Tag Archives: Patriarchy

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

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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.

Roe v. Wade and Your Milk & Eggs

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In a world where billions of female animals’ bodies and reproductive systems are owned, controlled, and exploited by men, the dismantling of Roe v Wade in the so-called “land of the free” sadly makes too much sense.

Animal studies scholars have pointed to the emergence of domestication (the biological, physical and psychological control over animals to manage and exploit their reproduction) as a major turning point in human history whereby women’s social status, alongside that of other animals, plummeted. Women, too, were subject to “husbandry” to manage their reproduction for men’s aims.

In the United States, this is buttressed by a patriarchal religious institution and a patriarchal legal system that both normalize and enforce subservience to (human) male rule. Women and other animals alike are to be sacrificed and suppressed under men’s “stewardship.”

In this anthroparchal society within which the controlling and exploiting of animals is normalized, women will never be free. Feminists and their allies who will be sitting down to breakfast with milk and eggs in the morning might consider the systemic violence happening with other reproductive systems and what this means for us all.

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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Frivolous Femininity and Plant-based Eating

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In my research on the phenomenon of sexualized veganism, I have noted that veganism poses a threat to anthroparchal power in a speciesist society and is thus vulnerable to sexist repressive efforts. Despite decades of stigmatization and discrimination, veganism has nevertheless persisted. Some of this persistence is a result of capitalism’s co-optation of veganism. Capitalism has effectively transformed a social justice movement into lifestyle consumerism. Emphasizing the gender politics of plant-based products helps ease a radical resistance movement into the marketplace. Sexualized vegan advertising, in particular, effectively pulls on gender stereotypes, sex, and careless consumption to sell a disempowered, consumer-friendly “veganism.”

Consider the American chain restaurant Red Robin. In an advertisement for its large variety of burgers, it makes special mention of its newly available Garden Burger. Speciesist industries will often greenwash their branding in order to avoid critique of other, less sustainable products on offer. Adding a token vegan item, however, is also important for ensuring that one dissenting consumer will not prevent a larger group of speciesist consumers (i.e. their family or friends) from choosing that brand. Companies are thus in the tricky position of needing to accommodate vegans without repelling speciesists. 

Sex depoliticizes. Red Robin’s ad, for instance, specifically draws attention to its veggie burger as appropriate for teenage girls in the family who may be “going through a phase.” Sexualizing vegan food in this way–by 1) noting the presumed gender of the consumer, 2) disparaging her activism as “a phase,” and 3) phrasing this disparagement as “just a phase” to align it with the similarly disparaged LGBTQ+ community–helps to promote it as an option while protecting the anthroparchal status quo. 

By way of another example, American fast-food chain Subway promoted its largely “meat”-based mix-and-match lunch deal as an offer that has “something for everyone.” The ‘Veggie Delite’ sandwich is paired with a white woman stereotyped as a hippie love child. Like the Red Robin commercial, Subway reinforces the sexist notion that healthy and ethical consumption is associated with the feminine gender role. More than this, the trope of the silly, free-spirited, “meat”-free white woman that Subway applies reinforces the idea that veganism is a lifestyle choice frivolously based on one’s current mood or appetite; as changing and unserious as women are presumed to be. Veganism presented as a care-free, fun lifestyle choice disassociates it from the serious (and more masculized) realm of politics where veganism threatens the very status quo that enriches Red Robin, Subway, and other violent companies.

 

 

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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Really Knowing and Interfering in Reality

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Marv Wheale

Species are socially composed by human animals into a vertical chain of worth.  Species, gender, class, race, ability, size and age structures of nations are material extensions of patriarchal logic.  Vegan Feminism is the way onward and upward.

Assigned “edible animals” have a unique type of non-status in the species pyramid of patriarchy that is obscured by generic terms like speciesism and human supremacy.  These animals share no allowable claims to personhood and space; they are treated as a horde not as individuals; most of the places they inhabit are unlivable.

Another feature of consumable animals is that they are a mainstay of “men” made structures across time and location.  Whichever human animal society you study, – tribal, spiritual, religious, monarchical, feudal, nation state, capitalist, etc – has been built on the use of these animals and their secretions.

Capitalism, for instance, is dependent on food designated animals to achieve and reproduce itself.  Inducting them is not simply adding another product to the economic system.  Eating flesh (and plants) fuels both capital and labor to carry out their unequal power roles.  Huge profits are made by businessmen in the purchase and sale of bodies, dismembered parts, human labor, land, buildings, machinery, insurance, feed grains, fertilizers, water systems, fossil fuels, electrical power, transport, veterinarian skills, pharmaceuticals, human healthcare (to deal with the symptoms of eating other animals) and funeral industry services. The wealth gained is spent in part to boost more growth in buying and selling death, contributing to the expansion of the whole economy. 

