Category Archives: Nonhuman Animal Rights & Speciesism

Vegan Feminist Network Interviewed on “Under the Toadstool” Podcast

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under_the_toadstool_web

Corey Lee Wrenn, founder of the Vegan Feminist Network, is interviewed on Episode 2 of Sonia Chauhan and Sarah K. Woodcock’s “Under the Toadstool” podcast. In this 40 minute program, the state of sexism in the Nonhuman Animal rights movement is explored, with some discussion of how to identify and disrupt it. This program was specifically designed to be introductory and is meant to share with those who are new to topics in intersectionality.

If you found your way to this page after listening to the podcast, welcome! We are so thrilled that you are here and that you care about social justice for everyone! Want to be a better advocate? Start by visiting our “What You Can Do!” page.

The Sexual Politics of Holier-Than-Thou Veganism

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Stella McCartney and dog walking on trail

Stella McCartney

 

Stella McCartney’s vegan fashion line was featured in a recent piece by feminist magazine Bustle in “Fashion & Beauty.” At first, I was thrilled to see veganism presented in a feminist space, which doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should.

It seems the author, too, is aware of the political disconnect between feminism and veganism, as she takes care to buffer readers with a disclaimer. Following a statement by McCartney that her brand is “the most ethical and loving company in the fashion industry,” Bustle clarifies:

The outlet notes that she said that with her tongue tucked in her cheek, indicating that she’s not holier-than-thou about her cruelty-free stance, which isn’t always the case with animal activists.

I find this disclaimer to be quite curious when placed in the context of feminist politics. Feminists generally balk when tone-policed themselves and often chastise celebrities who refuse to identify as feminist. But all’s fair when we’re talking about Nonhuman Animal rights. In other words, feminists determinedly encourage loud and proud feminism in an effort to destigmatize social justice activism, but they can be quick to turn around and vilify those who do the same on behalf of other animals.

Given that 80% of the Nonhuman Animal rights movement is female and given that veganism is extremely “feminized,” the sexist undertones to vegan stereotyping are important to recognize. It is possible that the “holier-than-thou” pejorative assigned to activists and vegans is actually a form of gender policing. In other words, these stereotypes work to shame and silence “uppity” women who dare to get political.

Feminists should steer clear of social justice shaming. Caring about the oppression of others should not be something to be hidden or downplayed. The commitment to ending injustice should be a marker of pride. We should be celebrating activism. It is hard work, it wins few friends, it is mentally fatiguing, and so few people are willing to get involved. Feminists should not be adding to that difficulty when they could be an important source of support. This is especially so since most vegan activists are women and speciesism is so intimately tied to patriarchy.

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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Steak & BJ Day: Because Women’s Cancer is All about Pleasing Men

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Not Safe For Work: Contains graphic discussions of sex acts. Website discussed is pornographic.

Content Warning: Intense degradation of women, particularly women disabled with cancer.

Close up of a woman's bottom, legs spread. She appears to be naked except for an apron and a pair of underwear with the organization's logo printed over the back of the panties. The logo is a cartoon of a steak and a pair of lips.

On “Steak and BJ Day,” women are encouraged to please the men in their life by cooking them a steak and performing fellatio . . . to “help punch cancer in the face.” You know, because breast cancer, a perfect excuse to serve men.

The event’s corresponding website is a veritable celebration of degradation and male entitlement.  The small print is all that distinguishes it from a run-of-the-mill pornography service, but I’m still not convinced. Multiple detailed and graphic instructional essays and videos are available to teach women how to give “the perfect head.” Here’s Step #11 “The Blowing of the Load” from “Blowjob 101”:

Spitting it out means like. Swallowing means love. And gargling with cum makes you look like a crazy slut that probably has STDs. Most guys don’t care about where it goes eventually, but there are some ways to keep it sexy and fun. If he’s into it, he may want to cum on your face. It’s just cum and you trust him. It has to go somewhere and it’s good for your skin. Wherever it goes, wipe it up soon. No one can relax and fall asleep when paste is hardening around them.

Swallow it or wear it if you want to demonstrate perfect servility.

