The Reality of Sex Trafficking in the U.S. and Women-Positive Alternatives to LUSH Cosmetics

Posted on February 1, 2015 by Vegan Feminist Network

PBS is currently streaming an amazing documentary on sex trafficking in the United States called, A Path Appears. The statistics are sobering. While most Americans believe prostitution to be a “choice” and a “victimless crime,” the truth is that these women (primarily poor women and women of color) are surviving severe emotional trauma and child abuse (usually sexual). Prostitution is the revictimization of the most vulnerable. As with the consumption of Nonhuman Animal suffering (“meat,” dairy, rodeos, zoos, “pets,” etc.), it is simply easier to view this relationship of dominance and destruction as a mutually beneficial one built on consent. But that is far from the case. Prostitution is for all intents and purposes sex trafficking.

In my vegan feminist work, I am frequently critical of how women’s bodies are also degraded within the Nonhuman Animal rights movement to sell organizations, to sell veganism, or to sell vegan products. Women’s bodies are bought and sold for someone else’s gain, but we too often take the “live and let live” path and presume that women are engaging in these behaviors purely out of “choice” and that it’s “victimless” or just “harmless antics.” The degradation of women’s bodies should be our business and we should not look away because this is not simply a matter of personal choice. Powerful gender roles and a culture of sexism provide specific opportunities for women, and these opportunities are unevenly distributed. The research is so desperately clear that the sexual objectification and degradation of women’s bodies is linked to actual, physical harm to women as a group, but vulnerable women in particular. White women of means may have the privilege of some degree of agency when getting naked to pass out Tofutti deserts for PETA or flyers for LUSH, but real women in our communities are being hurt by the ideology of misogyny that is upheld by the notion that women’s bodies are commodities.

Readers are often flabbergasted to learn that LUSH engages the sexual objectification of women, and, while many stubbornly defend the company, others ask what other alternatives might be available. The truth is that LUSH is not even a vegan company. Many 100% vegan companies exist that produce body products in a way that respects women and other animals alike. Of course, we do not always have access to 100% vegan companies and some of us like to support the vegan options made available by vegan-friendly companies to encourage the growth of veganism. I was actually quite thrilled to learn that the non-profit featured on A Path Appears that saves and supports women and girls who have survived the sex trade also employs these women and funds the non-profit’s services with an animal-friendly bath and body business. They report on their website that almost everything they produce is vegan (except for some products that contain beeswax and lanolin and are products of violence) and no products are tested on Nonhuman Animals.

Veganism should not end with compassion and justice for Nonhuman Animals alone. If women or any other vulnerable group is being hurt by your consumption, it should also be questioned. I highly recommend this documentary and I hope that you will (after suitably preparing yourself for this potentially triggering material) watch, learn, and expand your activist imagination. The next time you consider purchasing from LUSH, reconsider. Take a peek at Thistle Farms instead. We must understand oppression in terms of intersectionality, because all of these issues are entangled.

Film expires February 17, 2015. Streaming free online through PBS to American viewers. For viewers outside the U.S., try Hola, a free browser add-on.

Dr. Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She received her M.S. in Sociology in 2008 and her B.A. in Political Science in 2005, both from Virginia Tech. 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 serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute. She has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, 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).

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On Swedish Veganism and Goodness: Intersections of Species, Gender, Race, & Nationality

Posted on January 4, 2015 by Vegan Feminist Network

By Anna Nygren

I think about: Buying things, buying food, buying bodies, buying inclusivity and exclusivity and subjectivity.

In Sweden, in the fall of 2014: The company Oatly sells its oat based products with slogans such as “It’s like milk only made for humans” and “Wow, no cow!” which made LRF Mjölk (the national organization for diary producers) angry and they sued Oatly. In the end, I think Oatly won (I’m not very good at understanding trials and commercial law, but I read that the process raised the sales figures). OK, milk producers being upset about what should count as Real Milk is not really a new thing, but still, I think this thing with Oatly and LRF make visible something about the relation between drinking milk and being human…and being Swedish.

