Peter Singer is not Animal Liberation Now

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If you have been following this saga and are looking for the 2023 end of year update, you can jump straight to EPILOGUE.

Based on my commitment to keep our movement informed of major media stories about animals, I recently sent out, on DawnWatch, a New York Times op-ed written by Peter Singer. I did not comment on it, though I know my readers expect me to weigh in on what I send. I hesitated because it is vital to me to keep my personal life away from the work I do for animals, but they converge here, for I have filed suit against Peter Singer for Sexual Harassment and the Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress. I will share more on that suit further below.

My concern with Peter Singer’s stances is not new. I explain in my own book, Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the way we Treat Animals, that while Singer holds that it’s wrong to make judgments on the worth of a life based on species, because that would be speciesism, he argues that it is fine to do so based on qualities that he assumes to be unique to healthy humans. That’s like saying we can’t discriminate based on race, because that would be racism, but that if we discriminate on the basis of an attractive hair color that is exclusive to one race, that is no longer racism. It’s a specious argument against speciesism, and not one that Richard Ryder, who coined the word for which Singer is given far too much credit, would likely condone.

One such quality that Singer has cited as unique to most humans is our ability to plan for the future. Yet anybody who has come home to see their dog abandon their spot by the door and run to grab her leash, knows the dog has been looking forward to an evening walk. And what of squirrels gathering nuts for the winter? Meanwhile, as I wrote in Thanking the Monkey, many human plans don’t go further than heading to the pub Saturday to watch the game. How does that make our lives more worthy than those of other animals?

It is not unreasonable to value one’s own species above others; almost everybody does it. What is unreasonable is to hold that value while holding yourself up as the foremost representative for those who you judge less worthy of life.

Let’s compare Singer’s stance to recent lines from the New York Times columnist, Margaret Renkl:

“We fail the creatures with whom we share our ecosystems when we believe that only we are unique, that only we move through the world as individuals, while our wild neighbors are nothing more than bundles of hormones driven by instinct, with none of the originality that distinctly individual beings are capable of.”

Last month I brought Winky Smalls to the wonderful Animal Wellness Center in Venice and was delighted to see this quote from Henry Beston displayed on the lobby wall:

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”

As mainstream writers in the world’s most influential papers discuss the “unique” and “distinctly individual beings” of other species, and Ed Yong’s An Immense World lands on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal “Best Books” lists, it is disheartening to see real estate as precious as the New York Times editorial page used, by somebody given credit as one of our movement founders, to recommend only that we eat fewer animals and treat them better before we do.

NEW YORK TIMES PIECE ON CLIMATE CHANGE

In his April 23 New York Times piece, “Change your diet, save the planet,” Singer devotes a strong paragraph to the abuse of billions of animals each year, reminiscent of many pieces penned by the New York Times’ Nicolas Kristof over the last decade, even while the columnist was still eating animals. But then Singer writes that “the outsized contribution of meat and dairy products to climate change is for me now an equally urgent part of shifting to a plant-based diet.”

Equally?

Imagine Gloria Steinem, with a book titled Women’s Liberation Now coming out, focusing a New York Times piece on a cause she deemed “equally” important.

Many of us care deeply about climate change, and discussing it can help animals. If people give up eating meat daily, for environmental reasons, they might find it easier to consider our fundamental arguments for animal rights. But will their professed concern about climate change really cause them to change their diets? Check out Bill Maher’s recent segment on the celebrity climate activists (other than Greta) all riding around in their private jets.

A recent study revealed that while half of Americans consider climate change to be a “very serious issue” only a third want to see the industries most closely associated in the public mind with it, the fossil fuel industries, completely phased out. So while talking about the environment doesn’t hurt, we are kidding ourselves if we think it will drive significant societal dietary change.

A prime focus on climate also opens the door to suggestions that we should invest in ways to make meat production more efficient “by reducing cow’s methane emissions,” as was recommended in a recent Washington Post piece, or to calls for methane as a potential energy source.

MEAT REDUCTION IS A TOOL, NOT AN END GOAL

Singer continues with, “But we need not be hard-line about avoiding all animal products. If everyone chose plant-based foods for just half their meals, we would have fewer animals suffering, and a tremendously better shot at avoiding the most dire consequences of climate change.”

That math is questionable, for while the rate at which our population is increasing has slowed, the population is currently continuing to increase, so it is more likely that halving our intake would delay but not avoid “the dire consequences of climate change.”

As for saving animals with that recommendation: yes, such a change would save many animals, and in general campaigns that encourage meat reduction are helpful because studies have shown that those who go vegan gradually are far more likely to do so permanently. But I hope activists can appreciate the nuanced difference between encouraging people to cut down, in order to get them to take the first step on the right path, and actually instructing, “But we need not be hard-line about avoiding all animal products.”

I can’t help but bring up Gloria again and imagine her suggesting that we don’t need to take a hard line against sexism.

Animals deserve better.

PEOPLE CARE ABOUT ANIMALS

The presumed need to focus on environmentalism goes against research done by Faunalytics, which reveals that the majority of people, and the vast majority of women, are interested in protecting animals. It flies in the face of the entertainment industry rule, “Never kill the dog,” because people will change the channel if you do. There’s even a reference website, “Does the dog die?” to warn people about films in which the story line involves animal suffering.