Some theorists think capital is structurally indifferent to edibly purposed animals in the process of production and reproduction.  The hypothesis maintains that capitalism has no innate requirement for animals but merely makes use of them as opportunistic instruments to create another market for profits.  If there was no significant demand for animals in the future due to growing consumer awareness of animal suffering and of impacts on the biosphere, the system would move on to capture more lucrative ventures.

Historically however, in lived practice, “extra-economic” inequalities have always been part of the inner workings of capitalism and key to its dominating and alienating success.  Animal and human animal subjugation is a legacy from pre-capitalist times, a social inheritance baked into capitalism’s nature.  The economic model evolves past oppressive ties in varied ways to suit its own drive for accumulation.

The capitalist productivist mode could not endure without the nation state to regulate it.  Unrestricted market relations would end in a destructive free for all in an economically lawless world.  

In relation to consumable animals, state entities mediate the production and reproduction of such animals for capitalists.  Welfare state provisions/subsidies keep the system hardy, along with cruelty prevention laws (extolled by animal advocacy nonprofits), to ensure animals remain captive to capital use and keep the public content. 

What might we learn about social transfiguration when we start with the premise that eating animals is a keystone to the existence of capitalism, nation-building and male dominance not merely a correlation?  Could it be the adoption of Vegan Feminism, the commitment to veganism and to solidarity with anti-patriarchal-capitalist-racist organizations?

Nonhuman animal welfare fixtures and their fixations have omitted this assessment altogether.  They have dominated public policy shaping for nonhuman animal exploitation redress, without reference to the interconnections between patriarchal capitalism and the consumption of other animals.  Their short-sighted step-by-step proposals to the government and industry are otherwise known as incrementalism and siloing. Championing veganism and human equality coalitions in unison, as the solutions to animal and human animal oppression, go against the establishment’s standard practice of fundraising, publication, and lobbying to reduce harm.  What becomes of redress when mediocrity and decontextualizing injustice are the plan for change?

A Vegan Feminist paradigm recognizes eaten animals’ full structural position in the world through authentic ways of seeing, knowing and interceding.

*The revelations of this piece are not original to me

COVID Masculinities and the Meat of the Matter

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On Super Bowl Sunday, households across the nation ignored Dr. Anthony Fauci’s advice to only enjoy the iconic game with their immediate household. Instead, Super Bowl parties are expected to be ‘mini super spreader’ events with COVID-19 infections projected to grow exponentially because of these gatherings. Like cockfights in Bali (a case study often used by anthropologists to understand gendered politics in the region), Dr. Jan Huebenthal has argued that the Super Bowl similarly says something about masculinity in America. The potential for Super Bowl parties, often facilitated by men, to increase COVID-19 infections is not the first time toxic masculinity has been criticized for exacerbating the harm caused by COVID-19. Salon has written that “toxic masculinity has become a threat to public health,” the New York Times has argued that men’s “aversion to common sense protections” is inherently intertwined with men’s fear of seeming weak, and Wyoming News has simply stated that “toxic masculinity [is] a big reason for spread of COVID-19.” However, the implications of toxic masculinities and pandemics does not stop at COVID-19; toxic masculinity also increases the risks for future infectious disease outbreaks caused by animal agriculture.

Though the origin of COIVD-19 remains unknown, it has been argued that there are “many unshakeable links between modern animal agriculture and COVID-19.” COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease, which means that it originates in animals and can jump to other species, such as human beings. The root cause of zoonotic diseases is  often animal exploitation;  modern agricultural practices, such as factory farms, are involved in high-risk interaction between humans and animals and pose a serious risk for future outbreaks, such as avian flu. This is why organizations, like the Animal Legal Defense Fund, have published white papers on the relationship between COVID-19 and animal agriculture in the hopes of reducing the likelihood of a future global pandemics.

In addition to necessary policy changes that the white papers discuss, we must also interrogate the relationship between toxic masculinity and meat consumption, specifically in the context of COVID-19. Toxic masculinity has been a hot-button term for the past few years and is used to describe how what society deems ‘being manly’ is can be harmful to women, as well as the men themselves. Similarly, hegemonic masculinity is the practice of structures and institutions that legitimize men’s dominant position in society and encourage toxic masculinities. In the autumn of 2020, NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies posted a call for papers concerning the masculinities of COVID-19 in which the journal contended that “political and social appeals to act responsibly seem to be intertwined with different assumptions of what a good man should and should not do, not only among politicians but also in everyday encounters between obliging and obstructing citizens.” It asked scholars to research why men are dying at higher rates than women from the COVID-19 pandemic, how toxic masculinities played out on the federal level through policy creation, and in which ways fear of seeming weak and vulnerable have affected some men’s usage of commonsense COVID-19 protections, such as wearing masks.

