From the Papers of Marti Kheel Archive, Harvard University
Formed in the early 1980s, Feminists for Animal Rights (FAR)1 was typical of radical feminism in the latter half of the 20th century, embracing lesbianism in a larger social justice space (the Nonhuman Animal rights movement included) that more or less adopted a “don’t ask don’t tell” that approach. Founder Marti Kheel openly identified as gay and gender “deviant” (Kheel 1998: no page), and FAR participated in LGBT+ events from its beginning.
In its first year of official operation, FAR participated in the San Francisco International Lesbian/Gay Freedom Day, its table ironically placed next to a “burger” stand. FAR also marched in the Boston Gay Pride Parade with its banner as well as signs that read “Extend the Circle of Compassion: Go Vegetarian,” “Subvert the Dominant Paradigm,” and “Vegetarians Taste Better.” The latter was apparently the “crowd favorite” (Solomon and Stone 1999: 10). Regular engagement is listed throughout the twenty years of FAR’s newsletter publication, including attendance at the East Bay Lesbian and Gay Celebration and the Lesbian Empowerment Conference in Florida.
The Georgia Lesbian Ecofeminists, a branch of FAR, explains the centrality of this intersectional thought to the vegan feminist approach:
When the group formed we decided to call ourselves Ecofeminists because the term underscored for us the connection between feminism, animal liberation, and ecology. We also chose to include Lesbian in our name because most (but not all) of us are lesbians, and we see our visibility as lesbians as a political issue. We also identify the oppression we face as women and homosexuals as intricately related to the exploitation of animals and the earth by the same patriarchal mentality
(Georgia Lesbian Ecofeminists 1991: 4)
One FAR article, “‘So, What Do You Eat’ and ‘What Do You Do (In Bed)?’,” draws connections between veganism and lesbianism in how they are marginalized and how their personal relationship with their own body is scrutinized:
What do I eat? Anything I want, as long as it tastes good, is nutritious, is accepted by my body, and does not directly harm, or indirectly support harm, to any other creature on the planet. What do I do (in bed)? Anything I want that feels good, with or without a partner, is accepted by my body, and does not perpetuate hetero-patriarchal structures or beliefs.
(Post 1993: 13)
The connections were not always apparent. FAR members were regularly frustrated by the intersectional failure between anti-speciesism and gay rights. FAR organizer Batya Bauman (1990) notes, for instance, the regular occurrence of individuals claiming to be “animal lovers” in singles classifieds in popular lesbian magazines that also mention personal interests that include “fishing” and eating “meat.” FAR (1984) took issue with the “Gay Rodeo” as well, distributing protest literature on the event and sending letters of complaint to the gay publication, Coming Up.
Houston LGBT History.org
Likewise, FAR was adamantly opposed to AIDS research conducted on Nonhuman Animals, insisting that all progress in AIDS research had been achieved through nonanimal experiments (Todd 1991-1992). Kheel reiterated this value, insisting that the “best cure lies in prevention,” as animal-based testing is “morally bankrupt” and “scientifically invalid” with high failure rates and unintended side effects (1984: 4). “As a gay person,” she continues, “I sincerely hope that the gay community will question the type of research being done on their behalf and condemn all research that inflicts pain and suffering on innocent beings.” (4).
It would not be until the 2010s and 2020s that the professionalized Nonhuman Animal rights movement began to openly acknowledge and respond to sex and gender diversity and queer vegan theory established itself in scholar activism. These developments in visibility may reflect the larger successes of the gay rights movement, but it should be clear that the thoughts and actions of vegan feminists were aligned with these issues for many decades prior. Although third wave vegan feminism is often presented as an important countervoice to heteronormative feminist theory of the 20th century, the truth is that vegan feminists of that era were also explicitly engaged in queer activism, recognizing and responding to important intersections (and intersectional failures).
