Feminism in Men’s Meat Market

The cultural drive for men to consume other animals is well understood in the social science literature, but less research has examined how women as a distinct social class might also wish to consume Nonhuman Animals, and, more specifically, why women might actively resist vegan outreach efforts.

For some women, the alignment with male consumer behaviour and value systems could indicate an attempt to bargain with patriarchy, a strategy some women use, whether consciously or not, to protest their station as a woman or even improve their status by aligning with male power.

Other women may celebrate their consumption of other animals as a demonstration of their improved social status in a “postfeminist” society. Women and girls, after all, have been systematically denied access to higher-value foods, such as animals’ flesh. Many are deprived of sufficient calories due to cultural norms.

Women’s access to animal bodies may therefore signal “We’ve come a long way, baby.” Claiming “meat” allows women to claim their power. To this end, many feminists are resistant to vegan claimsmaking, arguing that food deprivation and dietary dictates are sexist.

Although feminism has historically employed consciousness-raising to awaken women to their personal and shared oppressions, the neoliberal influence over contemporary feminism has encouraged more feminist attention on individual freedom and considerably less on collective liberation. As a result, mainstream feminism has obstructed solidarity with other animals, as the requisite adoption of a vegan diet is dismissed as a matter of “personal choice.”

Sociological and psychological research on the relationship between gender and veganism often feeds the scientific trend in reifying gender essentialism (assumed fixed differences between women and men), focusing on women’s tendency toward plant-based eating and men’s tendency to eat more “meat.” More research, however, is needed to address a trend that is frequently overlooked in the literature: despite women’s cultural affiliation with other animals, most women continue to them.


Corey Lee Wrenn

Dr. Wrenn is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She is the co-founder of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and is a member of the Research Advisory Council of The Vegan Society. She has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute and has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Environmental Values, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis.

She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016), Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits (University of Michigan Press 2019), and Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain’s First Colony (State University of New York Press 2021).

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Men, Meat, Milk, and Toxic Masculinity

Vegan feminism is not only a critique of women’s experiences, the feminization of protest, the sexual and sexist exploitation of animals, or the patriarchy in the abstract. To be fit for purpose, vegan feminism must also contend with the male experience. Anthroparchy, a social system of human and male rule, is a conflict-based, hierarchical arrangement of power that is especially detrimental to women and other animals, but it is also detrimental to boys and men.

Vegan feminism examines sociological, psychological, and social work research on the relationship between masculinity, speciesism, and wellbeing. Research increasingly demonstrates that men’s aggressive or demeaning attitudes toward nonhuman animals are linked to similar attitudes toward women and other marginalized groups, but masculinity itself is quite fragile, requiring its adherents to constantly navigate a hierarchy of worth that regularly threatens to degrade the status of boys and men at the hint of any weakness.

Because masculinity is primarily enacted and demonstrated through power over others, boys and men who lack access to this power (such as those from the lower classes, communities of colour, or the global majority) will be at a disadvantage. All men, regardless of background, are expected to participate in this conflict-based social system and may be punished for deviating. This is certainly the case for vegan men who must balance their compassion for other animals with the societal pressure to appear tough and dominant.

Ultimately, the anthroparchy facilitates a type of toxic masculinity by enforcing violent, dominant, anti-social attitudes in boys and men. The considerable expectation that boys and men consume animal products, for that matter, creates–quite literally–a culture of toxic masculinity, as they will experience higher rates of fatal and chronic diet-related diseases resulting from their embodiment of masculine gender norms through food.

Lastly, vegan feminism acknowledges masculine norms as they persist in the animal rights movement. With compassion for other animals and plant-based eating considered feminizing traits, male-identifying activists sometimes work to protect their fragile masculinity with aggressive, confrontational, and even violent tactics and macho claimsmaking. Ultimately, it is argued that the protection of masculinity in anti-speciesist efforts only buttresses the problematic anthroparchal social system that the animal rights movement hopes to dismantle.


Corey Lee Wrenn

Dr. Wrenn is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She is the co-founder of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and is a member of the Research Advisory Council of The Vegan Society. She has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute and has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Environmental Values, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis.

She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016), Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits (University of Michigan Press 2019), and Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain’s First Colony (State University of New York Press 2021).

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Vegan Campout…for Men?

 


Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Vegan Camp Out is a British vegan festival held every uly that gathers thousands of attendees for a weekend of vegan talks, activities, and socialising. With tickets starting at £85 pounds, Vegan Camp Out is hardly an accessible event. Folks who rely on mobility devices would also find the campground difficult to access. Women, too, it seems are having issues with accessibility. Year after year, “the world’s largest vegan camping festival” features a nearly all-male lineup. 

