PETA's Most Offensive Campaign Yet?

PETA continues its reign as the worst activist organization in existence with a new campaign it's calling "Plan V." The Plan V message — in response to last week's news that Plan B emergency contraception pills may be ineffective for women over 165 pounds — is that going vegan can help all these fatties lose enough weight to make emergency contraception a viable option.

"If extra pounds are thwarting a woman's ability to use Plan B, PETA's "Plan V" could be the prescription they need," said PETA executive vice president Tracy Reiman in a press release. “Going vegan is a great way to lose weight and get healthy — and it could help women regain control over their reproductive lives.”

Idiocy is at work on so many levels here that it's hard to know where to start. First, losing weight for the sole sake of being able to use Plan B is a patently absurd idea. Second, the idea that all women over this 165-pound weight threshold need to lose weight is false. As Amanda Marcotte pointed out at RH Reality Check yesterday, many news outlets reported on the Plan B efficacy news with references to "overweight" or "obese" women. Yet it's perfectly possible for a 165-pound woman to have a body mass index that places her in the healthy weight range, depending on her height.

But PETA has long hated to bother with little things like sense and facts. This is the organization that routinely uses naked women in its ads, distributes terrifying books and videos to children, and uses every opportunity it can — including senseless killing sprees — to turn the spotlight back on its pet cause. If organizations could have mental health diagnoses, PETA is a textbook case of narcissistic personality disorder and sociopathy.

What angers me so much about this is that, until very recently, PETA was the face of vegetarianism and veganism in the United States. Thankfully, folks like Bill Clinton, various celebrities, and organizations like Meatless Monday have been slowly but surely changing this, dragging the vegetarian cause out from the pile of garbage under which PETA has buried it. I'm not strictly vegetarian or vegan, but I limit my meat and dairy consumption and strongly believe most Americans need to do the same for health reasons. PETA does not speak for me and it does not speak for most vegetarians and vegans I know. To hell with their misogynistic, fat-shaming, sociopathic approach to promoting animal welfare.