Notes
Although FAR was perhaps the most well known (or at least well remembered) of the lesbian-inclusive vegan feminists groups, it was certainly not the only one. In Britain, for instance, Lesbians for Animals’ Irreducible Rights surfaced in the late 1970s, bringing speciesism (vivisection, in particular) to the attention of the gay community through publications, leaflets, and participation in rallies (Adams and Gruen 2022).
References
Adams, C. and L. Gruen. 2022. “Ecofeminist Footsteps.” Pp. 1-43, Ecofeminism, C. Adams and L. Gruen (Eds.). London: Bloomsbury.
Bauman, B. 1990. “What is Loving Animals All About?.” Feminists for Animal Rights Newsletter 5 (3-4): 1.
Feminists for Animal Rights 1984c. “Gay Rodeo—A Sad Event.” Feminists for Animal Rights Newsletter 1 (1): 3.
Georgia Lesbian Ecofeminists. 1991. “Georgia Lesbian Ecofeminists.” Feminists for Animal Rights Newsletter 6 (1-2): 4.
Kheel, M. 1984. “The Monkey Business Behind AIDS Research.” Feminists for Animal Rights Newsletter 1 (2): 4.
——. 1998. Untitled talk. Papers of Marti Kheel. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute. Archive item sch01622c00397—MC962_4.17.
Post, L. 1993. “‘So, What Do You Eat’ and ‘What Do You Do (In Bed)?’.” Feminists for Animal Rights Newsletter 7 (3-4): 13.
Solomon, S. and R. Stone. 1999. “Taking Action in Boston.” Feminists for Animal Rights Newsletter 11 (1-2): 10.
Todd, B. 1991-1992. “AIDS & Animal Research: False Hope, Wasted Lives.” Feminists for Animal Rights Newsletter 6 (3-4): 1-9.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) was, in the late 19th century, one of the most outspoken and well-known women’s rights advocates. More than a feminist, she was also abreast of many other social justice causes of the era, including child welfare, food reform, and wealth redistribution. Many secondary sources hint that Woodhull had ties to vegetarianism (Donovan 1990, Robinson 2010), suggesting a potentially lost hero overlooked in the vegan feminist annals.
A survivor of child marriage, Woodhull advocated for the radicalization of oppressive marriage institutions and found herself dubbed “Mrs. Satan” for her radical “free-love” politics. Indeed, her influence (or at least tenacity) was so great, she was compelled to run for presidency under the Equal Rights Party in 1872.1 She believed in the human capacity to challenge injustice and progress society, but this position tended to reflect the eugenics discourse that was popular at the time. Indeed, Woodhull’s politics were premised on the supposed social and biological malleability of society:
Social evils are caused, first, by unequal distribution of wealth–no one held morally responsible as regards the methods by which the wealth is acquired; second, too many individuals are over-fed and underworked, and too many are overworked and underfed; third, too many are badly bred.
(Woodhull 1892a: 53)
She adopted a Christian scientific approach, deeply contemplating the animality of human beings and how moral concern for others as well as the cultural advantages of civilization differentiated the species. While such a perspective could certainly be said to diminish other animals who are positioned as morally and culturally stunted by comparison, her aim was to wield modern scientific and ethical advancements to better society (Woodhull 1893). For Woodhull, attention to the possibilities of optimum human intellect and social organization was needed, as slavery, marriage, capitalist exploitation, and other institutionalized inequalities were thought to stifle human progress itself.
For these reasons, Woodhull actually saw herself as a contemporary of Marx. I suspect that, vegetarianism, if included in her ideology, would certainly be positioned in line with her vision for social revolution. I examined some of Woodhull’s work in hopes of uncovering this possible intersection.
The results were disappointing to say the least.
Eugenics, Animality and Social Change
Woodhull’s politics are documented in the pages of her publications, namely the Woodhull & Claflin’sWeekly and The Humanitarian. Indeed, her journal would be the first to print Marx and Engel’s Communist Manifesto in the United States (Johnston 1967). These journals are also reported to feature discussions of vegetarianism. Woodhull had been very successful in the stock market (another feminist first), allowing her to self publish. Her writings are subsequently deeply polemical.
