In the article “All animals are equal” Peter Singer argues that non-human animals should be treated with the same respect as the human beings since the non-human animals are equal to the humans. Singer defines speciesism as the act of giving biased favors to the members of one’s own species, acting against the representatives of the other species. To prove himself right, he makes three claims against speciesism. Equality is based on equal thought; equality is an ethical idea not based on facts, and that the ability to suffer is a requirement for rights. Singer argues that without speciesism there would be no inequality.
To support his first argument, Singer shows that equality does not mean equal rights and that if an animal doesn’t know what voting is, it doesn’t have the right to vote. However, this doesn’t exclude it from having equal considerations and no matter what happens that animal should be treated equally to any human being. This proof also makes the arguments inhibiting the extension of rights to non-humans very vague.
To show that equality is based on ethics rather than facts, Singer argues that we demand equality among human beings and protest against racism, sexism and all the other things that go against the idea of equality. But the fact is that all human beings are different and no one is perfect. If equality was a factual aspect, then we would never have opposed racism in its favor. This proves that equality is a moral aspect and people demand equality because they ethically approve it, not because of the facts. So, no matter how big the differences between the humans and non humans are, we should treat them as equals, because it is a moral obligation of human beings.
Finally, Singer argues that whatever activity person is compelled to do it may change with the nature of his actions affecting them. He associates the rights given to any being with the suffering it tolerates. He supports the argument by showing that the behavior of humans towards animals is not worth the animals’ suffering from human beings, including being slain just for the taste of the human beings.