Tag Archives: Intersectionality

The Patriarchal Orientation of Sex, Race, Economic and Human/Nonhuman Classes

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By marv wheale 

 

Neither capital nor labor tend to consider women as a sex class beneath men.  Both economic classes are prone to treat sexual relations as private, naturalist, voluntaristic, thereby not collectively antagonistic.  Sexual equality is generally perceived as almost a given by men and women of the lower and middle economic classes.  They acknowledge some irrational differences that manifest because of poverty and cultural discrimination.  Racism is frequently explained along the same lines.   Celebrating diversity and commonality  are deemed as the answers to sex and race prejudice.  Full gender and race equality will be achieved in an economic classless society, they think.  So sex and race relations are subsumed into the class struggle and defined in primarily economic terms.  At the same time men and women in the capitalist class are mostly white at least in developed nations.  They often admit that women, especially women of color and of aboriginal descent (minority men as well) do not have equal economic power to white men but this will be resolved over time with more awareness, education and acceptance of differences.   These elite, not unlike their subordinate classes, are resistant to the idea that there is a systemic sex and race division of power inside and outside the marketplace and the state.

In fact the sexes and races are classes too.  Anyone who understands social classes knows that they refer to power inequalities not bigotry.  Male dominance is a sex class.  It signifies the political forms men’s power has taken over time:  the sexual allocation of childcare and labour, pornography, sexual harassment, stripping, burlesque, beauty practices, rape,  prostitution, battering, obligatory heterosexuality, homophobia,  transphobia, the state, capitalism, colonization, the military, etc.  Women assimilate into these constructs.  They did not determine them.  Hence male supremacy is institutional sexism not a natural or solely individual phenomenon.   In terms of race class, it was white men in Europe, Australia and North America who organized  the government, economy, servitude of  men and women of colour, segregation and the occupation of indigenous lands – all illustrations of institutional racism.

As a correlation think about capitalism.  Capitalists and workers do not have the same power to dictate each other’s lives.  It would be ludicrous to believe that capital is not dominant over labour and that mistrust and intolerance are the causes of the ill feelings towards each other.  To see the enmity in economic class divisions as a result of reciprocal misunderstandings would be an obscene misrepresentation of reality.   Capitalist rule is institutional economic classism.   Mutual respect, dialogue and compromise are not the solutions here to power and powerlessness;  abolition is, at the system design level.

Big fish eating smaller fish eating smaller fish; meant to represent capitalism

Many millennia ago males constructed masculinity thereby creating femininity out  of females, causing the rise of the sex class hierarchy.   When women  were privatized and isolated into pair bonding/marriage it obscured their sex class status and the systemic violence towards them.  Conjugality kept them divided against themselves by publicly declaring their primary identification as spouse/wife.  Women’s lower economic status is shrouded as well when they marry men because men generally have more wealth.  What’s more, women mediate economic class relations between men  when they marry across (and within) class lines.  Women serve to ease monetary and race class hostility by having men of different classes bond across women’s bodies providing political stability and legitimacy to the whole class system.

Woman and man holding signs that read "marriage equals" with a figure of a man and a woman

As noted by Cheryl Abbate the ascendancy of the male gender is obvious on the basis of aggression alone:  “The idea that masculinity is responsible for violence, including sexual assault, is rarely disputed.   As Kilmartin points out, the vast majority of violent acts are committed by males, leading us to conclude that there is a high correlation between masculinity and aggression (Kilmartin 1994, 211).   According to the FBI (2011), approximately 90% of violent crimes in the United States are committed by men.”

Male dominance exists cross culturally in common and particular local forms too.  Women are inferior everywhere in terms of the gendered/sex lines of power.  Trouble is, the partitioning is usually defined as the biological sex differences by men (and many women) concealing its sexual politics.  When the Left admits that austerity measures and poverty affect women, First Nations and people of colour more than white men, it seems to be aware of the centrality of white male privilege;  but the Left doesn’t honestly face the universal historicity of patriarchy, preceding and following primitive accumulation.

Since all the world is a structural stage and the central element is patriarchy, gender conditions our choices in sexual relations in conjunction with capitalism in economic relations.   No one purely chooses heterosexuality no matter how much consent there is because the assent is shaped by inequality.  Heteronormativity under male imperialism is (man)datory whether it be monogamy, sexual harassment, pornography, prostitution or polyandrous relations.    As mentioned earlier, in western countries male monopoly is integrated with white supremacy as the public setting for people of color.  The difference is that many progressives suppose race classes should be undone while the majority uphold masculinity and femininity as innate.  They only want femininity to be as socially valued  and empowering as masculinity.  Liberal feminists take this viewpoint that sex work, cosmetics, BDSM, marriage and housework can be liberating.