Website visitors can also learn how to cook a steak, purchase merchandise, or pleasure themselves to a gallery of pornographic images of naked women cooking and cleaning for men. Only young, thin, attractive white women, though, all of whom have large, full, and undiseased breasts. Based on the imagery of the website, there are clearly age, weight, racial, and health restrictions to participation in Steak & BJ Day.

Cringing yet? Don’t, because this is actually for a good cause!

In 2015 we’re supporting Coppafeel® – a charity formed to raise boob awareness, fight cancer and save lives. 1.7 million people a year are diagnosed with breast cancer, and who knows how many more are indirectly affected.

You read that correctly. A deadly, painful, miserable disease that disfigures and kills millions of women is really all about saving women’s breasts so men can “cop a feel” and keep the blow jobs and steaks coming.

Beyond the clear pornographic aim of Steak and BJ Day and aside from the atrocious sexualization of a deadly disease for men’s enjoyment, it is also vital to acknowledge clear intersections between the objectification of women’s body parts with the objectification of Nonhuman Animal body parts. The organization’s tag line:

Rumps and Romps. Fillets and Fellatio. Sirloins and Sucking. Best. Day. Ever.

Women’s breasts, mouths, vaginas, and buttocks are put on a plate for men’s pleasurable consumption alongside the slices of lightly cooked and bloodied cow’s flesh. The language used makes the degraded body of the woman indiscernible from the degraded body of the cow. This is all about paying homage to patriarchy. Nothing is sexier in a patriarchal relationship than the humiliation and death of the vulnerable. In this case, the vulnerable could include cows tortured and killed to produce steak, women hurt and humiliated in the performance of androcentric sex acts, and women suffering and dying from breast cancer.

The intersection of these values is especially visible in the below image of a partially nude and sexualized woman covering her breasts with rotting flesh for the male gaze. The pain, vulnerability, humiliation, disease, death, and objectification of vulnerable bodies is considered a turn on.

Thin white woman on her knees, kneeling in front of a plate with silverware and blood. She is rubbing bloody steaks over her breasts and looking seductively at the camera

Actual image from the website

To those who have loved ones impacted by breast cancer or are struggling with the disease themselves, I can only imagine the humiliation they might feel if they were exposed to this “charity’s” imagery and claimsmaking. Beyond the misogynistic nature of the campaign, the fact that animal flesh consumption is known to be a primary cause of cancer makes this approach not only offensive, but conceptually backwards. Appealing to male privilege to raise awareness for women’s health is also suspect. Historically, women’s diseases have been trivialized or ignored due to patriarchal prioritization of men’s interests. But, again, I do not believe this to be a project with a primary goal of fighting cancer. This is pornography: the sexualization of suffering and subjugation. The cancer variable was likely thrown on superficially as a means to justify this grotesque display of male entitlement. Drawing attention to the fact that women are suffering and vulnerable to death and disfigurement is probably an added bonus: more female pain to fetishize.

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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A Feminist Critique of “Service” Dogs

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Vegan Service Dogs
When visiting Ireland last year, I regularly noticed charity pots on the counters of chip shops and pubs asking for donations for Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind. Oftentimes I’d have to avert my eyes and uncomfortably avoid volunteers collecting donations in the mall. I didn’t want to have the difficult discussion with these well-meaning folks about why I didn’t find it ethical to donate to their cause. It is not an easy topic because society rightfully sees aid for disability as an important social service. Any effort towards that value is seen as sacrosanct, and criticizing any of those efforts makes you appear hateful or ableist. This is compounded by the inability for most to think critically about the human relationship with dogs and other companion animals. People with disabilities want to live independently and in relative comfort. Service dogs can provide this. And people love dogs, and dogs “love” to serve people. It seems like a win-win.