Let’s remember that almost two-thirds of Californians voted in favor of Prop 2 and Prop 12, which banned the most egregiously cruel housing for farm animals, despite agribusiness’ massive advertising effort to warn them that meat and egg prices would rise.

People care about animals, so we need not hide our concern for them while trying to save them using backdoor approaches. When we do that, we undermine our movement.

TALK THE WALK

I argued that point at the very end of my book Thanking the Monkey, in a section entitled “Talk the Walk,” which shared Marianne Williamson’s inspiring take on a Dateline segment. The segment showed an actor pretending to be hurt and crying out for help. Nearby, two other actors were just hanging out and talking. In a candid camera type of situation, Dateline watched the reactions of people walking by. Almost every person, as they saw two others ignore the cries for help, just kept walking. One person in 20 stopped, and then called for more help. But once that first person stopped, every person who came along joined in to help.

As Marianne explains it, once one person acts from an awakened heart, others will follow. Right now it seems many of us are trying to hide our hearts and hide our love for animals. And that pushes other activists to shout it in a tone that doesn’t sound like love at all.

What is missing from Peter Singer’s New York Times op-ed, and from too much of our activism lately, is the willingness to boldly and lovingly assert that the lives of animals matter. It is time to stop cloaking our cause in other causes we believe to be more popular.

“Plant-based” may be one of those cloaks. While not faulting animal advocates who choose it for its preferable connotations, I will point to Pinky Cole and her “Slu*ty Vegan” restaurants (asterisked for spam filter’s sake) taking the world by storm, while the musician Denai Moore’s new cookbook, Plentiful: Vegan Jamaican recipes to Repeat was just touted on the front page of the Washington Post, the same week that vegan sushi, brought to us by dancer Yoko Hasebe, was covered in the Los Angeles Times and announced on front pages of McClatchy newspapers across the country. Don’t those wins suggest we could reclaim the word vegan and change the connotations?

We have all heard the joke:

Question: How do you know there’s a vegan in the room?

Answer: They will tell you.

If only that were true! We need to up the frequency and volume of our sharing, while we significantly soften the tone.

LOS ANGELES TIMES PIECE AND MY LETTER

As I was putting together this essay, another piece by Singer came out, this one in the Los Angeles Times, where the animal-concerned editors at that paper at least made sure Singer focused on animals rather than climate change. Singer notes “there is now strong evidence that fish can feel pain,” while nevertheless grammatically treating fish as objects with the pronoun “it. ” The piece basically decries that 50 years after the release of Animal Liberation, animals are still treated badly before they are killed.

I am profoundly grateful to the Los Angeles Times for featuring my response, as the first letter on May 22, displayed with a photo of pigs in transport trucks and the headline “More Than Nice Cages for Animals.” I wrote:

“As always, it’s good to see animal issues covered in The Times, but one has to note the irony when the author of ‘Animal Liberation Now,’ Peter Singer, calls for bigger and better cages. (‘Think humans’ treatment of animals has improved in 50 years? Think again,’ Opinion, May 16)

“That is a call for animal welfare now, a worthy goal but one that lags behind most of the animal advocacy movement and even behind current trends in society.

“There is a growing understanding that other species are not here for our use. They have worth and wonder of their own, which is becoming more frequently acknowledged in human society.

“That acknowledgment will bring change that we will not see if our main focus is on causing animals less suffering in their servitude.”

EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM ISSUES

During the last decade, there has been no person more closely associated than Peter Singer with “Effective Altruism,” a system that attempts to measure how much good each charity does with each dollar. An example Singer gives is that if forty people each give a thousand dollars to Guide Dogs for the Blind, one dog can be trained as a helper to one blind human. Meanwhile $40,000 given to a different charity could restore sight to 40 people in third world countries.

I love that example because Guide Dogs for the Blind breeds Labradors, many of whom don’t make the cut and end up needing regular homes, while thousands of dogs whose temperaments would be perfectly suited for the job are killed in shelters.

But one cannot always numerically calculate impact. Malcolm Gladwell spells that out in The Tipping Point, a book all activists should read. The Effective Altruism movement urges funders to donate to charities that can prove how many animals they help. One of the top recommendations is a group that urges food companies to stop using eggs from hens in battery cages. That effort will surely help end that one hideous farming practice and ease some of the suffering of billions of animals. But those approaching the companies would have no success if other activists weren’t changing public opinion, pushing the envelope, and putting societal pressure on those companies to at least make some improvements. Thanks to Effective Altruism, however, the guys negotiating the deals to get millions of animals bigger cages are grabbing the bulk of funding, while those changing the way society views animals, who can’t count the number of animals they have helped, are, by Effective Altruism standards, not worth funding.

Effective Altruism starves out the activists creating the sparks, and Peter Singer wonders why our movement isn’t lighting up the world.

These issues are laid out beautifully in Carol Adams’ most recent book, an anthology titled, The Good it Promises, the Harm it Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism. I would call it a “must read” for anybody who donates to animal advocacy organizations.