Woman at SlutWalk protest holding sign that reads "Is it legal to eat me if I wear bacon?"

The following rhetorical questions should resonate with socialists and feminists alike :  Do workers meaningfully choose their type of work or place of work?  Have women played an equal part with men in conceiving and building the major institutions of society?  If working conditions improve would oppression disappear? If women are granted greater legal protection from male violence does their exploitation vanish?   If you have satisfying and high paying work, does that imply your work is not exploited? If a woman has high status in society by male standards does that mean she isn’t discriminated against or sexually objectified?   As feminist scholar Catharine Mackinnon once said, is “a good fuck…any compensation for getting fucked?”   I hope we all have honest answers to these questions.  Apply race to these queries, which we must, and you will have another layer of subordination alongside and below white women.  Add colonization, sexual orientation, age, disability, body shape and biosphere debasement to the equation, and more intertwining injustices come to light.

 

Women and Nonhuman Animals

Capitalists, socialists and anarchists have other conceptual barriers linked to male hegemony:  an aversion to regarding nonhuman animals as a subjected class.   Moreover these speciesist androcentrists dismiss women’s rank in interrelationship to animals’ position.   The comparative mirror reveals the oppressions are not the same: women aren’t eaten and animals aren’t usually men’s sexual fetishes, for examples.   Nonetheless there are numerous similarities.  Dog and pony shows are analogous to beauty pageants and runway modelling.Hypermuscular man is binding the corpse of a chicken   Animals are imprisoned and assaulted in our homes, corrals, barns, laboratories, rodeos, horse races, circuses, zoos, aquariums and fight rings.  Women are detained and abused in prostitution, brothels, rape camps, strip clubs, peep shows and in their homes.  It is men who typically control these forms of enslavement of women and animals.  Domesticated animals are cooked and photographed in sexual postures as the pornography of meat.  Women are sexually depersonalized in and by pornography.   Harassment is common to either group.   Animals and women are most frequently killed by men, and some women have been slaughtered, eviscerated and dismembered like animals by men.  In addition, societal assumptions in general that animals “exist” for human welfare should not sound totally different from women’s experiences under male expectations.  Even the therapeutic role animals and women play correlate.   Most people live their entire lives without learning of the barbarity that occurs behind the closed doors of brothels, pornography studios, massage parlours, sex trafficking, strip clubs and private dwellings on the one hand, and slaughterhouses, vivisection labs, animal entertainment industries, animal traffickers, product-testing facilities, factory farms and households on the other.  The business of exploiting women and animals for pleasure, convenience, amusement, taste and moneymaking is intentionally well hidden.   Disclosure would undermine the power and profit of male capitalist and socialist enterprises.   Men must have their sex and steak at all costs.

Men walking through red light district with women's bodies in the windows

The truth of the interrelationship of patriarchy, capitalism and speciesism is revealed by vegan feminists who believe it is crucial not to conflate them in ways that are fanciful and offensive to women or untrue of animals.   When relating the rape of women and farmed animals for instance, Corey Lee Wrenn  calls for respect: “Knowing that about 1 in 3 women have or will be raped, I find it extremely inappropriate to utilize rape imagery to promote veganism.  First off, our primary audience is women.  If 80% of the movement is women, and 1 in 3 women are rape victims, that means that more than 27% of our movement (or more than 1 in 4 activists) are likely to have been the victim of rape.  Any rape victim can tell  you, seeing images of rape or reading graphic descriptions is extremely triggering.  It is also revictimizing when it is made obvious that our community doesn’t care enough about our safety to avoid using our experiences for animal rights claims on our behalf.”   A discerning approach is always necessary to examine these oppressions together and separately.

 

Transforming Cognizance

Vegan feminists unmask and demystify our personal identities.  Part of seeing through the identity fog means admitting the delusions we took for granted, the “habitual patterns” –  the assigned gender hierarchies of masculinity and femininity, human species superiority and capital control –  reinforced through millions and millions of moments of social learning.  Before “awakening” we thought  it wasn’t possible for things to be any other way as if these tendencies were an unchanging part of human nature (coming from the stork or written in the stars).  These assumptions easily perpetuated themselves because they are some of the most unquestioned beliefs we have.  As we begin to grow in consciousness and apprehend the alternatives to the prison of gender roles, non-human animal inferiority and labour submission, we become unstuck from oppressive attitudes.  Declaring a primary loyalty to women’s or animals’ or workers’ liberation is now regarded as a misconceived notion.  They are different, interrelated and of equal value.  There is no complete separation among them when each is understood as they actually exist in the context of patriarchal systems and rules.

