From: coberbro@gmail.com
Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2011 12:08 PM
To: Ingrid Newkirk
Subject: NIAW "honor" is offensive
Ms. Newkirk:
As an infertile, I'm appalled at PETA's insensitivity of the vasectomy contest currently offered in "honor" of National Infertility Awareness Week.
Would you offer a free mastectomy in honor of Breast Cancer?
Would you offer free beer in honor of Mothers Against Drunk Driving?
Would you offer a free skin bleaching in honor of Black History Month?
Please end this offensive campaign. It is tarnishing PETA's reputation and hurting millions of people in the process.
Thank you.
Christa O.
Iowa
Here is the response I received moments ago:
From: Zoe Rappoport
Date: Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 1:21 PM
Subject: Re: NIAW "honor" is offensive
To: "coberbro@gmail.com"
Dear Christa,
Thank you for contacting PETA about your objections to our contest offering a free vasectomy; please allow me to respond for Ingrid. We are sorry to have offended you, and we have removed the phrase “in honor of National Infertility Awareness Week” from our website. We understand that this was not a wise choice of words.
Our goal was to focus attention on the tragic suffering and death of homeless dogs and cats. Since the best way to prevent animal companions from having unwanted litters is to spay and neuter them, a kind PETA member offered to cover the cost of a vasectomy for one compassionate man who wants to get himself “snipped” just like his furry friend.
To learn more about our efforts to address the animal overpopulation crisis, please visit
Sincerely,
Zoe Rappoport
Correspondent
PETA Foundation
So they took down the NIAW stuff. Do we get an apology? A donation to RESOLVE? I guess we'll see. At least they took it down.
Thoughts?
7 comments:
No, they didn't take down the NIAW reference. They simply removed the phrase "in honor of." Instead, now, it says, "During National Infertility Awareness Week."
Not even close to a victory, in my eyes.
I checked just now and it looks like they have taken down all references to NIAW.
I think they do things like this just to get attention but whatever!
Great e-mail by they way...
Glad they acknowledged your email and took the reference out. There was NO need for what they did. That's probably all that will happen now though ...
You're awesome- great email!
Well done - I think the other examples you gave really helped to explain the insensitivity of it all.
What a huge mess! I'm glad they are at least responding, but really?
What I would really, really like to know is how many "homeless and disabled children" any of these PETA representatives had adopted because I saw that referenced in another response email from PETA.
Love it! Thanks for e-mailing them! I'm very glad they replied and tried to fix it :-)
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