The dairy industry quite often sells their products using arguments like, “From Swedish farms.” They also work hard to produce a history of milk-drinking Swedish people, and a Swedish self-image that includes drinking milk from cows. It has worked so well so that “Landet Mellanmjölk” has become almost a synonym to Sweden, referring to a Swedish people as being moderate (“mellanmjölk” means pasteurized cow milk with 1.5 % fat).

Making milk-drinking a criteria for Swedishness not only make violence part of the Swedish history, but also creates a limit for who can be a “real” Swede. It is a definition that excludes everyone who doesn’t want to be part of the milk industry, and it also, very physically, excludes those bodies (for example many Asian-Swedish bodies) that are hurt by lactose and so on. So, LRF’s reaction to Oatly’s campaign also reflects the threat felt by an Astrid-Lindgren-blonde-healthy-good-racist Swedishness to the national self definition.

I hope my references concerning Swedishness are not too internal. I recognize the history of racism and racial biology in Sweden. I think about the “folkhem” (welfare state, literally translated as “the people’s home”), “folkhälsa”/public health, and the violence and exclusions in these concepts. I recognize how Lindgren’s books have been used to define real Swedishness and a romantic nationalism, something light and bright and fresh and white.

Image of Pippi Longstocking, white, red-haired girl with long braided hair smiling in the snow

Pippi Longstocking is perhaps one of author Astrid Lindgren’s most famous characters

I think I love Oatly for challenging this, for saying, “Hey, your products hurt, and that’s not a necessary.” Still, I have a problem with a lot of Oatly’s rhetoric. Because they, in many cases, use the same arguments for selling their products as the milk producers do. Take, for example, the Swedishness aspect. They not only write, “Wow, no cow!” on their products, but also: “No artificial badness,” “Swedish independent,” and “Packed with Swedish goodness.”

Firstly, in the end of 2014, Oatly launched Oatly Apparel featuring t-shirts with their slogans written on them. The photos of the t-shirts on their Facebook page show only white models. People have reacted to this, and Oatly writes that the models are their friends who did the shooting for free, and that they gladly show cool people of other ethnicity, gender and sexuality in other spaces such as Instagram. Looking at their Instagram, I can see that they might be sort of right, but mostly I see only the packages of the products. I think the whiteness of the models are also problematic and connected to “Swedishness.” Seeing a blonde girl dressed in blue jeans, jogging shoes, and a pink t-shirt saying “Packed with Swedish goodness” doesn’t really broaden the definition of Swedishness.

Using Sweden in their rhetoric might be a sort of counter-strategy. For example, it is working against the milk industry, connecting the Swedishness, not with Mellanmjölk, but with oat. And for a buyer in Sweden, the ecological aspect of using Swedish (i.e. local) oat might be of importance.

However, consider also the name. I can only think of American Apparel (and I most often don’t want to think of American Apparel), and well, Apparel might have other connections than American Apparel, but it’s not very often used in Sweden, and I think the choice to use the word might come from a similar strategy as the Swedish-thing. It is a way of using words in a different way: I can think of sexist American Apparel pictures and all the debate about them, I can see non-pornographic pictures with the same word connected to them, and I can think, wow, words can have different meanings, or something like that.

But, I still think the Swedishness aspect is problematic because of the whiteness and because of the “goodness.” Lately, the “goodness” (the superiority, the equality and being-best) of the Sweden (or the [self] picture of Sweden, or of Swedish history) has been questioned in different ways. Recall that Sweden was the first country to have a national racial biological institute. Observe that “neutral” can never be neutral because neutrality can never exist. Remember that Sweden has also enacted war and colonization. Researchers like Tobias Hübinette discuss Swedish whiteness as a discourse of Sweden as the whitest country, with the Swedish whiteness as the purest. This discourse creates violence on a lot of bodies. This Swedish whiteness is what I think about when I see Oatly’s t-shirts. It is a violent whiteness and it hurts. It reproduces a picture of a white Swedishness and Swedish whiteness.

On their website, under the heading, “Swedish independent” Oatly writes:

We know how it sounds. Tall, blond, beautiful, hard to get, extremely liberal with no sense of attachment or responsibility whatsoever. Sorry to disappoint you, that’s just not us. We are the other Swede – somewhat boring, super practical, painfully honest, notoriously hardworking and independent not because we don’t want to be social but merely because we want to have the right to say what we think and do what we think is right.

