PETA looks to sell sex to promote awareness of animal cruelty
PETA announced last week that they plan to launch a porn website, called PETA.xxx. If approved in November by the ICM registry, it will launch in December with the purpose to educate the public on animal rights, veganism, and vegetarian awareness.
As one of the nation’s top animal rights organizations, they are known for taking their messages to extremes to get their message across to the public; but a porn site?
This maneuver to launch an “awareness” porn site is just crossing the line.
As a fellow animal lover and vegetarian, I’ve always appreciated PETA, but why would they stoop to this level of launching a porn site?
In the past, PETA has made campaigns against fur by having famous celebrities like Pamela Anderson, Eva Mendes, Steve-O, and Elisabetta Canalis bare their bodies in hope of bringing awareness to animal cruelty with the message, “I’d rather be naked than wear fur.”
A porn site would be going beyond the simple teasing of bare skin. PETA’s porn site would involve uncensored photos and videos involving famous animal activist porn stars.
While watching the tedious videos, they will cut off to clips of animal cruelty and will promote links to vegan/vegetarian starter kits. Technically, PETAxxx is willing to lead people into thinking they are watching a porno and then shove animal cruelty clips down their throats.
There are so many wrong reasons for PETA to launch this porn site. PETA already has an alleged bad reputation for their extreme animal activism—lighting cars on fire and throwing red paint at fur designers.
This new website will surely worsen PETA’s reputation. The public will see PETA as an organization that applauds sex in order to save animal cruelty, which goes against their awareness purpose.
Additionally, a PETA porn site will attract people to the cause for the wrong reasons. Lindsay Rajt, PETA's associate director of campaign, told Reuters, “We're hoping to reach a whole new audience of people, some of whom will be shocked by graphic images that maybe they didn't anticipate seeing when they went to the PETA triple-X site.”
PETA will only annoy porn fanatics for misleading them into believing that they are watching full-on porn, but end up getting “graphic images” of animal cruelty.
Most of the time, forcing beliefs on others is met with a lot of resistance, even if it’s for a good cause.
It’s understandable why PETA has taken on this new idea; they know that sex sells!
Bring in pretty vegetarian women with amazing bodies and vegetarian men with killer abs, and people might consider the same lifestyle, aiming to look as fit as they do.
As a point of fact, to this day PETA hosts a contest called “Sexiest Vegetarians Alive.”
Steve Erlsten, Mercy For Animals Los Angeles Campaign Coordinator, emailed the following statement to the Corsair.
“Mercy For Animals applauds creative, non-violent efforts to raise awareness about the needless suffering animals are forced to endure–particularly at the hands of the meat, dairy, and egg industries which confine, mutilate and mercilessly slaughter billions of cows, chickens, and pigs in ways that would warrant felony-level cruelty charges in most states if even one dog or cat were the victim instead.
Regardless of how the issue is raised, consumers have a right to know where their food comes from, and that the easiest and most effective way to help animals is to simply stop eating them.”
It’s true that public animal cruelty awareness is extremely important through non-violent and creative ways, but a pornographic website isn’t the best way to rake in attention for a cause.
PETA is an important factor for animal cruelty awareness, and their efforts are constantly judged by the public, so a porn website might either be looked upon as a positive spin to bring awareness, or as I see it, a negative conception of selling sex to warrant public attraction for their cause.