillos manitas de otros seres. Kè? Amigues este libro no me ha impactado, me ha penetrado, me ha atravesado el cuerpo y la médula. Cien estrellas!! Además incluso,,, el prólogo de Itxi Guerra que me encanta todo lo que escribe!!!
ayer le dije a una amiga: este libro me está impactando.
Esta noche soñé que mis sarpullidos de ansiedad se convertían en sobresalientes tubérculos por mí cuerpo formado por diferentes partes de cuerpos de animales, en la ingle una pata en mi muslo el torso laterar de un cerdo en mis tobillos manitas de otros seres. Kè? Amigues este libro no me ha impactado, me ha penetrado, me ha atravesado el cuerpo y la médula. Cien estrellas!! Además incluso,,, el prólogo de Itxi Guerra que me encanta todo lo que escribe!!!
July 5, 2018
This was so, so good.
April 23, 2023
Są takie książki, filmy i spektakle, o których wiem, że są dobre, ale z jakiegoś powodu mi nie siadają. Ta książka jest jednym z takich utworów.
October 31, 2017
Wow! Yes!
December 24, 2024
Dzięki tej książce zdałam sobie sprawę, że temat niepełnosprawności jest mi wyjątkowo bliski i być może chciałabym się nim zająć w mojej pracy zawodowej. Otworzyła mi też oczy w temacie produkcji mięsa (m.in. przez przywoływaną książkę “Zjadanie zwierząt”, po którą sięgnęłam). Poza dym dowiedziałam się o sobie, że moje postrzeganie równości, mimo że utrzymywałam, że jest dla mnie ważną wartością, było ograniczone. Bardzo dużo dowiedziałam się dzięki perspektywie Saunary Taylor.
Żałuję, że rozłożyłam lekturę na wiele miesięcy i mam teraz cel, żeby wrócić do niej za jakiś czas, tym razem robiąc notatki. Pierwsze rozdziały czytałam latem i cieszyłam się jak małe dziecko, bo każde słowo niesamowicie do mnie trafiało. Muszę przeżyć to jeszcze raz.
✨ „Trudno twierdzić, że udomowione zwierzęta wybrały ubój, tak jak trudno uznać, że pokolenia kobiet wybrały patriarchat.”
Żałuję, że rozłożyłam lekturę na wiele miesięcy i mam teraz cel, żeby wrócić do niej za jakiś czas, tym razem robiąc notatki. Pierwsze rozdziały czytałam latem i cieszyłam się jak małe dziecko, bo każde słowo niesamowicie do mnie trafiało. Muszę przeżyć to jeszcze raz.
✨ „Trudno twierdzić, że udomowione zwierzęta wybrały ubój, tak jak trudno uznać, że pokolenia kobiet wybrały patriarchat.”
November 27, 2024
Skłaniający do refleksji i ważny esej, jednak jego lektura bardzo mi się dłużyła
March 13, 2025
Książka zmieniająca myślenie, a może nawet i życie.
February 3, 2024
Finally done! This could have been a tiktok❤️
September 10, 2024
¡Imprescindible! Una reflexión sobre el capacitismo y el especismo y sus conexiones. Una forma de mirar brillante y diferente.
December 6, 2024
Just spent 5 hours in Chester New Hall reading this and then screamed about meat grifters in the hallway next to a large fern. ‘Twas indeed a revelation.
November 21, 2023
Un saggio illuminante, fa quello che un saggio dovrebbe fare, far riflettere, e mettere in discussione pregiudizi che non sapevamo nemmeno di avere. È la prima volta per me che ascolto il punto di vista di una persona disabile sulla disabilità, e questo mi ha fatto rendere conto di quanto fossi influenzata dalla società nel considerare l'argomento in un'ottica a senso unico, cioè quello di una società che considera valida solo la normoabilitá. Non avevo mai pensato che la disabilità potesse essere considerata un elemento di ricchezza invece che di "manchevolezza". L'autrice accosta lo specismo e l'abilismo, ed evidenzia come entrambe queste logiche poggino entrambe sulla stessa convinzione: tutti i corpi "diversi" dal modello normoabile sono inferiori, quindi non degni di rispetto, non degni di vivere la propria vita, non degni di non essere discriminati. Ribaltare questa logica e combattere questa ossessione per le gerarchie è rivoluzionario, e liberatorio per tutti.
