Category Archives: Feminism & Patriarchy

Frances Power Cobbe: Unapologetically Feminist, Disabled, Fat, Gay, and Antivivisectionist

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There were many feminists of the Victorian era who tackled the horrors of vivisection, but perhaps none was so outspoken as Frances Power Cobbe. Born of landed gentry in Ireland, she was well educated, philosophically minded, motivated by morality, dedicated to reform, and a prolific speaker and writer. She was also unapologetically fat, more or less openly gay, and grappled with disability most of her life. Cobbe loved to eat, she loved a laugh, and she loved a good fight. Louisa May Alcott, upon meeting her, was taken aback by her presence, and pleased to find such a powerful advocate for justice who also happened to thwart the old maid stereotype that befell single women such as themselves.

Cobbe had been for some years heavily involved in anti-poverty efforts, religious and educational reform, and feminism, but the assault on Nonhuman Animals in vivisection laboratories and medical theaters would come to define her career. For her, there was a clear link observed between the ideological and material treatment of Nonhuman Animals and other marginalized groups. For instance, the heavy use of vivisection in medical training, she believed, was socializing a culture of cruelty in doctors. She and her colleagues saw the inhumane treatment of women (who were often made doubly vulnerable by poverty) as not dissimilar to that faced by other animals. Even the same disciplinary lexicon and utilitarian devices devised for vivisection would be reworked for medical treatments and experiments on women (Lansbury 1985). Cobbe was also aware that institutional prohibitions on women’s healing (midwives were outlawed by the 19th century and women were not allowed to attend medical school to become professional doctors) meant that patients were denied a kinder, more individualized approach to care. It was an intentional disarming of women to maintain their ignorance and dependence.

Vivisection, for Cobbe, was the exemplar for human immorality in a modernizing society; it was the bedrock for many social ills. Many tried to convince her that she was making much of nothing, that vivisection was rarely practiced and, for that matter, mostly harmless. Cobbe would have none of it, barrelling forward and drawing heavily on her scholarly training, gift for debate, and vast social connections to launch a campaign that she would fight until the end of her life. Kramer (1992-1993) credits her for organizing the first protest against vivisection, in fact. In 1863, she collected the signatures of 800 persons who insisted that exiled German physiologist Moritz Schiff cease his torturous experiments, leading to the formation of the Florentine Society for the Protection of Animals. Campaigners were particularly disturbed by the prolongation of violence against other animals in wholly unnecessary experiments conducted by scientists who dissected and mangled Nonhuman Animals without pain relief for purposes of curiosity and career advancement.

Back in Britain, Cobbe appealed to the RSPCA to intervene on the growing industry, quite unsuccessfully as the RSPCA was not wholly against speciesist scientific practices given its own class bias. Cobbe pushed ahead, gathering support where she could. Illustrations she collected from her research in medical journals were reproduced in a variety of campaigning materials, including color posters mounted in cities and railway stations across London and wider Britain. She had even hoped to include morally shocking images in a magic lantern show intended for family audiences (though, after much debate with her colleagues on the efficacy of such a tactic, was likely persuaded against it) (Williamson 2005).

Bolstered by the sympathies of Queen Victoria, Cobbe began to push for legislative regulation of the practice. With the encouragement of her colleagues, she formed the Victoria Street Society, what would become the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS). This effort culminated in the passing of a parliamentary bill in 1875, but the considerable compromises necessary to move it forward manifested the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act which effectively legitimated the practice and encouraged its rapid growth. Cobbe, a pragmatist, had been committed to restricting, rather than abolishing abolition. Considerable persuasion from her fellow abolitionists eventually moved her to adopt abolition herself, necessitating that she form a new organization, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV).

The fight continued for the rest of her life. Indeed, it continues to this day. Cobbe, at the time living with her longtime partner, Welsh artist Mary Lloyd, died at the age of 81, leaving quite the legacy. Both NAVS and BUAV are still in operation today, and vivisection, while still well entrenched in scientific and pharmaceutical research, is declining in other industries, such as cosmetics, largely due to consumer pressure like that initiated by Cobbe almost 200 years ago. Technological advancements have created a number of ethical, more scientifically accurate alternatives to vivisection, furthermore, suggesting the possibility of a future cessation.