Before I continue, I want to clarify that I live with a hearing and balance disability that is known to be progressive. At this point in my life I am independent and live a relatively “normal” life, but this was not always the case and there is also the possibility that I will be nearly or fully deaf later in life. My disability adviser suggested that I learn sign language in preparation. During “attacks,” I cannot drive or walk properly and must lay still for hours at a time. I point this out only because there is a tendency to attack the identity of the messenger in an effort to distract from the theory. I do not currently need a service animal, though at one time I may have benefited from one and in the future I surely may as well. I want to fully recognize that persons living with severe disabilities can and do gain from a working relationship with a service animal. However, I do not think this relationship is one where the interests of all parties are seriously considered. The institution of domestication also makes consent impossible.  It is an unequal relationship built on power and domination. Just because I can benefit from the “services” of someone in a less powerful position who suffers from this exploitation, is it ethical to take advantage just because I can?

The ideology of human supremacy weighs very heavy in the mix. It is difficult to think about our relationship with our companion animals as one of “domination,” but this is inherently the case. Service animals are, for the most part, purpose bred animals who are rigorously trained since puppyhood for one purpose and for one purpose only: to serve their masters. Many dogs live rather lonely lives: they are kenneled for long periods of time and they are denied free expression. People are even discouraged from showing attention and affection to service dogs because they are “working.” It is important for us to recognize that sexually exploiting vulnerable persons to produce offspring so that the offspring can be trained to be servants for life is a relationship of oppression.

While it is unfortunate that some of us live with disabilities that make life more difficult for us, it should not follow that we have a green card to oppress those below us. Even those with disabilities can still wield considerable social privilege. Consider studies of disabled men and women which find that large percentages men had purchased a woman’s body (and many of those who had not had at least considered it). Meanwhile, practically no disabled women in the studies had purchased bodies for sex. Women do not wield the same power as men, and are thus not in the same position to purchase the bodies of others for pleasurable consumption. Furthermore, the singular focus on disability can obscure the injustices experienced by others in the equation. This is why an intersectional framework is so important. Women victimized by prostitution are extremely disadvantaged, with large portions of them entering “sex work” as a result of sex trafficking, pimping, poverty, drug addiction, and severe childhood trauma.

Just as we should question the demonstration of oppression when prostituted women’s bodies are purchased so that disabled men can have sex with them, we should question the purchasing and using of Nonhuman Animal’s bodies and labor for human benefit. This is an institution of inequality. Some are hurt so that others with more power can benefit. Can women sometimes benefit from prostitution as well? Can dogs sometimes benefit from service work? In some ways and in some cases, perhaps they can. However, we should not get lost in musings of “humane” treatment and fringe benefits, as doing so ultimately masks the presence of systemic inequality.

Can we conceive of consent-based relationships in disability services?

Importantly, there are alternatives. I speak to an industry that constantly churns out expensive new canine products for human consumption, and this industry should not be supported. Few humans are financially privileged enough to afford these “products” anyway, and disabled persons are more likely to be living in poverty due to structural inequalities. Consenting and waged humans are viable alternatives, and ideally, their services should be covered by insurance and government assistance (although it should also be acknowledged that poor women of color are disproportionately located within care work and this work is poorly compensated). Community-based volunteers, family, and friends are also alternatives. Technology is regularly providing new tools to support independence. Unfortunately, having a human assistant constantly present is not always possible, and technology has its limitations. In those cases, a canine servant seems unavoidable. Another consideration is that some service dogs are adopted, and thus avoid a cruel death in a “shelter” when they begin their new “career.” If the choice is between death and servitude, which is preferable? And what of “invisible” disabilities like depression and anxiety that can be alleviated by bonding with other animals? In these cases, dogs, cats, horses, etc. are being “used” but are granted much more liberty. There are no simple solutions, of course. What is important is to remain critical of relationships of domination and to be wary of arguments that rationalize domination based on natural history, biological differences, or humane use.

 

From a reader:

As a former animal shelter worker, I know that the “rejects” from service programs are not always re-homed and do end up in shelters. As a sociologist, I wonder why society is so quick to claim that a dog solves every problem from being lonely to depression to blindness to hearing the door chime. The mantra of give someone with a disability a dog and then they can be independent is deeply woven into our culture. We’re quick to deliver the service dog and then back away from the situation so the human can be independent, as if independence is the most important thing in the world. Why do people avoid asking the most obvious question of all: Why don’t humans help humans instead of enslaving dogs or other animals to help humans in need?

