Talk:animal rights

Senses

In my experience, the term "animal rights" is used in many different ways. I don't think we can hope to cover all the ways it's used, but there seem to be two main salient points:

• It can be used fairly literally, to refer to (purported) rights of animals, but usually it's used vaguely or attributively, in phrases like "animal rights movement", "crusader for animal rights", "animal rights case". (This is like other similarly constructed expressions — "gay rights", "women's rights", etc. The notable exception is "human rights", which can really be used either way. No one would bat an eye at "Freedom is a basic human right", but "Marriage is a basic gay right", "Equal work for equal pay is a basic woman's right", and "Humane living conditions are a basic animal right" are all very awkward.)
• People "in the know" usually distinguish between animal welfare and animal rights, the former designating humane treatment, the latter designating actual liberation (freedom from confinement, exploitation, etc.). Technically I suppose the term "animal rights" could refer to animal welfare if the speaker believes that animals have a right not to be mistreated, but activists of both types are usually pretty clear on the distinction. Conversely, ordinary people don't usually draw this distinction, and instead use "animal rights" (or "PETA") as a blanket term for both. (Consider, for example, this AP article, which uses "animal rights" to refer to what activists would call animal welfare.) This is to be expected — most people don't consider birds to be dinosaurs or tomatoes to be fruit, but do consider cashews to be nuts and ants to be bugs — and there's nothing wrong with it. But our entries always need to cover both the "man-in-the-street" use and the use by experts/activists/etc.

—Ruakh_TALK 23:44, 16 February 2009 (UTC)