Cobbe’s legacy, however, is a complicated one. She was against “hunting and rejected the popular millinery fashion of wearing birds’ plumage, but she was not a vegetarian. Being both an advocate for women and an epicure (she claimed to have attended more than 2,000 dinner parties), she thought “meat” a necessity for good living, a necessity that was wrongly discouraged of girls and women. She was also known to be quite the bully, harassing colleague (and vegetarian) Anna Kingsford to the point of causing Kingsford ill health and necessitating her husband intervene with threats of litigation.

Cobbe was a stereotypical upper class Victorian whose wealth and wellbeing were made possible from colonial exploitation (her own family owned land in rural Ireland where her father worked as Dublin’s High Sheriff). She had some rather disparaging attitudes toward the colonies as a result, as well as some rather conservative ideas about gender roles despite her own independent lifestyle. Although she certainly advocated a much less restrictive set of expectations for women (championing their access to education, medical training, martial separation, and child custody), she took issue with women in certain leadership positions. She stocked her Victoria Street Society with men, for instance, to improve its credibility, and viciously attacked Kingsford (a wife and mother) for not restricting her campaigning to the domestic sphere.

For all her complexities, Cobbe is part of a rich history of queer anti-speciesist advocacy that informs a robustly diverse vegan feminist movement today. She certainly was not perfect, but she was a true force of righteousness that championed all sorts of causes. She lived an intersectional life and she recognized the intersectionality that shaped social inequalities. Her fortitude in the face of considerable patriarchal institutional violence and intimidation is nothing short of awe-inspiring.

References

Kramer, M. 1992-1993. “Frances Power Cobbe: Anti-Vivisectionism in Victorian England.” Feminists for Animal Rights Newsletter 7 (1-2): 5-17.

Lansbury, C. 1985. The Old Brown Dog. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Williamson, L. 2005. Power and Protest. London: Rivers Oram Press.

Corey Lee Wrenn

Dr. Wrenn is Senior 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), Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain’s First Colony (State University of New York Press 2021), and Vegan Witchcraft: Contemporary Magical Practice and Multispecies Social Change (Routledge 2026).

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Bealtaine (Beltane), May Day, and Elf-shot Cows

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Photo credit: Simon Garbutt

Marking high spring and the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere, Bealtaine (Irish for “May” and anglicized as Beltane) is a major sabbat that observes the returning sun, the greening of the land, and a heightening growth period. In Irish, Bealtaine refers to the fire (tine) of the Celtic sun god Bel. The May season is a time of agricultural birth and growth, with considerable wealth to be gleaned from the exploitation of other animals. Complex rituals sprung up across the British Isles in an effort to regulate the system and ensure prosperity.

Bonfires have traditionally been held on the eve of May 1st for the protecting of “livestock.” Cows might be jumped over the May Day fires or they and their living quarters might be decorated with protective plants and herbs to maximize fertility and keep the evil eye or dangerous fae away. Witches were often accused of interfering with “livestock” as well. Indeed, fears of evil interference with animal-based agriculture was a major reason for the persecution of witches and the overall devaluation of women. Cows and other animals that failed to produce or took ill were sometimes diagnosed as being “elf-shot,” that is, they were literally thought to have been targeted by witches, fairies, or other interlopers.

In modern witchcraft and pagan practices, killing and eating animals has become a contemporary opportunity for the average, non-farming practitioner to interact with this agrarian tradition (West 2002). “Meat” may not feature as heavily, but Wiccan author Scott Cunningham (2007) advises incorporating dairy into May Day festivities. Bees, too, are often included in Bealtaine celebrations as mead (a fermented honey beverage) is regularly encouraged (Greenleaf 2016). Bealtaine may not incorporate speciesism as deeply as Imbolc or Ostara, but it nonetheless exhibits the characteristic romanticization of speciesism in “livestock” exploitation through the ritualized consumption of animal-based foods and drink.

A time of union, handfasting, and the start of the fertile season, Bealtaine also marks a time in which the “masculine” and “feminine” energies of the earth are thought to merge as the feminine darker months wane with the return of the sun. There are certainly many ways to reclaim this cross-quarter point in early May for a vegan witchcraft. For instance, it might become a time to reflect on the fruits of female labour as well as a time to celebrate the destabilization of gender polarities. Indeed, this is the season of the Green Man (also known as the Wild Man and the Jack in the Green). This figure, representing environmental renewal and the fluid boundary between humans and nature, could be a useful symbol to explore.