In 2023, Vegan Camp Out highlights 20 speakers and performers on its promotional flyer. Only 6 of them appear to present as women.

In 2022, it highlighted Earthling Ed, Evanna Lynch, Simon Amstell, Lucy Watson, JME, Gaz Oakley, Bimini Bon-Boulash “and many others.”

In 2021, it celebrated its “incredible line-up” of Russell Brand, BOSH!, Chris Packham, Joey Carbstrong, Benjamin Zephaniah, P Money, Cosmic Skeptic “and more!”

In 2019, it cheered its “impressive line-up” of Earthling Ed, Matt Pritchard, Shikari Sound System, Akala “and many more.”

In 2018, it touted its “fantastic line-up” consisting of Simon Amstell, JME, Macka B, Neal Barnard, Melanie Joy, Heather Mills “and many more!”

The above highlights pulled from the Vegan Camp Out “Previous Years” website (as of April 23, 2023) include 28 speakers and artists. Only four of them present as women (in addition to Bon Boulash who is openly non-binary). The other female speakers, we are left to assume, must be counted among the “many more.”

The fantasy that Vegan Camp Out nurtures, whether intentionally or not, is a vegan movement by men for men. Too often in social movements, women are not deemed worthy of political thought or organizational contribution beyond making coffee and copies or serving as groupies. In the animal rights movement, which is comprised of a female majority (approximately 4 out of 5 vegan activists are women), the invisibilization of women exemplifies institutionalized sexism. It misrepresents, devalues, and erases women’s contributions while platforming men as more interesting, intelligent, and appropriate for leadership.

When challenged on this misrepresentation, Vegan Camp Out responded to me via Facebook on April 20, 2023, noting that their mostly male approach is acceptable because “the number of high profile acts/activists is [not] always proportionate” and “we book our line-up by listening to who our audience wants us to see, rather than us specifically.”

It is a Catch-22. Vegan Camp Out defers to audience polls to determine who will be approached as a speaker. Yet, with perpetual all-male lineups across the animal rights movement, how could the average activist be expected to know of any speakers who are not male? Women aren’t granted platform and this, in turn, ensures they will not be granted platform into perpetuity.

For that matter, the reality is that our society is sexist and male-favoring. Women, too, are socialized by patriarchy. The point is that movement leaders like Vegan Camp Out are in an important and influential position to develop the movement rather than replicate its weaknesses. Rather than recognize this responsibility, leaders too often dismiss anti-sexist critiques with gaslighting.

Vegan Camp Out furthers:

We don’t just book other people that our audience aren’t interested in seeing just to increase the number for that demographic, as we don’t book people based on their race or gender as that would be discriminatory and something we don’t agree with.

Vegan Camp Out bills itself as “The UK’s Best Vegan Festival.” This means it is in a unique position of professional obligation. When feminists and anti-racism activists raise attention to inequality and demand intervention, a common liberal response is to charge them with “reverse sexism” and “reverse racism.” This kind of response is an effective means to resist meaningful diversity efforts and maintain systems of inequality. It is effectively anti-affirmative action to the effect of maintaining white male supremacy. As a social movement, we have a duty to challenge inequality, not make excuses for it. Particularly for community leaders like Vegan Camp Out, it is vital that platforms are used to promote the world we want to see rather than replicate inequality and marginalization. 

The vegan feminist community calls on organizations and individuals to do better. Organizations should actively ensure a diversity of contributors (and accessibility for a diverse audience). Men should boycott events that do not have some semblance of diversity in representation. Everyone can nominate more women, trans women and men, non-binary people, people of color, people with disabilities, and other folks from marginalized groups who, despite their marginalization, have important things to say. Everyone can read more of their work, reference them more, and make space for their ideas and experiences that might differ from the middle-class white male Western experience.

This is not just a matter of equality for our movement, but it is of vital importance for creating a robust and effective movement. Western white men created many of these problems, we should hesitate in deferring to Western white men to fix them. Their expertise should be integrated into a multifaceted repertoire of tactical knowledge and theories of change, not rise to the top of that repertoire and crowd out the rest. This is not a matter of divisiveness; it is a matter of consistency in the anti-oppression work we engage in anti-speciesist spaces. To achieve total liberation for all species, vegan activists must also examine their own participation in inequality. If we, as a movement, cannot take seriously gender discrimination, this renders dubious our challenge to species discrimination. Why? Because oppressions share similar roots and mechanisms; sexism and speciesism are intimately entangled. 

