Tag Archives: Gender Binary

 The Politics of Attraction

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By Marv Wheale                                             

Evolutionary biologists claim that romantic inclinations are nature’s way of perpetuating the human species.  But who we choose, in societies where selection is allowed, is said by liberal and conservative-minded people to be based on free choice among the options before us.

What about the social determinants of allurement?

Learned or socialized yearnings within amorous relationships are not seriously explored by society. The chemistry of bonding is perceived as a natural attraction to someone – “the heart wants what the heart wants”. The culture of marriage, family, peers, popular love songs, Hollywood romance cinema, and social media influencers is constantly pushing the narrative.

However, interacting social conditions of attraction and disinterest complicate pure nature and emotion.  These factors are multifaceted and vary according to individual circumstances, including gender, sexual orientation, body shape and size, porn, race, colonialism, class, religion, health, ability/disability, age, geography, nationality, ethnicity…  This is not to say that inner wants and yearnings are unreal, only that external circumstances greatly inform them. 

These features are shaped by patriarchal organized power in an interconnected way.

While a full intersectional analysis is impossible to explore in this brief article, and probably beyond my ability, I would like to at least interpret gender relations as the built meaning society attaches to biological urges, learnt from social movements’ praxis.  

Binary gender differences in social roles, self-expression, clothing styles, makeup, mannerisms, etc, are not inborn programming or simply freely chosen. Our lives are bound up with patriarchal structural forces that take a primary place in defining and governing our minds, hearts, and bodies.  This includes assigning masculinity and femininity to bodies at birth and beyond.  These stereotypes, although not absolute, became learned and accepted over the course of acculturation and domestication (outliers notwithstanding). Patriarchal binary prominence distorted the diversity of authentic inner longings for communion with others with its opposites-attract ideology. The institutions of marriage and porn ritually and physically sanction this state of oppression.

Because of the grooming process of culture and economic systems, the gender division of functions like care work, housekeeping, apparel and employment (with some overlap), was entrenched as normal life, making outright coercion mostly unnecessary, except towards those who were characterized as unacceptable dissidents.  

The gender system demonstrates little to no intrinsic value to LGBTQIA2S+, disabled, elderly, and fat bodies, and they are commonly frowned upon. 

Queer, gender fluid, nonbinary, self-aware straight and nonhuman persons, in many ways, contradict rigid gender categories, even though they are just trying to live comfortably within themselves and in the world, having no intention of challenging gender authoritarianism.  

In cases where the deviants are relatively recognized by mainstream culture, it appoints itself as diversified without admitting the unfair position of minorities, and without scrutinizing the fault lines of the normative gender system.  

That the majority of males and females designated at birth remain uncritical of structurally hetero male supremacist organized gendering because they are politically habituated to it certainly implies it has nothing to do with personal failure. No individual is to blame for their socialization, but with liberatory knowledge comes an obligation for men to take collective action for renewal.

Vegans, too, who have the advantage of knowing how social conditioning created institutionalized speciesism, are prone to gender conformity training as much as nonvegans.

Gender hierarchy tying social roles and fashion to genitals, dressed up as natural differences, is imposed before children are even aware of gender (similarly, racism, class, ableism, speciesism…). Males, unlike females, are trained not to wear dresses, heels and makeup, or play with baby dolls; girls are socialized not to use hand and power tools, are a few obvious examples. 

We need to critically examine compulsory heterosexual and gender binary identity markers rather than simply move over to give space to a minority of nonconformists. Presently, for the most part, we remain stubbornly stuck in gender encasement, consciously or unconsciously loving inequality.  

The more gender conformity indoctrination persists, the more men and women deny it or say it’s a biological imperative, because the truth is too unsettling to face. The fear of violence from men when gender rules are publicly questioned and transgressed is also a deterrent. The result is that systemic masculinized power is maintained in both its malevolent and benevolent forms. 

One wonders if hierarchical social training in what meaning and identity are to humans is harder to recognize and change than so-called human nature. Biosignatures have more plasticity than sociosignatures will permit.  

