By Irma Susset – Contributor

On Wednesday, Oct. 11, students in the politics and international studies department had the opportunity to attend a fascinating talk from Molly Labenski on the ethics of animal ownership. Labenski, who has a doctorate in American literature, was invited to speak about her research. During her presentation titled “Media Representation and the Ethics of Pet Ownership”, she presented her findings via Teams on the place of pets in our society. She examined dogs’ role in the Northern American lifestyle and the difference in how animals are treated in media, especially in movies and books.

The main focus of Labenski’s talk was on the major disconnect between humanity’s views of the human-canine relationship versus what it truly is. She describes dogs as stereotypically being a ‘man’s best friend’ and compares this reality to the representation and fate of animals in popular books and movies, where the dog dies a large majority of the time. She emphasizes that dogs are not used in these cases to be the focus of the story, but rather to move the plot along. In doing so, she is able to illustrate the dissonance between the two realities. Truly, humans view dogs as commodities and treat them more disposably than we realize. 

In her PhD thesis on this subject, she explored the gendered dimensions of women’s relationship with dogs compared to the one men have with dogs in popular media. She found that women are not portrayed to explicitly seek out dogs as friends, unlike men who do. Not surprisingly, she recognized the same unfortunate storylines for dogs when using gender analysis. 

During her talk, Labenski touched on multiple subjects pertaining to animal well-being. She insisted that each dog is a living creature and that adopting dogs from shelters rather than pet shops or breeders is a simple yet amazing choice. Adopting counters the tendency to pick a ‘designer’ dog over a shelter dog. She also touched on the stark contrast between the meat industry’s cruel treatment of animals compared to the human treatment of pets. 

The speaker also informed the students attending that dogs are not recognized by the federal Canadian law as living beings with rights. Pets are only considered a possession which means the breeding, reselling and the resulting mistreatment of dogs is not punishable by law since they do not have their own established rights.

Organized by Prof. Robbins-Kanter in collaboration with the Politics and International Studies Association (PISA), this event was the first of the semester to kick off PISA’s Speaker Series. Students and faculty alike asked questions and expressed their gratitude to the speaker after she concluded her presentation.

The PISA organization extends a huge thank you to Molly Labenski for her presentation, to Prof. Robbins-Kanter and to internal members for organizing this very successful and enjoyable event. 

In order to stay up-to-date with upcoming events and information on the PISA’s Speaker Series, you can find PISA at this handle on Instagram: @bishopspisa.