The Medicalization of Nonhuman Animal Rights: Frame Contestation and the Exploitation of Disability

Nonhuman Animal rights activists are sometimes dismissed as ‘crazy’ or

irrational by countermovements seeking to protect status quo social structures.

Social movements themselves often utilize disability narratives in their claimsmaking as well. In this article, we argue that Nonhuman Animal exploitation and

Nonhuman Animal rights activism are sometimes medicalized in frame disputes.

The contestation over mental ability ultimately exploits humans with disabilities.

The medicalization of Nonhuman Animal rights activism diminishes activists’

social justice claims, but the movement’s medicalization of Nonhuman Animal

use unfairly otherizes its target population and treats disability identity as a

pejorative. Utilizing a content analysis of major newspapers and anti-speciesist

activist blogs published between 2009 and 2013, it is argued that disability has

been incorporated into the tactical repertoires of the Nonhuman Animal rights

movement and countermovements, becoming a site of frame contestation. The

findings could have implications for a number of other social movements that

also negatively utilize disability narratives.