It’s like, they make fun of the Swedishness, but they hardly challenge the whiteness. They also keep the discussion somewhat middle class-bound (that can be discussed), within a hipster-ish circle, and in line with a discourse of superiority. And then consider the use of the language, the consciousness, the negations. I mean, I think you might only want to abnegate your Swedishness if you’re not really risking losing it, and it might be impossible to distance yourself from it if you’ve never really been included.

So, I think that using Swedishness in any way is problematic. Maybe especially at the moment, when the elections in 2014 gave at hand that the third largest party in Sweden is a racist, nationalistic and fascistic one. I mean, I don’t think that nationalism in any case can save the world, or do much good, because nationalism per se is based on excluding (but still, some sort of “nationalism” might be temporally needed to fight colonialism and so on, though, Sweden doesn’t really need that kind of temporally nationalism).

Secondly, the use of goodness is, I think, another problem. For me, goodness is closely connected to Christian ecclestical discourse, and in the name of that goodness a lot of violent actions have taken place, like missionary colonialism and burning women for being witches. I think: The most violent and cruel actions are often made for goodness sake. And I think: in order for the good to exist, there must be a bad, and for some people to be good, some must be called bad, this creates a dichotomy that will always hurt the Other.

Goodness is also related to the individualistic view of the world. The goodness is tied to the individual person, who, by eating and drinking and buying Oatly’s products will do a good action and become a good person. And the problem is: Not hurting other is something that can never be done for your own ego, because then it is easily the case that what will gain this ego is instead something that will hurt other.

On the webpage for a post-humanist seminar in Lund, Sweden (that I wasn’t able to attend and for which I am crying my eyes out!), I read about the research of Claire Molloy (of the UK). I want to cite it because I can’t write it better!

She also problematized the (at least in the anglo-world) ongoing mainstreaming of (celebrity) veganism, arguing that when veganism becomes another private consumer choice, a hobby to find easy pleasure and fulfillment in, it easily gets detatched from its ethical dimension and radical driving force. The risk is that the long term goal of abolishing the use of animals in food industry disolves and disappears under the horizon.

I think this can be connected to the goodness concept. There are a lot of “good” celebrities, and it seems to me that it is quite easy for them to be “good” because they have the money, the power, and the opportunity. Not everyone has this privilege. This is another reason why goodness is a problem.

So, I think about Oatly, about being good, about buying things and selling things and living in a nation and who could be a part of this nation. I think that the problem is probably the market and the commerce and the capitalism, and the language and discourse existing within these, and building these. I think about violence and veganism and goodness. And the problems of how things get connected. And then, I think, I still like Oatly’s product (maybe except for the t-shirts).

Rape Analogy as Fast Food Advocacy

Posted on December 4, 2014 by Vegan Feminist Network

TRIGGER WARNING: This essay contains a frank discussion of rape analogy in the Nonhuman Animal rights movement, including images that depict violence against women. There are also discussions of other forms of human suffering (like pedophilia and racism) that may be painful for some readers.

In this essay, I want to quickly address some common responses to Vegan Feminist Network’s position on misogynistic imagery as a tactic in Nonhuman Animal rights. I believe much of the response reflects a commitment to sexism, but some also reflects a general ignorance to the impact that patriarchal ideology and a social environment of misogyny has on the activist imagination. The response also reflects a need to deflect discomfort, because these are tactics that have come to dominate our social movement space, and many have taken them for granted as acceptable and useful. Being made aware of participation in violence triggers cognitive dissonance, and it is a natural response to debate, deride, or deflect in order to protect a positive self-concept.

One of the most common responses we receive is an appeal to alternatives (the implication being that alternatives are either too difficult to imagine or simply do not exist). Activists may be sincere in their inquiries for alternatives to misogynistic tactics, but I believe this response is often engaged to derail the discussion. All activists know that there are certain lines that should not be crossed because they will be so offensive that they will hurt others and repel participants.¹ We don’t want to cause hurt and we want to grow our movement, so analogies that go too far are inappropriate.

Just today, this image was shared by A Well Fed World and Free From Harm. While no women are pictured, the analogy is implicit. Research into morally shocking imagery suggests that this approach can easily repel audiences. We can imagine how this response would be magnified by female audiences that are triggered by images of sexual assault and rape.

