In this podcast, Corey and Brian liberate a can of worms in discussing the many important overlaps and disconnects between socialist activism and veganism. Despite the relevance of Marxist critique, it seems that ideologies have gotten the better of us.
This episode is not safe for work (contains cursing).
Episode recorded on September 24, 2016.
Alexander Simon – “Against Trophy Hunting: A Marxian-Leopoldian Critique” Monthly Review
By Michele Kaplan
Image by Claudia Hafner Watercolor
There was a period in my life
where I devoted
My heart. My soul. My time.
Passionate. Vegan. To Animal Rights.
I would stand there in the freezing cold, some winter nights.
bundled up like I was going on an arctic expedition
with my activist family by my side
What do we want? Animal Liberation! When do we want it? NOW!
all with my camera, raised fist or a protest sign,
#ForTheAnimals! #ForTheEarth! #ForTheMovement!
and then. my wheelchair. stopped.
working
and no longer was I able to attend,
the many and various AR events.
And because sometimes shit happens consecutively,
my physical health also went sploot.
*sploosh*
It all began to unravel.
I began to share less and less vegan articles on social media
because I just lacked the energy to engage
in the sometimes defensive and hostile conversations, as I tried to explain.
why veganism
I began to share less Animal Liberation events
because I was already feeling isolated from not being able to attend,
because I lacked the heart space required to further face isolation.
backlash. that can occur from advocating
for a cause that goes against the norm.
No more energy to give
to the long draining internet conversations
with the single issue activists
who felt that veganism gave them some sort of free pass!
to discriminate.
No energy for the long draining internet conversations
for the activists who cried out
“vegan apologist!!” “sellout!”, accusing me of distracting from the cause.
for when I told them that it didn’t.
No more energy to write the intersectional articles in response,
desperate to do damage control because what. if. someone
outside of the movement
read this (what they posted) and thought
THIS represents the movement as. a. whole!
That this deters them from going vegan!
Oh no! Quick! We have to do… something!
#ForTheAnimals! #ForTheEarth! #ForTheMovement!
No more energy to spare for the urgency.
No more energy to spare…
No energy to spare for the anger in the movement,
lacking mindfulness, driven by ego rather than the cause.
No energy, not even for the intersectional anger, driven by compassion.
No energy to spare to be angry.
There was no energy to spare…
And when people would turn and say to me (almost demanding)
“Go ahead. Convince me. Why should I go vegan” (as you have done before)
a voice in my heart and head would cry out
“I don’t fucking care if you go vegan!!”
I am overwhelmed. I am drained. Thirsty soul.
I am just trying to survive.
get though this.
I have nothing to give.
And as time went on, and I became
isolated from the community
(which I say without resentment.
For this is the nature of the activist family.
The cause is the glue)
I began to rethink my devotion
Once married to the cause, I had no choice but to now map out:
Just who am I (when I’m not the hardcore animal rights activist, taking photos at the events)?
Quiet and aching from the times,
searching for a sense of community.
I began to rediscover a life beyond the movement.
And because the majority of people who stood by me during this time,
happened to be the folks I knew before I went vegan.
I began to question ideas of compassion
I began to question ideas of priority
Just what is important to me in this life?
And what is worth my devotion?
But if this was in question.
Yes.
I am still vegan.
#ForTheAnimals. #ForTheEarth.
| Author’s Note:
This poem is in no way putting down or trying to get people to not get involved in the AR movement. Like any activist movement in society, there are problems within the movement. This is not an animal rights thing. There are issues of privilege. But there is also a growing intersectional side to animal rights. This poem wrote was written in regard to my experience. It’s not to say that I will never return to the movement. I probably will. Activism is a part of me. But it talks about defining veganism for yourself. Not in the sense that you occasionally eat vegan food but still call yourself vegan, but in regard to the idea that a “real” or true vegan is out there in the streets, fighting for the animals but sometimes that’s just not an option. And that doesn’t mean one should stop being vegan, because veganism is not about a human run movement. It’s about the animals and the earth. This is also not to suggest that no one in the AR movement stood by me. While there is a difference between activist friends and friends, I have made good fiends in the movement as well. |
This essay originally appeared on Rebelwheels’ Soapbox on May 17, 2015.
