JENI O’DOWD: Attention-hungry activism only lasts as long as people watch, and it’s time to look away

There’s activism, and then there’s attention-hungry people like Tash Peterson. One fights for change, the other strips down, screams in restaurants and begs strangers for $30,000 to fund a trip to Britain because she’s bankrupt.

If this is the face of animal rights in Australia, no wonder most people roll their eyes and order another steak.

Peterson, 31, has spent years perfecting the art of spectacle. She’s stormed restaurants with a speaker blaring the “screams of terrified animals”, smeared herself in fake blood outside luxury stores and hurled abuse at butchers who are simply earning a living.

She has even turned up topless in supermarkets, slogans scrawled across her body, ensuring the cameras caught every angle. In another spectacle, she marched semi-nude through public streets holding placards.

Each performance was filmed, uploaded and designed for maximum outrage clicks.

It’s not activism. It’s theatre.

Then she went one step too far: in 2021, she and her partner Jack Higgs walked into a Perth vet clinic, filmed two cockatiels in a cage and falsely accused respected veterinarian Dr Kay McIntosh of “eating her own patients”.

They uploaded the footage online. McIntosh sued. Last year, the Supreme Court of WA found the accusations defamatory, ordering her to pay $280,000 in damages.

Neither Peterson nor Higgs has reportedly paid a cent. Instead, they declared bankruptcy in May and were forced to surrender their passports.

And now, rather than take responsibility for the harm they caused, they are asking strangers on GoFundMe to fund a $30,000 bond to unlock their passports so Peterson can keep touring her circus.

“We are bankrupt and need $30,000 to get to the UK for the Vegan Camp Out,” she said in a video on social media.

“The only purpose of our trip is to speak up for non-human animals. Not to run away,” she told news.com.au

Yeah right. Why don’t you leave GoFundMe for donations for things that really matter, like paying for a child’s funeral or helping a mother fund her cancer treatment?

And why has she set up the page anyway, as she earns an eye-watering sum of money from her OnlyFans account, which she created “because I think women should be able to do whatever the hell they want to with their bodies”.

On that point, she is right. But let’s not pretend it isn’t part of the same ecosystem of self-promotion.

Her notoriety as an activist fuels her subscriptions, her subscriptions bankroll more stunts and the cycle of outrage continues. What she presents as radical resistance is, in fact, a business model which only works as long as she stays controversial.

Court evidence from the vet case showed she’d banked more than $400,000 by the end of the 2021/22 financial year, mainly from OnlyFans.

She also earns money from her social media accounts. speaking engagements and even merchandise — if you want to pay US$40 for a tasteless t-shirt stating ”Eat Pussy, Not Animals.”

Still, she won’t pay the court-ordered damages to a vet who’s actually dedicated their life to saving animals. Not much respect there.

I don’t have a problem with veganism. Animals should be treated decently and, when the time comes, put down in a way that isn’t cruel.

But it’s a choice. Just as someone can choose to cut out meat, someone else can decide to order a chicken parmi. They don’t need a pair of boobs shoved in their face to convince them otherwise.

Australia is one of the most carnivorous nations on earth, eating about 103kg of meat per person each year. Chicken alone is served in seven out of 10 households every week.

What I’ve never seen is Tash Peterson sitting down to have an actual, reasoned conversation about why Australians should give up meat.

There are no solid facts, no talk about health or economics or sustainability, just shock stunts and tasteless Holocaust comparisons that turn people off.

The irony is that other advocates are doing the work properly: doctors pointing out lower rates of heart disease, scientists warning about the cost to the planet and economists adding up the billions in meat subsidies.

What Peterson is peddling is moral exhibitionism. And while she parades in fake gore for clicks, Australia continues to grapple with real crises — domestic violence killing one woman a week, child abuse destroying lives before they’ve even begun and homelessness forcing families to live in cars.

Imagine if the same energy poured into topless protests outside David Jones was directed at those causes.

In the era of influencers, Tash Peterson is a content machine whose real product is herself, making a nation of meat eaters roll their eyes while they fire up the barbecue.

But like any circus act, the show only lasts as long as people keep watching. Let’s look away.