Krista Hiddema‘s chapter on Esther the Wonder Pig is one of my favorites. It describes a brilliant campaign to get Esther’s millions of followers directly, financially, involved in her life when she was faced with a medical emergency. Peter Singer, in his lack of wisdom, weighed in with a column criticizing the effort because all that money could do far more good than helping just one animal.

But in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini describes fascinating psychology studies from which we can extrapolate that if we want to turn Esther’s admirers into committed pig people, asking them for $10 to help her, and letting them share responsibility for her progress, is a darn good way to do it. Peter dear, that money was not otherwise about to be donated to charity. And based on the studies in Cialdini’s book, we know that each doner’s next $10 wasn’t going to be spent on a bacon sandwich.

Effective Altruism may be helpful for fields that most people already acknowledge matter – human life, for example. And it may work in the field of basic animal welfare, within the framework of humans having the right to breed, own, and kill animals. But for those of us trying to change the way society views our fundamental relationship with other species – by influencing the media for example, as DawnWatch does – Effective Altruism calculations can be deadly, as they ignore the Tipping Point influence of activism that directly affects smaller numbers but can have a powerful effect on society.

Peter Singer’s dedication to that field, and his ability to attract animal advocacy donors to its biometrics, has bogged our movement down in welfare reforms when true change was on the horizon.

Please know that I support welfare reforms. I don’t know how anybody could look at a photo of a sow living in a coffin-sized gestation crate and not want to get her out of it, even if it’s only into a bleak and overcrowded communal pen. Plus, just as importantly, welfare campaigns show the shocking suffering caused by our food system; they wake people up. But seeing the bulk of animal advocacy funding flowing in that direction is distressing, and ironically we have the author of Animal Liberation Now to thank for much of that flow.

A PASS FOR CONSCIENTIOUS OMNIVORES

That flow is probably no accident given that during his current book tour Peter Singer told the Guardian, that “conscientious omnivores” can “get a pass” if it can be shown that the animals bred and killed for their meat didn’t suffer.

When faced with an ethical question on animal rights, it is always useful to ask what the answer would be if we were talking about humans. I use that guideline with questions of welfare: of course, we would strive to get humans better conditions on death row, even if they shouldn’t be there. And I use it with questions such as this one about conscientious omnivorism. Would we say it’s okay to raise and slaughter humans for food, as long as they don’t suffer?

Again, Singer’s argument, this time about conscious omnivorism, is not entirely unreasonable, but coming from somebody currently speaking on behalf of our movement it is dispiriting. We should not have to argue about the worth of animal life against somebody promoting Animal Liberation Now.

INFANTICIDE, AND THE WORTH OF HUMAN LIFE

When one reads a headline such as “Peter Singer says there is no reason to say humans have more worth or moral status than animals” one expects an uplifting argument against harming other animals. But Singer’s argument does not uplift animals so much as it downgrades some humans. In that Guardian interview I cite above he says, “Defenders of speciesism argue that humans have a special rational nature that sets them apart from animals, but the problem is where that leaves infants and the profoundly intellectually disabled.”

Singer argues that parents should have the right to euthanize severely disabled newborns.

In his exquisitely written and profoundly influential book, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy, Matthew Scully, who wrote the book while serving as a senior speechwriter for President George W Bush, chastised Singer’s stand on infanticide. In my otherwise glowing review of Scully’s book, I defended Singer and wrote that I was appalled by Scully’s lines: “In the same way, animal liberationists who turn to Peter Singer for guidance must ask themselves how we can protect vulnerable animals from the caprice of man if we do not protect vulnerable people, the sick, the aged, the newborn and the unborn — how it is possible to love cats and dogs and baby seals if we do not love the most innocent and defenseless of human beings.”

I am ashamed that I defended Singer. In 2002 I was a new and strong activist, but also a lost young woman who had been seduced by her hero, unaware of how ethically problematic that situation was, and unaware that I was one of many women in it. As I think people wiser than I know, a sexual relationship can severely cloud one’s judgment. (Those surprised to learn both of that relationship and my sexual harassment suit should know that having acquiesced under professional pressure does not preclude such a suit.)

Singer argues his infanticide stance logically, but it is likely to send chills up many spines. It is an association our movement could do without.

THE PERMISSABILITY OF ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION

In Thanking the Monkey, I acknowledge that reasonable people can disagree on whether it’s ever okay to experiment on animals to save human life. I suggest we focus instead on the vast majority of animal experiments, which bring us better oven cleaner, or drugs that work for an extra hour or two. Let’s tackle the issues on which every decent person would agree. In our tribal society, people may not appreciate the nuance involved in accepting that something might be a reasonable view, while not personally supporting that view. Of course, I am personally against deadly animal testing, even for the purpose of saving human life, because I believe in a circle of life rather than a hierarchy of life, and don’t see other species as expendable objects here for our use.

Peter Singer, however, has said that animal experimentation is justified if the good done to others outweighs the harm inflicted on the animals, even making that point with regard to terminal primate research. That’s the utilitarian way of looking at the world. While I acknowledge there may be reasonable people who agree, who should not be shouted down or shamed, especially given that they may currently be in the majority, I am sorry to see one of them trying to carry the torch for the animal liberation movement.

Meanwhile, how wonderful to see the movie Guardians of the Galaxy III making sure a generation grows up with the message that animal testing is just plain wrong – not wrong sometimes, depending on how greatly humans think they might benefit from it.

