What is "speciesism"

"discrimination against certain animals based on assumption of human superiority," first attested 1975 in Richard D. Ryder's "Victims of Science," from species + -ism.

n. (context philosophy ethics English) An ethical stance that assigns different worth or rights to beings on the basis of their species membership, such as assigning greater rights to human beings than to other animals.

Speciesism involves the assignment of different values, rights, or special consideration to individuals solely on the basis of their species membership. The term is sometimes used by animal rights advocates, who argue that speciesism is a prejudice similar to racism or sexism, in that the treatment of individuals is predicated on group membership and morally irrelevant physical differences. Their claim is that species membership has no moral significance.

The term is not used consistently, but broadly embraces two ideas. It usually refers to "human speciesism" ( human supremacism), the exclusion of all nonhuman animals from the rights, freedoms, and protections afforded to humans. It can also refer to the more general idea of assigning value to a being on the basis of species membership alone, so that "human-chimpanzee speciesism" would involve human beings favouring rights for chimpanzees over rights for dogs, because of human-chimpanzee similarities.