Book review
Archive - April 2002

Animal Equality: Language and Liberation
by Joan Dunayer

The first book on speciesism and language, Animal Equality shows that deceptive, biased words sustain injustice toward nonhuman animals.

The book's compelling evidence of nonhuman thought and emotion debunks language that characterises other animals as unreasoning or insensitive. Vivid descriptions of zoos, aquaprisons, hunting, sportfishing, vivisection, and food-industry captivity and slaughter reveal the cruelty that misleading words legitimise and conceal.

Animal Equality also uncovers the speciesist attitudes and practices underlying much sexist and racist language.

Every animal - nonhuman or human - deserves equal consideration and protection, Joan Dunayer argues. Providing pronoun, vocabulary, and style guidelines, she proposes new language that will bring us closer to nonhuman liberation.

In two chapters of special interest to CAPS members, Dunayer shows the cruelty of zoos and aquaprisons. She also refutes the claim that these institutions 'conserve' species. The National Zoo (Washington, DC) is considered one of the world's best zoos. Yet, "at two National Zoo facilities in winter 2000, two Grevy's zebras - members of an endangered species - died from the cold. Fed an inadequate diet, they had virtually no body fat to protect them from low temperatures. One was eight years old; the other was one. Grevy's zebras can live to 30."

In making her compelling case against captivity, Dunayer spans a wide range of animals, from falcons and bears to octopuses and tunas. Bluefin tunas can swim as fast as 80 kilometers an hour, she notes. When migrating, they swim about 160 kilometers a day and "traverse waters ranging from sub-Arctic to tropical". Dunayer describes bluefins' fate in captivity: "Bluefins who survive capture refuse to eat for days or weeks. Their captors force-feed them by prying their jaws open and dropping a dead fish down their throat. Probably from vitamin, calcium, and fatty-acid deficiencies, the bluefins develop cranial deformities. Some go blind."

In vivid detail, Dunayer shows how the language of zoos and aquaprisons conceals nonhuman suffering and death. She also provides a helpful list of alternatives to standard zoo and aquaprison euphemisms.

Animal advocates will find Animal Equality extremely useful. Along with comprehensive guidelines for nonspeciesist language, the book offers a wealth of evidence and arguments that zoos, aquaprisons, and all other speciesist institutions should be abolished. Tom Regan has called Animal Equality "brilliant and devastating", "a book of monumental importance for animal rights". Peter Singer comments, "Anyone interested either in changing the status of animals, or in the study of language and its role in culture, will find Animal Equality a valuable book."

Carol Adams writes, "A giant step for animalkind... Animal Equality is intensely powerful: groundbreaking, definitive, comprehensive, compelling. Unparalleled in scope and exhaustively researched, it is a remarkable achievement." Everyone who seeks the emancipation of nonhuman animals should own this landmark book.

Animal Equality: Language and Liberation by Joan Dunayer is available in Europe from Amazon.co.uk and Airlift Book Company (Freepost ND 6143, Enfield, Middlesex EN3 7BR, phone +44 (0)20 8443 5333), and in the US from Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and lanternbooks.com. (2001, Ryce Publishing, 283 pages, hardcover, £21, $25)