where science and ethics intersect with politics
We love some animals, exploit others, and kill still others in the name of protection. From intelligent pigs to dairy cows and endangered owls, we examine how intelligence, economic usefulness, and human preference determine which lives matter—and who gets to make that decision.
If consent is a fundamental ethical principle, what responsibilities do we have toward animals who cannot give it? Exploring bodily autonomy, reproductive control, and the uncomfortable distinction between caring for another being and using their body for our benefit.
From the Latin comes the Spanish rodear, a “roundup” – the practical, unglamorous work of gathering cattle. American English, with a cowboy twang-drawl, turned rodeo into an “exhibition” and “contest.”
You can help one pig, you can pull up a crate, or you can put down the pork.
Why does veganism make some people angry? Jim Mason reflects on the uncomfortable reality animal advocates bring into view—and the comfort that reality can disturb.
A reflection on Jim Mason’s Madness, exploring domination, cultural disconnection, and the unsettling clarity of a worldview that refuses to soften the truth about human systems.
In the language of the food industry, animals are not killed—they are “processed.” This Language, Examined piece explores how a single word can remove violence from view, transforming an act into a procedure and reshaping how we understand what’s really happening.
“Free-range” evokes images of open space and animal freedom—but what does it actually guarantee? This Language, Examined piece explores how the term shifts our focus from outcome to environment, offering reassurance while leaving deeper ethical questions untouched.
What does “ethical meat” really mean? This Language, Examined piece explores how the phrase reshapes the conversation—shifting focus from whether animals should be killed to how it’s done, and offering reassurance where deeper questions still remain.
What does “humane slaughter” actually mean? This Language, Examined piece unpacks how carefully chosen words can soften violence, reduce moral tension, and shape public perception in ways we rarely stop to question.
Words like “harvest” and “processing” are not neutral descriptors—they are carefully chosen euphemisms that sanitize violence and erase victims from public consciousness. By examining the language used to describe animal exploitation, this piece explores how softened terminology shields harm from scrutiny and why precision in language is an ethical act, not a rhetorical one.
What if animal liberation weren’t confined to courtrooms and campaigns—but passed quietly into law? This satirical illustration imagines a future where New York City recognizes what activists have long argued: freedom is not species-specific. As Bronx Zoo animals walk through open gates and into public life, the cartoon asks a simple, unsettling question—what changes when justice finally applies to everyone?
A leader who kills a puppy and then proudly markets the story is not an anomaly — she is a symptom of a political culture that confuses cruelty with strength. The Kristi Noem scandal is not about a single dog; it is a mirror held up to America’s comfort with harm, hierarchy, and disposability.
The FDA’s expanded approval of cultivated meat marks a major shift in U.S. food policy. But beneath the promise of slaughter-free protein lies a harder ethical question: Are we truly ending our exploitation of animals, or simply modernizing it? A technology that begins with the taking of another being’s cells cannot deliver liberation. It can only deliver a cleaner mirror for our existing beliefs.
Through language other animals are made to bear the crudest human acts, the ugliest human thoughts, the deepest human guilts, the worst human crimes, the most unspeakable human evils…
While subjection to speciesism may be required by physical and political forces in the real world, no such necessity holds in imaginary worlds. The author, editor, and publisher of a story, a play, a novel, a poem, a song, a movie script, a video game, or some other piece of literature wield plenary power over the manufactured universe in which that piece is set. If we want readers and viewers to escape from speciesism, even just for a little while and even just in their imaginations, we can enable that escape by keeping speciesism and animal exploitation out of literature altogether. This end can be achieved both (i) by writing new works that are, from the outset, free from anthropocentric and speciesist content and (ii) by editing existing works to meet that criterion.