For instance, despite her dedication to socialism, Woodhull’s idea of progress did not bode well for society’s marginalized social classes. In one editorial, she refers to these people as “totally usless [sic] animal weeds” who “choke and sap the vitality of the fit” (1893: 53). She argued that humans, like “horses and roses,” should be bred for betterment, as “progress in evolution is accomplished by the elimination of the unfit” (1893: 52).
Thus, challenging inequality was not just important as a moral matter to those experiencing it, but to society as a whole since social inequality made it difficult to determine who was “fit” or “unfit,” blocking “human progress” (1893: 52): “What wonderful solicitude is shown in the breeding of choice animals, and what utter indifference in the breeding of boys and girls, whereas it ought to be the other way” (1893: 52). I did not read closely enough to determine how she planned to execute this genetic policing.
Perhaps we can grant that the intentions of many eugenicists, particularly those who were ardent social justice advocates like Woodhull, were well-meaning. Disability politics of the late 20th and early 21st century, afterall, are comparatively postmodern in substance, questioning what constitutes “good,” “bad,” or “progress,” upsetting old binaries, and advocating for the radical and compassionate accommodation of all individuals just as they are. These ideas, I can only assume, were not well known at the time or at least failed to resonate given the heavy excitement surrounding cutting edge evolutionary science. The late 19th century was truly emboldened by Darwinism, which instigated a dramatic shift in Western epistemology. It seemed increasingly possible that humans were not just divinely appointed on earth by some unknowable, uncontrollable power that relinquished little control over society’s trajectory. Life on earth instead came to be seen as a work in progress, a work that might be adjusted through human agency.
That said, the particular vitriol of Woodhull’s position on persons relegated to the lower classes, people with disabilities, people with alcohol addiction, and even sex workers leaves little room for grace.
Vegetarianism, Animal Rights, and Humanitarianism
Woodhull’s attachment to eugenics is extremely disquieting, and, given her ardent interest in controlling bodies–human or nonhuman–to achieve her idea of social and biological perfection, I held out little hope that her vegetarian position would offer any redemption as I continued through her periodicals. In fact, in my precursory search of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly (published in the 1870s) and The Humanitarian (published in the 1890s), I was not able to find any promotion of vegetarianism.2 Woodhull’s own writing dominated the periodicals, and primarily made mention of other animals for the purposes of comparison with humans who she believed ought to practice restraint and civility to distinguish themselves as a higher species. Domestication, with its manipulation of nonhuman bodies, was a point of inspiration for her eugenics agenda (Woodhull 1892b).
Dietary pieces were sometimes featured but did not advocate vegetarianism that I could see. A typical example can be found in a submission she published under the “Medical Department” of The Humanitarian, within which the author discusses ways to cure and process animal bodies for optimal consumption (Welles 1893a). In another article, the same physician rejects vegetarianism, as “the teeth of man” are “adapted to the mastication of animal flesh” and “animal food, thence, reorganized, furnishes immediately to man that highly organized and stimulating nerve food, from which the higher and nobler development of brain power is the manifest result” (Welles 1893b: 45). He goes on to justify human “supremacy over other animal life” by drawing on Innuit people of the Arctic and other Indigenous communities of the Americas as evidence to the supposedly natural (read primitive) way of the human species. Oppressing other animals is, on one hand, offered as evidence to the advancement of human civilization, while, on the other hand, the “uncivilized” peoples of the world who oppress animals (usually living in extreme environments and themselves deeply oppressed by European colonialism) are made examples of authentic humanity. The same weak (and colonialist) logics that stand in opposition to veganism today, in sum, are touted in Woodhull’s Humanitarian periodical.3
Her use of the term “humanitarian” is telling here. By the late 1870s, Woodhull was living in the southwestern United Kingdom, where the periodical was published and circulated. She was a contemporary of Henry Salt (who also lived in southern England) and would surely have been familiar with his own humanitarian writings and activism. Salt’s (1892) Animals’ Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress was one of the first major publications on the topic of anti-speciesism. His own Humanitarian League (now the League Against Cruel Sports) centered the Nonhuman Animal cause in its agenda. Woodhull (1892a), by contrast, makes no mention of them at all in introducing her otherwise intersectional humanitarian platform as presidential candidate.4
It seems very likely that Woodhull, a socialist-feminist humanitarian active in the same region as Salt and a multitude of other socialist-feminist anti-speciesists, would have been familiar with their political claimsmaking.
