Period Politics: Why Menstruation Matters for Women and Other Animals

Posted on by

Photo credit: Vulvani, Wiki Commons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Corey Lee Wrenn

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

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

Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

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

Posted on by

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

Figure 1

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

It’s “Girl power!” PETA exclaims.

Figure 2

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

Figure 3

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

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

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

Corey Lee Wrenn

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

Pairing Veganism with Sanctified Inequality

Posted on by

By Marv Wheale

Is religious veganism a truth-informed disposition?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Roe v. Wade and Your Milk & Eggs

Posted on by

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).

Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

Frivolous Femininity and Plant-based Eating

Posted on by

 

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).

Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

Really Knowing and Interfering in Reality

Posted on by

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