Anna Kingsford, Britain’s first qualified female medical doctor, was especially horrified by the burgeoning vivisection industry in the 19th century. Women were disadvantaged by their societal exclusion when protesting men’s scientific violence against other animals, but Kingsford’s medical training granted her access, insider knowledge, and proof that a degree could be earned without harming other animals. She also used her medical training to produce research that supported the suitability of plant-based eating, information that was largely absent in a society that was only just coming to discover and understand the science of nutrition.
When science and medicine proved ineffectual in her liberation campaign, she turned to the psychic realm. She levied psychic attacks on European vivisectionists, aiming not just to disrupt their work but reportedly to end their lives.
In the history of Nonhuman Animal rights, Kingsford is remembered as one of the first vegetarian feminists, bravely resisting anthroparchal violence in an era that offered little platform to women. But I would suggest that Kingsford should also be remembered as one of the first vegetarian witches. She certainly believed male vivisectionists were such—for Kingsford, these were not objective, calm, scientists; they were instead sorcerers engaged in black magic, fiendish for the blood, gore, and suffering associated with their laboratory torture.
Like the 20th century feminist witches that would follow her, she believed in reincarnation. Nonhuman Animals, she warned, were due considerable karmic compensation. Vivisectionists, then, if not to meet any justice in this life, would surely meet it in the next. Her belief in the afterlife of Nonhuman Animals perhaps offered some sort of solace. In her metaphysical work, these victims finally had voices, speaking to her in seances.
Although Kingsford may not have identified as a witch (while she was influenced by a variety of world religions, she was an avid Christian), the same concentrated intention for ending patriarchal violence and enacting justice through metaphysical means would be taken up by second-wave feminists in California a century later.
Work Cited
Budapest, Z. 1986. The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries: Feminist Witchcraft, Goddess Rituals, Spellcasting, and Other Womanly Arts. Oakland: Consolidated Printers.
Ferguson, C. 2022. “Anna Kingsford and the Intuitive Science of Occultism.” Aries—Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 22: 114-135.
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.
The animal rights movement attempts to change the property status of animals to those of persons. The trouble with this line of activism is that even if animal property law could be undone most animals would still have lower-class status. The state would continue to allow these inferior animals as food while maintaining humane treatment stewardship laws. No laws would be enacted to prevent human animals from utilizing such animals because of the state’s obligations to cultural speciesism and capitalism’s animal agriculture and processing industries.
By comparison, state-legislated eradication of capitalism’s labor exploitation would not end the subordination of labor to capital in the workplace. Adequate pay and working conditions would put some limits on employers but not permit full democracy on the job. The class structure of capital – the owners of production – which makes labor produce surplus profit for bosses, holds fast. Capitalist-state altruism to other animals discloses a similar inequality.
This doesn’t mean ending the private property position of animals is unimportant. It indicates we are prone to distorting what can be done by state reforms (one step at a time ideology) in the liberation of animals.
For at least several reasons, the state by its very creation is not a neutral mediator that can be swung in any direction. For one thing, it has often formed from the theft of Indigenous peoples’ land subordinating their authority in political decision-making. Second, the state is integral to reproducing capitalism and with it, the cultural customs of meat, dairy, eggs, and other animal uses no matter which political party is elected.More, the state is a male fabrication that depends on controlling women’s bodies to populate the nation and sustain capitalism by giving birth and providing childcare to prepare future workers for the citizenry and economy.
Thus the state can’t be carried over to an equality-based society. We have to conceive of abolishing the state – similar to what was done to feudalism and monarchical rule in many parts of the world – not making it nicer while leaving the underlying burdensome structures intact.
On the other hand, we can’t simply theorize to replace the state with organized free associations. Human-animal dominance, male authority, white primacy, colonization, economic classes and ableism could easily be carried over from the former system by habitual conscious and unconscious attitudes/ways when organizing new paradigms. A vegan feminist democratic framework for leveling hierarchies is essential to overcoming these injustices because it openly rejects them as nonstarters in the design process. Vegan feminism always cautions against working to halt human-animal imperialism in isolation of class, male, white, abled, gender binary, and heteronormative dominance. Many other social movements don’t have this expansive grasp of reality.
