Category Archives: Feminism & Patriarchy

Gender Inequity in the Animal Welfare Movement

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Jen here. I recently had the pleasure of meeting (through the Internet) a fascinating scholar by the name of Corey Wrenn. She wrote a paper entitled, “The Role of Professionalism Regarding Female Exploitation in the Nonhuman Animal Rights Movement,” published in The Journal of Gender Studies.

Ms. Wrenn makes one point that it not new- that some animal rights groups get their point across by exploiting women, specifically PETA, LUSH, Fish Love, and Animal Liberation Victoria (ALV).

But she makes a larger point that is the elephant in the room: Even though WOMEN make up the majority of those who support animal welfare, it is MEN who are in the leadership positions.

Does this sell our cause, or does it demean women and diminish our voice?

Indeed, the ASPCA, the Humane Society of the US, the Humane Association, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the World Wildlife Fund, and many other groups are led by men and their top leadership is overwhelmingly male.

But it’s not men that are caring for animals. It’s not men who are lobbying for animals. It’s not men targeted with those emotion-laden commercials begging for money. It’s all about us then, baby.

So why are men running the show in this female-dominated arena? Why are we allowing them to market to us in a way that is demeaning? And does this gender inequity play into our inability to make meaningful changes in the animal welfare arena?

Recently I wrote a blog post where I said I wanted to work in the field of animal welfare. Many posted comments suggesting that I cut back on blogging and show my interest by volunteering for a rescue. Really? I scoop litter boxes every day. Why do I have to prove my worthiness to work in this field by scooping litter boxes for someone else? For free? Do you think Wayne Pacelle, when interviewing to lead the Humane Society, was asked how many litter boxes HE scooped to earn his stripes?

Personally, I’m thinking it’s time for a real change in the path this movement is taking. We need to phase out the Good Old Boy leadership. We need to stop the exploitation of women. Let’s change the face of this movement from the Crazy Cat Lady and clueless co-ed, who each need men to guide them, to that of the Old Crone, the elder who holds the wisdom of the ages.

Painting of an elderly woman wrapped in red.The Wise Crone respects Mother Earth and all of her creations

What do you think? Is Animal Welfare rife with sexism? Do you feel women are respected in the movement, or are we used as funders and cheap labor to promote a male agenda? What do YOU think should be the face of the movement?

 

By Jenny Threet

You can follow her on Twitter and on her blog, Rumpy Dog.

This post was originally published on  Rumpy Dog on July 8, 2013.

Male PETA Employees Make Women have Sex with Vegetables “For the Animals”

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Not Safe for Work: Discusses pornography and contains sexualized imagery.
Trigger Warning: Discusses pornography

Some may recall that PETA launched a pornography site a few years ago, interweaving graphic scenes of violence with sexualized images of women. Fortunately, it removed the images of women, and the porn site is nothing more than short video clips of factory farms. But that wasn’t the end of the story. The porn is back, now under a new campaign called “Veggie Love Casting Session.”

A bright-eyed white woman simulating oral sex on a cucumber. Meant to resemble an internet porn advertisement. Reads: "Can't get enough veggies? Join now!!! All access starting at $16/year."

On the campaign’s website, various clips of women performing sex acts on vegetables are featured. In the television commercial, women are paraded in front of the camera and inspected for the audience like human meat ready for consumption. The project is orchestrated by men who we hear in the background calling the shots, directing the women to show the audience how much they love their assigned vegetable, then laughing at the woman’s humiliation at the end of her session. Photos of the women are listed at the bottom of the page where viewers can rate them with a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down,” adding another level to the women’s objectification.

Image depicts two women in bikinis performing oral sex on a carrot. From PETA's Veggie Love campaign.PETA even manages to mimic the prevalence of racism in pornography.   The only African American woman featured is shown animalized, crawling across the couch to some broccoli where she devours it with no hands.

An African American woman in a bikini and high heels crawling across a couch towards broccoli.

Many would view this campaign and argue that these women are participating “by choice” and they’re “enjoying it.”  But this is missing the point.  We need to consider what shapes those choices, that being an environment that sees women as sex objects and resources for male enjoyment.  Women are under immense pressure to perform the gender roles they have been assigned.  Under patriarchy, women are socialized to be servants to men.  Women are groomed as little girls, taught that providing sex and pleasure for men is both expected and required of them.  Women are given so few opportunities in this world to achieve and succeed based on their skills, knowledge, and other dignifying qualities, sex work is one of the only options available to them. The vast majority of sex work, incidentally, is high risk, low pay work with very little job security and very little agency (most sex workers are pimped or otherwise trafficked). Importantly, this is an option that’s not even on the table for men.

Pornography and other forms of sexual exploitation also target especially vulnerable women, predominantly girls and women from low-income backgrounds or abusive families, girls and women with little occupational or educational opportunities, and girls and women who are suffering from addictions.Pornography hurts all women, but it particularly hurts at-risk women.

A white woman in a bikini and high heels spanking herself with a stalk of celery.

How does this imagery educate the public about speciesism?