The Los Angeles Times columnist, Robin Abcarian, recently asked, “Can there be anything humane about causing animals to suffer, even if it’s for the good of humanity?”

In a follow-up piece she wrote, “I look forward to the day we stop using sentient beings in laboratory experiments. We must find ways of improving the health of human beings without harming or killing other living creatures.”

Can we have more Robin Abcarian and less Peter Singer on animal testing, please?

PETER SINGER’S DIET

During our recent health crisis Peter Singer wrote that hospital beds should be denied to those who chose not to get a certain shot. While one can reasonably argue that people should accept the consequences of their choices, everybody knows that a fast-food diet leads to heart disease and diabetes. Yet Singer never suggested that those whose diets had led to those comorbidities should be denied hospital beds, even though such a policy might have encouraged millions to go vegan. How sad to see such a strong stand on shots and weak stand on meat from the author of Animal Liberation Now.

But then Peter Singer is in no ethical position to discuss diet on behalf of our movement. It is probably impossible to be totally vegan in this society – car tires aren’t even vegan – so we must all draw our own lines. Eating animals, however, is well beyond the cheat level of most people who would consider themselves to be part of the animal rights movement. Yet in his most recent Guardian interview, Singer announces that he has no objection to eating oysters because he doesn’t think they can suffer.

Anybody tempted to agree with Singer that oysters, and other mollusks he eats (he once wrote me that he had ordered mussels rather than be “stuck” with bread and salad) should read Ed Yong’s extraordinary book, An Immense World, which I mentioned above. From that book I learned what I had already suspected, that humans can barely fathom the way other animals experience the world, with senses far more impressive than ours.

A thoughtful and thorough analysis of the subject of eating bivalves, on the AnimalEthics.org site, tells us that “some bivalves have simple eyes,” that “mussels have aversive responses to cold water, and produce morphine….in response to muscle damage,” and also “alter their responses according to differing danger levels… such as the smell of a predator which causes them to close their shells.” It tells us that “Scallops have been found to show increased heart rates in response to cues from predators” and that while older bivalves are generally stationary, young bivalves swim. The section ends with, “What we do know is that there is an enormous amount of possible suffering at stake. Given the possible sentience of these animals, the most prudent course of action appears to be to err on the side of caution and not harm them.”

Can we persuade the author of Animal Liberation Now to demonstrate and advise such prudence?

Not only does Peter Singer eat some animals, he notes, “Also, if I am out somewhere where it’s a real problem, I will go for something vegetarian. That my everyday purchases are vegan is the main thing.”

Being vegan at home, in other words with one’s everyday purchases, while being looser in restaurants, is the advice I offered in Thanking the Monkey, my 2008 book aimed squarely at people with a concern for animals but little knowledge of what they go through, written in the hope of getting them to start to question our right to use animals as we do. I sure didn’t recommend it for people committed to our movement, who are calling themselves leaders of it.

APPROPRIATING WOMEN’S VOICES

I have “co-written” many newspaper pieces with Peter Singer over the years, to which he contributed no more than a decent editor, yet put his name first on each piece.

In 2016, a new editor at the Los Angeles Times asked Peter Singer for a piece on whether taking half-measures, such as giving up chicken and fish, could cause more harm than good. Singer brought me on as a cowriter but rejected my first draft. I overhauled the piece according to his direction. When the editor rejected our submission, reiterating her first request, Singer responded, “We did in fact draft a broader piece at first, more like what you are suggesting….” at which point I restored the piece and the editor expressed delight that we “had this alternative version handy.”

Singer’s contribution to that piece was little more than a line noting that “pound for pound chicken is responsible for less environmental degradation than beef,” a line I resisted as superfluous to a piece on cruelty. As Singer held firm I added, “a diet that is responsible for hundreds of times more suffering is not made ethical by producing a lower level of greenhouse gas emissions.” Thankfully, Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns (please note that she and I are different activists with similar names and a shared love of turkeys) responded with a published letter that spelled out “the poultry industry’s baleful effect on the environment.”

When the editor asked whose byline should go first, Singer acknowledged privately to me that I had done the bulk of the work – twice – but said that because his name was more recognizable, the piece would be more widely read and thus be better for animals if his went first. I am embarrassed to admit that under such pressure, for animals’ sake, I acquiesced.

When a famous man, only tangentially involved in our movement at the time, puts his name on the work of women devoted to it, and puts his name first, he continues to get writing assignments on animal issues, as editors view him as the leading voice. But it’s not his voice. We are currently hearing his actual voice on his book tour – a voice for animal welfare but not rights, for some animal experimentation, and for eating animal products and even some animals when veganism is inconvenient.

One might argue it was better for animals when I and other women were writing for him! But here’s the problem: that perpetuates the patriarchy, and that is bad for animals. Studies show that women are far more likely than men to be vegetarian or vegan and to be members of animal welfare and animal rights organizations. The standing of animals is directly related to the standing of women in society.

