PETA will launch a porn web site to fight animal cruelty

ANIMAL RIGHTS GROUP People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is launching a pronographic web site in an effort to raise awareness of the plight of animals.

The group's controversial plans involve an .xxx web site featuring pornographic images of women, along with images and videos of animals being mistreated, which might cause some mixed feelings for any would-be visitors.

The idea is to entice people with pornographic images and to then shock them with material showing cruelty to animals in an effort to make them think about what they eat and the process it goes through before ending up on their plates.

The web site will also include vegetarian and vegan starter kits and recipes, which might seem a little out place next to the pictures of nude women and mistreated animals.

"We're hoping to reach a whole new audience of people, some of whom will be shocked by graphic images that maybe they didn't anticipate seeing when they went to the PETA triple-X site," said Lindsay Rajt, associate director of campaigns at PETA, according to Reuters.

PETA has earned some criticism for this campaign, however, particularly from feminist groups, many of whom argue that PETA is exploiting women to get its point across about animal welfare, particularly given that the pornographic images will not feature any men.

"PETA is extremely disingenuous," said Jennifer Pozner, executive director of Women In Media & News. "They have consistently used active sexism as their marketing strategy to garner attention. Their use of sexism has gotten more extreme and more degrading."

Rajt disagrees with this view, arguing that all of the women who are participating in the web site chose to do so and that it would be more misogynistic for PETA to tell them how they should express themselves or what they should or should not do with their bodies.

It seems that PETA is well aware of how controversial this campaign is and, in fact, that this is the exact reason it decided to employ it, as it has certainly brought the group and its message into the media spotlight. The question, of course, is whether people will be thinking about the mistreated animals or the naked women. Or getting them mixed up. µ