After viewing videos of women performing sex acts on vegetables, videos of Nonhuman Animals being beaten and killed automatically pop up on the PETA website. In other words, images of sexualized and humiliated women are juxtaposed with dying animals. PETA is tapping into a new form of sexuality, one that has been popularized by porn culture: subjugating and hurting the vulnerable for the pleasure of the privileged.  Seeing someone humiliated and suffering for our enjoyment has become sexy.

A woman (possibly of color) in a bikini and high heels leaning against a couch on the floor. Her head is back and her back is arched. She is rubbing herself with tomatoes.

PETA is sexualizing the degradation and humiliation of women. PETA is sexualizing the exploitation of vulnerable people. PETA is sexualizing violence against women.  PETA is sexualizing oppression.

A white woman stuffing radishes into her mouth with painfully stretched cheeks.

The director encourages this woman to stuff as many radishes as possible into her mouth to demonstrate to the audience how much girth she can withstand.

The research is overwhelmingly clear: pornography leads to the degradation of women, the objectification of women, the dehumanization of women, and violence against women. It leads women to internalize this devaluation, and women begin to objectify themselves.  It disempowers women, it leaves women susceptible to domestic violence, and it feeds rape culture.  For more information on how pornography hurts women, check out The Price of Pleasure (warning, the material on the website and in the film are extremely triggering and graphic).  I also recommend Gail Dines’ Pornland or Robert Jensen’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (this book is freely available on his website).

A white woman deep-throating a cucumber.

 

Corey Lee WrennDr. Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She received her M.S. in Sociology in 2008 and her B.A. in Political Science in 2005, both from Virginia Tech. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute. She has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis. She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016).

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Why Sex Doesn’t Sell Animal Rights

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In a previous article with One Green Planet, I documented the rising incorporation of sexist tactics and sexual objectification of women in Nonhuman Animal rights advocacy.  Beyond the well-known and infamous PETA naked campaigns, more and more advocates are turning to the female body to promote veganism and rights for other animals.

In February 2013, a vegan pornography site “Vegan Pinup” relaunched brandishing the slogan:  ”Because veganism is beautiful and sexy!”  Like other vegan pornography sites, Vegan Pinup justifies the sexual objectification of female models with the presumption that images of “beautiful and sexy” naked or nearly naked women put veganism in an attractive light.

The website is set up like the popular alternative-lifestyle pornography site Suicide Girls, which runs on volunteer female models who submit their own images with varying levels of nudity based on the model’s comfort level.  The model pays for the photographer, spends her own time having the photos taken, processed, and sent to the webmaster, and the webmaster then displays them on the website for paying customers.  The models receive minimal compensation.

Vegan Pinup does not profit from customers who must pay to view the photographs (the photos are free to view), but they do profit from an extensive merchandise store.  Unlike Suicide Girls, none of the vegan pinups receive compensation.

World Water Day For PETAPlayboy models working for PETA draw attention to water usage in Nonhuman Animal products by sitting naked in a bathtub in a public square

Essentially what has happened is that the Nonhuman Animal rights movement, a serious movement advocating for social justice, has been co-opted by pornographers and mainstream sexism.  The Nonhuman Animal rights movement is comprised of 80% women, yet it is led mostly by men.  Men construct the theory and men dictate the tactics.  Advocacy on behalf of other animals has become sexualized.

Women are being told that to advocate for veganism or Nonhuman Animal liberation means taking off their clothes and indicating sexual availability.  Activism is no longer about discussing ethics, it’s putting the female body on display for male consumption.   Veganism is now about sex, not social justice or political engagement.

Of course, body image is an important factor as well.  For instance, while Vegan Pinup explicitly states that all body types are welcome, at this time, only thin women are pictured.  More telling, the website repeatedly states the requirement that all models must demonstrate healthfulness, they must look “healthy.”  This has implications not only for body weight (it is unclear how the webmaster decides the cut off on an “unhealthy” looking woman) but also for sexual availability.  A pornography site can’t function unless it’s models appeal to men’s sexual appetite.

Sex cannot sell our movement . . . it can only sell out our  movement.  The proliferation of websites and tactics like Vegan Pinup speaks to the patriarchal infiltration of what was once a powerful site of female political presence.  Encouraging women to strip for Nonhuman Animal rights is encouraging women to strip their personhood and become sexual objects.  Instead of gaining empowerment through political action, women are told they are empowered by disrobing and looking “beautiful and sexy” for men.

playboy_playmate_05_wenn1465803.preview_0Playboy models working for PETA in lettuce bikinis insert veggie hot dogs into their mouths

A plethora of research has demonstrated that the prevalence of sexually objectifying media degrades women’s self-esteem and can lead to mental health issues and eating disorders.  A recent study in Psychological Science, however, has even asserted that sexual objectification leads women to internalize that objectification to the point of impaired self-efficacy.  Women who are socialized to believe they are objects, in other words, are less likely to engage social activism that challenges that oppression.  For a mostly female movement, increased objectification and reduced efficacy could prove disastrous.