Michele Kaplan is a queer (read: bisexual), geek-proud, intersectional activist on wheels (read: motorized wheelchair), who tries to strike a balance between activism, creativity and self care, while trying to change the world.
Why fedoras? See bottom of essay.
Dear readers,
Are you tired of endless microaggressions and intentional ignorance disrupting your activism? Totally over the overt racism and sexism levied at you by privileged persons determined to ruin your day? Got a racial tension headache?
Annoyed at the time wasted every day bouncing off derailing comments when you could be advocating for social justice? Yuck. I know I am.
Of course, activists are well aware of the tough resistance inherent to social justice work. Social change is hard. People don’t want to give up their privilege.
But feminists are also aware of a particularly insidious aspect of this work: the frustration, stress, and energy expended in grappling with disingenuous persons who want nothing more than to cause us pain and to block social progress. You know, the doxxers, the cyber-stalkers, the “all lives matter” espousers, the “not all men” proclaimers, and the “reverse racism/sexism” wannabe philosophers. It’s the trolling, the mocking, and the jabs at underprivileged people made by privileged people. It’s the revelry in bigotry.
Certainly, we do not live in a post-racial/post-feminist world, and these attitudes and behaviors are still commonplace in our society. However, it is especially disheartening when they characterize social movements. It’s also especially crushing when it takes place online, where there is little recourse for those targeted. In fact, this kind of behavior especially flourishes in online spaces (male-created and male-dominated) where marginalized persons network and advocate at low cost (which is crucial for us, as poverty targets women and people of color).
Racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, and other oppressions that seem to proliferate and flourish online can leave activists feeling frustrated, sidetracked, and ineffective. And that’s the point. Countermovements and bigots are successful when they keep activists from doing their important work.
Just how to handle this conundrum has been heavily debated. Some advocate ignoring it, while others advocate spiritual recentering and understanding. Some prefer to tackle it head on by publicly shaming and outing abusers to demand accountability. Whatever works for you, it is still important to acknowledge that the negative impact that systemic oppression has on marginalized activists is real. It hurts.
It also hinders.
My wise friend Aph Ko once explained to me that we all know how to break things down and criticize what is wrong in the world, but we don’t seem to be as skilled in building things back up. We don’t nurture our imagination for reconstruction enough. Instead of incessantly focusing on the negative, how can we start to create the positive world we want to inhabit? Can we start to tune out the bad with stronger, clearer, more radiant messages of social justice and equality?
And so, my dear vegfems, this is my resolution to share with you. Every time someone with ill-intentions seeks to bring you down, slur you, scare you, silence you, try this:
|
Do something positive for Nonhuman Animal liberation (or Black liberation, or trans liberation, or women’s liberation, et cetera). |
Take the ugliness you have been served and use it to fuel your actions in the service of good.
Can you do that? Try it. It doesn’t have to be major. If someone tells you that Black Lives Matter is narcissistic, bring some food to a feral cat colony in your area. If someone calls you a cunt, send an email to a feminist friend and offer some support and tend to the friendship. Shamed for promoting anti-reformist approaches to animal rights? Go post some leaflets in your community. Received a microaggression on Facebook? Give your dog a nice brushing, or treat your cat to some playtime. You get the idea.
Take that negative energy and flip it. When life gives you fedoras, make social justice.
Keep putting the good out there. It won’t stop the hate, and it won’t stop the violence. But it can help you to cope in a constructive way, and it will move us closer to our goal of peace.
So let’s give it a go, okay?
And let us know how it turned out! Please stop by Vegan Feminist Network on Facebook and share your stories, or email them to us! Check out WhyVeganism.com for more ideas.
In love and solidarity,
Vegan Feminist Network
Why Fedoras? In modern feminist spaces, fedoras have come to symbolize fraudulent “Men’s Rights Activism,” or feminist countermovement activity.