More and more activists in the movement recognize that slavery and Holocaust analogies are problematic. True, there are still some white-identified/non-Jewish persons clinging onto these analogies, but there are other analogies that I daresay no one would get behind. For instance, I think it is fair to say that everyone agrees that pedophilia analogies would go too far. A common analogy between women and other animals involves the violence of dairy production. Women are often depicted as being assaulted, beaten, and raped to make a point about what happens to cows. When women are targeted, there seems to be little objection. However, if activists were to produce and promote memes of children being sexually assaulted to raise awareness to dairy cows being violated, most would have to agree that this approach would be so triggering and hurtful, that it would be an act of violence and would put the movement in a bad light. Indeed, because the cows in the dairy industry are still babies and children themselves when they are hoisted onto the industry-termed “rape rack,” wouldn’t pedophilia analogies be more accurate than those that draw on violence against adult women?

But it isn’t about accuracy. It’s about swapping out one degraded and worthless body for another. As one reader pointed out, PETA’s foie gras campaign that positions women as the duck victim in advertisements and demonstrations across the world is illogical because ducks used in the industry are male. That doesn’t stop PETA from “telling it like it is.”

Indeed, a common response to misogynistic analogies is that “this is accurate; this is how it really is.” Vegan Feminist Network isn’t arguing against that, but we must be cognizant of media as a social construction. Media creators choose what story they want to tell and they seek to manipulate how audiences will interpret them. We live in a rape culture where violence against women is commonplace. The movement draws on this social reality to trigger a specific response. Patriarchal ideology may make many unconscious to this language they are using, but activists are not ignorant. No one (I hope) uses images of lynching or violence in nursing homes or mental institutions. No one uses images of humans with deadly diseases like cancer, AIDS, or ebola. All of these human experiences with violence and suffering could easily be enacted to make analogies about Nonhuman Animal exploitation. Fortunately, activists know better than to use them, because it is understood that they will be offensive and painful to the vulnerable groups whose experiences are appropriated. Except for women. The movement produces thousands of images and reenactments of women bloodied, bruised, assaulted, raped, dying and dead. Because women don’t count.

Women are still at the bottom of the ladder. Violence against women is so commonplace, it is rarely even questioned as a painful subject in the Nonhuman Animal rights movement. This is to be expected. In all social movements, women have been ignored, exploited, and left behind.² The anti-slavery movement would not let women participate and intentionally excluded gender from campaigns to make legislative language more inclusive. The Civil Rights movement kept women in organizational roles and pushed men into the leadership positions. The gay rights movement seriously underserved lesbians. The free-thinking/atheist movement soundly denies the need to recognize feminist issues. In all efforts to advance social justice, women have been made to take a back seat, never considered fully equal or worthy of rights. The feminist movement has been seeking to challenge this ideology since women were first ousted from anti-slavery efforts in the 1800s, but female activists continue to be framed as loudmouthed, unattractive, mentally unstable, feminazis. Just last month, Time Magazine listed the word “feminist” on their reader poll of words that should be banned. We’ve come a long way baby…but not nearly far enough.

Sexism is so normalized in our society that it has become invisible. You cannot turn on the television without being exposed to sexist remarks, jokes at women’s expense, sexual harassment, sexual objectification, and violent assault and rape of women. We are all exposed to a nonstop onslaught of sexist imagery in our society. It becomes as natural as the air we breathe. The bodies of women have always been sites of violence and domination, to the point where it becomes mundane and expected. So, when Vegan Feminist Network takes a stand against the encroachment of this violent imagery in Nonhuman Animal rights spaces, readers are understandably taken aback. They’ve never been made to think critically about the gender-based violence they have taken for granted as acceptable and normal for all of their lives.

Readers often respond with disbelief or with weak justifications, demanding a soundbite explanation as to why this behavior is problematic in two Facebook comments or less. The information is out there (as just one example, the Vegan Feminist Network website is chock full of free information), but few really want to learn more, because I suspect that few really care. This is the way it has always been done, women are easy targets, and women’s pain doesn’t matter (or matters less).