I treasure a text from Gloria Steinem regarding my suit against Singer that ended with, “I send encouragement and gratitude for standing up to a patriarch.” Though Gloria’s first concern is women’s rights, I pray my stand will ultimately help animals.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT CLAIM

During question-time at a San Francisco book tour stop, Peter Singer summarized our situation for an auditorium by saying that the following took place 15 years after we had a sexual relationship and had remained on good terms: “She twice invited me to speak to financial donors to DawnWatch, we had something of a disagreement about the way she arranged one of the segments of those events and the way she spoke to me during the event, I invited her to apologize and she didn’t, she then launched a complaint against me for causing Infliction of Emotional Distress.”

Having heard that version, I feel compelled, unfortunately, to share much more of our history than I did originally in this essay.

My claim against Peter Singer, filed in the Santa Barbara court, alleges that he slept with at least thirty women from the animal rights movement in the last few decades, and handed out prestigious paid co-writing assignments, in the period covered by the claim (2002-2020), to women only with whom he had been sexually involved or was trying to be, and that he professionally punished women who did not condone his behavior. With some shame I admit that for almost two decades I stuffed down my discomfort with his conduct in order to receive the professional aid he had unique power to give, and to avoid the punishment he eventually meted out, in 2018 and 2020, when I fully revealed the extent of my own pain and unveiled my concerns.

In a recent letter to Wayne Hsiung, which was circulated at DxE, Peter Singer described our relationship as “consensual” and then wrote that my stance was “unfair to several women with whom I have worked, in that it suggests that I worked with them for sexual reasons rather than because of their expertise and intelligence.”

I am not questioning their expertise or intelligence. I was one of them! I know all too well that he relies on the professional talents of the women in his life.

I am calling out pervasive, implicit, if not explicit, sexual harassment and clear sexual discrimination. His sexual interest should not be a requirement for his mentorship or the allotment of prestigious co-writing assignments to women, as it is not for men.

I acknowledge that we can only call it a “requirement” if we deem the exact correlation between his sexual interests and the list of his female cowriters from 2002-2018 to be something other than pure coincidence. Singer recently wrote that my calling attention to that correlation was “nasty”. No Peter, the correlation itself is nasty, not my pointing to it.

Peter Singer pursued me with daily phone calls for a month after we met at a conference in 2002, and seduced me into a sexual relationship for which the word “consensual” may or may not be accurate, but is certainly inadequate, when an activist is seduced by a man 25 years her senior, who is the most prestigious and powerful man in the movement to which she has devoted her life.

The “consent” is questioned in my complaint as it was achieved via deceit, with the married man attesting to an “arrangement” with his wife that did not exist, and his choosing not to reveal that I was becoming one of three current lovers other than his wife. The day I learned of the other women, I broke off our sexual relationship. I was lured back into his orbit a few months later, with the offer of a co-writing credit for a Los Angeles Times piece. That kind of professional pressure to achieve close contact also calls “consent” into question.

The affair resumed, briefly, for what was one of the lowest points of my life. It took a toll, which eventually proved insurmountable, on my primary relationship with a man who had unreservedly supported me and my work for animals.

Though Peter Singer eventually told me he had slept with about thirty women in our movement, my claim refers to just a few, whose lives, like mine, were profoundly damaged by their dealings with him.

Yes, we remained on good terms for fifteen years as I overlooked his sexual conduct and continued to feed him my voice for animals via our “co-written” newspaper pieces, in return for the opportunities and access I was given. That choice was foretold in an email I wrote to him as we broke up, which I submitted to the court, in which I shared that I planned to maintain a warm relationship because I was “not a fool.” In other words, I felt I had little choice given his unparalleled power in both the animal rights and philanthropy movements. I had seen the professional rewards bestowed upon women with whom he was sexually involved, and seen heretics punished. For example, the book “In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave” includes my chapter on media. I argued, while he and I were involved, that another chapter rightly belonged to his ex-lover who had pioneered the field that the other chapter covered. Though she had cut all ties with him, she may well have accepted the assignment in order to promote her continued work for animals. He responded with an email demeaning her exemplary work and awarded the chapter to a young activist who, unbeknownst to me at the time, he was sexually pursuing.

After fifteen years of peace, in December 2018 I asked Singer to stop in Los Angeles for a small fundraising dinner for DawnWatch, as he changed planes heading back to Australia from Princeton. Our having any disagreement about the way I arranged the event is pure fantasy, surely invented to avoid acknowledging that we were arguing about our sexual history, a fact made clear by our subsequent email exchange.

In a private conversation at that dinner, which began warmly, he mentioned that I had always had good self-esteem. I expressed my surprise at that, given our history. Prodded by him, I reminded him of my profound hurt during our time together, and finally shared an episode during that period that had damaged me severely, even physically. I truly expected compassion, and perhaps an offer to discuss the matter at a more fitting time. But Singer quickly became so defensive and enraged that he used the c word in order to humiliate me, as he misrepresented an embarrassing event from our past. Then he walked out of the dinner, at which he was the guest of honor.

He omitted that part as he summed up the issue to the San Francisco auditorium, surely calling into question the ethics professor’s honesty.

The three other guests were one of our movement’s most prominent leaders, a celebrity supporter, and a potential donor who had flown in for the meal. The rest of the evening did not go well. It was one of the most humiliating and professionally damaging nights of my life.