Adopting a vegan feminist intersectional way of life is the alchemy of Transfiguration. And what a huge leap forward to liberation we could achieve if there were numerous songs, concerts, poetry and movies inspired by vegan feminism everywhere. Gorgeous music and art of inter-person communion through equality would exalt all.  

Take courage and dream big!

As sort of an appendix, here are some other elements entwining gender binary blueprinting to take away: 

  • Inter-racial-class-abilities emotional ties do not in themselves undermine ableism, colonialism, or white and upper-class supremacy as systems of power. These relationships are used by antagonists to narrow structural inequalities to individual mutual respect, treating material institutional barriers as irrelevant, even unseen. We also see this reductionism in male and female relations under male supremacy.
  • Mainstream society is extremely couple and nuclear family-oriented as the place to make meaningful connections—Indigenous tribal societies model group bonding as central to individual fulfillment.
  • Patriarchal capitalism, with its isolating liberal individualism and glorification of private property, keeps gender privatized rather than scrutinized. The economic system shapes our search for intimacy to be overly centered on coupling and children. Moreover, aside from high divorce rates, many couples don’t want to live with their partners, are subject to social pressure to stay, are afraid of male violence to leave, and/or can’t afford it due to economic inequalities.  
  • Overvaluing heterosexual pairing relationships places platonic friendships as second-rate. Few imaginative storylines in films and songs put non-sexualized bonds at the center of the plot.  Heterosexuality almost always receives the spotlight. Plus, living single, whether celibate or not, is undervalued as a joyous way of life. Institutionalized marriage remains a major barrier to uplifting these alternatives.
  • Veganism is sometimes noted in the entertainment industries, but presented as a personal choice, not a social justice duty to end oppression against animals by human animals.  No explanations are given about the correlation between gender and speciesism, or for advocating a non-speciest inclusion of other animals in the definition of family.  The very words, “man”, “woman”, “mankind”, “rational man”, “mother earth”, “meat”, “butcher”, “hunter”, “rancher”, “fisher”, “pet”, were forged in the patriarchal gender binary speciesist paradigm.

Feminism in Men’s Meat Market

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The cultural drive for men to consume other animals is well understood in the social science literature, but less research has examined how women as a distinct social class might also wish to consume Nonhuman Animals, and, more specifically, why women might actively resist vegan outreach efforts.

For some women, the alignment with male consumer behaviour and value systems could indicate an attempt to bargain with patriarchy, a strategy some women use, whether consciously or not, to protest their station as a woman or even improve their status by aligning with male power.

Other women may celebrate their consumption of other animals as a demonstration of their improved social status in a “postfeminist” society. Women and girls, after all, have been systematically denied access to higher-value foods, such as animals’ flesh. Many are deprived of sufficient calories due to cultural norms.

Women’s access to animal bodies may therefore signal “We’ve come a long way, baby.” Claiming “meat” allows women to claim their power. To this end, many feminists are resistant to vegan claimsmaking, arguing that food deprivation and dietary dictates are sexist.

Although feminism has historically employed consciousness-raising to awaken women to their personal and shared oppressions, the neoliberal influence over contemporary feminism has encouraged more feminist attention on individual freedom and considerably less on collective liberation. As a result, mainstream feminism has obstructed solidarity with other animals, as the requisite adoption of a vegan diet is dismissed as a matter of “personal choice.”

Sociological and psychological research on the relationship between gender and veganism often feeds the scientific trend in reifying gender essentialism (assumed fixed differences between women and men), focusing on women’s tendency toward plant-based eating and men’s tendency to eat more “meat.” More research, however, is needed to address a trend that is frequently overlooked in the literature: despite women’s cultural affiliation with other animals, most women continue to them.

Corey Lee Wrenn

Dr. Wrenn is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She is the co-founder of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and is a member of the Research Advisory Council of The Vegan Society. She has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute and has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Environmental Values, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis.

She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016), Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits (University of Michigan Press 2019), and Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain’s First Colony (State University of New York Press 2021).

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Research Finds Gender Bias in Self-Reported Meat Consumption

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Woman Eating Meat

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.

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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