All this illustrates the extraordinary power and influence of male ideologies over our consciousness, unconsciousness and societal institutions. They render dissenting views like the abolition of pornstitution,  animal products and capitalism as absurd and unintelligible – it has always been this way so it must be this way.  Overcoming the suppression of freedom of expression by male dogma is daunting but achievable.   Promoting veganism is an essential though utterly deficient way forward.   Political engagement in women’s, people of colour’s, workers’ and other species’ emancipation from  patriarchal organizational injustice is the ultimate solution.    Single issue approaches focusing on higher status animals as in dogs, cats, bears, whales, dolphins, sharks, elephants, tigers, gorillas, etc., does not constitute a serious engagement with comprehensive structural violence when they omit contextual analyses and strategies.

 

Feminism, Anti-Capitalism and Anti-Specieisism

That deep feminism is the missing underpinning of anti-speciesist socialist/left/anarchist analyses is another point of this reflection.   Some pro-animal revolutionaries from these traditions agree that all oppressions including sexism are entangled.     However they are reluctant to admit that men, often white males, have dominated the top tiers of monarchial, feudalist, religious, slavery, animal industry, state, military, capitalist, colonialist, family and pornstitution systems.   The animalist left typically denies that the male sex class could well be the enveloping power of all social hierarchies throughout (his)tory. Patriarchy was never unvarying. It evolved in various ways depending on how societies were organized within the hierarchies of men of which women and animals had little decision making power. It would be more factual therefore to resolve other class struggles within the broader sex class struggle.   Male supremacy should be emphasized as the first among equal subjections rather than one structure among many.  Opting for an “interlocking equal oppressions method” has the effect of minimizing foundational sources and influences even though women oppress animals, women capitalists have power over their workers and white women as a group have advantages over people of colour.

How can we devise appropriate strategies to change the world if we don’t  analyze it accurately?

 

Note: Few of the ideas in this post originate with me.  The principal ones stem from feminists like Cheryl Abbate and Corey Lee Wrenn  who have taught me how to think rationally, critically and inclusively,  something my non-feminist teachers failed to do. 

 

“Sexism is Nuts” says company that enslaves animals, children, and uses disableism in slogans

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Feminists were in a fury over a new Australian Snickers ad that makes a mockery of street harassment and gender equality. For some time now, Snickers’ commercials have been based on people acting really strange or belligerent because they are hungry.  Once fed a Snickers bar, they are satiated and return to normal. In this Australian commercial, construction workers are acting out of sorts from hunger. We know this because they are yelling egalitarian slogans at female passerby that sound straight from the mouth of feminist Ryan Gosling.

Hey Girl: Gender is a social construct but everyone likes to cuddle

Feminist men: It’s funny because it would supposedly never happen.

In the commercial, we see that most women are afraid at first (and this is supposed to be funny), because we have been conditioned our entire lives to expect and to fear strange men yelling at us. However, the women in the commercial appear to be pleased and amused when they realize they are hearing pro-feminist calls.  Lisa Wade at Sociological Images describes the cruelty of playing on these gender scripts:

And then the commercial ends and it’s all yanked back in the most disgusting way. It ends by claiming that pro-feminist men are clearly unnatural. Men don’t respect women — at least, not this kind of man — they’re just so hungry they can’t think straight.

Wade finishes her piece by declaring that she would never be buying Snickers again. But I’d like to know what feminist would be eating them in the first place.

Today Cadbury jumped on the bandwagon with an ad for their Boost bars that reads: “We at #BOOSTNUTS believe that men with real nuts proudly respect women whether they’re hungry or not. #Sexism is Nuts.”  Then MissRepresentation retweeted it.  Now I’m really confused.

Cadbury Slaves Vegan Feminism

So far as I am aware, both Mars (who makes Snickers) and Cadbury source their chocolate from child slaves in Africa.  Their chocolate also contains dairy products from enslaved and tortured cows who are eventually killed.  Cadbury suppliers rip the newborns from their mothers, throw them in the back of a corpse-laden truck, and blast them in the face before feeding them to dogs.  The calf pictured managed to survive a bullet to the head and struggled his way across the bodies of his family members to the corner before he was finished off.  Additionally, Mars has been testing their products on animals for years–so they can tout the healthy properties of their chocolate.  It appears Cadbury was purchased by Kraft Foods, which likely conducts animal testing as well.  So, really, as a feminist against the oppression of others, I would never, ever purchase from Mars or Cadbury, and I’m really quite disgusted that large feminist collectives would promote either.