Not only do I see dogs being used as way for humans to avoid interacting with each other, I see humans unwilling to consider why we are so quick to shove a dog at a social problem, as if dogs can cure social ills. It’s one thing to want and have a dog as a companion, but it’s something else altogether to use a dog in ways that exploit a dog’s nature and being for human gain, especially when humans are perfectly capable of helping each other with companionship, therapy, running errands and developing technology that will solve many of the problems faced by those with disabilities.

Is it possible that service dogs leave someone with disabilities more socially isolated than they were before getting the dog? What happens when the hoopla of receiving the dog and the training associated with having the dog are over? We know that when a service dog is on duty humans are not supposed to approach the dog or the human, that we are not supposed to do or say anything to distract the dog from the work at hand. The service dog also sends a strong message that the human with the dog values independence, and as such, it is easy for others see a need to honor that independence by just walking way and not initiating friendly contact.

It’s time to question the use of service dogs and other animals in ways that are not ableist, but that give serious consideration to the fate of the dogs.

The Reality of Sex Trafficking in the U.S. and Women-Positive Alternatives to LUSH Cosmetics

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Thistle Farm Vegan

PBS is currently streaming an amazing documentary on sex trafficking in the United States called, A Path Appears. The statistics are sobering. While most Americans believe prostitution to be a “choice” and a “victimless crime,” the truth is that these women (primarily poor women and women of color) are surviving severe emotional trauma and child abuse (usually sexual). Prostitution is the revictimization of the most vulnerable. As with the consumption of Nonhuman Animal suffering (“meat,” dairy, rodeos, zoos, “pets,” etc.), it is simply easier to view this relationship of dominance and destruction as a mutually beneficial one built on consent. But that is far from the case. Prostitution is for all intents and purposes sex trafficking.

In my vegan feminist work, I am frequently critical of how women’s bodies are also degraded within the Nonhuman Animal rights movement to sell organizations, to sell veganism, or to sell vegan products. Women’s bodies are bought and sold for someone else’s gain, but we too often take the “live and let live” path and presume that women are engaging in these behaviors purely out of “choice” and that it’s “victimless” or just “harmless antics.”  The degradation of women’s bodies should be our business and we should not look away because this is not simply a matter of personal choice. Powerful gender roles and a culture of sexism provide specific opportunities for women, and these opportunities are unevenly distributed. The research is so desperately clear that the sexual objectification and degradation of women’s bodies is linked to actual, physical harm to women as a group, but vulnerable women in particular. White women of means may have the privilege of some degree of agency when getting naked to pass out Tofutti deserts for PETA or flyers for LUSH, but real women in our communities are being hurt by the ideology of misogyny that is upheld by the notion that women’s bodies are commodities.

Two LUSH employees wearing aprons that read, "Ask me why I'm naked." They are both white and young, appear to have no shirt on underneath their apron

Readers are often flabbergasted to learn that LUSH engages the sexual objectification of women, and, while many stubbornly defend the company, others ask what other alternatives might be available. The truth is that LUSH is not even a vegan company. Many 100% vegan companies exist that produce body products in a way that respects women and other animals alike. Of course, we do not always have access to 100% vegan companies and some of us like to support the vegan options made available by vegan-friendly companies to encourage the growth of veganism. I was actually quite thrilled to learn that the non-profit featured on A Path Appears that saves and supports women and girls who have survived the sex trade also employs these women and funds the non-profit’s services with an animal-friendly bath and body business. They report on their website that almost everything they produce is vegan (except for some products that contain beeswax and lanolin and are products of violence) and no products are tested on Nonhuman Animals.

Veganism should not end with compassion and justice for Nonhuman Animals alone. If women or any other vulnerable group is being hurt by your consumption, it should also be questioned. I highly recommend this documentary and I hope that you will (after suitably preparing yourself for this potentially triggering material) watch, learn, and expand your activist imagination.  The next time you consider purchasing from LUSH, reconsider. Take a peek at Thistle Farms instead. We must understand oppression in terms of intersectionality, because all of these issues are entangled.

