Quick hit: PETA offers pathetic excuse for their misogyny

Have you seen this interview with PETA’s Associate Director of Campaigns? In it, Lindsay Rajt attempts to do the impossible: explain away PETA’s consistently terrible no-good very bad history of employing sexism and misogyny to draw attention to their cause.

If you don’t feel like reading the whole interview, here’s the basic idea: PETA is just putting out these god-awful ads as a publicity stunt (no big surprise there) because they “don’t have millions and millions to spend” (really?) and so they “have to work a little harder” to get their message out. So they deliberately employ “provocative and controversial campaigns” even though, JK cause their president and co-founder is actually totally a feminist!

Hmm. Under this logic, I am incentivizing and furthering their misogyny by even giving them a mention. But this is such utter BS that it needs to be deconstructed before it can be dismissed.

Note to PETA and everyone who ascribes to this ridiculous logic (and pay attention, because we feminists are busy with our feminist activities, which contrary to popular belief, do not consist solely of ratcheting up pageviews for shitty campaigns that represent a threat to the safety and dignity of women):

No matter what your non-profit works on, no matter how good the cause, no matter how important the activism, no matter how badass of a social justice crusader you think you are, no matter how progressive you identify, it is NEVER OK to throw women under the bus.

Are we clear? Yes? Cool. Now please go forth and use all that great brain power you have from eating healthy fruits and veggies to create yourself an ad campaign that isn’t offensive and awful.

Brooklyn, NY

Lori Adelman started blogging with Feministing in 2008, and now runs partnerships and strategy as a co-Executive Director. She is also the Director of Youth Engagement at Women Deliver, where she promotes meaningful youth engagement in international development efforts, including through running the award-winning Women Deliver Young Leaders Program. Lori was formerly the Director of Global Communications at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and has also worked at the United Nations Foundation on the Secretary-General's flagship Every Woman Every Child initiative, and at the International Women’s Health Coalition and Human Rights Watch. As a leading voice on women’s rights issues, Lori frequently consults, speaks and publishes on feminism, activism and movement-building. A graduate of Harvard University, Lori has been named to The Root 100 list of the most influential African Americans in the United States, and to Forbes Magazine‘s list of the “30 Under 30” successful mediamakers. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Lori Adelman is an Executive Director of Feministing in charge of Partnerships.

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