Cadbury Calves

Male calves are considered “by products” of the dairy industry and meet brutal deaths. Cadbury was under fire for shooting calves in the head. Though this image is disturbing, this calf’s torture and death is considerably less brutal than that of most male calves (who enter the veal industry).

These are capitalist enterprises–sexist or not sexist–they are out to profit by exploiting the vulnerable. Nice try Cadbury, but aside from being a slave industry, you also managed to maintain cis-normativity in presuming real men must possess “real nuts.” And using “nuts” as a pejorative is also disableist! “Sexism is nuts” reads like “People who are sexist are bad people, just like mentally ill people.”  Fair-traded vegan chocolate for me, please.

As Long As It’s Vegan? Single-Issues, Silos, and Social Justice

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Not Safe for work:  Contains semi-revealing images of nude woman.

LUSH "Go Naked" ad featuring four women standing naked, exposing their bottoms. Reads, "We prefer to go naked, like over 100 of our products"
LUSH Cosmetics advertisement

Single-issue campaigning and social movement siloing are toxic for social justice. Despite the veganism’s collective identity as a movement for love and compassion, it has a remarkable tendency to dismiss human injustices under the banner of “nonhumans first.” The “as long as it’s vegan” ideology has been used to protect nazism, rape, racism, and other manifestations of bigotry in the Nonhuman Animal rights movement, stifling critical thought and eliminating any chance for coalition-building.

What makes this ideology so insidious is that its adherents often believe themselves to be a compassionate activist committed to Nonhuman Animals at any cost. While this is, of course, admirable, it is also a self-concept which inhibits self-reflection. Because the movement is white-centric and post-citizen (meaning that most vegan activists already have a number of essential rights and privileges established for themselves), it becomes very difficult for them to acknowledge how many humans still lack these rights.

Woman used in LUSH demo pictured with cords attached to her head, she is gagged and wearing a nude suit

In one of several misogynistic live action advertisements, LUSH hired a street performer in a nude bodysuit to enact gruesome scenes of vivisection for approximately 10 hours.

This is aggravated by segregation; when privileged groups do not have to interact with disenfranchised groups, it is easy for them to ignore or downplay the experiences of others. Membership in a white-centric, middle-class social movement only reinforces these walls of separation.

Consider, for instance, this Irish grassroots group’s promotion of LUSH Cosmetics products on World Vegan Day. LUSH is known to regularly engage misogynistic tactics to scare or shame women into buying its products.  It also mirrors People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in prostituting women’s bodies to grab media attention and sell goods. The group announced that it would be leafleting outside the Cork LUSH store and accepting donations from LUSH for every “Charity Pot” lotion product that is purchased.

Please email for transcript of image

When confronted with LUSH’s misogynist business ethic, this local vegan community predictably employed a number of tropes to restore its positive self-image. First, it suggested that as long as individual women “choose” to participate, this supposedly absconds the organization that hosts the event as well as all involved parties from any responsibility for the negative consequences for women as a class.

Second, it is mistakenly argued that the inclusion of “men, too” would eliminate the misogyny of these tactics. But this falsely presumes that society is gender-neutral and that sexualized violent imagery of women would be interpreted equally with equal impact.

Third, for the purposes of this essay, this group also highlighted that the supposed animal-friendliness of the company trumped any misgivings about its misogyny. Nonhumans first.

As these deflections illustrate, there is a profound disconnect between the oppression of women and the oppression of other animals. The logic that normalizes the commodification and sexualization of violence against women is the same logic that normalizes the commodification and fetishization of violence against animals.

The vegan movement’s confusion over this intersection is all the more evident in its bizarre alliance with LUSH. LUSH is not a vegan company. It is a speciesist industry that profits from the the sale of Nonhuman Animals’ bodies, products, and labor. Bizarre though this relationship may be, it exemplifies how a movement culture that devalues intersectional awareness can undermine Nonhuman Animal interests. Putting “nonhumans first” may unwittingly be putting nonhumans last.

LUSH employee wearing nothing but an apron as part of an advertising campaign

LUSH often holds in-store promotions that feature its mostly female staff unclothed.

That activists appeal to the marketplace to support their single-issue focus is not surprising. I am of the persuasion that intersectional failure is intimately bound to capitalism and its intentional fanning of individualism and false consciousness. This ignorance is key for the perpetuation of an oppressive system. It undermines efforts for equality.

