Editing Peter Singer (section)

=== Criticism ===
Singer was criticised in 2017 for an [[op-ed]] co-written with [[Jeff McMahan (philosopher)|Jeff McMahan]], in which he defends [[Anna Stubblefield]], who was convicted of aggravated sexual assault against D.J., a man with severe physical disability. Singer and McMahan argued that the judge refused to consider independent evidence that D.J. was indirectly able to communicate, and could have been interrogated. They argued that Anna Stubblefield believes her love to be reciprocal, and that D.J. still had not given sign of hostility towards Stubblefield.<ref>{{Cite news |last1=McMahan |first1=Jeff |last2=Singer |first2=Peter |date=April 3, 2017 |title=Who Is the Victim in the Anna Stubblefield Case? |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/opinion/who-is-the-victim-in-the-anna-stubblefield-case.html}}</ref> [[Nathan J. Robinson]], founder of [[Current Affairs (magazine)|''Current Affairs'']], criticised when Singer and McMahan wrote that even supposing that D.J. is not just physically but also cognitively impaired (which they contest), then D.J. may not even understand the concept of consent, and it "seems reasonable to assume that the experience was pleasurable to him", as "he was capable of struggling to resist." Robinson called this a "rape", and considers that Singer and McMahan's argument implies that it would be permissible to rape or sexually assault sufficiently disabled people as long as they do not try to resist.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Robinson |first1=Nathan J. |date=4 April 2017 |title=Now Peter Singer argues that it might be okay to rape disabled people |url=https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2017/04/now-peter-singer-argues-that-it-might-be-okay-to-rape-disabled-people |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230910115349/https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/04/now-peter-singer-argues-that-it-might-be-okay-to-rape-disabled-people |archive-date=10 September 2023 |access-date=21 April 2019 |work=Current Affairs}}</ref>

[[Roger Scruton]] was critical of the [[consequentialist]], utilitarian approach of Singer.<ref name="Scruton-2017">{{cite book |last=Scruton |first=Roger |author-link=Roger Scruton |title=On Human Nature |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton and Oxford |date=2017 |page=91 |isbn=978-0-691-18303-9}}</ref><!--<ref>{{Cite journal |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy/article/parfit-the-perfectionist/D24A41080134F08EFD7074839C998DE6 |title=Parfit the Perfectionist |first=Roger |last=Scruton |date=10 October 2014 |journal=Philosophy |volume=89 |issue=4 |pages=621–634 |via=Cambridge Core |doi=10.1017/S0031819114000266}}</ref>--> Scruton alleged that Singer's works, including ''[[Animal Liberation (book)|Animal Liberation]]'' (1975), "contain little or no philosophical argument. They derive their radical moral conclusions from a vacuous utilitarianism that counts the pain and pleasure of all living things as equally significant and that ignores just about everything that has been said in our philosophical tradition about the real distinction between persons and animals."<ref name="Scruton-2017"/> Anthropologists have criticised Singer's foundational essay "Animal Liberation", published in 1973,<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Singer |first=Peter |date=5 April 1973 |title=Animal Liberation |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/04/05/animal-liberation/ |magazine=The New York Review |access-date=18 April 2021 |archive-date=18 April 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210418115932/https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/04/05/animal-liberation/ |url-status=live}}</ref> for comparing the interests of "slum children" with the interests of the rats that bite them – at a time when poor and predominantly Black American children were regularly attacked and bitten by rats, sometimes fatally.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Cherkaev |first=Xenia |title=Zoo-Fascism, Russia: To Hell with Equality and Ownerless Dogs |url=https://culanth.org/fieldsights/zoo-fascism-russia-to-hell-with-equality-and-ownerless-dogs |access-date=2021-04-18 |website=Society for Cultural Anthropology |date=15 April 2021 |language=en |archive-date=22 June 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230622185449/https://culanth.org/fieldsights/zoo-fascism-russia-to-hell-with-equality-and-ownerless-dogs |url-status=live}}</ref>