PETA Announces Plans to Launch Triple-X Web Site Promoting Veganism

PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is no stranger to creating campaigns that grab attention. An ad campaign featuring naked women is one that comes to mind. Their newest effort is launching a XXX web site, featuring pornography and graphic images of animal suffering.

“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,” said Lindsay Rajt, PETA’s associate director of campaigns.

PETA has already garnered a reputation of campaigning for animal rights at the cost of exploiting women. A billboard PETA paid for featured an obese woman with the caption “Save the Whales. Lose the Blubber. Go Vegetarian.” After the billboard was displayed, Facebook groups appeared called Vegans and Vegetarians Against PETA and Real Women Against PETA.

“PETA is extremely disingenuous,” said Jennifer Pozner, executive director of the advocacy group Women In Media & News. “They have consistently used active sexism as their marketing strategy to garner attention. Their use of sexism has gotten more extreme and more degrading. This may be in their minds the only thing left at their disposal to lower the bar,” she said.

Peta has filed the paperwork to make the .xxx domain to go live in early December. Other companies fight to protect their domains from being hijacked by the .xxx domain, PETA added the new domain as just another way to conduct business.

“We try to use every outlet that we can to speak up for animals,” Rajt said. “We anticipated that this new triple-X domain name would be a hot topic and we immediately decided to use it and take advantage of it to try to promote the animal rights message.”

Jill Dolan, director of the program in gender and sexuality studies at Princeton University, feels the new campaign is primitive. In an email, Dolan said, ”Exploiting porn to get people’s juices going seems lame; exploiting pornographic images only of women to make their point is retrograde and misogynist. Come on, PETA. Don’t be Neanderthals.”

Rajt denies PETA is insensitive to women. ”Our demonstrators, the models, all chose to participate in our campaigns … It’s not a very feminist thing to do to turn to women and tell them whether or not they can use their voices, their bodies to express their voice.”

Visitors to the X-rated site will initially receive pornographic material, as well as images from previous ad campaigns that feature nude celebrities, like Ron Jeremy, Sasha Gray and Jenna Jameson. Those images will follow with undercover video of animals being mistreated. The site will then include links to going vegetarian and vegan.

“When people first visit the site, it will be very enticing and once they go just a little bit deeper, that’s when they’ll be confronted with images that we hope will make them stop and think and get them talking and hopefully encourage them to make a lifestyle change to a plant-based diet,” Rajt said.

From Yahoo News