If you claim to be against all forms of oppression but find yourself mainly subscribing to, valuing, and sharing the voices of white men when it comes to veganism or really all of life’s topics, you need to think about why. And you need to think about the consequences of that.
– Sarah K. Woodcock of The Abolitionist Vegan Society
Trigger Warning: Contains a graphic description of violence against a Nonhuman Animal and a discussion of domestic violence.
Nonhuman Animal rights groups have been circulating a horrific story of the kidnapping, battering, torture, and murder of a female emu by high school football players at a party:
On Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2015, eighteen-year old student Cassius Mankin entered the property of Bob and Carol Falk in Comanche County, Texas with several other people, both minors and adults. They took the couple’s emu to a party where they allegedly punched out her eyes and choked her to death. Police charged Mankin, a high school football player, with felony animal abuse.
How did this happen? A few bad apples? No, this incident is much more insidious . . . it is systemic. What happened to Miss Molly the emu reflects the power of masculinity and the normalization of violence against feminized bodies.
Violence against the vulnerable in highly-masculinized spaces such as football team parties and frat houses is a phenomenon that is increasingly gaining media attention. Importantly, as the crimes continue to pile up and are kept visible and relevant thanks to the efforts of feminist activists, the facade of gender neutrality in reporting is beginning to lift. That is, the narrative of crime and violence is more likely to acknowledge that there are gendered patterns in this behavior. This isn’t just a perpetrator that happens to be male and a victim that happens to be female. We are starting to recognize that we live in a system where men are socialized to be aggressive and violent, a system where men must prove their masculinity by enacting dominance and control over the vulnerable.
In reading the report of Miss Molly’s terrible death, if we did not know she was a bird, we might easily imagine the victim was a human female. This universality is key–masculine violence knows no species barrier. Patriarchy is a system that privileges men and exploits and terrorizes all feminized bodies.
These connections are essential to recognize for anyone hoping to dismantle oppression. For Nonhuman Animal rights activists, it is important to recognize the violence faced by women as it supports the violence experienced by other animals. For domestic violence activists and social workers, it is important to recognize how men hurt animals like men hurt women. Fortunately, it is common for social workers to be trained to identify these connections when interviewing clients or performing house visits. Social services departments are aware that when Nonhuman Animals are being abused, it is likely that humans in the home are as well.
Great. Now . . . what about the Nonhuman Animal rights movement? It’s time to acknowledge that women matter because masculinity matters. A single-issue movement that frames vegan feminism as “selfish” or “speciesist” wholly misses the point.
Dr. Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology and past Director of Gender Studies (2016-2018) with Monmouth University. 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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I recently had the pleasure of reading Dr. Breeze Harper’s new fiction publication, Scars: A Black Lesbian Experience in Rural White New England and feel confident recommending the book for newcomers to intersectional theory, undergraduate students studying feminism, critical race, and other social justice issues, and seasoned advocates and scholars who might enjoy a fictional break that speaks to their interests. A trigger warning is in order because, as the title warns, Scars deals with many uncomfortable topics and visceral experiences, including racism, domestic violence, child molestation, and rape.
Although the concepts that shape the book are acute, Scars is an engaging read that both entertains and educates. The main character, Savannah (Savi), is a young college student that we can all look up to. As a poor white girl from Appalachia, I sat mostly silent in the classroom, absorbing what I was taught without question. So, for me, Savi instantly becomes a hero of critical thinking as she challenges the white male normativity of the privileged world around her. She courageously speaks out against post-racial ideologies and the micro-aggressions of her more privileged peers, even when her friends and classmates resist. Savi is a little radical, and I love it.
Dr. Breeze Harper
But Savi isn’t a perfect superhero. She is certainly human, facing many structural barriers due to her race, class, and sexual orientation. Brave in some situations, she is scared and vulnerable in others. Her experience with racial slurs as a small child is heartbreaking. Her terrifying experience with a sexually aggressive customer alone in the gas station where she works brings chills. Her debilitating concern for her mother’s health and the constant burden of bills and cold temperatures reminds readers of the stark realities of difference in America.
There is also something to be said of the tension Savi faces in experiencing oppression. At times she is scrappy and outspoken, tackling challenges head on. Oftentimes, however, confrontation is pushed onto her and she feels quite helpless. We see this when she is engaged by her white male classmate who seeks Savi’s counsel in understanding his privilege, but we also see it with her struggle to come to grips with her lesbianism and the pressure to “come out” before she feels ready. Rarely does she feel comfortable admitting weakness and accepting help.
