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For lack of verbal communication with others, are we to presume that they are so very different from us? Moreover, are we to presume that the other is stupid or inherently inferior to us?  Michel echoes this sentiment about human and animal relations, saying, “from what comparison betwixt them and us does he conclude the stupidity he attributes to them?”  (584) Those in positions of power (humans, in this case) feel that the burden of proof should fall on the animal.  The proof in this case is that they are not in fact “stupid” and that they indeed “warrant equal consideration and respect” as humans (586).  To this, Montaigne adds, “why may it not be in our part as well as theirs?” (584)  Perhaps whilst we debate communication breakdowns between species, races, and generations, we must consider our own culpability.  This phenomena of presumption on the part of the powerful is nothing new.  Rather, it is a pattern; it is “our natural and original disease.” (584)  The Spanish conquistadors presumed the indigenous Aztecs to be “stupid,” because of their inability to communicate their value system and language.  White slave owners thought their black servants to be “stupid.”  Now we read about how feigning stupidity was simply a defense mechanism against a most inhumane and torturous condition of enslavement.  Again, the burden of proof fell upon the many blacks who revealed to the world their sobering stories of enslavement.  Similarly, the same burden has fallen upon women in a patriarchal society.  Sonali, I think it is important, as you say, to state the reality of patriarchy and speciesism as a status quo that continues to exist in our society.  It is very true that "As long as speciesism has existed, patriarchy has similarly been entrenched in society."  I think the connection between the two has everything to do with perpetuating a culture of male (man) dominance.  As long as men (or rather the system of patriarchy) exists as the dominant power structure, so too will other systems of oppression, namely racism, anti-semitism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, classism, elitism, ethnocentrism, etc.  On that note, maybe, "feminists could argue that to remove meat is to threaten the structure of the larger patriarchal culture," as Sonali says.  Literally starving the carnist and sexist mentality may indeed have positive effects on the culture of dominance in our globalized world. 

infant is just as much in want of human communication
as many animals.
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/family/blog/2007/10/07-week/

The following quote made me think of the communication disconnects and failures amongst humans even of the same family: between infants, adolescents, adults and elders.   Michel de Montaigne says: “As infants, for want of words, devise expressive motions with their hands and eyes” so too do animals for lack of human language.  The implication is not that animals want to communicate with humans, but rather, that humans assume they cannot.  Human infants are very similar to animals in that they are indeed temporarily disconnected from the complex human world around them.  In terms of their lack of sophisticated verbal language, they are no different from animals.  We, however, pay particular attention to their unique forms of nonverbal communications (i.e. crying and facial expressions).  We treat them as humans, though they are for a time psychologically and physically underdeveloped and unsophisticated.  Why then, do we think that animals, who are similar to infants by virtue being incommunicado, are worth less than human infants.  This then leads me to raise a question that I have already touched on previously about abortion.  “Such is the breathtaking speciesism of our Christian-inspired attitudes, the abortion of a single human zygote (most of them are destined to be spontaneously aborted anyway) can arouse more moral solicitude and righteous indignation than the vivisection of any number of intelligent adult chimpanzees!” (581)

Really?  Ok. Then why are you down with murdering pigs and cows
so that you can masticate their flesh and meat?
http://heiressroyalty.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html

On another note, it is interesting to note that what the Earthlings film did to its viewers is what Jacques Derrida calls, “thrusting these images in your faces or awakening them in your memory.” (599)  Derrida analyzes the actual response of the viewer and takes the Earthlings shock and awe approach one step further.  “If these images are ‘pathetic,’ if they evoke sympathy, it is because they ‘pathetically’ open the immense question of pathos and the pathological, precisely, that is, of suffering, pity, and compassion.” (599)  This is why we felt sympathy when we see the horrors of violence thrust before our eyes.  And when we wonder exactly what separates us from other animals, perhaps we must focus less on our intellect and more on our capacity for suffering.  Derrida goes on to quote Bentham, saying that “the first and decisive question will rather be…’Can they suffer?’”  (600)  So instead of asking ourselves who we can exploit by virtue of what we consider inferior intellect or lack of communication, perhaps we can consider this what “Bentham simply yet profoundly” says about universal suffering.  (600)