“Humanitarian” Vivisection
Further evidence of Woodhull’s well-rounded speciesism can be found in another socialist article printed in The Humanitarian which explores the science of physical labor and its impact on the body. The evidence presented undoubtedly derives from vivisection. Woodhull anticipates criticism from her readers, including a quote from prominent vivisection-defending physician William Gull5 at the end of the article:
Sir William Gull was asked by a lady if he did not consider experiments on animals as cruel. “madam,” he said, “there is no cruelty comparable to ignorance.”
(Woodhull 1892: 39)
Of course, experiments that transpired in Victorian vivisection theaters and laboratories are the epitome of cruelty, enacted for the most wonton of curiosities without anaesthesia or any other alleviation from fear or pain. These are justthe sort of cruelties that surely lurk behind the labor study that Woodhull spotlights in The Humanitarian, seeing as how it aims to understand the detrimental impacts of extreme distress on muscular and cardiovascular systems. Nonhuman Animals are inevitably slated for dangerous and gratuitous experiments such as these.6
Another case of vivisection is spotlighted in support of prison reform. One contributor recounts his travels abroad in Corsica, where he and his travel party killed several pigs to dissect for the purpose of learning more about their eating habits. Apparently, pigs, being opportunists, will eat all manner of things and persons, including deers, birds, other pigs, and even humans. This research is supposed to serve as a rudimentary criminology, explaining why criminals might engage in violent, seemingly unnatural crimes as do pigs (Rothery 1892). Whatever might be gleaned from the stomach contents of murdered pigs and bizarre trans-species comparisons of moral intent, it certainly does not support the notion that Woodhull was accommodating to vegetarian politics.
Conclusion
I want to be clear that my analysis of Woodhull’s writings is anything but comprehensive. It is based on a cursory and purposive sample of convenience. It may be the case that pro-vegetarian or anti-speciesist essays exist beyond the handful of digitized copies available to me, but it is quite clear that Woodhull’s first political interest is the sexual liberation of women, and her second is improving the moral and physical character of society through eugenics. Nonhuman Animals only surface as points of comparison, “nourishing” ingredients in food, and objects for scientific experiments. Nonhuman Animals, in other words, are merely fodder for her vision of a progressive society. The view that other animals are sentient beings capable of suffering and worthy of political action–a view that was widely adopted by other progressive era activists, especially suffragettes–was not adopted by Woodhull.
Ultimately, Woodhull’s campaign to include women in the 14th amendment to the US Constitution, the amendment that granted suffrage to recently enslaved African American men, sat uneasy with many fellow activists.7 Her insistence on free love—which prioritized women’s autonomy over men’s institutional and personal entitlement to them—sat even uneasier. Her politics were indeed so radical that she was eventually dropped by the American feminist movement, unsupported in her time but also unrecorded in their feminist anthologies and thus forgotten in modern women’s history. Even Marx found Woodhull’s socialist campaigning noxious and disingenuous. Unfortunately, if there were to be any redeeming qualities to be found in her support of vegetarianism, I have yet to find them.
Perhaps some elements of Woodhull’s tireless work to advance society is worth celebrating, particularly her effort to uplift women’s independence and her challenge the bondage of marriage. But her class position created a very awkward sort of sympathy with disadvantaged people that demeaned them as much as it hoped to uplift them. I suspect it is the same classist hierarchical thinking that leaves Woodhull unable to offer Nonhuman Animals any sympathy at all.