Kim Socha refers to these kinds of trans-species tactics as “fast food activism.” There is no concern with investigating why these analogies might be problematic, that is, why they may not work as a scientific matter, how the state of sexism is in our society influences interpretation, or how they impact women. Just like McDonalds, these analogies pull on the readily available language of violence against women and pump out advocacy cheaply and quickly irrespective of the hurt it causes to vulnerable groups and the damage done to society.

Violence-free activism that brings attention to Nonhuman Animal exploitation and the intersectionality of oppression is not difficult to achieve.

There are tons of ways we can help other animals without resorting to this tokenizing approach. I’ve published hundreds of essays on this website and on my personal blog, The Academic Abolitionist Vegan, most of which are grounded in my research in social movement theory and social psychology, and all of which are freely available. There are also hundreds of books on effective social change available. There’s no excuse for allowing patriarchal norms and PETA’s influence to dictate our activism. We don’t need to hurt women to help animals. We do it because it is easy and because women don’t matter, and that is a problem.

Notes

1. There are a few exceptions, including Israeli group 269Life which, in addition to “reenacting” sexual assault and violence against women in public, also uses shackles, chains, and branding on humans in street demonstrations. PETA, too, has utilized graphic analogies of African slavery and the Holocaust.

2. This is not to say that women were not leaders and important players (in all movements there are important exceptions), but only to emphasize that movements act as microcosmic social systems and too often exclude women and ignore their interests.

Giving “Real” Feminism a Bad Name

Posted on November 12, 2014 by Vegan Feminist Network

In this essay I will be addressing some common tools of dismissal utilized by those who adhere to sexism or otherwise seek to block feminism in Nonhuman Animal rights spaces (though, this essay has potential for general application to feminism in any space).

Those who are targeted as an accomplice to sexist norms often retaliate by insisting that vegan feminists call out sexism in the Nonhuman Animal rights movement to “get attention” or achieve some sort of personal gain or interest. In short, people like us do a disservice to “real” feminists; we give “real” feminism a bad name.

So, what is “real” feminism from this point of view? “Real” feminism means working to advance opportunities for women without challenging the privilege of those who stand to gain from a system of inequality. People of this persuasion are all for feminism . . . as long as it doesn’t question their own actions, their own privilege, and their own unearned opportunities and advantages. Unfortunately, feminism that sticks to the rules of proper ladylike behavior by politely asking for more without disrupting the system of male rule is not the type of feminism that is likely to create any meaningful advancements for women. It maintains women’s status as inferior and subservient.

Feminist icon Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency is often accused of using feminism for personal gain, evidenced in "Gamergate"

Feminist icon Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency is often accused of using feminism for personal gain, evidenced in the “Gamergate” scandal. She has been targeted by thousands of men (and some women) with misogynistic messages and death threats, including one promising to conduct the world’s largest school shooting at one of her scheduled talks.

The abolitionist faction of Nonhuman Animal rights is perhaps one of the most sexist in the movement.¹ Maybe not as bad as PETA’s outright sexist tactics which aggravate a culture of violence against women, but just as insidious because this faction cleverly masks itself behind post-sexist ideologies and the veneer of intersectionality. Prominent abolitionists often accuse Vegan Feminist Network contributors of using feminist critique to dishonestly shut down their approaches. These are approaches we identify as fundamentally uncritical and privileged, approaches that are doing real hurt to real people. Simply slapping a label of intersectionality on outreach does not guarantee adequate comprehension or successful implementation. In too many cases, it appears that the label is used to protect privilege and deflect critical reflection on effective, non-violent activism.

A strong indication that someone is actively engaging in sexism is the nasty employment of gendered, derailing tropes that frame feminists as gossiping troublemakers seeking attention/personal gain/cheap shots. This is a sexist response that works to protect a violent social system because it obscures the validity of the feminist argument by ostracizing or attacking the character of the messenger in a gendered manner. For centuries, women have been stereotyped as greedy, untrustworthy gossipers, so it is all too easy for these labels to be applied to feminists. The unfortunate reality is that most people will believe the labels because society both hates and distrusts women: using sexist tropes to deflect feminist critique is very effective. Again, this has relevance beyond the Nonhuman Animal rights movement. It is a standard, sexist deflection of feminist thought. The same response is used to dismiss Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency (celebrity feminist in the gaming world) and Rebecca Watson of Skepchick (iconic feminist of atheist spaces). If a woman is speaking, the default is to dismiss her, not believe her, or presume her ignorant or up to no good. This is one reason why the contributors to this website rely on screen captures: women will always be accused of lying and deceit in a misogynist world, so we put the perpetrator’s own words on display. We let them speak for themselves.