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February 17, 2019 "If animal and disability oppression are entangled, might not that mean their paths of liberation are entangled as well?"
Mainstream animal rights and liberation discourse has, for the longest time, rested on a number of troubling arguments about personhood and sentience. In Animal Liberation (1975), the foundational text of contemporary animal rights discourse, Peter Singer famously writes that because humans and nonhuman animals both possess the capacity to suffer, both should be given equal consideration. If we think that causing suffering is morally wrong, then surely we have a moral obligation to stop killing animals for food, encaging "exotic" species in zoos, experimenting on mice and chimps in the name of scientific progress, and pushing more and more species across the planet towards extinction.
And yet, Singer writes, there are some animals who are more sentient and cognisant than others. In fact (and this is where Singer's argument becomes particularly vicious), there are some nonhuman animals that we might even think of as being just as sentient as some human beings. Infants and (his words) "severely intellectually disabled" people are, for Singer, classified in the same orbit of partial-personhood as great apes. We wouldn't want to inflict unnecessary suffering on disabled people, Singer suggests, so why do we continue to harm nonhuman animals?
Singer's provocations have driven a wedge between disability and animal activists. Because Singer denies the full personhood of disabled people, and because his ideas have for too long been taken as exemplifying animal rights philosophy, it is no wonder that disability activists have often rejected or scoffed at the suffering of animals. In a debate between Singer and the lawyer and disability rights activist Harriet McBryde Johnson, McBryde Johnson famously draped fur over her chair and proclaimed her 'blissful ignorance' about industrial animal agriculture.
How, then, can we build a bridge between animal and disability liberation? What sort of language do we need to more fully comprehend the ways in which capitalist and colonial modernity exploits disabled animals, whether human or nonhuman? How can we revitalise and redeem animal liberation discourse from its longstanding ableism while at the same time persuading disability activists that nonhuman lives are worth fighting for? In other words, how to simultaneously critique animal rights' ableism and disability rights' speciesism without ever alienating either side?
These are difficult tasks, but as Sunaura Taylor's Beasts of Burden shows, they are by no means impossible. Taylor convincingly argues for the profound commensurability of animal and disability ethics, offering a nuanced and urgent analysis of how ableism and anthropocentrism often operate together. But what is truly striking here is the generosity of Taylor's approach. Her book is deeply critical of Singer. But she is honest, too: "Singer was one of my heroes growing up and I remember thinking that anyone who would write a book called Animal Liberation must be someone I'd like. Imagine my dismay a decade later when I learned that much of the disability community hates the guy." In a conversation with Singer, written-up and reflected on in one of Beasts of Burden's most astonishing chapters, Taylor brilliantly negotiates both her debt to and critical deconstruction of Singer's philosophy.
Across the pages of her timely and very readable book, Taylor reveals how there are deep connections between disability and animal liberation. Think, for instance, of how capitalism requires productive bodies: the productive body of the human worker, who is sustained by the productive body of the animal worker. If the human worker becomes or is born disabled, then they are no longer deemed productive and are cast aside. If the animal worker becomes or is born disabled, then they are no longer deemed productive and are cast aside.
One of Beasts of Burden's most significant interventions, then, is that Taylor dislodges speciesism as the foundation of animal oppression. Might ableism, Taylor asks, be a more appropriate lens for reading the oppression of human and nonhuman beings? "Industrialized agriculture, factory farms and meat packing plants are disability issues", she writes. Abattoir workers are more likely to face life-changing injuries than coal miners. And the animals they are forced to kill – for pitiful wages – are themselves often disabled. Farmed birds are debeaked, pigs limp around with broken bones, and cows are bred to be so large that they can barely move. "What does it mean to speak of a ‘healthy’ or ‘normal’ chicken, pig or cow, when they all live in environments that are profoundly disabling?”
Taylor therefore challenges her readers to unlearn their internalised ableism while also reclaiming veganism as an embodied political action, rather than a banal dietary fashion: "When animal commodification and slaughter is justified through ableist positions, veganism becomes a radical anti-ableist position that takes seriously the ableism embedded in the way we sustain our corporeality". By shifting the terrain towards ableism, Taylor fosters a new kind of solidarity between different species.