Bealtaine should also be a time to reconsider the dual oppression of women and other animals, particularly in light of the historical persecution of women accused of interfering with animal-based agriculture. Today’s vegan witches aim to spoil farming yields through liberating–rather than hexing–cows, sheeps, and other imprisoned animals. Thus, the first of May might be an appropriate time to reclaim this feminist power of resistance by elf-shooting the anthroparchy and raising the Bealtaine fires for the protection and liberation of its victims.

Works Cited

Cunningham, S. 2007. Cunningham’s Encyclopaedia of Wicca in the Kitchen. Woodbury: Llewellyn Publications.Greenleaf, C. 2016. The Book of Kitchen Witchery. London: CICO Books.

Greenleaf, C. 2016. The Book of Kitchen Witchery. London: CICO Books.

West, K. 2002. The Real Witches’ Kitchen. London: Thorsons.

Corey Lee Wrenn

Dr. Wrenn is Senior 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), Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain’s First Colony (State University of New York Press 2021), and Vegan Witchcraft: Contemporary Magical Practice and Multispecies Social Change (Routledge 2026).

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Imbolc, Ecofeminism, and the Romanticization of Rural Idyll

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Source: Wikicommons, Rasmus Fonseca

Celebrated around the first of February,1 the pagan holiday of Imbolc2 marks the turning point from deep winter to spring’s edge in the Northern Hemisphere. Imbolc was historically a point of celebration as domesticated animals were nearing the season of birthing. As such, dairy is perhaps the most ubiquitous association with this early spring festival (Greenleaf 2016). This connection is amplified by Imbolc’s alignment with Ireland’s Saint Bridget’s Day, Bridget being the saint of healing, hospitality, and nonhuman breastmilk. Modern ecofeminists, witches, and feminist pagans often frame this breastmilk as symbolic of nurturance, a “mystical gift” (Woodward 2021: 101).

Imbolc is traditionally aligned with exploitation of sheeps, and today, this relationship is romanticized as taking place in a peaceful rural idyll. The reality is anything but romantic, however. All ovine inhabitants of the “idyll” will meet a violent end, and many of them are separated from their mothers and sent on a harrowing journey to slaughter at just a few weeks old given the popularity of “lambchops” and “leg of lamb.” The peaceful scene of the pasture is far from the horror of the finishing floor where many victims are not even stunned before their throats are cut. Nearly three million sheeps slated for Halal or Kosher slaughter in the United Kingdom alone are fully conscious and not stunned before being killed.

The pasture itself is a site of considerable suffering. Mother sheeps are genetically manipulated to produce multiple children to maximize the surplus value to be exploited from their labour, leading to high mortality rates for both mother and children. Pregnancies coerced deep in the winter to meet spring market demands for babies’ flesh, furthermore, leave newborn lambs vulnerable to freezing weather. As a result, almost one in five British lambs do not survive to slaughter. All lambs are subject to “tail docking.” The severing of their tail is accomplished with a knife, hot iron, or a rubber band that causes slow necrosis, and anaesthesia is not offered. To increase their market weight, improve the palatability of their flesh, and reduce their capacity to resist the violence they endure in the trade, male lambs have a similar procedure inflicted on their genitals.

Source: Wikicommons, James T M Towill

Even in “wool” production, suffering is high; these sheeps also undergo manipulated pregnancies, early removal from their mothers, and unanaesthetised mutilations. The “live export” trade, furthermore, relies heavily on the production of sheeps’ hair. Once “wool” industry victims become burdensome and less productive with age, they are crammed onto transport ships to countries where they can be slaughtered for food and religious purposes. With animals exposed to extreme heat or cold, overcrowding, accumulating filth, poor air circulation, fear, and stress, conditions are so horrific on these multi-level ships that death counts are high. These ships occasionally wreck as well, with animals trapped below deck or flung into open sea where they die by drowning.

With pandemics (most of which have zoonotic origins) now a regularity, sometimes these ships will be denied port, leaving animals to suffer on board for weeks until they die of thirst or heat exhaustion. In these cases, Nonhuman Animals back up in their home countries as well, prompting hasty destruction. After Brexit and COVID-19, for instance, Irish dairy farmers experienced a “calf tsunami” as the domestic dairy industry expanded and international markets shrunk. Many infant boys were shot in the head by farmers a day or two after birth as farmers could not cope with their care as they awaited transportation to offshore slaughterhouses. Male babies are the inevitable “byproduct” from the systematic exploitation of female bodies and always meet with a violent end.