Film expires February 17, 2015. Streaming free online through PBS to American viewers. For viewers outside the U.S., try Hola, a free browser add-on.

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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On Swedish Veganism and Goodness: Intersections of Species, Gender, Race, & Nationality

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By Anna Nygren

Oat Drink

I think about: Buying things, buying food, buying bodies, buying inclusivity and exclusivity and subjectivity.

In Sweden, in the fall of 2014: The company Oatly sells its oat based products with slogans such as “It’s like milk only made for humans” and “Wow, no cow!” which made LRF Mjölk (the national organization for diary producers) angry and they sued Oatly. In the end, I think Oatly won (I’m not very good at understanding trials and commercial law, but I read that the process raised the sales figures). OK, milk producers being upset about what should count as Real Milk is not really a new thing, but still, I think this thing with Oatly and LRF make visible something about the relation between drinking milk and being human…and being Swedish.

Dairy Farm

The dairy industry quite often sells their products using arguments like, “From Swedish farms.” They also work hard to produce a history of milk-drinking Swedish people, and a Swedish self-image that includes drinking milk from cows. It has worked so well so that “Landet Mellanmjölk” has become almost a synonym to Sweden, referring to a Swedish people as being moderate (“mellanmjölk” means pasteurized cow milk with 1.5 % fat).

mellanmjölk

Making milk-drinking a criteria for Swedishness not only make violence part of the Swedish history, but also creates a limit for who can be a “real” Swede. It is a definition that excludes everyone who doesn’t want to be part of the milk industry, and it also, very physically, excludes those bodies (for example many Asian-Swedish bodies) that are hurt by lactose and so on. So, LRF’s reaction to Oatly’s campaign also reflects the threat felt by an Astrid-Lindgren-blonde-healthy-good-racist Swedishness to the national self definition.

I hope my references concerning Swedishness are not too internal. I recognize the history of racism and racial biology in Sweden. I think about the “folkhem” (welfare state, literally translated as “the people’s home”), “folkhälsa”/public health, and the violence and exclusions in these concepts. I recognize how Lindgren’s books have been used to define real Swedishness and a romantic nationalism, something light and bright and fresh and white.

Image of Pippi Longstocking, white, red-haired girl with long braided hair smiling in the snow

Pippi Longstocking is perhaps one of author Astrid Lindgren’s most famous characters

I think I love Oatly for challenging this, for saying, “Hey, your products hurt, and that’s not a necessary.” Still, I have a problem with a lot of Oatly’s rhetoric. Because they, in many cases, use the same arguments for selling their products as the milk producers do. Take, for example, the Swedishness aspect. They not only write, “Wow, no cow!” on their products, but also: “No artificial badness,” “Swedish independent,” and “Packed with Swedish goodness.”

Firstly, in the end of 2014, Oatly launched Oatly Apparel featuring t-shirts with their slogans written on them. The photos of the t-shirts on their Facebook page show only white models. People have reacted to this, and Oatly writes that the models are their friends who did the shooting for free, and that they gladly show cool people of other ethnicity, gender and sexuality in other spaces such as Instagram. Looking at their Instagram, I can see that they might be sort of right, but mostly I see only the packages of the products. I think the whiteness of the models are also problematic and connected to “Swedishness.” Seeing a blonde girl dressed in blue jeans, jogging shoes, and a pink t-shirt saying “Packed with Swedish goodness” doesn’t really broaden the definition of Swedishness.

Several images of models wearing Oatly t-shirts. All are in their early 20s, male and female, and white.

Using Sweden in their rhetoric might be a sort of counter-strategy. For example, it is working against the milk industry, connecting the Swedishness, not with Mellanmjölk, but with oat. And for a buyer in Sweden, the ecological aspect of using Swedish (i.e. local) oat might be of importance.

However, consider also the name. I can only think of American Apparel (and I most often don’t want to think of American Apparel), and well, Apparel might have other connections than American Apparel, but it’s not very often used in Sweden, and I think the choice to use the word might come from a similar strategy as the Swedish-thing. It is a way of using words in a different way: I can think of sexist American Apparel pictures and all the debate about them, I can see non-pornographic pictures with the same word connected to them, and I can think, wow, words can have different meanings, or something like that.