When I finally reached out to Peter Singer eighteen months later, I learned, as he noted above, he had been waiting for an apology. Given the situation he had put me in, that stance revealed a surprising lack of empathy on top of his infamous arrogance.

My letter did not apologize, it peacefully expressed a desire to acknowledge our damaging past and move forward. His email response accused me of “haranguing” him in front of the 2018 dinner guests, an accusation he tacitly withdrew later in court documents that acknowledged our conversation had been private. He then demeaned my work, falsely accusing me of sending “a few sporadic” DawnWatch emails, when I had sent out 188 during those 18 months, had written a four page spread for The Progressive magazine, and had spoken at an international conference to an audience that included activists from around the world and members of the Dutch parliament. I think that’s a solid effort, given that I was living in an RV at the time, and struggling with medical issues that included a partial mastectomy.

This was reminiscent of his demeaning the work of the brilliant pioneering activist, when, due to unhealed bad feeling between them, he denied her a chapter that was rightfully hers and handed it to a young activist he was sexually pursuing. In the same email, he quit the DawnWatch board. That was profoundly professionally punishing, given his standing in the nonprofit world, and another act he omitted from his summary of the situation before the auditorium.

I had been hoping for help with funding, but, after demeaning my work, he gave me tips for adjusting my DawnWatch alert system in order to prove myself worthy of the funding for which he had happily recommended me just 18 months earlier, before the argument about our hurtful sexual history. I told him I could not move forward with that dynamic, and I filed suit. I filed under the single clause of Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, because, as he well knows, I was unaware that California Civil Code Section 51.9 allows for sexual harassment outside of traditional employment situations. But that initial suit included the same facts as those in the amended complaint, which rightly included Sexual Harassment.

Singer’s counsel filed a demurrer, which is a motion to dismiss that says that even if the facts alleged in the complaint are true, no law has been broken. That is an important point because Peter Singer has publicly accused me of being untruthful. I hope that anybody who questions him will ask him to name any untruth in this essay or the lawsuit, for I am aware of none.

The original claim was for $4 million, with the amended complaint increasing punitive damages after I learned, in 2022, that his behavior had not changed. Yet the terms of two settlement agreements I proposed made it clear that despite having been wronged, I was not after his personal earnings, nor hoping to enrich myself, but to have the funding for my work for animals that I had before I met him, and likely would have continued to have if not for his interference in my life.

The Santa Barbara court has ruled against my sexual harassment claim and decided that Singer’s “vulgar and offensive” language during the private conversation at a 2018 fundraising dinner was not “severe harassing conduct,” and, inaccurately, that the 2020 letter contained nothing that could be construed as sexual harassment, and therefore my claim fell outside the three-year statute of limitations.

That ruling reflected the effect of my having no legal counsel in confronting Singer’s law firm. Importantly, my amended complaint did not refer to brand new case law, Judd vs Weinstein (2020), which is invaluable to my claim because it discusses the “retaliation” elements of a sexual harassment suit. Though my follow-up argument against Singer’s move to dismiss the claim did indeed include that case law, the judge’s decision missed it entirely.

I have formally objected, and will appeal, because it will be clear to a jury, based on the email to which Singer was responding, that, just like his professionally punishing dinner exit, his non-harassing but punishing letter was in fact retaliation for my refusal to continue to overlook the grave harm caused by his sexually outrageous conduct. The exit and the letter are the retaliation elements of my claim. Whether the professional harms he inflicted while we were discussing the hurt caused by his sexual abuse of power, were, in fact, retaliatory, is a triable matter for a jury, not a matter for dismissal of the claim at this stage.

The upside to a loss at this level is that an appeal will be taken up by a higher court, at the state level, and become part of California case law. If you know a lawyer admitted in California who might be interested in this case, knowing I have 5,000 emails between myself and Peter Singer that back up everything I claim in the suit and this essay, please reach out.

This case has been taxing, of course, but I could not continue to be silent with that silence tacitly covering for horrendous behavior. I have seen men who have devoted their lives to our movement virtually kicked out of it for allegations of misdeeds no greater than Peter Singer’s. I saw a friend whose contributions to our movement have been stunning, who has no sexual harassment allegations against him, deprived of a speaking spot at the Animal & Vegan Advocacy Summit due to a suggestion that he had enabled an offender. No matter how one views those circumstances, one must see the bitter irony in Peter Singer delivering the 2022 keynote address at that conference. I understand that the organizers did not know that for the last few decades Peter Singer has been treating our movement like his personal harem and was, at the time of the conference, fighting that claim in court. Now they know.

PROVING MY WORTH

I will outline my work here and ask you to consider the body of it, and how many times Peter Singer was happy to put his own name on it, while questioning whether the professional punishment he meted out, during our arguments about our sexual history, was truly likely to have been based on its worth, a question that goes to my legal claim.

I send out DawnWatch media alerts, aimed at encouraging activists to encourage the media to give animal issues better coverage, so that people can make informed choices in line with their own values. We have a lot of success with those; the 2019 International Conference presentation I mentioned above shows how they work. But I may be best known for bathing and blow-drying turkeys on TV. My annual turkey rescue has been covered on ABC Now, Fox Business News, and on every local Los Angeles Network. Los Angeles ABC 7 covered it on Thanksgiving Day for 12 years in a row, from 2008 through 2019 (including the period of silence between myself and Singer).