New research confirms that women downplay their flesh consumption. Gender roles strongly influence our attitudes and behaviors…and this includes what we eat and how we eat it.
Caring about Nonhuman Animals is “for girls.” Women are socialized to be empathetic to other animals, while men are socialized to have instrumental, non-caring relationships with other animals.
For women and men, gender is something that is performed. Eating animals or not eating them is part of that performance. Not only do women eat less flesh than men, they also underreport their actual consumption. This is because femininity requires that women consume less flesh, and women feel pressured to conform to that feminine ideal.
The gender binary aggravates this, pushing women to care about animals (and not eat them) and pushing men to not care about animals (and eat a lot of them). This binary stretches and distorts the behavior of men and women. Performing gender according to this exaggerated binary helps to reinforce the perceived natural differences between women and men. This not only erases the existence of nonconforming persons, but it also supports patriarchal dominance.
What does this mean for activists? First, women are clearly the “low hanging fruit” in terms of outreach, as they are more receptive to anti-speciesist campaigning because of their gendered socialization. It also means that men will be a tougher audience as they must overcome both human and male supremacist ideologies on their path to veganism. According to the research, simply making mention of a PETA video was enough to induce the guilt and denial response from women, but men had no such reaction.
Thank you to Carol J. Adams for bringing attention to this story.
Dr. 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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In an interview hosted by Cherise Charleswell and Valecia Phillips, I discuss my forthcoming book, A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory, as well as how veganism and the Nonhuman Animal rights movement falls into the scope of a feminist framework. Specifically I unpack the relevance of speciesism to feminism, the Nonhuman Animal rights movement’s problems with sexism and racism, and the corrupting effect that capitalism has on social justice efforts.
Feminist Magazine on KPFK is the weekly Southern California radio show of news, views, politics and culture with an intersectional feminist perspective.
You can access the stream by clicking here or pressing play below.
Macra na Feirme, a farmer’s association in Ireland, is creating a pornographic calendar to raise awareness about mental health problems and suicide in the farming community, particularly that of young men.
This project is gendered, as pornography predominantly involves the display of women’s bodies, while farming is masculinized. Women are the objects on display, while men are the subjects of concern.
Calendar sales will go to the mental health non-profit Walk In My Shoes
What is interesting is that the campaign seeks to challenge unrealistic masculine gender roles (which discourage boys and men with depression from seeking help or admitting weakness), and yet those same roles are protected by framing the campaign in clear scripts of patriarchal dominance.
Importantly, the centering of men’s experiences also makes invisible the multitude of research that shows clear correlations between the sexual objectification of women and women’s higher rates of depression, anxiety, and self-harm, as well as lower rates of self image and self efficacy.
But more is going on in these images–we’re also seeing the romanticization and sexualization of speciesism. In one image, the Rose of Kilkenny (Ireland’s version of Miss America), poses seductively with a milking device. An instrument of torture for the Nonhuman Animals involved, but a very naturalized symbol of power, domination, and the pleasurable consumption of the female body for humans who interpret the image.
What’s also made invisible is the relationship between mental health and participation in systemic violence against the vulnerable. Yes, the campaign seeks to bring attention to the emotional challenges associated with farming, but no connection is being made to the relationship between hurting others and the hurt one experiences themselves. Slaughterhouse workers, for instance, are seriously psychologically impacted by the killing and butchering they must engage. Dairy workers, too, are paying a psychological price for their participation. This isn’t just about “farming” in general, this is about speciesist practices in particular. Speciesism hurts us all: Nonhuman Animals in particular, male farmers as a consequence, and women who are objectified and hurt in a society where the exploitation of feminized vulnerable groups is normalized.
Indeed, I find it interesting that, for women who want to participate in a social movement, the “go to” response is so often to get naked or make pornography. It is a powerful statement about the gender hierarchy in our society and the limited and often disempowering choices available to women. Ultimately, it speaks to a considerable limitation on our social justice imagination.
Thank you to our Hungarian contributor Eszter Kalóczkai for bringing attention to this story.
Dr. 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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