Feminist Rebecca Watson began criticizing sexism in the atheist movement, and has become the target of serious harassment, with many accusing her of profiteering and manufacturing sexism where it does not exist.

Feminist Rebecca Watson began criticizing sexism in the atheist movement and soon became the target of serious harassment, with many (including the famous Richard Dawkins) accusing her of profiteering and manufacturing sexism where it does not exist. The man pictured is PJ Myers, an outspoken male ally.

Suggesting that feminists are just a bunch of troublemakers is in of itself evidence of serious sexism. Make no mistake, the Nonhuman Animal rights movement is deeply sexist, and at times, very misogynistic (for those unfamiliar with these trends, please take the time to browse our previous essays and recommended readings). The idea that any feminist would challenge misogyny for fun or personal gain is nothing short of ridiculous and offensive–no woman enjoys retaliation from privileged persons upset by feminist critique. This is one reason why so few women (and men) are vocal about the sexism and misogyny that runs rampant in the movement. It is the proverbial elephant in the room. No one wants to speak out about it because it will result in a tirade of punishment.

It isn’t fun work. Every single day, contributors to Vegan Feminist Network deal with angry racists, classists, and men and their female supporters who insist we should have been aborted, that we are fascists, that we are despicable or disgusting, that we are “moronic/idiotic/stupid” or otherwise mentally ill,² that we are divisive, that we are man-haters, etc. This happens Every. Day. Ironically, when we block or ignore these comments and emails, we’re then accused of censorship. It is common for some to pull on sexist expectations that women nurture men’s contributions by listening to them and entitling them platform (it is an expected privilege that men’s/whites’/higher classed persons’ opinions are always needed, relevant, and important and that they should be allowed to take up space, even where they are not welcome). Some pull on sexist expectations that women “teach” them, instead of taking the initiative to read and learn without exploiting women to do the work for them. It is as though our website resources and Facebook activities aren’t enough. Indeed, nothing is ever enough as long as male/white/class privilege is at stake.

Casey is correct to point out that sexist character attacks and offensive measures are more common than genuine concern for deconstructing inequality in the Nonhuman Animal rights movement.

We here at Vegan Feminist Network find oppression problematic, we find the sexist response to our feminist work problematic, and we want to put an end to it. Doing so is not attention-seeking, it is social justice in action. Some parting words of advice: When an individual or group suggests that a feminist uses feminist critique to start trouble, there is a good chance that they are indeed engaging sexism and have something to hide (or protect). If derailers truly care about “real” feminism, perhaps they might spend less time demonizing feminists and more time learning about how they can be a positive force in social change.

Believe women.

Notes

1. Important exceptions include The Abolitionist Vegan Society, Vegan Information Project, and the Food Empowerment Project.

2. These disableist responses by prominent abolitionists offer further evidence that abolitionism has largely failed to put “intersectionality” successfully into practice

Nazi Cake: As Long as It’s Vegan

Posted on November 7, 2014 by Vegan Feminist Network

Trigger Warning: Dismissal of racism that may be painful for some readers.

There is an unfortunate tendency in the Nonhuman Animal rights movement to disregard human suffering as long as it is supposedly in the service of veganism. This approach is extremely illogical for a movement that seeks to end oppression. For one, hoping to end nonhuman oppression by aggravating human oppression is simply hypocritical. We cannot work for peace by engaging violence. Secondly, as evidenced in the research of Dr. Breeze Harper and Dr. David Nibert, human oppression and nonhuman oppression are heavily entangled. That is, you cannot separate the two and work against one and not the other. It doesn’t work because human and nonhuman oppression support and influence each other. Sadly, I have seen oppressive logic (“Nonhumans first” or “as long as it’s vegan”) engaged by a variety of grassroots groups and non-profits, abolitionist and welfarist alike.

