I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur

Model Wikipedia:Christy Turlington posing for PETA. The series of ads triggered criticism from feminist animal rights advocates.

As part of its anti-fur action, celebrities and supermodels have posed naked for the group's "I'd Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur" campaign.

This article may contain material from Wikipedia An article on this subject has been redirected to another page on WP: I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur Current versions of the GNU FDL article on Wikipedia may contain information useful to the improvement of this article

WP R E D

PETA opposes the use of animals for producing clothing that utilizes fur, leather, or wool. PETA opposes the use of down from birds; the extraction process is at best, a byproduct of the meat industry. PETA also opposes the use of silk from silkworms or spiders, that are boiled alive as part of the extraction process.

This article contains content from Wikipedia. Current versions of the GNU FDL article PETA#Campaigns and consumer boycotts on WP may contain information useful to the improvement of this article

WP

The organization is known for its aggressive media campaigns, combined with a solid base of celebrity support—Wikipedia:Pamela Anderson, Drew Barrymore (WP), Wikipedia:Alec Baldwin, Wikipedia:John Gielgud, Wikipedia:Bill Maher, Wikipedia:Stella McCartney, and Wikipedia:Alicia Silverstone have all appeared in PETA ads. Every week, Newkirk holds what The New Yorker calls a war council, with two dozen of her top strategists gathered round a square table in the PETA conference room, no suggestion considered too outrageous. PETA also gives a yearly prize, called the Proggy Award (for "progress"), to individuals or organizations dedicated to animal welfare or who distinguish themselves through their efforts within the area of animal welfare.

Steve-O during PETA's "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" campaign

As part of its anti-fur action, PETA members have infiltrated hundreds of fashion shows in the U.S, Europe, and once in China, throwing red paint on the catwalks, and unfurling banners. Celebrities and supermodels have posed naked for the group's "I'd Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur" campaign—some men, but mostly women—triggering criticism from feminist animal rights advocates (see below).

Robert Garner of the University of Leicester writes that Newkirk and Pacheco are the leading exporters of animal rights to the more moderate groups in the United States—both members of an animal rights elite that he argues has shaken up the animal rights movement, setting up new groups and radicalizing old ones.

There is criticism of PETA from both the conservative and radical ends of the movement. Michael Specter writes that it provides for groups such as the Wikipedia:Humane Society of the United States the same dynamic that Wikipedia:Malcolm X provided for Wikipedia:Martin Luther King, or Wikipedia:Andrea Dworkin for Wikipedia:Gloria Steinem—someone radical to alienate the mainstream and make moderate voices more appealing. The failure to condemn the Animal Liberation Front triggers complaints from the conservatives, while the more radical activists say the group has lost touch with its grassroots, is soft on the idea of animal rights, and that it should stop the media stunts, the pie-throwing, and the targeting of women. "It's hard enough trying to get people to take animal rights seriously without PETA out there acting like a bunch of jerks," one activist told writer Norm Phelps.

The New Yorker writes that PETA activists have crawled through the streets of Paris wearing leg-hold traps and thrown around money soaked in fake blood at the International Fur Fair. They regularly engage in pie-throwing—in January 2010, Canadian MP Gerry Byrne compared them to terrorists for throwing a tofu cream pie at Canada's fishery minister Wikipedia:Gail Shea in protest at the seal hunt, a comment Newkirk called a silly chest-beating exercise. "The thing is, we make them gawk," she told Satya magazine, "maybe like a traffic accident that you have to look at."

Foxes in the snow, but no fur; body paint on long underwear will have to suffice

The ads featuring barely clad or naked women have appalled feminist animal rights advocates. When Wikipedia:Ronald Reagan's daughter Wikipedia:Patti Davis posed naked for Playboy, donating half her $100,000 fee to PETA, the group issued a press release saying Davis "turns the other cheek in an eye-opening spread," then announced she had been photographed naked with Wikipedia:Hugh Hefner's dog for an anti-fur ad. In 1995, PETA formed a partnership with Playboy to promote human organ donation, with the caption "Some People Need You Inside Them" on a photograph of Hefner's wife. The long-standing campaign, "I'd rather go naked than wear fur," in which celebrities and supermodels strip for the camera, generated particular concern.

PETA "Lettuce Ladies" in the Short North, Columbus, Ohio

Newkirk has replied to the criticism that no one is being exploited, the women taking part are volunteers, and if sexual attraction advances the cause of animals, she is unapologetic. Asked by Wikinews how she feels when criticized from within the movement, she said: "Somebody has to push the envelope. If you say something that someone already agrees with, then what's the point, and so we make some more conservative animal protection organizations uncomfortable; they don't want to be associated with us because it will be embarrassing for them, and I understand that. Our own members write to us sometimes and say, 'Oh why did you do this? I don't want anyone to know I'm a PETA member.'"

