August 25, 2011
The always-provocative animal-rights organization is at it again, this time announcing that it plans to launch a porn site to draw attention to the plight of animals. And once again it's alienating groups that it ought to consider allies.
Not surprisingly, many feminists (in the broadest sense of the term) have objected. The general line of argument is that you're not really accomplishing anything if you're raising awareness for one cause (say, animal suffering) by doing damage to another cause (say, sexual equality). When PETA uses naked bodies, it was almost always female bodies, portrayed and instrumentalized as sex objects. Porn, in other words, is pretty problematic as a consciousness-raising tool.
Now none of this assumes that all porn is automatically a bad thing. It is, by definition, naughty, and certainly controversial, but there's little reasoned objection against portrayals of nudity or sexuality per se. Any sane objection has to be rooted in things like objectification, which is not a necessary ingredient of porn, though it is certainly a common one. Of course, no one yet knows what kind of porn PETA has in mind, but the group's history suggests we shouldn't expect anything terribly progressive.
Why does the group use such tactics in the first place? PETA claims it has no choice, saying, "Unlike our opposition, which is mostly composed of wealthy industries and corporations, PETA must rely on getting free 'advertising' through media coverage."
But that's not exactly true. According to PETA's financial report, the organization has a budget of approximately US$36 million, about $11 million of which is spent on "Public Outreach and Education."
It perhaps goes without saying that any for-profit corporation that tried to set up such a website to draw attention to its product would draw fire, too. But of course, it is utterly unthinkable that Coca-Cola or Microsoft would set up a porn site just to draw attention to their products. That's not to say that lots of companies don't use sex in their advertising, but no mainstream business would ever go so far as to use actual porn to reach an audience. But then, PETA isn't a for-profit corporation, but rather a not-for-profit corporation, one that exists to promote animal rights. But is objectification of female bodies for a cause different than objectification of female bodies for money, ethically speaking?
PETA will surely say "yes." After all, this is porn for a good cause, not just for its own sake, and not just to generate filthy profits. But it's worth remembering that PETA's values, and the goals it seeks, are far from universal. We're not talking about, say, world hunger or literacy. And there are all kinds of for-profit companies that produce products that make the world a better place in tangible, agreed-upon ways.
Maybe the problem with PETA isn't (just) that its campaigns objectify women, but its use of sex in this way shows how cavalier it is about doing so. An organization supposedly committed to getting us to think about the plight of animals can't afford to be seen as clueless about other ethical issues.