Any movement, faction, organization, or activist that fails to acknowledge the root cause of capitalism in manifesting inequality will never achieve its goals. By participating in capitalist enterprise, vegans only contribute to the humane-washing of an inherently violent economic system. For resource-starved grassroots groups, it is all too tempting to partner with speciesist industries who trade attention and platform for community approval and immunity from protest.

This trade-off is not a wise one. “As long as it’s vegan” does Nonhuman Animals no favors if it destroys the movement’s ability to be taken seriously as a social justice effort. Neither is it helpful if it normalizes frameworks of oppression, as these frameworks are not species-specific but universally dangerous.

 

 

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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Veganism is Not “Food Ethics”: Veganism is about Social Justice

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Mother cow and calf nuzzling

I was beyond disappointed after reading Olivia’s (from Skepchick) recent post and the discussion that followed in the comments section concerning veganism. First of all, there was absolutely no serious conversation about the connections between atheism and veganism. I am always at a complete loss to explain the lack of interest in veganism in atheist spaces. Atheists appear to be critical as long as they remain within the tiny sliver of conversation surrounding God-beliefs but lose all capacity for this critical thinking when it comes to narratives that those God-beliefs underpin. I would argue that the consumption narrative, with respect to animals, is one such narrative. Second, and the subject on which I will comment today, the conversation was carried out in an overly simplistic manner, which has been a depressing trend lately, even among other vegans.  As usual, this overly simplistic treatment of veganism was derived from the assumption that veganism is individually based ethical action rather than a proper social justice position and movement founded on particular ethical beliefs.  Key features of this myopic construal of veganism are:

(a)   At its root, veganism is an ethical matter grounded in the individual.

(b)   Veganism is an unattainable ideal. It is a guide rather than a realizable goal.

(c)   Veganism is a food practice, a food ethic, and/or a diet.

(d)   The bulk of veganism is to try “the best one can”.

(e)   Veganism naturally entails moments of “guilt” because one cannot be a “perfect vegan”.

(f)    Veganism is a practice conceptually isolated from other social justice practices.

Throughout her post, Olivia consistently referred to veganism as “food ethics” or a “diet” (c) and the rest of (a) through (f) can be seen in just one passage:

“We can see that not every abstract ethical conclusion demands perfect compliance because our own well-being should be part of our ethical calculations. Each of us has a finite amount of time, money, and energy, and we have to decide which arenas to focus those resources in. There are an amazing number of things we could do to improve ourselves and our communities, and we simply cannot do all of them. If changing our diet deeply depletes our resources, it may hurt us, or leave us anxious, angry, unhappy, and incapable of acting ethically towards the people around us (as an example I know that I am a cranky bitch when I don’t get adequate protein). If one particular ethical choice leaves us without anymore energy or resources, it may not be the most effective way of improving the world.”

Let me address (a) through (f).

(a) Veganism, at its root, is a social justice position grounded in the political collective.  This means that mass exploitation and torture of animals can be eradicated only with social and political restructuring. Notice that we demand social and political restructuring also to address the plight of other oppressed groups . . . because to be anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, etc is to take a social justice position. These are not individual ethical stances (although they are founded on ethical concerns and ethical implications do follow). There is no talk of “do you!” when it comes to social justice positions because to take a social justice position is to make some sort of claim about rights. Rights are a universal notion, not a “do you!” notion.

Not only is veganism a social justice position but also it is one grounded in a critical stance. It is a position funded by the critique of our inherited consumption narrative with respect to animals.  We take issue with the assumption that animals must belong in the consumption narrative and we hold that it is partly because of this flawed assumption that animals remain without rights. If animals are simply beings for us to consume and use, whether as food, clothing, entertainment, research subjects, etc, then it is contradictory to also hold that they are beings deserving of protection from violation.  As long as we assume that animals belong in the consumption narrative, they will never be granted rights. (Refer to my past post to read why I believe animal rights are the proper end goal for vegansim).

(b) Achieving vegan goals is certainly a realizable project. The only obstacle in the way of seeing this is the tendency to misconstrue veganism as an individually based ethical project! Obviously, ethical efforts made by isolated individuals cannot possibly dismantle the myth about animals’ place in the current consumption narrative. The consumption narrative is a systemic story complete with, economic, cultural and political forces; thus, if we are going to find a good strategy to tackle the problem, it will have to be at the systemic level. The abolition of chattel slavery was not the mere sum of individually based ethical projects. Rather, it was the result of calls for social and political restructuring. Abolition would have certainly been an unattainable ideal had abolitionists failed to see that the root of this oppressive tradition was based in a narrative systemically sustained. In other words, our great social injustices do not exist simply because there are “bad” people who are not willing to strive for abstract, unrealizable ideals. Great social injustices exist because structures are built and kept in place that function to perpetuate those very injustices. These structures are the very things giving rise to the illusion that ridding ourselves of particular social injustices are “abstract” ideals devoid of reality or mere phantoms of optimism that human nature can never accommodate.