 

Contact Vegan Camp Out and ask that they step up as movement leaders and ensure a more diverse program:

Twitter: @VeganCampOut
Facebook: @VeganCampOut
Instagram: @VeganCampOut

 

Read more about this issue in my 2017 essay, “Uh Oh… Your Vegan Panel is All White or Male.”


Learn more about challenging vegan sexism from our “Tips for Male Allies


Corey Lee Wrenn

Dr. Wrenn is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She is the co-founder of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and is a member of the Research Advisory Council of The Vegan Society. She has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute and has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Environmental Values, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis.

She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016), Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits (University of Michigan Press 2019), and Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain’s First Colony (State University of New York Press 2021).

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Period Politics: Why Menstruation Matters for Women and Other Animals

Photo credit: Vulvani, Wiki Commons

Menstruation, although generally absent from vegan feminist theory, is central to both gender and species boundary maintenance. Menstruation has historically served as a potent symbol of female animality and has been used as justification for ostracization, segregation, and subjugation. It is seen as the root of female irrationality. It is a marker of uncleanliness and even moral failing. Meanwhile, women who cannot menstruate–such as menopausal, intersex, or trans women–are framed as alien or burdensome and are pushed to the margins. The stigmatization of menstruation is so powerful that this very important marker of vegan feminist intersectionality—the shedding of blood—is practically unexamined.

When we think of menstruation, we primarily think of female humans, but many mammals menstruate. Menstruation is only discussed in the anti-speciesism discourse, however, in a sterile manner. Activists generally do not even acknowledge its role. Billions of chickens the world over are exploited each year for their menstrual capabilities. Cows and other female domesticates in the agricultural system and companion animal industry, furthermore, are labeled “spent” and sent to slaughter or are euthanized when they menstruate and “fail” to become pregnant. Women, too, are vulnerable should they “fail” in this regard. Period politics are also integral to the derogation of transgender women, nonbinary and intersex persons, women with certain disabilities, older women, and other feminized groups who no longer mensturate or never did in the first place. 

Period politics, furthermore, feed measures of sexual control that are couched in animality. Menstruation or “moon time” has been linked, for instance, to misogynistic and ableist stereotypes about women’s mental stability. Women were literally believed to be under the lunar influence, exhibiting lunacy when they bled. Because rationality is considered one of the key demarcations of humanity from other animals, women’s ability to menstruate and the associated lapse of rationality essentially categorized women as less than human, more animal-like, lacking in agency, guided by instinct, and uncivilized.

Even today, premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is wielded to dismiss or denigrate women: “It must be that time of the month.” Although PMS is a relatively common “disorder” (if a natural bodily response to changing hormones can be considered “disorderly”), it is weilded against menstruating people as further evidence to their irrational animality. Women who are too loud, too aggressive, too emotional, or too anything by patriarchal standards are believed to be unaccountable for their actions, governed as they are by biology and nature. 

For Nonhuman Animals, the regulation and consumption of their periods underscores their animality more profoundly. Although few consumers are conscious of the fact they are eating a menstrual product and have close to no understanding of farmed animals’ reproductive cycles (including those used for companionship), “breeders” and “farmers” have made an intimate knowledge of their ovulation their business as this knowledge is profitable. In the case of chickens, their ovulation is  genetically manipulated to produce grotesque amounts of eggs. Almost all hens used for menstrual purposes are kept in cages to facilitate full human control over their bodies and behaviors. By withholding food, water, and lighting, humans can force chickens to molt between egg-laying cycles. Without this intervention, chickens will not produce eggs so as to allow their bodies time to recover. Forced molting, which can entail starvation for as much as two weeks, means that this critical healing time is not allowed and egg production can continue.

Some consumers will also be intimately familiar with the products of fish menstruation in the form of caviar. Modern caviar production does not involve the natural passing of eggs. Female fishes (often sturgeons) are electrocuted or are given cesarean sections to manually remove eggs. Although this “stripping” process is widespread, some industries use physical manipulation of the fish’s body to encourage the release of eggs without killing her. This menstrual product is considered a highly-prized culinary delicacy in many cultures of the world.

The menstruation of a variety of female species is manipulated in order to encourage reproduction, growth, lactation, or some other bodily process or product that can be monetized. The highly sensitive eye stalks of female shrimps, for instance, are crushed or removed to encourage them to reproduce (a procedure euphemistically referred to as “eyestalk ablation”). Doing so is thought to alter her hormonal system for peak exploitation. Her blindness creates permanently dark conditions which trigger her body to ovulate. This mutilation is particularly important in stressful, unhealthy factory farm conditions where most sentient beings instinctively resist reproduction or are otherwise too sick to reproduce. “Eyestalk ablation” became standard practice with the industrialization of shrimp farming in the later half of the 20th century.