My Wikipedia page, and the DawnWatch websites’ list of published works, display numerous solo op-eds in the Los Angeles Times, plus pieces in the Washington Post, New York Newsday, and the Guardian, and a slew of Huffing Post blogs, and also articles I wrote for The Progressive, from 2015 through 2019 (the last, on cultivated meat), including “Making Animal Protection a Political Issue,” which I hope you will check out as it touts the bipartisanship that is vital to the quest for animal liberation. We have now seen the most significant advance against animal testing in US history, the FDA Modernization Act, put forward by Cory Booker and Rand Paul, which ended the archaic requirement for animal testing on all new drugs. That Act, signed into law in December 2022, passed the Senate unanimously – in our current political climate!

You’ll find information about my 2008 book Thanking the Monkey, Rethinking the way we Treat Animals, which engendered lovely TV news segments, got a starred review from Publishers weekly, and strong coverage in the Washington Post, with that paper including it on a Best Of list for the year. It is ripe for a new edition!

There’s a link to a debate about dolphin captivity on New Zealand’s national evening news, which I’m proud of, though Peter Singer suggested I won it because I looked “gorgeous,” sending me an Onion article titled, “Poll shows Majority of Male Voters would have elected a naked woman.” While of course he was trying to be funny, I am sure many women can relate to my disappointment.

If you visit my YouTube channel, you’ll find loads of media appearances, including a 40 minute interview with New Zealand’s most popular radio host, Kim Hill, which I would love you to listen to. They display a style that is friendly and soft sell, while never suggesting that our end goal is anything other than animal liberation.

ANIMAL LIBERATION NOW

It’s painful to see Peter Singer out there in the media this month, under the banner of Animal Liberation Now.

Let’s hang the “Animal Liberation Now” banner over the activists fighting for it. It doesn’t fit a man who wrote a great book in 1975, but in the first two decades of this century has kept his hand in our movement, so to speak, substantially by putting his name on the work of women with whom he has been sexually involved, a man who isn’t even vegetarian, and who currently, in the media, calls only for meat reduction and better treatment of the animals we farm for food.

Peter Singer can have animal welfare now, climate change now, or effective altruism now. I would have liked to have added sexual predation now, but as noted above, a Santa Barbara Court has ruled that my claim of sexual harassment was outside the statute of limitations, not “Now.” I expect a higher court, taking the retaliatory component of the claim into account, will reverse that ruling so that the case can proceed. Our quest for Animal Liberation Now, a quest for justice and compassion, cannot be led by a heavily compromised man who stands, at best, for animal liberation now and then.

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EPILOGUE – DECEMBER 31, 2023

As the year draws to a close, I am compelled to update this Peter Singer saga, and then hopefully put it to bed for good.

After consulting with lawyers, I decided not to appeal the court’s ruling, that my sexual harassment claim against Peter Singer had been filed beyond the statute of limitations. I learned that over 90 percent of appeals fail, and that a judge would need to commit a glaring mistake, as opposed to making a surprising but legally justifiable ruling, before a higher court would overrule. I still see the Judd vs Weinstein 2020 ruling, with its reference to retaliatory actions, as having brought my case into the statute of limitations, but sadly, through my own incompetence, I missed the hearing at which I could have asked the judge about her choice to ignore Judd vs Weinstein. It was too risky and too expensive to proceed with an appeal while not knowing her thinking.

Importantly, if one successfully appeals, the case goes back to the same judge. As we litigated, I had no idea that ours, Judge Donna Geck, appointed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, had faced a recall effort in 2022. She was accused by numerous plaintiffs of bias in favor of “well connected and well-funded” men against the women they battled in court. Without getting too heavily into trashing the judge, I will note my utter lack of surprise upon learning about the recall effort.

One of her most surprising rulings was the refusal to grant me an extension to submit my amended complaint, from the close of business Friday until the start of business on the following Monday. This was despite my asking for the extension at a hearing at which Singer’s lawyer was supposed to have appeared online, but had failed to, though I had showed up in court. On the phone after the hearing, Singer’s lawyer told me his plan to appear, uninvited, at a hearing two hours later, which forced me to wait around at the courthouse when I should have been working on my complaint. Even if I were not representing myself, it would have been unusual not to grant an extension from a Friday to a Monday morning, especially when the Defense Counsel did not even show up to object. As California judges are expected to give some leeway to plaintiffs without counsel, and given I was up against a wealthy and powerful man who could afford highly paid counsel, the ruling was particularly surprising, leading to my being forced to submit a mess of a first draft as my amended complaint, and also leading to my lack of surprise noted above with regard to the recall effort.

If Peter Singer and I are forced back into court under a different claim, we will face a different California judge. The next one might not virtually shrug when it is pointed out that Singer’s lawyer outright lied on court documents, for example, in relaying that I had invited Peter Singer, in 2019, to spend a few days with me in Los Angeles. An email trail I presented proved he had been invited to spend a few hours while changing planes, not days, all of those hours at a fundraising dinner. We might face a judge who finds Singer’s overall conduct to have been reprehensible, and whose choices to censure or not, where there is leeway, will reflect that impression.