Modern witchcraft ignores these unsavoury realities of “meat,” “dairy” and birds’ eggs production, drawing instead on delusions of peaceful, consenting relationships with other animals. For instance, one Imbolc ritual invites practitioners to “celebrate the day by giving thanks for all the things that sheep have given us” including “fleece for sweaters and milk for cheese” with an “Imbolc prayer.” However, the process of domestication itself troubles the possibility of consent, and domestication by its very nature manipulates the minds and bodies of other animals to facilitate human mastery. Domesticated sheeps are born, live, and die at the whim of human desires.

Vegan feminism sees domestication as an anthroparchal system of oppression that intentionally undercuts the agency of Nonhuman Animals, locks them in bondage through physical and cognitive manipulations and architectural incarceration, and replicates anthropocentric hierarchal arrangements (Mason 1993). Regardless of whether this domestication takes place in backyards, rural pastures, or factory farms, it entails violence and oppression. This is no gift; it is theft.

The modern nature of Nonhuman Animal agriculture has not only rendered insensible the horrors inflicted on Nonhuman Animals, but it has also rationalised speciesist exploitation such that nonhuman bodies and excretions are readily available and artificially affordable for most. The ubiquitousness of animal-based foods has influenced witches’ dietary preferences. This, in turn, has shaped how sabbats are celebrated. Dairy and other forms of animals’ flesh in early agrarian societies would have been scarce, and were, in some cases, intentionally omitted through the rest of the winter months; this practice would be adapted into the Christian practice of Lent. Despite this modern emphasis on abundance and feasting, Imbolc was historically a time of purification, often calling for fasting. Fresh foods were scant and stored foods would be running low. Fasting may have taken on a spiritual, ritualistic quality as a measure to regulate food stores. Practitioners originally forwent any flesh, dairy, or eggs. Later, Lent laws would be relaxed, and fishes and other animals’ products might be allowed.

Today, few practice plant-based winter fasting, as Nonhuman Animal products have become so ubiquitous with intensive genetic manipulation and industrialized agricultural practices. Modern witches seem a bit unclear about this history. The Real Witches’ Kitchen, by way of an example, notes that “fresh food would not have been plentiful at this festival” (80) but nonetheless suggests that “lamb is ideal for this feast” (West 2002: 81). Likewise, The Witches Feast (Brooks 2023) offers a vegetarian stew recipe to celebrate Imbolc in an attempt at historical accuracy, but eagerly advocates roasting an “herby leg of lamb” for March’s spring equinox as this “delicious and impressive looking feast […] makes the most of the meat that would have traditionally been available at this time of year” (57). Imbolc, then, seems to be considered a celebratory time for drinking the breastmilk of pregnant mothers who are preparing to give birth to their babies, while equinox3 entails consuming the babies themselves.

It seems odd that the patriarchal domination inherent to domestication, reproductive manipulation, and blood sacrifice would remain so central to ecofeminist spirituality today. However, while it is true that speciesist traditions remain prevalent in many ecofeminist spiritual paths, being feminist practices, there are no set requirements for ritual observance. This suggests, to some extent, a degree of capriciousness and ample room for retooling for multispecies inclusivity. Bridget was not just associated with the birthing of new lambs and other animals destined for use and slaughter, but midwifery in general. After retreating and resting in the winter months and cleansing body and home, might new rituals for celebrating rebirth and renewal be developed beyond speciesist practice?

The Irish government, for instance, declared St. Bridget’s Day, February 1st, a national holiday in 2018. A corollary to the more equinox-aligned St. Patrick’s Day that follows in March, St. Bridget’s Day honours the major feminist achievements in recent Irish history. But advocates for the holiday emphasize the holiday’s importance in celebrating healing in an era of climate devastation. As the Director of Woman Spirit Ireland explained in an announcement of the new saint’s day: “In a post-Covid world, we will be able to reflect further on her role, asking how the integration of nature, culture and technology can serve to heal our wounds and the vulnerable earth.” Bridget, in other words, has come to embody an ecofeminist worker of magic, and this might easily replace the exploitation of sheeps and cows in a vegan Imbolc.

