Animals have feelings, too.

“Animal rights are now firmly on the mainstream ethical agenda,” ends a recent Op-Ed by Nicholas Kristof. This is a victory for animals, and I am unabashedly celebrating it. “Animal rights” are condescended and teased frequently, and I’ve never been sure why there is so much animosity against the movement. I feel like people are finally coming to their senses and realizing that animals can suffer (see further down in Kristof’s column) and do suffer at the hands of humans, and for the purpose of overstuffing our obese selves. We’ve developed an arbitrary designation system for determining what animals are okay to eat and what animals are meant to cuddle with, based not on the animal so much as our own needs. We’ve even gone a step further in wrongly deciding that either animals do not suffer or that their suffering is of little consequence to us. Then, we’ve turned a blind eye to the cruelty inflicted upon animals so that we can eat them. It’s wrong. It’s disgraceful. It must change.