Marv Wheale is a retiree living in Vancouver and longtime social justice advocate. Wheale was active with Liberation VC, a local vegan animal rights group which involved public engagement, and has been a leading contributor to Vegan Feminist Network for over ten years.
Wheale grew up on a farm that he recalls “completely normalized the using and eating of animals,” and isn’t quite sure how he made his way into radical social justice politics as his family certainly did not. He has some university background in sociological and feminist studies from at the University of Regina in the 1990s. His studies encouraged a focus on women’s invisible and unpaid labor, the pay gap, sexual exploitation, and men’s violence against women, ultimately calling him to a life of advocacy. This understanding of oppression, he adds, is deeply influenced by the work of radical 2nd wave feminist Catharine MacKinnon.
In 2005, however, he came across Carol Adams’ Sexual Politics of Meat and “was cut to the heart” and “became a vegan without any stops.” He continues:
I could finally see how women’s and animals’ oppressions crisscrossed each other and were entangled. Both are treated as objects of subordination by the contrived system of male primacy, the social machinery of inequality that continuously reproduces itself.
Wheale also credits the work of vegan feminists of color for inspiring his activism, namely that of Sarah Kistle, Aph Ko, and Syl Ko. Amidst this vibrant discourse, Wheale declares himself a proud supporter: “I see myself as an ally of vegan feminism.”
With this background, Wheale presents vegan feminism as a recognition that “women’s and animals’ bodies were, are, perceived as bound to nature and animality, while men are perceived as above nature, rational and controlling.” He adds that vegan feminism does not simply require a confrontation with these gender politics but must also consider the role of species: “While women and other oppressed groups often protest against their subservience, they, too, view nonhuman animals as inferior and consumable. Vegan feminists see through these made up inequalities.”
MacKinnon’s influence has particularly informed Wheale’s critique of pornography as a material, cultural and ideological affront to women’s bodily integrity and autonomy. This position of the 2nd wave feminist movement has come under scrutiny from feminists today who are more likely to promote a “sex positive” position that validates participation in the sex industry as agential and even empowering. This tends to sidestep the structural account of capitalism and patriarchy that radical feminism centers. Wheale counters:
I just couldn’t ever except that reasoning that sex work is real work because […] it’s still objectification of the body as are nonhuman animals objectified in their bodies, in different ways, but then, you see the crossover with the pornography of meat. […] We don’t even realize how we’re being formed, molded by porn culture, which is connected to rape culture as well.
Thus, Wheale integrates his radical feminist critique of pornography to theorize the oppression of women and people of color but also nonhuman animals. Indeed, he recognizes that 2nd wave feminism has missed this important link between gender and species. He is also aware of radical feminism’s overall failure to include trans and nonbinary folks, which he identifies as another serious shortcoming. Folks embodying identities across the spectrum, he clarifies, are “showing us a different way of performing gender.”
The animal rights movement, meanwhile, has contended with its own difficulties. Here, Wheale identifies two major obstacles. First, is the movement’s failure to adopt a vegan feminist approach. Second, he points to the ruling institutions of society, specifically the state, capitalist economy, mainstream culture, social media, education, family life, and religion. “This powerful social architecture has conformed our minds and desires to human supremacy and other hierarchies for centuries in a gridlock pattern,” he explains. This has complicated alliance-making across movements: “Even most social movements that strive for equality among human animals and for ecological justice fail to admit their complicity (as I did) in violence against other animals.” Wheale thus concludes that, given “omnipresent cultural conditioning,” the low numbers of vegan feminists does not really warrant question, but rather their very existence at all.
Wheale’s lived vegan feminism entails a commitment to a variety of social justice causes. Living in social housing himself, for instance, Wheale is an advocate for affordable housing and guaranteed liveable income. His critique of private property and the inequalities it creates also extends to nonhuman animals, noting that it characteristically displaces freeliving animals, often for the purposes of animal agriculture.
Likewise, Wheale is deeply committed to efforts to achieve Indigenous sovereignty in Canada, a campaign which overlaps with quite a lot of other social justice concerns, including poverty, prostitution, and domestic violence. This support for sovereignty, he concedes, has made inroads with veganism tricky:
I’m one of the colonial class, I’m on their land, stolen land, so what am I going to criticize them with my self-righteous vegan proclamations? No, we just gotta support their rights. And then, maybe in time, there can be more room for conversation, but until we have liberation from colonization, I don’t think so. And such a small percentage of the Canadian population anyway, you know. It’s white people that we have to address, the majority.
Wheale also spent a decade working in a domestic violence crisis center and shelter. This role entailed regular public engagement, namely “educating other men about gender inequality and men’s aggression.” This effort, he notes, has more successfully intersected with veganism, as each year he helped organize a walkathon for the charity that included a fully vegan buffet. Wheale explains:
I just couldn’t […] organize a huge banquet for our walkers with meat in it […] because I’d be contradicting my identity […] and beliefs.
Wheale offers three key strategies for achieving a vegan world. First, there must be “constant education about vegan intersectionality […] to grow a coherent and cohesive mass movement that values liberation and equality for all.” Second, he advocates “dialogue with other social justice movements about confluence and coalitions.” Third, he sees value in “developing extended definitions of family that can nurture and uplift vegan feminist activists and companion animals.”
We know the odds are stacked against our success and that some members will lose heart and turn away. Nonetheless, we can’t predict when ebbs and flows can break into a torrent of social and planetary transformation.
Indeed, this transformative potential is foundational for Wheale: “It’s the main reason I rise out of bed each morning. Vegan feminism is at the aspirational center of my life.” He sketches this vegan feminist future in a poem:
Vegan feminism is creating a new earth
The horrors of the past and present shall fall away
Instead, there shall be delight, singing, rejoicingNo longer will the sound of mourning and weeping be heard through slaughtering
Or those who do not round out a full lifetime, dying in mere youthHuman animals shall eat the bounty of plants from their gardens and worker-run enterprises
Without gender, race, class, colonial, disability, age, body size type divisionsWe must magnify vegan feminism, animals, and human animal potential
Vegan feminists, by the light of their splendor, can lead the world to structural equality and community
That light burns as fiery as the starsTherefore, I call these shimmering proclaimers of liberation, Firelight!
Wheale’s writing can be found here on Vegan Feminist Network.