Animal Activism vs Zoo Activism
Hey, you know what's cool? Activism! Activism is the act of doing something for a cause. That might be something like going door to door collecting donations for UNICEF, it could be running rallies to spread awareness to an issue. It could be writing some kind of online publication to assist in education on a topic (more on that later). It can even be something as simple as making a tweet on your social media platform of choice showing support or arguing against an idea.
There are a billion problems in the world, which means there are a billion causes that you can choose to be an activist for. But it's not like activism is a factory where you go in, expel labor, and then get a result. It's much more free form. Activism is an art. Ask people how they feel about Just Stop Oil throwing stuff on paintings and you'll get a wide range of opinions on the effectiveness of that specific action. It's subjective. Something different people have different opinions on. So is there a *right* way to do activism? Is there a *wrong* way?
Something there's been a lot of discussion about in the zoo community is whether as zoos, it's more important to do zoo activism, or animal activism. Both are noble sounding goals, but they seem to be different guiding lights. Different ways of approaching the goal. The distinction can be a little weird, so let me break it down, starting with the animal side. Animal activism is about the betterment of the animals of the world. Veganism or vegetarianism are great examples. Factory farming is horrible, we have great solutions, and so therefore to push for veganism is to make the world a better place for animals. Another great example is animal testing. A lot of labs test products on animals in order to judge their danger or efficacy. These animals are basically getting tortured for humans to be able to take guesses on whether something is bad or not. Kinda fucked up if you ask me. In the zoo community, animal activism is generally seen as universally a good thing. Not every zoo is vegan, but agree veganism is morally correct and something to strive for, even if they aren't personally ready to do it.
Zoo activism on the other hand has a slightly more controversial flavor, even within the community. Don't get me wrong, most zoos aren't saying zoo activism is bad, but it definitely sparks more debate. It's something that I've seen many times placed in opposition to animal activism. People asking questions like "which is more important?" Or, "how can we do zoo activism while prioritizing animal activism?" And I think it's an interesting juxtaposition. Really, what is zoo activism at the end of the day? The destigmatization of the topic seems like a fair goal most people can agree on. But what else? The answer most people jump to is the one that stands front and center as the thing zoosexuals would care about. The sex. It's not hard to read "zoo activism" as "just trying to legalize bestiality."
Personally though, I don't really agree. I think when you're trying to compare both topics, you lose a lot of nuance. To place these two topics as EITHER animal activism OR zoo activism means that when you're looking at one you need to divorce it from the other. Or, more clearly, you need to remove any kind of overlap to ensure you're looking at just the thing you want to look at. This is where this question gets messy for me. If you're looking at animal activism and taking out the zoo side of it, your picture remains generally the same. There are plenty of animal activists that have never thought about zoosexuality in their lives, and that's fine. They're out there doing great work. But look at it from the other way around. Taking the animals out of zoo activism just doesn't make sense. There are zero zoo activists that have never thought about animal rights. And if there ever were, we as a community would generally consider them bad zoo activists.
Just in case this still feels a little nebulous let's look at another example really quick. There are plenty of people out there who are climate change activists. They're people concerned about the rising temperatures of the world and the melting of the polar ice caps. There are also ecological activists. People who care about wild life and nature. Those are both different groups with different goals, but at the same time doesn't really make any sense because at the end of the day they really are trying to do the same thing. Very very few climate activists are going to say we should destroy natural ecosystems to build solar farms to get away from fossil fuels. And very very few ecological activists are going to say we should really start fracking hard so long as we're spending the money we get from that to plant some trees. At the end of the day, they're fighting the same fight. The climate activists are doing their best to prevent the world from lighting on fire, and the world happens to be where the ecosystems are. And the ecological activists are doing their best to keep the world happy and healthy and ecologically diverse and that in turn helps with fending off climate change.
This is exactly how it feels to me when people compare zoo activism and animal activism. The goal at the end of the day is the same, even if we have different routes to get there. This is especially how I feel when people say that zoo activism is just "promoting bestiality" That's missing 99% of what the community is about. Take the argument around consent for instance. A zoo activist might argue that animals are very able to give and revoke consent, and that it's very important to listen to an animal when they're giving you that communication. They might also tie that to an example like bestiality because that's relevant to them. An animal activist might argue that animals are very able to give and revoke consent, and that it's very important to listen to an animal when they're giving you that communication. They might also tie that to an example like animal training, because that's something relevant to them. The vast majority of things that zoos talk about consent, animal intelligence, health, ect, are all things that animal activists talk about as well. But I think we have a habit of attributing the positive aspects of that conversation towards "animal activism" and the negative towards "zoo activism."
There's one other thing I want to touch on here, and that's who exactly is an activist. Because it's not everyone. DogGooner6969 is most likely not going to be a zoo activist even if they are actually a zoo. You can be a part of a minority and still be against that minority. See trans people that voted for Trump, women that don't think women should have the right to vote, or that one gay guy who told me to my face that he doesn't think gay marriage is the same as straight marriage, and that it shouldn't have the same legal protections.
When we're looking at zoo activism, I think this is a really important dstinction to make. There are absolutely people out there that only care about the cause in so far as they want to get their rocks off. But those people aren't the people that are actually fighting for zoo causes. If you look at the people that the community general sees as activists, the messaging is much more in line with what we see in animal activism. If you see Mr DogGooner6969 saying something like "I only like dogs for the knot" and you take that as a reflection of what the community as a whole is saying, the issue is that you're taking the one minute negative voice and amplifying that over all the rest. Like a Youuber who gets 99 positive comments and then 1 negative one and then stresses about it all day, you're cherry picking the worst example and inflating it well past the point of its actual volume.
Article written by Tarro (March 2025)
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