Mainstream animal rights and liberation discourse has, for the longest time, rested on a number of troubling arguments about personhood and sentience. In Animal Liberation (1975), the foundational text of contemporary animal rights discourse, Peter Singer famously writes that because humans and nonhuman animals both possess the capacity to suffer, both should be given equal consideration. If we think that causing suffering is morally wrong, then surely we have a moral obligation to stop killing animals for food, encaging "exotic" species in zoos, experimenting on mice and chimps in the name of scientific progress, and pushing more and more species across the planet towards extinction.
And yet, Singer writes, there are some animals who are more sentient and cognisant than others. In fact (and this is where Singer's argument becomes particularly vicious), there are some nonhuman animals that we might even think of as being just as sentient as some human beings. Infants and (his words) "severely intellectually disabled" people are, for Singer, classified in the same orbit of partial-personhood as great apes. We wouldn't want to inflict unnecessary suffering on disabled people, Singer suggests, so why do we continue to harm nonhuman animals?
Singer's provocations have driven a wedge between disability and animal activists. Because Singer denies the full personhood of disabled people, and because his ideas have for too long been taken as exemplifying animal rights philosophy, it is no wonder that disability activists have often rejected or scoffed at the suffering of animals. In a debate between Singer and the lawyer and disability rights activist Harriet McBryde Johnson, McBryde Johnson famously draped fur over her chair and proclaimed her 'blissful ignorance' about industrial animal agriculture.
How, then, can we build a bridge between animal and disability liberation? What sort of language do we need to more fully comprehend the ways in which capitalist and colonial modernity exploits disabled animals, whether human or nonhuman? How can we revitalise and redeem animal liberation discourse from its longstanding ableism while at the same time persuading disability activists that nonhuman lives are worth fighting for? In other words, how to simultaneously critique animal rights' ableism and disability rights' speciesism without ever alienating either side?
These are difficult tasks, but as Sunaura Taylor's Beasts of Burden shows, they are by no means impossible. Taylor convincingly argues for the profound commensurability of animal and disability ethics, offering a nuanced and urgent analysis of how ableism and anthropocentrism often operate together. But what is truly striking here is the generosity of Taylor's approach. Her book is deeply critical of Singer. But she is honest, too: "Singer was one of my heroes growing up and I remember thinking that anyone who would write a book called Animal Liberation must be someone I'd like. Imagine my dismay a decade later when I learned that much of the disability community hates the guy." In a conversation with Singer, written-up and reflected on in one of Beasts of Burden's most astonishing chapters, Taylor brilliantly negotiates both her debt to and critical deconstruction of Singer's philosophy.
Across the pages of her timely and very readable book, Taylor reveals how there are deep connections between disability and animal liberation. Think, for instance, of how capitalism requires productive bodies: the productive body of the human worker, who is sustained by the productive body of the animal worker. If the human worker becomes or is born disabled, then they are no longer deemed productive and are cast aside. If the animal worker becomes or is born disabled, then they are no longer deemed productive and are cast aside.
One of Beasts of Burden's most significant interventions, then, is that Taylor dislodges speciesism as the foundation of animal oppression. Might ableism, Taylor asks, be a more appropriate lens for reading the oppression of human and nonhuman beings? "Industrialized agriculture, factory farms and meat packing plants are disability issues", she writes. Abattoir workers are more likely to face life-changing injuries than coal miners. And the animals they are forced to kill – for pitiful wages – are themselves often disabled. Farmed birds are debeaked, pigs limp around with broken bones, and cows are bred to be so large that they can barely move. "What does it mean to speak of a ‘healthy’ or ‘normal’ chicken, pig or cow, when they all live in environments that are profoundly disabling?”
Taylor therefore challenges her readers to unlearn their internalised ableism while also reclaiming veganism as an embodied political action, rather than a banal dietary fashion: "When animal commodification and slaughter is justified through ableist positions, veganism becomes a radical anti-ableist position that takes seriously the ableism embedded in the way we sustain our corporeality". By shifting the terrain towards ableism, Taylor fosters a new kind of solidarity between different species.
December 23, 2018
Absolutely necessary, approachable, and nuanced interrogation of the way ableism and speciesism interconnect in assumptions of value, labour, self-determination, and ethical consideration.
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April 5, 2020Very good book about speciesism and ableism!
May 18, 2021
I have been meaning to read this book for a while. Sunaura Taylor beautifully articulated so much of what I feel. This book is funny, moving, important, and for me, validating.
