posted
The title for this is taken directly from a heading in the introduction of Martha Minow's Making All the Difference - Inclusion, Exclusion, and American Law. A number of threads have dealt with labels - their validity, their use. I think it's obvious that labels DO have power. For example, from my personal experience, being labeled a "patient" ends up taking away some of my personal power and autonomy and tends to focus on one and only one aspect of who I am. Physicians are fonder of calling me a "patient" than I am of embracing that label or role.
The following is a little illustration of the power of labels applied to nonhumans, from pages 4 and 5 of the book referenced above.
quote:An animal behaviorist, Harld A Herzog, Jr., has examined the impact of the labels we use in our moral responses to, of all things, mice. At the University of Tennessee a clean and well-run facility for animals houses some 15,000 mice used each year in experiments. The university requires approval by an animal care committee for any experiment using the mice, and both the federal Department of Agriculture and the American Association for the Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care inspect and monitor the standards of care provided. Yet it is only the experimental mice, Herzog notes, who are protected by these concerns for animal care. At any given time, some mice escape; these become "pests" and are routinely captured and destroyed. The staff at the center use "sticky" traps, something like flypaper, to catch these "pests" overnight, and those that are not dead by morning are gassed. Herzog observes that these traps would never be used for the "good" experimental mice, yet no animal care committee, no public or private research agency, reviews this "pest removal" process. "Once a research animal hits the floor and becomes and escapee, its moral standing is instantly diminished. Similarly, some mice are used as food for other research animals, and a mouse labeled "snake food" also falls outside the attention of an animal care committee. The role, and the label, of the creature determines the variations in how the very same animal may be perceived and treated.
Perhaps most ironically, Herzog reports an incident from his family life. His young son had a pet mouse, Willie. When Willie died, the family gave him a burial, with a tombstone and funeral. "At the same time that we were mourning Willie's demise, however, my wife and I were setting snap traps each night in a futile attempt to eliminate the mice that inhabit our kitchen."
Maybe it's easier to talk about animals than people. I've mentioned how the word "vegetable" gets used and where it can lead. Or how someone who requires assistance to eat who is starved in the community is a victim of abuse while a counterpart in a hospital setting is seen as having a "dignified death." When does the power of a label go beyond "sticks and stones" and become something more?
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posted
I think there is a difference between the research mice and the pest mice because the research mice are bred to careful specifications. Though I don't know if it matters whether the mice are male or female. I guess in addition to the breeding, a mouse that has lived out of the cage may pose a hazard to the cage mice if they try to return it. They may even teach each other escape behavior. Like in the Matrix or something.
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posted
Hmmmm, interesting. The advocates of "Political Correctness" would definitely have us believe we shouldn't use certain words to describe people. I am more interested in working to remove the negative connotations of certain words. Some are just always going to be negative. But I really think some don't need to be.
For instance, it is sooooo much easier to say a person is "black" than to say they are African-American. But I am paranoid that if I refer to anyone as "black" that I will offend. I don't think of it as being negative, but apparently enough people do that it is a problem.
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pooka, I think what the article is saying is that the mice were bred exactly the same, but an escaped highly bred mouse was treated as a pest regardless.
posted
So do we just accept that the labels are entirely random and arbitrary? Why are the pests dealt with in this way?
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posted
I don't think any of the labels described in the piece are random at all. In the case of the mice, the lab labels are interrelated with the actions researchers exhibit toward the animals. I thought that was obvious.
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