Notes
Woodhull is considered by many to be the first woman to run for president, however she would have been too young to legitimately take office in the event of her election. Furthermore, her appointed running mate Frederick Douglass was likely unaware that he had been added to her ballot, suggesting the campaign was only symbolic.
The Woodhull & Claflin Weekly is available through the Hamilton College Library. I browsed a few issues manually for mention of anti-speciesism or vegetarianism, but I also used a key word search for “vegetarian” which did not turn up any matches. Some issues of The Humanitarian are hosted online by The International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals.
Woodhull’s platform, does, however, heavily emphasize the importance of providing substantive, healthy, and unadulterated food.
Gull’s grim and uncompromising defense of vivisection has been cited as evidence by several web sources as to why this physician is thought a suspect in the “Jack the Ripper” case by some.
Vulnerable humans were often exploited for vivisection as well, including people with disabilities, women, enslaved people, Irish immigrants, and people in poverty. It does not seem clear that Woodhull was aware of this important intersection in her support of vivisection.
Some activists were concerned that introducing women to the proposal would be considered too radical by legislators and thereby undermine its potential to pass. Given that many advocating the inclusion of women were wealthy white women whose experiences were miles away from that of recently enslaved Black men, their insistence on inclusion, while merited, inflamed racial tensions in both feminist and abolitionist movements.
Works Cited
Donovan, J. 1990. “Animal Rights and Feminist Theory.” Signs 15 (2): 350-375.
Johnston, J. 1967. Mrs. Satan: The Incredible Saga of Victoria Woodhull. London: Macmillan.
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.
Although vegan feminism is a relatively new theory of social change in the West, it has had a rich background with a variety of innovative tactics, developed by innovative women in the resistance. In “Vegan Feminism Then and Now: Women’s Resistance to Legalised Speciesism across Three Waves of Activism” published in Gendering Green Criminology (Bristol University Press 2023), Lynda Korimboccus joins me in exploring this history through the efforts of three outstanding activists we take to represent feminist approaches to anti-speciesism across three primary waves of collective effort.
Charlotte Despard and First-Wave Intersectionality
The first, Charlotte Despard, was a British woman of Irish birth who was heavily active in Irish independence efforts, feminism, vegetarianism, and anti-vivisection campaigning. She is perhaps best remembered in the anti-speciesist movement for her protests involving the contentious Brown Dog statue in Battersea, London. The statue, meant as an homage to a canine who languished in the vivisection industry. This little dog represented thousands of others who were victimized by the increasingly powerful and entrenched medical science.
The statue was a direct challenge to patriarchal institutions and their systemic violence against Nonhuman Animals…and others. Despard chose Battersea for a reason: it was also a hotbed of Irish nationalism, feminism, and socialism. Despard’s protest tactics were intersectionally aware and explicitly engaged coordination across movements. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the belief in social progress was not isolated by cause. Many women activists were actively engaged in a variety of campaigns simultaneously, sometimes in overlapping ways.
Patty Mark and Second-Wave Open Rescue
By the mid-20th century, women had become the dominant group in activist ranks. And, although men’s philosophical contributions tended to take precedence, women activists were busy developing novel tactics for dismantling a now entrenched speciesist economics order. Patty Mark, for instance, had innovated a new strategy in Australia that both challenged the mundane normalcy of speciesism and physically intervened in Nonhuman Animal suffering. Her “open rescue” approach intentionally and strategically broke the law, the law being deemed illegitimate due to the horrific harms it protected. This tactic encouraged activists to peacefully enter industrial spaces to remove some victims to safety and disrupt industrial processes. Activists often chained themselves to facility infrastructure as well.
The aim was to attract media attention through illegality and disruption, bringing attention to the cause and allowing the public a rare opportunity to see within hidden speciesist spaces. Arrest was not only risked but even encouraged as it added to the spectacle and disruption. This tactic was innovative in introducing feminist ideals of nonviolence and active compassion.