December 29, 2024
I loved this book so much. A powerful exploration of how to examine animal rights through a disability lens. She argues that like people with disabilities, animals are also disabled by the restrictive and oppressive environments we put them in. Disability therefore is not an inherent inability but a social oppression that disadvantages beings who experience the world differently. We also tend to place value on a being based on their intelligence or human-centered abilities such as language or sight. She argues that these measures of value are ableist and don’t take into account the range of intelligence or abilities that look different than the human experience, such as bioluminescence, migration, or communication through smell. Instead of anthropomorphizing the animal and finding its value in its similarity to humans, we must see them as having value in their difference.
Another interesting comparison she makes is of the discomfort that both disabled people and vegans experience having to be “accommodated” as guests. We disrupt the social expectations of a guest/host relationship, Safran Foer asks the question: “how much do I value creating a socially comfortable situation, and how much do I value acting socially responsible?”
We can learn through disability the value of interdependence and of caring for one another, regardless of ability or species.
“There’s really no such thing as the voiceless. There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard.” -Arundhati Roy
Activitists will help animals more if we treat them as active participants in their own liberation- as the expressive subjects animal advocates know them to be- remembering that resistance takes many forms, some of which may be hard to recognize from an able-bodied human perspective. -66
“Disability is not a ‘brave struggle’ or ‘courage in the face of adversity’… disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.”… Marcus’s statement challenges the idea that disability is simply lack; what’s more, it asks us to look for value in ways of living that are not necessarily centered around efficiency, progress, independence, and rationality… disability can be liberating, exhilarating, a place of freedom from the continual work our society demands of us to be “normal”. -136
Another interesting comparison she makes is of the discomfort that both disabled people and vegans experience having to be “accommodated” as guests. We disrupt the social expectations of a guest/host relationship, Safran Foer asks the question: “how much do I value creating a socially comfortable situation, and how much do I value acting socially responsible?”
We can learn through disability the value of interdependence and of caring for one another, regardless of ability or species.
“There’s really no such thing as the voiceless. There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard.” -Arundhati Roy
Activitists will help animals more if we treat them as active participants in their own liberation- as the expressive subjects animal advocates know them to be- remembering that resistance takes many forms, some of which may be hard to recognize from an able-bodied human perspective. -66
“Disability is not a ‘brave struggle’ or ‘courage in the face of adversity’… disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.”… Marcus’s statement challenges the idea that disability is simply lack; what’s more, it asks us to look for value in ways of living that are not necessarily centered around efficiency, progress, independence, and rationality… disability can be liberating, exhilarating, a place of freedom from the continual work our society demands of us to be “normal”. -136
February 18, 2021
This book side swiped me in a good way. I intended to breeze through it as background research for my most recent book I’m writing. But the clarity, precision, intelligence and accessibility of the writing made me unable to put the book down or skim pages. Honestly, I know very little about disability studies and still do largely. But this book at least introduced me to some key concepts and revealed how enlightening a disabilities studies framework is in understanding the potential for animal rights. Taylor had a knack for embodying concepts by deftly weaving together her personal experience with larger theoretical frameworks. I’ve tried this myself in some of my own work, largely unsuccessfully. It’s not easy. I’m jealous of anyone who can link the personal with the political by not either seeking egotistical or dulling down theoretical concepts. But each side balances each other out in this book. I cannot recommend this book enough both in terms of its intelligent take and the compelling style it is written in.
March 25, 2025
I recommended this book to three separate people while I was still reading it! It was a fun, easy, informative read throughout. To me, it was mostly about disability acceptance, community, and history, but it is also an interesting introductory animal rights book. It covers disability, animals, and feminism, so readers will definitely come away from it with different thoughts depending on which of these topics is most impactful to them. The author goes over her conversations with Peter Singer about how he has spoken about disabled people in the past, which was an especially interesting section of this book to me.
March 14, 2025
A really unique look at disability liberation through the lens of a form of activism frequently at odds with disability activists (peter singer, I'm looking at you). I think I've tended to stay away from animal activism just because I have this internalized fear of being that vegetarian who's too intense about it to the point where they prioritize animals over humans. But this book really really spoke to me about the things I believe innately, both about bodily ability and animal rights. There's so much to learn about ableism from the ways in which we view things that are "less than human" and what is considered to be a life worth living. Realized I unknowingly ILL'd two sunaura taylor books at the same time without realizing they were by the same person! So onto disabled ecologies :)
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