Digital Dive: Plagiarism is Just Plain Nasty: Speaker 2 Transcript

STUDENT: I am here today with a simple goal. I'm here today to speak to you about speciesism. I want to reconnect people with animals and to reawaken the positive emotions and feelings we once had towards a speciesism. I first wanted to find specism as the unethical on principle point-of-view that the human species has every right to exploit, enslave, and murder another species.

We can all agree that injustice of any kind be it racism, sexism, misogyny, or any other form is wrong. Hatred in its purest form is a learned behavior. Children on the playground couldn't care less about the color of their friend's skin or their religious backgrounds, and specism is no different-- just another type of discrimination.

When we were children, we loved animals. We used to be in awe of them. When anyone was mean to an animal in front of us when we were little, we would have been extremely upset. What happened along the way? Who taught us to be so mean and hateful or indifferent to animals who used to be our friends?

Who taught us that human species is much more important, so much more superior than animals. That's a dangerous line of thinking. It is the basis of all forms of discrimination. Once one group begins to think that they are superior to others, they begin treating other groups like property often proceeding to exploit them and deny their freedom.

And here is something basic we must understand about discrimination. It is never OK to pick and choose which forms of discrimination to be opposed to, to say which ones are evil, racism, homophobia, misogyny, and to say which ones are OK, specism. The very foundation of discrimination is evil, and so I want to reconnect you with your empathy and positive feelings towards animals.

I ask you to think about putting yourself in the place of the animal, to think about this issue from the victim's point-of-view. When you examine any form of injustice, be it humans as the victims or animals as the victims, please remember the victims point-of-view. If you are not the victim, you cannot examine the problem solely from your point-of-view, because when you aren't empathizing with the victim, it becomes easier to rationalize and excuse cruelty, injustice, inequality, slavery, and even murder.