Moral Panic over Fake Service Animals

Abstract

We use Stanley Cohen’s moral panic framework to examine concerns about fake service animals and to illuminate processes of intersectionality that shape our social relations and systems. Applying Critical Animal Studies and Critical Disability Theory, we examine media reports about fake service animals in North America to explore how these anxieties constitute a moral panic, the interests at work, and underlying ideology that motivates outrage about animals considered to be out of place. We found that classifying other animals as legitimate or not affects those animals but also impacts humans. The findings indicate that speciesist representations and restrictions imposed on nonhuman animals maintain ongoing discrimination against humans with disabilities. The study reveals how speciesism sustains ableism and advances particular economic interests. Thus, we encourage expanding research ontology to examine speciesist power relations in intersectional analysis to dismantle ableist oppressive relationships and achieve trans-species social justice (social justice beyond humans).