Singer's Nerve Piece: Following Up

LBOistas,

Given the number of spoofs and parodies that float around the net
every April Fool's day, I took the Francione press release, which
Marta forwarded, and the Singer Nerve piece as potentially parodies.

After rereading them both, I couldn't satisfy myself that either of
them were genuine, so I did a bit of digging. Apparently a few other
LBOers thought they might be April Fools Day jokes too, so I'm
including what I found out.

Emily Nussbaum, managing editor at Nerve, says,

      i solicited the book review, i edited it, i spoke to him, and
      it's not a parody.  personally, i think it was pretty gutsy for
      him to write it, considering how it was bound to attract a lot
      of sniggering and outrage -- and i do think a lot of people are
      missing his central point, which is that examining this taboo is
      a useful jumping off point for thinking about the fact that
      people AREN'T outraged by other behavior towards animals.
      (eating them, say, or experimenting on them.)

      i also think people are assuming that by sex he must mean
      intercourse, and/or that he's somehow advocating bestiality
      instead of analyzing it (i mean, the guy is an ethicist, after
      all!), which seems like a major misreading, to say the least.

I took the Singer piece to be a spoof or parody initially because of
the tone of the piece, which didn't sound at all like Singer ("cunt"
and "fiery little volume" and "fucking"); but then it is Nerve. I was
also a bit surprised to see no consideration, however brief, of the
issue of consent.

I contacted Singer and asked him about the piece, and he responded by
email, saying,

       Yes, I wrote it.  Nerve isn't a philosophy journal, or the NY
       Times - hence the different style.  As for the content - well,
       I thought it was worth asking some questions about our
       attitudes to sexual contact with animals, as compared with our
       attitudes to other things we do to them, and to other forms of
       nonreproductive sex.

As the discussion here has pointed out, the Nerve piece isn't a paen
to bestiality. While I think it's poorly written, both in tone and
approach, and something of a weak effort from Singer, it does suggest
an interesting line of inquiry about common human attitudes toward
animals, as Singer suggests.

As for the Francione press release, it's perhaps the most confusing
bit of all of this since it claims Singer's piece "promote[s] sex with
animals" which strikes me as a very tendentious reading, at best.

I don't know if this tweaked anyone else's journalisttic funny bone,
but it got mine.

Best,
Kendall Clark, Monkeyfist.com
-- 
Jazz is only what you are. -- Louis Armstrong