Sarah Kistle and Third-Wave Vegan Intersectionality
Finally, we explored the tactical developments of Sarah Kistle. As the movement entered the 21st century, a return to intersectionality seemed ever more necessary. The late 20th century had witnessed a considerable neoliberalization that introduced and reified individualist approaches to social change. Indeed, the rational ideology that underpinned this shift made feminist approaches appear marginal, deluded, and unfocused. This new era of “rational” activism had also normalized welfare reform and animals’ flesh “reductionism.”
Sarah Kistle became a prominent figure in the debates that would arise between these two positions by the 2010s. Kistle advocated for a radical, intersectional approach to advocacy, insisting that veganism was the least humans could do to alleviate speciesism, and the movement had a duty to promote it as such. Importantly, she argued that this vegan message should not be restricted only to “animal lovers,” but should be actively put into conversation with other social justice causes. As a Korean American, she recognized that the unjust experiences of Nonhuman Animals heavily entangle with that of marginalized human groups. With the outbreak of Black Lives Matter protests later that decade, she realized this vegan intersectional theory by opening a vegan restaurant in Minneapolis, employing Black Lives Matter activists who had been harassed and arrested by the police.
Across all waves, we can find so many inspiring stories of innovative women who fought a speciesist legal system to advance the radical idea that animals (and the humans whose experiences intertwine with that of other animals) matter. Indeed, Despard, Mark, and Kistle took on the police themselves, using state repression as a means to shine light on the personhood of the oppressed. It is a vegan feminist criminology that should inspire another generation of women to critically examine a criminal justice system that has historically relied on violence, control, incarceration, and the stripping of rights to maintain not only speciesism but many other systems of oppression. Future tactics might continue to test the limits of what is legal and what is legitimate, devising new modes of resistance to unjust state institutions of “justice.”
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.
The abolitionist faction of the Nonhuman Animal rights movement is unique in the movement because it specifically values intersectionality. That is, abolitionist activists recognize that sexism, racism, heterosexism, and other isms are as morally problematic as speciesism. Indeed, many abolitionists recognize that these systemic discriminations are actually entangled and mutually reinforcing.
Intersectionality is not only applicable to general society, it has relevance within social movement spaces as well. The Nonhuman Animal rights movement is male-dominated with a female majority and sexism has been heavily documented. It is a movement that is also white-dominated with few activists of color offered platform or leadership and a notoriously racist past with regard to campaigning and claimsmaking. Acknowledging these connections in social justice efforts is so very important for counteracting oppression.
In a movement that opposes inequality but still evidences inequality in its interactions with activists and members of the public, a strange situation occurs in which inequality may persist unchecked amidst efforts to resist it. Following many years of social justice campaigning across several social movements, few would openly admit to being bigoted today. Most like to think of themselves as upstanding and moral. Similarly, in an era in which diversity is theoretically embraced as a social good, most people champion diversity. If most agree that bigotry is bad and diversity is a worthy goal, why the persistence of bigotry and exclusion?
Because discrimination is often hidden or abstracted through institutionalized practices, it becomes more difficult to identify. With discrimination hard to “see” (at least to those who benefit from it or who are otherwise not impacted by it), a disconnect between theory (philosophical support for social justice) and practice (physical support for social justice) emerges. Oppression is systematic, and, at least in the West, individualism makes it difficult to understand how each one of us is shaped by that system and how we, in turn, contribute to that system through passive (or active) compliance. Those who are relatively privileged may view themselves as allies against oppression, but will not always recognize responsibility for that oppression or personal benefit from it.
It gets even trickier in a social movement space in which activists actively embrace intersectionality theory and diversity goals. More than the average citizen, a social justice activist is personally invested in an anti-oppression identity. For some, this means regular interrogation of oppression in all its forms paired with active self-reflection. Being an ally is not easy, as it can require unlearning quite a lot of socialized norms and values, resisting entrenched social systems, and giving up privilege. It takes humility and a willingness to make mistakes and feel uncomfortable sometimes.