If anybody wonders 'what's this with all these reforms?', you can hear us clearly. Our goal is total animal liberation, and the day when everyone believes that animals are not ours to eat, not ours to wear, not ours to experiment [on], and not ours for entertainment or any other exploitive purpose.

—Ingrid Newkirk, 2002

Wikipedia:Gary Francione, professor of law at Rutgers School of Law-Newark, argues that PETA is not an animal rights group—and further that there is no animal rights movement in the United States—because of their willingness to work with industries that use animals to achieve incremental change. This makes them an animal welfare group, in Francione's view: what he calls the new welfarists. A proponent of abolitionism, Francione argues that PETA is trivializing the movement with what he calls the "Three Stooges" theory of animal rights, making the public think progress is underway when the changes are only cosmetic.

Like Francione, PETA describes itself as abolitionist. Newkirk told an animal rights conference in 2002 that PETA's goal remains animal liberation: "Reforms move a society very importantly from A to B, from B to C, from C to D. It's very hard to take a nation or a world that is built on seeing animals as nothing more than hamburgers, handbags, cheap burglar alarms, tools for research, and move them from A to Z ..."

PETA AsiaPacific anti-zoo demonstration

Francione has also criticized PETA for having caused grassroots animal rights groups to close, groups that he argues were essential for the survival of the animal rights movement, which rejects the centrality of corporate animal charities. Francione writes that PETA initially set up independent chapters around the United States, but closed them in favor of a top-down, centralized organization, which not only consolidated decision-making power, but centralized donations too. Now, local animal rights donations go to PETA, rather than to a local group.

Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder of PETA, is a strong supporter of direct action that removes animals from laboratories and other facilities—she told The Los Angeles Times in 1992 that when she hears of anyone walking into a lab and walking out with animals, her heart sings. In an interview for Wikinews in 2007, she said she had been asked by other animal protection groups to condemn illegal acts. "And I won't do it, because if it were my animal I'd be happy." But she added that she does not support arson. "I would rather that these buildings weren't standing, and so I think at some level I understand. I just don't like the idea of that, but maybe that's wishy-washy of me, because I don't want those buildings standing if they hurt anyone ... Why would you preserve [a building] just so someone can make a profit by continuing to hurt and kill individuals who feel every bit as much as we do?"

In August 2011, it was announced that PETA will be launching a Wikipedia:soft pornography website in the Wikipedia:.xxx domain. PETA spokesperson Lindsay Rajt told the Huffington Post, “We try to use absolutely every outlet to stick up for animals,” adding that “We are careful about what we do and wouldn’t use nudity or some of our flashier tactics if we didn't know they worked.” PETA also used nudity in its "Veggie Love" ad which it prepared for the Wikipedia:Super Bowl only to have it banned by the network. PETA's work has drawn the ire of some feminists who argue that the organization sacrifices women's rights to press its agenda. Lindsay Beyerstein criticized PETA saying “They're the ones drawing disturbing analogies between pornography, misogyny and animal cruelty."

See also

Wikipedia sound file: Newkirk on clashes with other animal rights organizations and her feelings about the Animal Liberation Front

Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder of PETA, on animal rights and the film about her life

• Michelle Manhart‎

• Wikipedia:Kentucky Fried Cruelty
• Wikipedia:Women and animal advocacy
• Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (2004) Episode 1 of Season 2 - "P.E.T.A."
• Your Mommy Kills Animals (2007) documentary film

Further reading

• PETA homepage, accessed July 2, 2010.
• Interview with Ingrid Newkirk, PETA Co-Founder, May 2012
• McCartney, Stella. "Fur farm investigation", PETAtv.com, accessed July 2, 2010.
• Morrison, A.R. Personal Reflections on the “Animal-Rights” Phenomenon, The Physiologist, Volume 44, Number 1, February 2001, accessed July 17, 2010.
• Pence, Gregory. Classic Cases in Medical Ethics: Accounts of Cases That Have Shaped Medical Ethics. McGraw-Hill, 2007.
• PETA. Meet Your Meat, a film about the egg and meat industries, narrated by Alec Baldwin, accessed July 2, 2010.
• The Huffington Post. The Sexiest PETA Ads of All Time! A slideshow, accessed July 2, 2010.
• Workman, Dave P. Peta Files: The Dark Side of the Animal Rights Movement, Merril Press, 2003.

• FBI file on PETA

Template:Animal rights