In his essay “All Animals are Equal,” Peter Singer argues that there is no moral justification behind our refusal to extend some form of equality to animals. He states that because attitudes such as racism and sexism are fundamentally wrong, so too is the premise that one species is more deserving of ethical treatment based solely on the idea that one is more capable of thought or suffering than the other. The idea of treating animals as our equals is one that has been mocked in the past, but only because many have taken that idea to mean that animals are equal to humans in the most literal sense possible. As far as we can tell, most animals do not invent, think deeply, or create culture, and therefore are not equal solely in terms of rational behaviors. However, this is not the kind of equality Singer advocates for in his essay. First, he argues, we should not be equating moral equality with that particular kind of factual equality. If we were to base moral equality on factual equality, then we would be justified in discriminating against fellow humans based on ideas of inequality in regards to sex, race, or intelligence. The only way to fight this type of discrimination would be to prove that the feature or capacity we have chosen as a marker for factual equality is arbitrary, and can provide qualifiers from some other feature or capacity instead. The African-American and women’s liberation movements took this approach. They argued that skin color and sex were only arbitrary markers of factual equality, and that the markers of factual equality truly had more to do with intelligence and capability. In this particular premise for human equality, that approach works well. But, Singer argues, we could just as easily choose intelligence or capability as the characteristics that could be used to discriminate against humans who may be lacking in those features, such as