Notes

  1. Imbolc is rooted in Western Europe, but has also been practiced as Candlemas with the coming of Christianity. In the United States, it transformed into Groundhog’s Day. All variations celebrate the turning of the seasons, the release of winter, and the increasing daylight hours.
  2. Imbolc (pronounced “eem-ulk”) is an old Gaelic word that translates to “in the belly.”
  3. The modern witch community refers to spring equinox as Ostara, a reference to the “livestock” oestrus season.

References

Brooks, L. 2023. The Witches Feast. Salpe Publishing.

Greenleaf, C. 2016. The Book of Kitchen Witchery. London: CICO Books.

Mason, J. 1993. An Unnatural Order. New York: Simon & Schuster.

West, K. 2002. The Real Witches’ Kitchen. London: Thorsons.

Woodward, L. 2021. Kitchen Witchery. Woodbury: Llewellyn Publications.

Corey Lee Wrenn

Dr. Wrenn is Senior 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 Alcotts and Vegan Feminism of the 19th Century

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Fruitlands. Photo credit: Wikicommons, Daderot

Although most of the early vegetarian feminists were not quite willing to acknowledge or resist the inherent violence in animal-derived foods and products beyond “meat,” political veganism in the West has been in practice since at least the early 19th century. The famous Alcott family of the United States, for instance, understood Nonhuman Animal rights as complementary to their abolitionist efforts. In the 1840s, they attempted to put their transcendentalist philosophy and social justice values into action not simply by practicing veganism by way of diet, but by creating a utopian-oriented communal farm (Francis 2010, Shprintzen 2013). They acquired a large 90-acre tract of farmland in rural Massachusetts they named Fruitlands. Here, they hoped to grow their own food—all vegan—without the use of horses, oxen, or other animals for draught nor manure.1

This emphasis on the utopia should not suggest that people of the era had an unfamiliarity with plant-based living. In 19th century Ireland, for instance, colonization ensured that the agricultural exploitation of cows and other animals for flesh and breastmilk was relegated primarily to British colonial landowners bound for industrializing England and the booming slave trade in the Americas. The Irish peasantry survived primarily on the farming of potatoes and other vegetables for their own consumption, and vegetarian advocates of the day saw this as evidence of the nutritional suitability of animal-free consumption (Wrenn 2021).

Veganic farming, for that matter, was not unknown prior to the industrialization of agriculture. For instance, abundantly available seaweed was used as a potent fertilizer in Ireland, while Native Americans did not rely on Nonhuman Animals for plowing and many tribes ate very plant-heavy diets (Robinson 2024, Teufel 2009). While the destruction of the American buffalo is often cited as a strategy in Indigenous genocide, less discussed is the assault on the American chestnut, a far more widespread and actively managed food source for natives of North America.

The Alcotts were familiar with these vegan-oriented food production systems and more, citing them in their writings as rationales for their own experiments. What they were less familiar with, however, was how to operationalize these techniques with little practical experience of their own. As upper-middle class artists, authors, and speakers, they were truly unprepared for the immense efforts needed to operate a fully self-sustaining farm. Louisa May Alcott (who authored the famous classic in American women’s literature, Little Women) was also acutely aware of the gender politics that remained largely unchanged in this little utopia (Shprintzen 2013). The male inhabitants of the project continued with their busy advocacy and lecture circuits, leaving the women behind to maintain the everyday drudgery of operating a working farm.

Within a year, the project came to an end. Historians have pointed to the eschewing of Nonhuman Animal labor as reason for the failure (Francis 2010), but it seems more likely that the philosophical interests and commitments of the residents distracted from the material requirements of farm life. They seemed more interested in pontificating about utopia than doing utopia.

That said, Fruitlands does provide evidence of early interest in the manufacture of a vegan society, one that was born of an intersectional praxis given the founders’ participation in so many social justice efforts of the time. It was also evidence of an early vegan feminist critique of male privilege in the movement. As would become a pattern across the next century, women would be burdened with the drudgery of organization and project upkeep, freeing men to undertake the more glamorous and celebrated public-facing work.

Notes

  1. Many “back to the land” hippie and feminist campaigns in the United States fail to consider the legacy of colonialism and Indigenious removal in the “taking back” of land. Fruitlands (now a museum) continues to occupy traditional lands of the Agawam, Nipmuc, and Pawtucket tribes in Harvard, MA.