There is a vegan cupcake shop in London that is well known to have ties to neo-Nazism and is under active boycott. This has been covered by several media sources, including Vice, Libcom.org, and London Antifacists. The store is located in an area that is known to host white-power subcultures. From what I can gather, the woman running the store may not herself be a neo-Nazi, but she has many Facebook friends who are, and she is (or was) dating a man who does socialize with Italian facist gangs. The woman herself denies the allegations of her affiliations and claims that she is being targeted by a jilted ex or someone with a personal vedetta. Given the reality of patriarchy and violence against women, I am inclined to believe her. She has been receiving threats and hate mail since the allegations surfaced, and feminists are all too aware that men (and many women) will jump at the chance to demonize, harass, and attack women. However, the purpose of this essay is not to determine guilt, but rather to highlight some problematic responses from vegans who promote the store, while simultaneously denouncing any critical discussion of the store’s alleged Nazi ties. As long as it’s vegan.

Facebook page, What FAT Vegans Eat, promoted the cake shop, making at least one reader uncomfortable. Shona passed on a screencap of the dialogue before it was deleted by the page:

Cakes ‘n’ Treats Vegan Coffeeshop is known to have neo-Nazi ties, is under active boycott, and What Fat Vegans Eat moderators respond to criticisms with appeals to depoliticized veganism. In so many words, Nazi cake is okay as long as it’s vegan. Judith Barnes responds:

Your comments about the company are the same as someone’s comments about food that comes from any other company who’s practices you don’t agree with. The rule is if it’s vegan it’s okay. The cake is vegan. That’s all we care about.

Nicki Teager writes:

This page isn’t for ethics, debate or anything else, whether it is merely informing or not. If it’s vegan it’s fine to post here.

Catherine McLaughlin Burt:

Using the group to promote a boycott is hijacking the purpose of the group. And saying that we support nazism if we don’t go along with what is being said is nothing more than bullying.

It is difficult for me to understand how, one, neo-Nazi baking can ever be considered vegan, and, two, why a vegan group would want to divorce itself from ethics. Veganism is a matter of ethics. Discussing racism (or any other form of human oppression) is not “hijacking.” When anti-oppression activists speak up against violence, they are often silenced with claims that this is neither the time nor the place. I have seen similar silencing tactics used on women who have experienced sexism in the movement. Rather than engaging the criticism, the women were simply accused of “trolling” and using the page as a “soapbox.”

These uncritical and passively violent stances reflect the white-normativity of the Nonhuman Animal rights movement. I can’t imagine that these criticisms would be characterized as derailments if the movement was led by persons of color, for instance. The damage that neo-Nazi alliances would cause to vulnerable communities would be self-evident. White privilege distances white-identified activists from the lived reality of racism, ethnocentrism, and white power facism that really hurts real people. Many activists are puzzled as to why so few people of color are interested in participating in the movement, but the answer lies in active dismissal of racial oppression that veganism abets.

The Language of Patriarchy & the Animal Rights Imagination

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Vegan Feminist Network

An important aspect of feminist theory and practice is the challenge to problematic language. This is because language is power: it reflects existing power relations and works to reinforce them, often unconsciously. When we speak of our advocacy as a “battle” against speciesism that we are “fighting”–that is, when we use language of violence, competition, and domination–we are pulling on the language of patriarchy to reach a peaceful world.

“Rights” language is also the language of patriarchy because it puts individuals in competition with one another. For that matter, rights were originally devised by men to protect male interests and have been used to exclude vulnerable groups for several centuries.

Direct action approaches that heavily utilize”war” language and literally attempt to act out their battle tactics amplify this masculine framework. Not surprisingly, these approaches primarily attract men.

I can understand the desire to use this language. Sometimes, it really does feel like a battle to liberate other animals, and, personally, I stand by the rights-based approach to liberation as the most appropriate in our current political climate. Nonetheless, we should always be cognizant to the power of language. This post is derived from the work of early vegan feminists who have previously theorized the masculine rhetoric of Nonhuman Animal rights. If you want to learn more about the language of anti-speciesism, check out the work of Josephine Donovan, Lee Hall, Carol Adams, and Marti Kheel.

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Vegan Feminist Network

Critical essays and resources for vegan women and their allies

Category Archives: Nonhuman Animal Rights & Speciesism