Since state power operates internationally, worldwide solidarity must be imperative to our politics of total liberation, with special attentiveness to major state powers. The cessation of animal subjugation, oppression among human animals, wars and ecological collapse depends on it.
Clearly, the end of states is unattainable at present. It requires long-term and complex collective work. For the short term, the best that we might be able to accomplish is to simply raise awareness through the channels available to us learning praxis as we go.
Climate upheaval, environmental devastation, poverty, male preeminence, white primacy, normative gender identity dominance, abled superiority and human supremacy all coexist with the prevailing mode of production and life – capitalism. This system, invented by rich white men, categorically undermines animals’ and human animals’ lives through class divisions and interactions with the other stated hierarchies. A revolutionary societal remaking is thereby required to end these oppressions and abolish the current top-down market economy.
Social-ecological restitution must also be directed at nonhuman animals used as commodified goods in the structure of production and consumption. Their rights have been systemically violated and the crimes have added to biosphereic degradation.
To realistically accomplish the purpose of system change we have to first take non-reform reform steps that don’t re-legitimize these overbearing institutions, like bland reforms do.
A GLI would afford employees to work less, translating into lower emissions and pollution from decreased production. Moreover, let’s not forget that numerous workers are being dislodged by capital’s use of robotic technology, especially artificial intelligence, making GLI adoption extra urgent.
To ensure the globalization of a GLI there would have to be a transference of wealth within and from affluent nations to poorer ones by way of tax justice and tax havens to advance the sustainability and equity goals of the impoverished.
Initially, to achieve major social-ecological improvement a GLI has to secure the basic needs of every person to fully participate in society. Only then will people have the choice to reduce or withdraw from working in the disastrous compulsory capitalist model of production and its animal reproductive/slaughtering industries. Our fear of financial insecurity and radical social change would be minimized, opening up time and creative energy for pursuing socially and ecologically sound production and lifestyles.
All the above is an impetus for the GLI movement, the animal rights movement, the ecology movement, the feminist movement, the LGBTQI+ movement, the antiracist/colonialist/capitalist movement and the disability movement to join forces to construct a world of equality for life’s beings.
Although vegan feminism is a relatively new theory of social change in the West, it has had a rich background with a variety of innovative tactics, developed by innovative women in the resistance. In “Vegan Feminism Then and Now: Women’s Resistance to Legalised Speciesism across Three Waves of Activism” published in Gendering Green Criminology (Bristol University Press 2023), Lynda Korimboccus joins me in exploring this history through the efforts of three outstanding activists we take to represent feminist approaches to anti-speciesism across three primary waves of collective effort.
Charlotte Despard and First-Wave Intersectionality
The first, Charlotte Despard, was a British woman of Irish birth who was heavily active in Irish independence efforts, feminism, vegetarianism, and anti-vivisection campaigning. She is perhaps best remembered in the anti-speciesist movement for her protests involving the contentious Brown Dog statue in Battersea, London. The statue, meant as an homage to a canine who languished in the vivisection industry. This little dog represented thousands of others who were victimized by the increasingly powerful and entrenched medical science.
The statue was a direct challenge to patriarchal institutions and their systemic violence against Nonhuman Animals…and others. Despard chose Battersea for a reason: it was also a hotbed of Irish nationalism, feminism, and socialism. Despard’s protest tactics were intersectionally aware and explicitly engaged coordination across movements. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the belief in social progress was not isolated by cause. Many women activists were actively engaged in a variety of campaigns simultaneously, sometimes in overlapping ways.
Patty Mark and Second-Wave Open Rescue
By the mid-20th century, women had become the dominant group in activist ranks. And, although men’s philosophical contributions tended to take precedence, women activists were busy developing novel tactics for dismantling a now entrenched speciesist economics order. Patty Mark, for instance, had innovated a new strategy in Australia that both challenged the mundane normalcy of speciesism and physically intervened in Nonhuman Animal suffering. Her “open rescue” approach intentionally and strategically broke the law, the law being deemed illegitimate due to the horrific harms it protected. This tactic encouraged activists to peacefully enter industrial spaces to remove some victims to safety and disrupt industrial processes. Activists often chained themselves to facility infrastructure as well.