Human women, too, have been subject to all manner of forced sterilization, forced or coerced contraception, and even genital mutiliation to control their menstruation. The connections are many and the root of this oppression can be found in the social derision of animality. One of the final frontiers of feminist progress is the normalization of menstruation and the elimination of period stigma. Although nearly half of the human population menstruates for a portion of their life, the cultural silence surrounding menstruation suggests that it is anything but a natural human process. Psychologists have noted that menstrual stigma contributes to the lower status of women and deteriorates their psychological and physical well-being (Johnston-Robledo and Chrisler 2013).

This silence obviously reflects norms set by patriarchy as most men will never menstruate, but more than this, menstruation signals something more insidious about the cultural regard for the female experience. The passing of blood is a monthly reminder of women’s association with the natural world. It also serves as a reminder that humans, like other animals, are products of basic reproduction. This is a link to the evolutionary and biological reality of humanity that centuries of religious and human supremacist doctrine have worked to obscure. Hiding periods (and childbirth, for that matter) works to differentiate humans as something above other animals, something more divinely designed.

The destigmatization of menstruation will need to be couched in the destigmatization of animality. Acknowledging the basic animal process of shedding uterine lining as something that is just as normal and natural as urination, defecation, shedding skin and hair, growing nails, running noses, tearing eyes, and waxing ears can challenge the patriarchal notion that some bodily functions are deviant, shameful, and should be hidden. Bringing basic reproductive functions to normalcy could demystify human sexuality, but it could more fundamentally illustrate the similarities between humans and other animals as biological beings with comparable biological processes. Advancing the status of women will necessitate the advancement of other animals in tandem.

 


Corey Lee Wrenn

Dr. Wrenn is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She is the co-founder of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and is a member of the Research Advisory Council of The Vegan Society. She has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute and has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Environmental Values, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis.

She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016), Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits (University of Michigan Press 2019), and Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain’s First Colony (State University of New York Press 2021).

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International Women’s Day is a Vegan Feminist Issue, not a PETA Campaign

Each March 8th, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (the world’s largest Nonhuman Animal rights organization) appropriates International Women’s Day to spotlight its sexist campaigning. Given persistent issues with gender inequality in the animal rights movement, this appropriation is not just disappointing, but dangerous.

Figure 1

Consider one 2013 blog post that encourages readers to “Celebrate International Women’s Day With the Strong, Powerful Women of PETA.” The blog author must have bent over backward to identify the few PETA print campaigns that do not sexualize women activists. While the effort is admirable, the blog post nonetheless diminishes its selected activists as “brazen beauties” and also spotlights a number of PETA’s pornographic celebrity campaigns. One chosen image depicts Pamela Anderson, an icon of the sex industry, in a promiscuous position and sexualized expression (Figure 1). Another depicts talk show host Wendy Williams completely nude in a similarly sexualized position (Figure 2). PETA seems to suggest that “strong” and “powerful” women are those who are sexually available and objectified for the male gaze.

It’s “Girl power!” PETA exclaims.

Figure 2

Ten years later, some things have changed, but many remain the same. On the positive side, PETA celebrated International Women’s Day in 2023 by actually featuring international women (as opposed to mostly white American women as it has in the past). As another consequence of this internationalization, PETA has decreased its reliance on naked campaigning in some regions (such as the UK) where the public and media have been less accommodating to sexist images. But sexism is still sustained in PETA’s appropriation of feminism in the US. The image chosen to represent one featured female activist appears to be pulled from a pornographic magazine (Figure 3).

Figure 3

This is not to say that PETA’s female activists have no agency and are uninvolved in their participation and presentation. Sexuality can be empowering for women in a society that has historically controlled and demonized women’s desires. Women’s bodies should, of course, be celebrated. But on International Women’s Day, a day of solidarity against patriarchy and gender inequality, the emphasis should not be on pimping pornography in the name of animal rights. International Women’s Day might be better celebrated by challenging pay inequality in the animal charity sector, confronting men’s sexual harassment and abuse of female activists, and rejecting objectifying, sexually exploitative imagery of our women activists which feeds this inequality and violence.

Rebranding sexism as feminism is a clever, but nefarious tactic. Feminists outside of the animal rights movement have flagged this trend as a consequence of capitalist co-optation. Sex and sexism are used to sell all sorts of goods in the marketplace; using language of “empowerment” can mask continued inequalities, silence criticism about that inequality, weaken social justice efforts, and can even be used to sell sexist products to women! Feminist scholars have noted, “IWD suffers from corporate capture by all types of organisations…which make empty claims for reputational gain.” “We are daunted by the showbowing and the lack of concrete systemic changes,” they further.

