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Scotland. ...

Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary in

Animal love or animal lover may refer to: affectional relationships between humans and companion animals, see human-animal bonding. wider concern about the well-being of all animals, see animal welfare. sexual relationships between humans and animals, see zoophilia. affectional bonding between animals, see pair bond.
ould you say you’re an ‘animal lover’? It isn’t difficult to find people who say they love animals. Many of us have cats or dogs, or both. In the United Kingdom, for example, almost half of households have pets. Very often these animals are thought of as family members. And a lot of us enjoy watching television programmes, like David Attenborough’s, that bring the wonders of the natural world into our homes. Yet most of those who call themselves ‘animal lovers’ knowingly participate in animal cruelty – by eating meat, for example. Children easily appreciate the inconsistency here, but most adults still make excuses for their behaviour.

At the same time, many people in the animal rights movement reject the term ‘animal lover’. Not only do they claim not to love animals, a lot of them say they don’t own animals, either. When they do share their lives with animals, it’s usually with rescued animals who they think of as companions rather than pets. They feel that the word ‘love’ devalues the work that they do, and they insist that it is possible to respect animals’ rights and work to make their lives better without feeling any affection for them. ‘Love,’ they say, doesn’t come into it.

It was partly in response to the label ‘animal lover’ that pioneering animal ethicists such as Peter Singer and Tom Regan adopted an overly-rational approach in their work – one which has since been critiqued by ecofeminists, who instead emphasise relationships and explore our interconnectedness with nature. Some philosophers even argue that ‘love’ is the wrong motivation for justice. In his book Animal Liberation, Peter Singer writes:

No one, except a racist concerned to smear his opponents as ‘n*****-lovers’, would suggest that in order to be concerned about equality for mistreated racial minorities you have to love those minorities, or regard them as cute and cuddly. So why make this assumption about people who work for improvements in the conditions of animals?

The term ‘animal lover’ has been used to denigrate people who display affection or concern for animals. Those who care about animals are often characterised as abnormal – as the term ‘crazy cat lady’ illustrates. While
tropes like this exist for women, men’s affection for animals is confined to the image of the pitiful singleton who lives with his cat and no one else. (There’s also the country man and his dog, but he’s typically understood as unaffectionate; he may enjoy the dog’s company, but he doesn’t express that joy.)

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