The aim was to attract media attention through illegality and disruption, bringing attention to the cause and allowing the public a rare opportunity to see within hidden speciesist spaces. Arrest was not only risked but even encouraged as it added to the spectacle and disruption. This tactic was innovative in introducing feminist ideals of nonviolence and active compassion.
Sarah Kistle and Third-Wave Vegan Intersectionality
Finally, we explored the tactical developments of Sarah Kistle. As the movement entered the 21st century, a return to intersectionality seemed ever more necessary. The late 20th century had witnessed a considerable neoliberalization that introduced and reified individualist approaches to social change. Indeed, the rational ideology that underpinned this shift made feminist approaches appear marginal, deluded, and unfocused. This new era of “rational” activism had also normalized welfare reform and animals’ flesh “reductionism.”
Sarah Kistle became a prominent figure in the debates that would arise between these two positions by the 2010s. Kistle advocated for a radical, intersectional approach to advocacy, insisting that veganism was the least humans could do to alleviate speciesism, and the movement had a duty to promote it as such. Importantly, she argued that this vegan message should not be restricted only to “animal lovers,” but should be actively put into conversation with other social justice causes. As a Korean American, she recognized that the unjust experiences of Nonhuman Animals heavily entangle with that of marginalized human groups. With the outbreak of Black Lives Matter protests later that decade, she realized this vegan intersectional theory by opening a vegan restaurant in Minneapolis, employing Black Lives Matter activists who had been harassed and arrested by the police.
Across all waves, we can find so many inspiring stories of innovative women who fought a speciesist legal system to advance the radical idea that animals (and the humans whose experiences intertwine with that of other animals) matter. Indeed, Despard, Mark, and Kistle took on the police themselves, using state repression as a means to shine light on the personhood of the oppressed. It is a vegan feminist criminology that should inspire another generation of women to critically examine a criminal justice system that has historically relied on violence, control, incarceration, and the stripping of rights to maintain not only speciesism but many other systems of oppression. Future tactics might continue to test the limits of what is legal and what is legitimate, devising new modes of resistance to unjust state institutions of “justice.”
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.
The abolitionist faction of the Nonhuman Animal rights movement is unique in the movement because it specifically values intersectionality. That is, abolitionist activists recognize that sexism, racism, heterosexism, and other isms are as morally problematic as speciesism. Indeed, many abolitionists recognize that these systemic discriminations are actually entangled and mutually reinforcing.
Intersectionality is not only applicable to general society, it has relevance within social movement spaces as well. The Nonhuman Animal rights movement is male-dominated with a female majority and sexism has been heavily documented. It is a movement that is also white-dominated with few activists of color offered platform or leadership and a notoriously racist past with regard to campaigning and claimsmaking. Acknowledging these connections in social justice efforts is so very important for counteracting oppression.
In a movement that opposes inequality but still evidences inequality in its interactions with activists and members of the public, a strange situation occurs in which inequality may persist unchecked amidst efforts to resist it. Following many years of social justice campaigning across several social movements, few would openly admit to being bigoted today. Most like to think of themselves as upstanding and moral. Similarly, in an era in which diversity is theoretically embraced as a social good, most people champion diversity. If most agree that bigotry is bad and diversity is a worthy goal, why the persistence of bigotry and exclusion?
Because discrimination is often hidden or abstracted through institutionalized practices, it becomes more difficult to identify. With discrimination hard to “see” (at least to those who benefit from it or who are otherwise not impacted by it), a disconnect between theory (philosophical support for social justice) and practice (physical support for social justice) emerges. Oppression is systematic, and, at least in the West, individualism makes it difficult to understand how each one of us is shaped by that system and how we, in turn, contribute to that system through passive (or active) compliance. Those who are relatively privileged may view themselves as allies against oppression, but will not always recognize responsibility for that oppression or personal benefit from it.