References

Francis, R. 2010. Fruitlands. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Robinson, M. 2024. “Indigenous Veganism.” Pp. 295-313, in The Plant-based and Vegan Handbook. Y. Athanassakis, R. Larue, and W. O’Donohue (Eds.). Cham: Springer.

Shprintzen, A. 2013. The Vegetarian Crusade. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Teufel, N. 2009. “Nutrient Characteristics of Southwest Native American Pre-contact Diets.” Journal of Nutritional & Environmental Medicine 6 (3): 273-284.

Wrenn, C. 2021. Animals in Irish Society. New York: SUNY Press.

Wrenn, C. 2022. “Society Writings.” Pp. 333-348, in The Edinburgh Companion to Vegan Literary Studies, L. Wright and E. Quinn (Eds.). Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.

Corey Lee Wrenn

Dr. Wrenn is Senior 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.

Witches for Animal Rights

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In my forthcoming book, Vegan Witchcraft, I explore the history of feminist witchcraft in the US and UK, arguing that, despite many key parallels, feminist witches have failed their commitments to other animals (often referred to as familiars) in either ignoring or outright rejecting veganism and total liberation.

That said, I have found evidence that some witches are making this connection. In the early 1990s, for instance, the Feminists for Animal Rights Newsletter announced the formation of a new sister group in New York, Witches for Animal Rights. Witches for Animal Rights rallied fellow witches by imploring them to “save the world with your fork.” Feminists for Animal Rights (1994) explains that “members worship the Goddess by promoting the wellbeing of her nonhuman animals” (16), suggesting that interested readers contact the Morningstar Coven in McDonough, New York. Witches for Animal Rights also surfaces in the record as a performing group in “No RIO,” an anti-gentrification guerrilla project in New York City that provided space and platform for radical artists and activists (Forte 1989). This organization was likely shortlived as I was unable to find futher reference.

In the 2010s, a the Protego Foundation formed from a group of Harry Potter fans who contextualize their anti-speciesist activism in the magical creations of J. K. Rowling. A registered nonprofit, the Protego Foundation “fights to end the abuse of the animals in the Muggle world through our inspiration from the magical creatures in the wizarding world […] empowering all magical persons to get active for animals.”

Gregory Maguire’s (1995) retelling of the “Wicked” witch of Oz sees her (Elphaba Thropp) as a social justice activist, advocating for Nonhuman Animals and the environment. Indeed, vegan scholar Christopher Sebastian (2020) suggests that her skin is green as a symbolic reference to her advocacy for nature and other animals, but also to mark her as a monstrous other in protesting the violent social stratification of Oz where the oppression of humans and other animals are explicitly entangled.

Witches for Animal Rights, Wicked, and the Protego Foundation are interesting examples of witchcraft engaged in the service of other animals, but they are exceptions, not the norm. Many feminists have embraced spirituality, paganism, and witchcraft as an important thealogical, philosophical, psychological, and even strategic means of resilience and resistence, but few extend this nature-based practice to include veganism and species-inclusiveness. It remains to be seen if modern witchcraft will, on a whole, begin to incorporate these values. To date, it is not sufficiently distinct from mainstream speciesist feminism and anthropocentric institutionalized religions.

References

Feminists for Animal Rights. 1994. “Resources.” Feminists for Animal Rights Newsletter 8 (1-2): 16.

Forte, S. 1989. “Guerilla Space: A Few Many Things about ABC No Rio.” X-posure Summer: no page.

Protego Foundation. No date. Who We Are. Retrieved April 15, 2024, from: https://www.protegofoundation.org/who-we-are.html.

Maguire, G. 1995. Wicked. New York: HarperCollins.

Sebastian, C. 2020. “Adaptation: No One Mourns the Wicked, But We Should.” Pp. 212-221, in The Edinburgh Companion to Vegan Literary Studies, L. Wright and E. Quinn (Eds.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Witches for Animal Rights. 1994. “Save the World with Your Fork!” Feminists for Animal Rights Newsletter 8 (1-2): 15.

Corey Lee Wrenn

Dr. Wrenn is Senior 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.

Britain’s First Female Qualified Medical Doctor…and Vegetarian Witch?

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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.

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.