(c) Veganism is not merely a food practice or food ethics or a diet. This is not to say that food practices are not social justice issues. They certainly are and deserve more attention. However, veganism is a social justice position with the aim of securing animals rights and, as such, is not exhausted by what we eat or wear. It grates me to even hear the phrases “veganism”, “food practice” and “food ethics” in the same sentence. If, as I’ve argued, vegans properly come to the social justice position by critiquing the assumption that animals must belong to the consumption narrative, then it follows that vegans do not conceptually regard animals as food. Calling veganism a “food ethic” or a “diet” or “food practice” is a lazy misnomer.

(d&e) Feeling guilty only makes sense when viewing veganism myopically as an individually based ethical project. I will have to support this claim by way of an example. One of my favorite films unfortunately has one short scene with needless misogynistic crap. When the dreaded scene approaches, I -as a staunch feminist- do not feel guilty. Rather, I feel frustrated and -at most (and at worst)- powerless as an individual. As a vegan, I am aware that I cannot currently live a life free from animal exploitation. As mentioned above, our society has systematized and institutionalized human dependence on animals and animal exploitation and torture. When I learn that my wall contains (most likely) exploited animal product, it seems inappropriate to feel guilt. I am not culpable in this matter. Rather, I feel frustrated at how pervasive the problem is and -at most (and at worst)- powerless. The feeling of powerlessness ebbs away after a while and the frustration that remains reminds me where the proper site is for my activism: at the systemic level. Momentary realizations of powerlessness, which is naturally grounded in individual powerlessness, and frustration are productive emotions because they indicate that the problem transcends the individual. Guilt is not productive because it indicates that the problem stems from the individual.

Shakespeare character holding a bunch of carrots asks, "To vegan or not to vegan?"

Some might object that I have given little to no attention to feeling guilty when it comes to “slip ups” or being “lax” in certain company or to those in dire situations who -regardless of social justice positions- must rely on animals for food and clothing. Regarding the first: as I’ve already stated, I think veganism is properly understood as a critique of the consumption narrative and animals’ place in it, which means that animals no longer conceptually qualify as “food” and that it is a social justice position, which means a vegan actually thinks animals are rights-deserving subjects. I think adopting the critical stance makes impossible “slip ups” or “laxity”. I (controversially) believe the “slip up” and “laxity” phenomena have a lot to do with adopting the individual-ethical-stance, which rely on vague notions of moral statuses and “cruelty” and does not do much to conceptually or critically alter the person.

I (again controversially) don’t consider situations that involve dire straits to be of any immediate concern to vegans. As vegans, we should be concerned with the consumption narrative; we are concerned with the story we as a society tell about animals and how they fit into our consumption routines. When people are eating or using animals for basic survival, they are not interested in creating a consumption narrative that gives animals the short end of the stick because of some perceived privilege. They do not have the power to institutionalize these notions. They are simply trying to stay alive. Professor Will Kymlicka refers to such a situation as residing outside of the “circumstances of justices”.  This is a different issue than what vegans should take issue with. (Similarly, when you spray an insect in your kitchen with roach spray, subsequently killing it, this is a different issue than what vegans should be taking issue with.  Such isolated incidences have nothing to do with maintaining the current consumption narrative in the same way that spraying an intruder’s face with the same roach spray has nothing to do with current human rights violations.)

(e) Veganism is not a social justice issue isolated from other social justice issues. Above Olivia states, “Each of us has a finite amount of time, money, and energy, and we have to decide which arenas to focus those resources in.” Such a view is rampant among both vegans and non-vegans. According to this “single-issue” mindset, activisms are structured to address one issue and it addresses this issue as being fundamentally independent of and different from other issues. As a result, we have to prioritize issues. The single-issue approach obscures the reality of how racism, sexism, classism, ableism, homophobia, speciesism, ecocide, etc are all not only connected but dependent on one another to form what I call a ‘pernicious holism’. If one sees this reality, the single-issue approach appears completely incoherent. If all of the issues we wish to fight against are enmeshed in a deep, interconnected web, then it makes absolutely no sense to structure your activism as if they are not connected and interdependent. Isolating one issue from the web is to misjudge the root and depth of the problem, in which case any further activism from this isolation is futile. Most times, single-issue approaches are espoused simply due to lack of diversity. It can be difficult to spot how particular issues are connected if you lack the relevant experiences.