It gets even trickier in a social movement space in which activists actively embrace intersectionality theory and diversity goals. More than the average citizen, a social justice activist is personally invested in an anti-oppression identity. For some, this means regular interrogation of oppression in all its forms paired with active self-reflection. Being an ally is not easy, as it can require unlearning quite a lot of socialized norms and values, resisting entrenched social systems, and giving up privilege. It takes humility and a willingness to make mistakes and feel uncomfortable sometimes.
For many others, however, the intersectionality identity simply becomes a badge to be worn. Anyone can wear the badge, whether or not they actually do anything to earn it. Even worse, the badge can become a form of authority. With the badge brandished, it becomes difficult to challenge activists who engage in harmful or problematic practices. The badge can also create a psychological barrier for the wearer who may become less willing to acknowledge challenges as valid.
Unfortunately, this is a persistent issue in anti-speciesist spaces, including the abolitionist faction (despite its principled commitment to intersectionality). Privileged abolitionist vegans regularly flash their ally badges while simultaneously blocking intersectionality efforts. Some years ago, Sarah Kistle of The Abolitionist Vegan Society terms these persons “Badge-allies.” Badge-allies create another barrier to meaningful feminist discourse and complicate the possibility of implementing anti-oppression practice.
By way of some examples, women who have critiqued patriarchy in the movement have been accused of “misandry” and subjected to coordinated stalking and bullying campaigns. Women of color introducing conversations about race have been harassed and deplatformed, as their criticism of white supremacy is interpreted as “racist.” The majority of the accusers, bullies, harassers, and gatekeepers in these cases were white men (and many white women). Wielded in these ways, intersectionality becomes a strategic weapon for privileged people to protect their privilege and protect themselves from criticism.
These actions reflect an element of conscious discrimination, but they need not always be intentional. Microaggressions are also heavily used by Badge-allies. Again, few persons today see themselves as bigoted, but they can still engage in discrimination in unintended or unconscious ways. Microaggressions can include interruption, cat-calling, sexualizing, or desexualizing, misgendering, tone-policing, delivering or laughing at a sexist or racist joke, dismissing, downplaying or ignoring the experiences of a marginalized group, and denying the reality of sexism, racism, and other forms of oppression. Badge-allies are less likely to see microaggressions of this kind as aggressive or discriminatory because they have self-identified as intersectionally conscious.
Being an ally means more than simply wearing the identity like a badge. True allyship requires action and open dialogue with the marginalized groups that are being represented. Intersectionality is not a means for protecting privilege and shutting down critical discussions. It was developed as a philosophical tool for acknowledging a variety of experiences and how several core systems of inequality and mechanisms of oppression operate in similar, mutually supportive ways to shape those experiences. Intersectionality is a map for resistance, not a manual for maintaining a broken system.
An earlier version of this essay first appeared on The Abolitionist Activist Vegan blog on April 2, 2015.
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.
As the animal rights movement expanded in the late 20th century, fuelled in large part by the popularity of the civil rights movement, vegan feminism took shape as a potent and explicit critique of patriarchal oppression women and other animals and the male-centeredness in anti-speciesist mobilization.
In addition to the influences of anti-racism, feminism, and other social justice movements of the era, the environmental movement also offered a much-needed seedbed for theoretical development. Vegan feminism might be identified as a theory of animal rights, but it owes much of its development to the ecofeminist movement of the late 20th century. Many scholar-activists from the animal rights movement, such as Carol Adams, Greta Gaard, Lori Gruen, and Marti Kheel published and presented extensively in ecofeminist spaces.
Ecofeminism emerged in resistance to the androcentrism of environmental philosophy and activism, arguing that gender inequality served as the foundation to environmental destruction and subsequent violence against women and the natural world. Vegan ecofeminists expanded this discourse in the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s by explicitly acknowledging the oppression of nonhuman animals as important for advancing ecofeminist theory to its fullest intersectional expression.
As vegan ecofeminism gathered strength, it began to take on the Nonhuman Animal rights movement with more confidence. This culminated in the formation of Feminist for Animal Rights in 1981. For the next twenty years, FAR would develop an activist-oriented theory of vegan feminism that would interrogate anti-speciesism as a gender-neutral affair.
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.