But, I still think the Swedishness aspect is problematic because of the whiteness and because of the “goodness.” Lately, the “goodness” (the superiority, the equality and being-best) of the Sweden (or the [self] picture of Sweden, or of Swedish history) has been questioned in different ways. Recall that Sweden was the first country to have a national racial biological institute. Observe that “neutral” can never be neutral because neutrality can never exist. Remember that Sweden has also enacted war and colonization. Researchers like Tobias Hübinette discuss Swedish whiteness as a discourse of Sweden as the whitest country, with the Swedish whiteness as the purest. This discourse creates violence on a lot of bodies. This Swedish whiteness is what I think about when I see Oatly’s t-shirts. It is a violent whiteness and it hurts. It reproduces a picture of a white Swedishness and Swedish whiteness.

On their website, under the heading, “Swedish independent” Oatly writes:

We know how it sounds. Tall, blond, beautiful, hard to get, extremely liberal with no sense of attachment or responsibility whatsoever. Sorry to disappoint you, that’s just not us. We are the other Swede – somewhat boring, super practical, painfully honest, notoriously hardworking and independent not because we don’t want to be social but merely because we want to have the right to say what we think and do what we think is right. 

It’s like, they make fun of the Swedishness, but they hardly challenge the whiteness. They also keep the discussion somewhat middle class-bound (that can be discussed), within a hipster-ish circle, and in line with a discourse of superiority. And then consider the use of the language, the consciousness, the negations. I mean, I think you might only want to abnegate your Swedishness if you’re not really risking losing it, and it might be impossible to distance yourself from it if you’ve never really been included.

So, I think that using Swedishness in any way is problematic. Maybe especially at the moment, when the elections in 2014 gave at hand that the third largest party in Sweden is a racist, nationalistic and fascistic one. I mean, I don’t think that nationalism in any case can save the world, or do much good, because nationalism per se is based on excluding (but still, some sort of “nationalism” might be temporally needed to fight colonialism and so on, though, Sweden doesn’t really need that kind of temporally nationalism).

Secondly, the use of goodness is, I think, another problem. For me, goodness is closely connected to Christian ecclestical discourse, and in the name of that goodness a lot of violent actions have taken place, like missionary colonialism and burning women for being witches. I think: The most violent and cruel actions are often made for goodness sake. And I think: in order for the good to exist, there must be a bad, and for some people to be good, some must be called bad, this creates a dichotomy that will always hurt the Other.

Goodness is also related to the individualistic view of the world. The goodness is tied to the individual person, who, by eating and drinking and buying Oatly’s products will do a good action and become a good person. And the problem is: Not hurting other is something that can never be done for your own ego, because then it is easily the case that what will gain this ego is instead something that will hurt other.

On the webpage for a post-humanist seminar in Lund, Sweden (that I wasn’t able to attend and for which I am crying my eyes out!), I read about the research of Claire Molloy (of the UK). I want to cite it because I can’t write it better!

She also problematized the (at least in the anglo-world) ongoing mainstreaming of (celebrity) veganism, arguing that when veganism becomes another private consumer choice, a hobby to find easy pleasure and fulfillment in, it easily gets detatched from its ethical dimension and radical driving force. The risk is that  the long term goal of abolishing the use of animals in food industry disolves and disappears under the horizon. 

I think this can be connected to the goodness concept. There are a lot of “good” celebrities, and it seems to me that it is quite easy for them to be “good” because they have the money, the power, and the opportunity. Not everyone has this privilege. This is another reason why goodness is a problem.

So, I think about Oatly, about being good, about buying things and selling things and living in a nation and who could be a part of this nation. I think that the problem is probably the market and the commerce and the capitalism, and the language and discourse existing within these, and building these. I think about violence and veganism and goodness. And the problems of how things get connected. And then, I think, I still like Oatly’s product (maybe except for the t-shirts).

Oatly Vegan