Brigid Brophy
Brigid Brophy
Brigid Antonia Brophy, Lady Leveywas a British novelist, critic and campaigner for social reforms, including the rights of authors and animal rights. Among her novels was Hackenfeller's Ape; among her critical studies were Mozart the Dramatistand Prancing Novelist: A Defence of Fiction ... In Praise Of Ronald Firbank. In the Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Novelists since 1960, S. J. Newman described her as "one of the oddest, most brilliant, and most enduring of 1960s symptoms."...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth12 June 1929
To argue that we humans are capable of complex multifarious thought and feeling, whereas the sheep's perception is probably limited by lowly sheepish perceptions, is no more to the point than if I were to slaughter and eat you on the grounds that I am a sophisticated personality able to enjoy Mozart, formal logic and cannibalism, whereas your imaginative world seems confined to True Romances and tinned spaghetti.
Whenever people say, 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add, 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it.
I don't hold animals superior or even equal to humans. The whole case for behaving decently to animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species. We are the species uniquely capable of imagination, rationality, and moral choice - and that is precisely why we are under an obligation to recognize and respect the rights of animals.
I refuse to consign the whole male sex to the nursery. I insist on believing that some men are my equals.