This post was originally published by One Green Planet on March 15, 2013.

Corey Lee WrennDr. Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She received her M.S. in Sociology in 2008 and her B.A. in Political Science in 2005, both from Virginia Tech. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute. She has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis. She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016).

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Why is the Animal Rights Movement so Toxic for Women?

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Sexism is all too prevalent in the Nonhuman Animal rights movement. Anyone familiar with PETA’s advocacy has seen their heavy reliance on female nakedness to garner attention and fundraise. Of course, how they hope to alleviate the objectification of Nonhumans while simultaneously objectifying women is questionable. Their inability to respect the interconnectedness of speciesism, sexism, and other oppressions has been criticized heavily by academics and advocates alike.

PETA Shoe Protest

However, sexism remains indirectly prevalent in other advocacy organizations and activist communities. The problem is so rampant that I would venture to say that the Nonhuman Animal rights movement has become a microcosm of patriarchal domination. This is especially bizarre given that advocating against speciesism (which I define as the structural oppression of the vulnerable) is inherently an anti-patriarchy endeavor.

Femininity and concern for other animals have long been linked. Traditional gender roles view women as creatures of nature with an “instinct” for nurturing. Adding to this, the oppression of women often mirrors the oppression of other animals, and many times these oppressions reinforce one another. So it comes as no surprise that the Nonhuman Animal rights movement is composed largely of female activists (to the tune of about 80%).

As we know, gender stereotypes are not always so flattering. Femininity is also associated with hyper-emotionality and irrationality. This is a socially constructed reality that women of the Nonhuman Animal rights movement recognize. In an effort to overcome these stereotypes and resonate with audiences, female activists often adopt rational discourse and suppress emotion in their advocacy. Sociological research has found that male Nonhuman Animal right activists are perceived to be so rare and so important to lending the movement credit that women (and other men) will praise these men heavily and readily elevate them to positions of leadership. Women are often relegated to the less glamorous and more mundane tasks behind the scenes.

Clearly, we wouldn’t expect to see organizations like PETA prioritizing female empowerment, but other more “serious” liberation organizations drop the ball as well. Some of these factions are so reliant on rational arguments that feminine perspectives are generally unheard of or are dismissed as unnecessary. Femininity is suppressed in favor of rational, unemotional, masculine discourse. This is especially unfortunate because emotionality is actually an asset in affecting social change. Social psychology has shown emotional appeals to be far more persuasive and motivating than rational ones.

To be sure, race and gender intersect as well. Masculinity and whiteness have become normalized and go largely unexamined. White world views predominate and white, thin vegan bodies have become the ideal. Vegan critical race activist Dr. Breeze Harper warns that this has had the effect of alienating people of color. Likewise, T.O.F.U. Magazine recently published a special issue on the detrimental impact of fat-shaming and privileging thinness.

When recognized at all, people of color are often tokenized. While white activists may draw parallels between speciesism and racist atrocities like antebellum slavery, most fail to acknowledge the ongoing discrimination that people of color face. Many campaigns are designed to sensationalize animal cruelty associated with people of color, exploiting racial prejudice for the cause. Still other campaigns default to the white world view and ignore human rights violations, environmental racism, and racialized food politics. Structural racism is ignored, unless it is something advocates can campaign behind.

Ignoring gender and race has real consequences, consequences that hurt at-risk populations. Women find themselves sexually objectified by organizations like PETA, Animal Liberation Victoria, and LUSH Cosmetics, who see them as nothing more than naked bodies to prostitute for media attention and donations. Women who advocate with their clothes on do not escape these consequences either. Sociologist Dr. Emily Gaarder, author of Women and the Animal Rights Movement (2011) reports that sexual harassment is a very common experience among female activists. By pushing men into positions of power and relegating women to subordinate tasks and stripping, the movement becomes toxic for the vulnerable. As for people of color, they are often left out of outreach efforts altogether. Those who are outspoken about this exclusion risk backlash and accusations of “reverse racism” or “reverse sexism.” Like many other critics of oppression, it has even been suggested that I have a mental illness (the exploitation of disability identity in Nonhuman Animal rights advocacy is another topic altogether!).

LUSH-Cosmetics-Sexism-300x228

The Nonhuman Animal rights movement would be wise to consider how gender and race continue to be salient identities that warrant special consideration in a social movement environment that privileges men and whites. Gender and race matter, despite any personal fantasies we may have about a post-feminist, post-racial utopia. Diversity in leadership and advocacy should be encouraged. Femininity and emotional appeals should be given their place alongside rational discourse and the language of rights.

Until the Nonhuman Animal rights movement cleans up its act in its treatment of vulnerable populations within its own ranks, I don’t believe it’s possible to make any real headway for other animals. A coherent battle against oppression cannot be fought so long as the movement’s own oppressiveness goes unchallenged.

This post was originally published on Feminspire on June 11, 2013.

Corey Lee WrennDr. Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She received her M.S. in Sociology in 2008 and her B.A. in Political Science in 2005, both from Virginia Tech. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute. She has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis. She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016).

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