These traits of what being a strong man means, which Salon described as “individualistic, pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps rhetoric,” has been reified by Trump’s re-election campaign. As the Washington Post reported, Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be “This potentially deadly illness is something to dominate or be dominated by.”  These anxieties about seeming ‘weak’ are an example of toxic masculinities that directly affect public health, especially as men have refused to wear masks in fear of being seen as weak and have “turned mask wearing into a battlefield in the culture war,” as argued in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. This threat of emasculation by something as simple as wearing a mask has made “flouting public health guidelines became synonymous with manliness,” as reported on in Mother Jones.

Not only do toxic masculinities put people’s physical safety at risk, but COVID-19 has also exacerbated mental health crises. In “Men, Suicide, and Covid-19: Critical Masculinity Analyses and Interventions,” Khan et al. found that “Excessive pressure to conform to traditional modes of masculinity increases the risk of men’s suicidal behavior.” Over 75% of men in a Cleveland Clinic survey reported increased levels of stress and worsened mental health. As Healthline reported, “When asked about their own health priorities and stressors, the men surveyed cited the economy and their family’s well-being ahead of their own personal health.” This is troubling, especially as men attempt suicide at higher rates than women and that suicide rates are increasing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is well accepted that toxic masculinities hurt men themselves and that this harm has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but the pandemic itself—as well as the potential for future pandemics—can also be blamed on hegemonic masculinity. The connection between meat consumption and masculinity has been well researched, and have inspired books like Carol Adam’s keystone work, the Sexual Politics of Meat, in which she argues that “white supremacy and misogyny together upheld meat as white man’s food.” Simply, men consume more animal products because meat and masculinity are inherently intertwined because meat is seen as a stand-in for power and strength. Not only does this form of masculinity have an ecological and ethical footprint, but it also hurts the men themselves who face health risks connected to meat consumption, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.  

In an interview concerning COVID masculinities conducted by history PhD student Matthew Sparks, an interviewee explained the anxieties COVID-19 created for their masculinity:

Men are supposed to be the protective, providers, go out and hunt the boar and bring back the meat, go out and fight and defend the home, protect the home and the hearth and all that kind of stuff, it’s kind of ingrained in us, even if we don’t necessarily relate to that kind of behavior, it is ingrained in our way of thinking and in our society…So, here we are in survival mode, and those perceived gender roles are just sporadically going everywhere…We’ve redefined and rearranged our roles in the household to where it’s like “what the fuck are we supposed to do right now?”

This confusion over identity and purpose illustrated above, as well as the perceived failing many men currently feel for not being able to provide for their families as unemployment rates rise, is another example of toxic masculinity harming men themselves. However, as explained earlier, toxic masculinity has a body count—when men see wearing masks as ‘feminine,’ people get sick and masculinity literally threatens public safety and health. When eating meat is seen as manly, zoonotic disease outbreaks can occur that can detrimentally harm our global community, when men feel pressured to uphold the ‘right’ kind of masculinity, men’s mental health suffers. In order to mediate future pandemics, it is imperative that we as men question what it means to be ‘manly.’ Toxic masculinity isn’t helping any of us—give yourself the freedom to pursue healthy forms of masculinity and let’s redefine what being a ‘man’ means together.  

Z. Zane McNeill is an activist-scholar, co-editor of Queer and Trans Voices: Achieving Liberation Through Consistent Anti-Oppression, and the founder of
Sparks & McNeill.

Armie Hammer’s Alleged Cannibalistic Fantasy is the Ultimate Manifestation of Misogyny

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By Antonia Georgiou
Trigger warning: This post discusses extreme violence including rape.

Privileged and powerful men, as we learn time and time again, feel that they can get away with all manner of abuse against women. But when #armiehammer began trending recently, no one was quite prepared for the horrific nature of the accusations. The Call Me By Your Name star is facing allegations of indulging in violent sexual fantasies involving cannibalism, rape, and bloodsucking. Whether these claims are true or not, past statements made by the actor are testament to his hatred of women. Hammer was once quoted as saying, “I liked the grabbing of the neck and the hair and all that. But then you get married… You can’t really pull your wife’s hair. It gets to a point where you say, ‘I respect you too much to do these things that I kind of want to do.’” The debate as to whether certain women are “worthy” of respect is frequently propagated by misogynists; that is, women perceived as being of less value may be subjected to degrading acts, whereas women who uphold the traditional gender role of, say, wife or mother deserve respect.