For instance, feminist movements have historically focused solely on the gender aspect of their struggle simply because their members and the women they targeted and spoke for were all white women of a particular class.  Until recently, it never occurred to mainstream feminist organizations that race and class are social forces that shape gender. This illumination was afforded by the voices of women of color and women from lower socioeconomic rungs.  Although vegan organizations like to draw upon the likeness of human and animal exploitation, rarely do they take it to the next logical step to conclude that these likenesses have something to do with the same structure underpinning these exploitations. The anatomy of this structure on which all exploitations hinge is the pernicious holism that exists among all of the regressive –isms. To make a commitment in the right way to veganism, then, is not to take away time, money and energy from other valuable commitments. Making a commitment to veganism is just to make a commitment to attack the underlying structure of speciesism, which is structurally embedded with all of the other regressive –isms.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this is not to say that vegan activism is feminism is anti-racist activism, etc. However, to take on the force that shapes animal exploitation requires also taking on the social forces that shape and intersect with that force. Gender, race, class, ability, sexual orientation, and other forces are so wrapped up in animality that tackling animality and how it undergirds speciesism requires taking into account gender, class, race, ability, sexual orientation, etc. This is the multi-issue approach or as it’s sometimes referred to as “intersectional activism”. For a good demonstration of this approach, consider this point Dr. Breeze Harper makes when she argues that there is something inconsistent about calling vegan products “cruelty-free” when they are made by child slaves!

Conclusion. The take away from all of this is that viewing veganism from the individual perspective as a practice that exhausts itself in personal ethics is diametrically opposed to the aim of veganism, which is to eradicate the myth that animals belong in the consumption narrative. Since legal protections are the only things that could meaningfully prevent the exploitation of vulnerable beings and since rights-language is the only language that can ensure formal vulnerability and violability of beings, our task as vegans is to secure animals rights if we are to meet our aim.  The ethical implications which follow from this view do just that: they follow the critical stance that give rise to our social justice position and subsequently fix our practices. We need to insist that we are involved first and foremost in the business of social justice. Morality talk merely tells us something about us- about our character, about whether we are good or bad. Rights-talk tells us something about animals– about what they deserve and what they still don’t have.

By Syl 

A Commentary on Non-Humans First

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There is an animal rights activist group trying to shake things up by taking three steps backwards and dragging veganism/ animal rights to an all-time low. They recently put forward a declaration titled “Non-Human Animals First.”  Their mission? Vegans need to put animals first because apparently we are back in the activist dark ages, during which we assumed activism was a zero-sum game. Also, something about temporality because certain groups have to be “first” or “not first” or something like that for a movement to achieve anything.

Reads "Non-Humans First!" Image of upraised dog paw and human fist, with human fist crossed out

A representative of the group (which I will refer to as NHFirst) wants us to use the single-issue mindset espoused by early women’s liberation efforts, civil rights, etc as evidence that an intersectional approach is not needed. For instance, NHFirst points out that MLK Jr. was a “sexist” and “homophobe” and that while “it is great to be against all injustice, in reality people are complex and have differing views.” Who knew that being a sexist or a homophobe was simply a sign of character complexity?!

It speaks volumes that NHFirst is willing to deal with and accept “complex” characters like racists, sexists and homophobes, but not willing to deal with and accept speciesists.  This position echoes the ridiculous synchronic position I keep seeing in the animal rights movement which goes like this:  If we just accept everyone, no matter how horrendous they are, we’ll have more people “for the animals.”  They don’t seem to realize that over time, we will lose people from the movement since women, people of color, homosexuals, disabled people, etc will run the hell away. If we are all in a movement, we have to work together and that’s not going to happen if the movement is filled with people who have attitudes that motivate particular behaviors toward particular people against whom they hold those attitudes.

Moreover, they seem to overlook the fact that the lack of intersectionality that plagued (and continues to plague) many early (and current) movements is the precise reason we are still dealing with the very same problems those movements sought (and seek) to dissolve. Corey Lee Wrenn has already pointed out that NHFirst’s approach fails to appreciate what I call the ‘pernicious holism’ existing among speciesism, sexism, racism, ecocide, etc., and, as such, cannot possibly begin to dismantle our dependence and subsequent exploitation of animals. In other words, if we correctly identify the depth of the problem- that is, that the exploitation of animals is systemic and a crucial element of the ‘pernicious holism’- but we refuse to engage with the problem -the system of pernicious holism itself- then, we are doing absolutely nothing to address the problem of animal exploitation. All of NHFirst’s words are basically a lot of hot air.