For many others, however, the intersectionality identity simply becomes a badge to be worn. Anyone can wear the badge, whether or not they actually do anything to earn it. Even worse, the badge can become a form of authority. With the badge brandished, it becomes difficult to challenge activists who engage in harmful or problematic practices. The badge can also create a psychological barrier for the wearer who may become less willing to acknowledge challenges as valid.
Unfortunately, this is a persistent issue in anti-speciesist spaces, including the abolitionist faction (despite its principled commitment to intersectionality). Privileged abolitionist vegans regularly flash their ally badges while simultaneously blocking intersectionality efforts. Some years ago, Sarah Kistle of The Abolitionist Vegan Society terms these persons “Badge-allies.” Badge-allies create another barrier to meaningful feminist discourse and complicate the possibility of implementing anti-oppression practice.
By way of some examples, women who have critiqued patriarchy in the movement have been accused of “misandry” and subjected to coordinated stalking and bullying campaigns. Women of color introducing conversations about race have been harassed and deplatformed, as their criticism of white supremacy is interpreted as “racist.” The majority of the accusers, bullies, harassers, and gatekeepers in these cases were white men (and many white women). Wielded in these ways, intersectionality becomes a strategic weapon for privileged people to protect their privilege and protect themselves from criticism.
These actions reflect an element of conscious discrimination, but they need not always be intentional. Microaggressions are also heavily used by Badge-allies. Again, few persons today see themselves as bigoted, but they can still engage in discrimination in unintended or unconscious ways. Microaggressions can include interruption, cat-calling, sexualizing, or desexualizing, misgendering, tone-policing, delivering or laughing at a sexist or racist joke, dismissing, downplaying or ignoring the experiences of a marginalized group, and denying the reality of sexism, racism, and other forms of oppression. Badge-allies are less likely to see microaggressions of this kind as aggressive or discriminatory because they have self-identified as intersectionally conscious.
Being an ally means more than simply wearing the identity like a badge. True allyship requires action and open dialogue with the marginalized groups that are being represented. Intersectionality is not a means for protecting privilege and shutting down critical discussions. It was developed as a philosophical tool for acknowledging a variety of experiences and how several core systems of inequality and mechanisms of oppression operate in similar, mutually supportive ways to shape those experiences. Intersectionality is a map for resistance, not a manual for maintaining a broken system.
An earlier version of this essay first appeared on The Abolitionist Activist Vegan blog on April 2, 2015.
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.
As the animal rights movement expanded in the late 20th century, fuelled in large part by the popularity of the civil rights movement, vegan feminism took shape as a potent and explicit critique of patriarchal oppression women and other animals and the male-centeredness in anti-speciesist mobilization.
In addition to the influences of anti-racism, feminism, and other social justice movements of the era, the environmental movement also offered a much-needed seedbed for theoretical development. Vegan feminism might be identified as a theory of animal rights, but it owes much of its development to the ecofeminist movement of the late 20th century. Many scholar-activists from the animal rights movement, such as Carol Adams, Greta Gaard, Lori Gruen, and Marti Kheel published and presented extensively in ecofeminist spaces.
Ecofeminism emerged in resistance to the androcentrism of environmental philosophy and activism, arguing that gender inequality served as the foundation to environmental destruction and subsequent violence against women and the natural world. Vegan ecofeminists expanded this discourse in the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s by explicitly acknowledging the oppression of nonhuman animals as important for advancing ecofeminist theory to its fullest intersectional expression.
As vegan ecofeminism gathered strength, it began to take on the Nonhuman Animal rights movement with more confidence. This culminated in the formation of Feminist for Animal Rights in 1981. For the next twenty years, FAR would develop an activist-oriented theory of vegan feminism that would interrogate anti-speciesism as a gender-neutral affair.
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.