Feminists have also specifically called out PETA on its contribution to this for-profit culture of misogyny. Not only does PETA’s denigration of International Women’s Day sour gender relations within the animal rights movement, but it also renders impossible a meaningful alliance with the feminist movement. And solidarity in the face of injustice is the entire point of the celebration.


Corey Lee Wrenn

Dr. Wrenn is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She is the co-founder of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and is a member of the Research Advisory Council of The Vegan Society. She has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute and has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Environmental Values, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis.

Pairing Veganism with Sanctified Inequality

                                  

By Marv Wheale

Is religious veganism a truth-informed disposition?

Vegans of theological persuasion feel that the speciesism of their faith traditions can be uprooted by educating nonvegan members about veganism and by appealing to spiritual teachings on compassion and mercy. A common assertion of these vegans is that religious institutions have corrupted the scriptures on which those organizations were originally based. The founding sacred testaments are said to be undefiled, divinely inspired, and hold potential for veganizing.

A thorough look into these ancient literary works however muddies the affirmation. They reveal that god created a social ladder of being. God, the supreme being at the top delegates authority to men (especially the prophets) to be the main spokespersons for divinity. Unequal male ranks of power run the world and are to provide for women. Women’s assigned gender roles tend to be nurturing, childcare, eldercare and meal preparation. Animals are placed at the bottom of the grand design serving human purposes.

The overall hierarchy is both gracious and punitive. Kindness, mercy, gentleness, patience, and sacrificial love are commanded by god in the pyramid structure. If the commandments are breached then punishment is to be enacted unless there is repentance. If so, forgiveness and reconciliation are bestowed.

Humans are appointed as stewards and caretakers of animals, a paternalistic relationship that places animals as dependent and vulnerable rather than equal to humans. Eating animals and their byproducts is deemed moral though they are not to be mistreated while alive. Abstaining from animal flesh is prescribed sometimes but is considered an act of spiritual purification not a deed of animal justice.

In fact, the ethics of care ideology in the words of god is an altruistic and violent message, including its benevolent sexism and classism. Class divisions, slavery, gender role designations, monarchies (divine right of kings) feudalism and other stratifications are all sanctioned; albeit self-sacrificing virtue and reprieve are demanded from all unequal sides.

The centrality of care and compassion diverts attention away from the injustice of inequitable power structures the very cause of the cruel behavior in the first place. Inequality is intrinsically unjust and leads to various types of humiliation and harm.

Furthermore, the god of scriptures wants to be worshipped and praised. No matter how empathic and forgiving this entity claims to be, the expectation of veneration is egotistical and petty. This god is vindictive when people reject god’s authority, love and morality; this seems a lot like men who control and commit violence against women when they are disobedient, followed by acts of affection. The analogy makes sense given that men wrote down the pronouncements of god.

Believing in an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent god who wants to be adored and loved also infantilizes us. It holds us back from pursuing mature collective equality among ourselves and towards other animals.

To fully critique the hierarchies of god/s we have to question the very existence of the supernatural. There is no scientific proof of nonmaterial life. Religious belief is based on a “felt presence” beyond material observation. Faith in an intangible being is irrational.

The construction of god was a divergent process different groups of men developed over time. Their quest was to transcend bodily limitations, suffering and death. Eternal salvation was determined to happen through communion with the wonders of nature, with the creator, savior and lord of all, to reach a oneness of consciousness – building immortal castles in the sky.

One can not separate the invention of god from its contextual times – male-dominant cultures and institutions. God was conceived by them as the cornerstone of other hierarchies, among them, human-animal supremacy. It would be denying reality to give a historical account of nonhuman animal subservience without admitting the role of supposed divine revelation in scrolls and books.*

To associate veganism with faith teachings is to discredit veganism as something compatible with patriarchal mythology. This trivializes veganism as belonging to magical beliefs like ghosts, angels, fairies, santa claus, easter bunny…

Veganism is a political movement for animal and human-animal liberation. It is based on scientific methodology, reason and empathy, contradicting the illusions of religion.**

Spiritual vegans have to grapple with faith identities that don’t strive to abolish structural inequality in this world.


*I have intentionally avoided quoting scriptures as it would lend itself to an overly selective reading of these voluminous documents in such a short review. I have chosen to summarize the literature as a whole instead. If readers think this is unfair or insufficiently nuanced I invite them to study the testaments themselves to see if social stratification, love and violence commingle in the framed nature of god.

**Social scientists and other scientists who assert that the god of scriptures is real are betraying the observable evidence they are trained to study, thereby exhibiting an anti-science position.