Hammer’s purported behaviour is merely an extension, albeit an extreme one, of what powerful men in Hollywood have been getting away with for decades. The list of men accused of sexual misconduct seems to grow every day; some face repercussions, while others are either forgiven or their actions are swiftly swept under the carpet. Hammer, it seems, may very well end up in the latter category, with colleagues quick to dismiss the messages as fake news. This denial is demonstrative of the endemic nature of rape culture, as accusers are dismissed and distrusted, while their alleged abusers are painted as the real victims. Despite what his devotees may assert, dozens of screenshots of messages believed to have been written by Hammer exhibit a desire to quite literally consume women.

While there is nothing wrong with kinks involving consensual adults, an impulse to eat women is inherently misogynistic, and Hammer’s accusers have said that they did not consent to the alleged acts. According to one of the DMs, Hammer is claimed to have “cut the heart out of a living animal before and eaten it while still warm”. Tellingly, Hammer once revelled in posting gory photos of a dissected pig on his official Instagram, proclaiming with morbid glee that “He’s smiling!”

The patriarchy tells us that real men eat meat, but when man has conquered, killed, and consumed as many non-human animals as he can, he may then turn to another animal that he deems lowly, lesser, and, crucially, unequal to him: the human female. It is not enough for rich and entitled men to subjugate women through power imbalances; the ultimate manifestation of misogyny comes in tearing off a woman’s flesh, abasing her not simply through the patriarchal hegemony, but through the diminution of her very being. For these men, women are viewed as prey to be hunted, captured, and devoured. Though shocking, these alleged fetishes are an extreme symptom of pervasive misogyny whereby women are regarded as nothing more than vessels for male gratification, no matter how cruel and depraved the enactments may be. Moreover, cannibalism is a fundamentally selfish endeavour, which is symptomatic of a culture that centres itself on male pleasure, male needs, and women as the receptacles for whatever men desire.

In a recent interview with the Guardian, counsellor Michael Sheath explained that watching extreme pornography is a gateway into real life violence: “If you look at the videos on mainstream porn sites you can see ‘teen’ themes, ‘mom and son’ themes, lots of incestuous porn. It’s pretty deviant stuff. To watch this you have already lowered your threshold of what is acceptable. Porn is an entry drug for a lot of them.” While we may not know the reasons for Hammer’s purported predilections, their depraved nature is rooted in increasingly callous pornography, in which women are routinely beaten and abused for perverse gratification. The more violent the pornography, the less satisfied the viewer, resulting in further aberrant searches until the fantasies manifest in everyday life.

As with kinks, there is nothing wrong with pornography itself; the problem lies with a male-dominated industry that exploits women’s bodies and labour, for which they do not own the means, in unwaveringly aggressive and extreme enactments. When men grow accustomed to violent sex as the norm, there is a greater risk for women being subjected to this brutality in real life intimacy. For instance, when referring to raping a woman at knife point, Hammer allegedly laments that “everything else seemed boring” afterwards. As Sheath explains, “Think of young women emerging into the sexual world and meeting men who are into strangulation and anal sex. It’s not criminal, it’s not being reported, but as a social and cultural experience it’s really significant.”

Other DMs demonstrate a desire to be a slave master who owns his partners, as Hammer professes to a woman that he wants to “brand you, tattoo you, mark you”. One former girlfriend, Paige Lorenze, has claimed that Hammer branded her by carving his initial into the skin near her vagina, which is undoubtedly the uttermost emblem of his patriarchal dominance. The veracity of Hammer and Lorenze’s relationship has been confirmed by the former’s team, who assert that the acts were consensual and did not amount to abuse. Branding is one of the most monstrous weapons of domestic violence, and the ultimate means of control, so the extent to which such intrinsically misogynistic acts could be consensual is dubious at best. By viewing women as property for his sole ownership, Hammer exposes the true extent of his privilege, suggesting that art imitates life and he is perhaps not dissimilar from malevolent characters he has played in excellent, anti-racist films such as The Birth of a Nation (2016) and Sorry to Bother You (2018).

Whether these allegations are true or not, they shed light on a woman-hatred so endemic in society that supporters are quick to defend even the most heinous of accusations. But there is no doubt that such an extreme fantasy, the literal devouring and degeneration of women, is the pinnacle of misogyny.

Antonia is a London-based writer with degrees from Queen Mary University and UCL. She is culture editor at New Socialist where she writes primarily on film from a feminist perspective. A lifelong feminist and animal welfare advocate, her other areas of interest include mental health, disability rights, and an end to austerity