As a charitable reader, I initially assumed NHFirst had good intentions that simply went horribly awry. After all, at one point many of my vegan companions were very animal-focused in their activism and never thought to incorporate human rights activism into their “animal work.” NHFirst, on the other hand, explicitly go out of their way to mention their awareness of (daily) human rights violations and human suffering only to point out that those violations should remain outside the range of our concern as vegans. Animal exploitation is an emergency situation whereas human exploitation is. .. well, just something brown people and women need to suck up because ANIMALS FIRST.

I don’t think the “brown” and “woman” stuff is wholly coincidental to NHFirst’s insistence to downplay the extent of human suffering. In fact, I think it is precisely because exploited humans are generally non-white and/or women that NHFirst thinks it’s totally fine to pretend human suffering has nothing to do with or cannot be addressed in conjunction with animal suffering. We all know that if there were to be a holocaust disproportionately impacting white or white-looking people, everyone would think it highly inappropriate to start yelling, “ANIMALS FIRST!”

Having said all of that, I don’t mean to claim that vegan/animal rights activism is reducible to civil rights activism or feminist activism or other human rights activism and I don’t mean to suggest that any species of human rights activism is reducible to vegan/animal rights activism. Certainly feminism has a specific beneficiary in mind; namely, feminism seeks to grow the rights and improve the lives of women, while gay rights activism seeks to grow the rights and improve the lives in the LGBTQ community, and so on and on with other oppressed groups. In the same vein, veganism/animal rights activism seeks to grow the rights and improve the lives of non-human animals. I don’t mean to deny the constraints that determine the specific flavor of distinct activisms. However, what I do claim is that achieving those specific ends of distinct activisms requires taking into account other social forces that shape and affect the specific -ism we seek to dismantle in any activist site.

For (an easy) example, a feminist activist who fails to acknowledge the unique role race and class plays in shaping the very gendered oppression that women face, especially women of color or poor women, cannot begin to adequately engage with, address, or dismantle gender oppression. She would be missing crucial components that shape sexism. So, one activism cannot be carried out in isolation from other activisms. It has to be done in concert with other movements (which is why the great Frederick Douglass said, “All great reforms go together.”)

I would like to take this one step further in the case of animal exploitation. Unlike any other oppressed group (possibly with the exception of prison inmates), animals are the only group that has never been granted rights. That is, although (some) animals have been granted some measure of legal protections, none have been granted proper rights in the United States. Rights language is needed to formally acknowledge the vulnerability and violability of beings. Unlike animals, humans have all been granted rights simply by virtue of being human. The distinction that rests between oppressed humans and animals, then, is this: while oppressed humans’ rights remains in the space of theory- that is, those rights are rarely enforced in practice despite having been granted- animals simply don’t have rights. There is nothing to enforce since nothing has been granted. This leads to a terrifying revelation: beings can be rights-having subjects and still face horrifying violence and exploitation, as we see with oppressed humans.

Hence, taking oppressed humans into consideration, the problem we face as vegan activists is actually two-fold: first, animals are not granted rights. In other words, even in the space of theory, animals are not seen as subjects that can be rights-having, which means they are not seen as beings that can be properly violated or vulnerable. Killing them, eating them, torturing them, raping them, etc are not considered ‘violations’ in the robust sense of the word. Second, even if animals were to be granted rights, there would be no assurance that these rights would be enforced in practice. Like most humans, animals’ rights would remain in the space of theory, which leaves them practically in the exact same position they were in before: subject to violence and exploitation.

Monkey in cage looks up to viewer, hands on bars

Even if one cannot see the pernicious holism among the -isms that Corey Lee Wrenn and other writers point out, the fact remains that vegans have a duty to involve themselves in human rights activisms to make sense of and work to close the gap between rights in the space of theory and rights in the practical sense. If granting rights is the only means to formally establish violability and vulnerability, but rights-having subjects continue to be violated and exploited in practice, then rights-having is essentially useless. It would be a shame if we worked this hard and this long to gain rights for animals only to have those rights ring hollow in the face of violence and exploitation.

NHFirst, then, is very, very wrong. It does matter if your movement is riddled with sexists, homophobes, racists, and the like because these are the very kinds of attitudes that play a role in nullifying the practicality of rights-having. Sure, plenty of historical figures that played a large part in movements were sexists, homophobes, racists, etc., but that only explains why sexism, homophobia, racism, etc are even more deeply (and invisibly) embedded in the structure of present-day society. It doesn’t explain why that’s a good template to follow in our movements today. We know better.

By Syl