The book’s primary strength relies in its ability to carefully tackle the intricacies of oppression. Her best friend, who is hearing disabled, often engages his male privilege and abuses their friendship with near constant pressure for a relationship, seemingly unable to understand that no means no. Savi herself faces a considerable level of structural oppression, but she comes to recognize that she also maintains some degree of privilege as a human and as a Westerner. She learns that Coca-Cola is responsible for serious social and environmental injustices, but doesn’t want to give it up, so she creates rationalizations. Though she is lactose-intolerant, she continues to eat animal flesh and balks at the thought of giving up McDonald’s.
None of the characters are perfect in understanding oppression; everyone is still learning. We see this in Savi’s heavy use of sexist and disableist language, the fetishization of animal bodies as food by most of the characters, and her vegan friend’s wool clothing. Oppression is never straight forward, and Scars helps readers to navigate these complicated concepts and relationships.
When all is said and done, Scars is not a doom-and-gloom story. Harper is careful to point out bright spots, altruism, and room for hope. There are characters that are willing to learn, and many individuals seek to disrupt violence in any way they can. Although there are definitely hierarchies of privilege, no character lives unburdened from some sort of systemic barrier or personal tragedy. Everyone has scars, but everyone has the potential to heal.
Dr. Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology and past Director of Gender Studies (2016-2018) with Monmouth University. 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).
Trigger Warning: Graphic descriptions of rape and violence against women.
On a public walkway, women are gathered around. One woman cradles her baby. Suddenly a gang of men dressed in black with ski masks grab her. They pull her child away, place the baby in a crate, and she screams and cries for her child. The assailants rip open her blouse, exposing her breasts. She is beaten, pulled by the hair, and a man forcibly clamps a breast pump to her nipple. She screams in agony, blood pours from her breast. When they are finished milking her, they beat her about the head, tie a lead to her neck, and drag her to a waiting van, where she is dumped inside.
This assault (what Nonhuman Animal rights organization 269 Life describes as a “performance”) is currently hosted on Youtube (not linked to here because it basically amounts to rape porn). As of this writing, it has over 36,000 views. The top comments are:
Stop it boner!
And
Nice tits!
One commenter requested they go further and actually rape, maim, kill, dismember, and cannibalize her:
LOL! Great! Keep doing this so people can see how radical vegans really are. Why stop at branding and milking? Seems kinda wimpy to not go all the way. C’mon, 269, you can do better than this. Let’s see impregnation! Spaying! Neutering! Euthanasia! How about butchering! Fire up the grill along side the branding iron. A video of you radical vegans chomping on some human steaks would really prove how sincere you are about animals being equal to humans.
But 269 Life reassures us that the message we should be gleaning is that dairy consumption is immoral and exploitative. Really? Because all I got from watching this video was sick to my stomach, fearful for my life, and flash backs to my own experience with rape and male violence. As for the male viewers, they were apparently turned on and hungry for more.
Dairy farmers do not dress in black with ski masks and dump their victims in vans, the stereotypical rapist does that. 269 Life uses the language of human female rape and murder to tell a story about cow rape and murder. While there are certainly similarities, 269 Life has botched this job big time. By the way, the infant used in the rape demonstration was real. Exposing a baby to this violence, staged or not, qualifies as child abuse.
Incidentally, this group also hosted another street demonstration where three white men were chained and branded with a hot iron. As with the white woman who was forcibly separated from her child and beaten by her owners, these branded men in chains draw on a history of human slavery. There’s something disturbing about white skinned activists from a mostly white organization reenacting a history of racial oppression while simultaneously failing to acknowledge it in their narrative.
In another street demonstration, this time against foie gras (the diseased livers of ducks who are force fed sometimes to the point that their esophagus or stomach ruptures before they are even slaughtered), a male activist forcibly holds down the head of a young woman. Her face shows terror, his shows violent determination. Her hands are bound and a feeding tube is forced into her mouth. The imagery is, not by coincidence, drawing on the popularity of “gagging” gonzo porn. Watching a woman gag on a penis, or feeding tube, whichever, is supposed to be sexy . . . especially if she is hurting and humiliated.
In another demonstration by the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association, a parade float that is intended to “raise awareness” for homeless kittens is one big mobile strip joint. Nearly naked women writhe and flip on stripper poles down the street. Somewhere in the crowd of nearly naked women, you can make out a sign that pictures a kitten in need. One commenter writes: “Nice pussies.”
Some third wave feminists hail stripping as “empowering,” but for less privileged women who live the reality of sex work, there is nothing glamorous or liberating about stripping at all. The profession has extraordinarily high rates of sexual assault, rape, and pimping.
Animal rights activism draws on very real violence against women, children, and people of color, aggravating it, normalizing it, and sexualizing it. It’s clear from the public reaction, their intention to help Nonhuman Animals is getting completely obscured. Instead of alleviating violence and suffering, they aggravate it.
Dr. Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She received her M.S. in Sociology in 2008 and her B.A. in Political Science in 2005, both from Virginia Tech. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute. She has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis. She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016).
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