I share that because we are still within the statute of limitations for a defamation claim, based on both outright lies and lies of glaring omission, which Peter Singer told a San Francisco audience in May 2023. When asked during the Q&A, “Peter, I know you currently have an active sexual harassment lawsuit in Santa Barbara,” he interjected, “That is not correct. “ But instead of saying the sexual harassment case had been dismissed a few weeks earlier, as outside the statute of limitations, he said “There was a case brought against me, initially for causing emotional harm.” Anybody listening would have had the impression there was no sexual harassment claim and that the questioner (silly woman) had got it all wrong.

He then told the audience a fanciful tale about an argument he and I supposedly had about the way the 2019 fundraising dinner at which we quarreled was arranged, no doubt realizing that copping to an argument about our sexual history left him open to an appeal of the ruling on sexual harassment. Our email trail makes it clear, however, that he wasn’t talking about my “c*nt”(as his own lawyer’s documents acknowledge) as we argued about dinner arrangements. Thanks to a guardian angel I have the intentionally misleading Q&A statement on video. It made my suit look frivolous, as opposed to outside of the statute of limitations, and therefore made me look foolish in a way that damages my professional reputation.

To reiterate what I wrote above: The sexual harassment claim, which was filed as soon as I realized California Law allowed for sexual harassment claims outside of typical employment settings, was based on Peter Singer having granted prestigious co-writing assignments, for the almost two decades covered by the claim, to women exclusively with whom he had been sexually involved or was trying to be, when no such qualifications were applied to the men with whom he co-wrote. Such a requirement for work assignments is not legal in California. They were assignments that only he, as the most revered person in our movement, received and had the power to share. That was an abuse of his power.

His conduct hurt me personally as I struggled to disentangle myself from our destructive relationship but was lured back, with my first ever Los Angeles Times piece being the bait he dangled.

I dealt with my regrets over the relationship for years, but was finally pushed to file my claim when, at the 2019 fundraising dinner for DawnWatch, during a private conversation, I shared with him the extent of my suffering during the long-ago period in which we were involved, and he responded, not with the regret I expected, but with fury and professional punishment. He walked out of the fundraising dinner at which he was the guest of honor, and during our next contact he quit the DawnWatch board.

If Peter Singer thinks there is nothing wrong with his conduct, he has every right to say so, but not to lie about my claim against him, whether with provable untruths or glaring lies of omission. If he continues, we will go back to court, and this time I won’t stand alone. One of our movement’s greatest activists, who prefers not to be named if I choose not to go forward, because she would much rather leave her sorrowful history with Singer behind her, has told me she will release a statement if I feel forced to proceed, which will buttress my credibility and challenge his. She tells me she will confirm all I wrote about the supposed arrangement Peter Singer had with his wife, which she knows ended long before I met him, and his habit of keeping the existence of his harem well-hidden from women he pursues – all while lecturing on ethics. Her court testimony would also cover the significantly detrimental impact of their affair on her work.

I will, if necessary, summon the other women I know he has gravely harmed over the years (again, to challenge his credibility, as is allowed by California law). And I will call on one previously unknown to me, who I learned about from our movement’s lead feminists during my quest for legal representation for an appeal. She compares her interaction with Peter Singer to “rape”, not because he forcibly held her down but because of the sway he held over her, which interfered with her power to refuse him. Let me make it clear that I am not accusing him of rape, and, to my understanding, nor is she. But I have no doubt that her testimony would be of grave interest to a truly disinterested judge and to a jury.

I base that belief on the case of director Paul Haggis, who I know all too well. Surely because of his position in Hollywood, and women’s wish to stay on his good side, he was so oblivious to the pain and long-standing ill-will his sexual dealings had evoked, that he spoke out publicly against Harvey Weinstein. That stunned numerous women, with Haggis then insisting on going to court against one who accused him of rape. He was then stunned to have three other women testify on her behalf, against his wife’s contention that he is “a gentleman.” The jury ruled against him.

Though I am grateful for the support I have been offered, I want, badly, to get on with my life and I hope Peter Singer feels the same way. I thus hope he will drop his provably false fibs about what happened at our 2019 dinner, and about the basis of my suit against him (half-truths, lies of omission, being just as misleading as outright lies) and choose “no comment” when questioned – unless he chooses to tell the truth about his conduct and try to defend it, which is his right.

A final note: A friend told me that I should not have conflated, in the essay above, my profound disappointment with Singer’s now tepid stance for animals, with my disgust at his dealings with women, because it made it seem like I was just “out to get him.” I know she has a point, but which should I have chosen?

For two decades, torn and tormented, I buried my anger, continued to work with him, and even, at his urging, continued to let him put his name, first, on what was largely my work, because he convinced me that was best for animals. And my work for animals is what matters most to me in life.

No, I am not out “to get” Peter Singer. I hear from people who tell me about his latest anti-animal liberation statement, thinking I might want to use it as ammunition to take him down, but I don’t. For 20 years I felt like I was covering for him, betraying myself, and betraying the women in our movement and the movement itself. Finally, when the horrible truth of our relationship was thrown in my face, I felt forced to stand for myself and the female activism experience. I have done that now and should let other women know that it has significantly eased the rage that was eating away at me.

Happy New Year!

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