Dear Animal Advocacy Organizations: If You're Not Fighting White Supremacy, Then I Can't be Part of Your Movement

I came to the animal liberation movement through the feminist and social justice movements. I became vegan nine years ago because I came to the realization - largely through reading things like Carol J. Adams' The Sexual Politics of Meat - that there was no meaningful difference between oppression of nonhumans and oppression of marginalized humans. The philosophy that creates a hierarchy of whose needs and lives matters and whose don't is the problem. A truly just society can only be achieved through the rejection of all philosophies that value some lives more than others. Therefore, for me, there is no veganism - there is no animal liberation - without a wholesale rejection of all forms of oppression. It is not only ending nonhuman animal oppression that matters, but also ending white supremacy and patriarchy. They cannot be separated.

That is why I find it profoundly disappointing that so few animal advocacy organizations have spoken out against what happened in Charlottesville last weekend and about what is happening all across the country. There are some exceptions: Food Empowerment Project is a wonderful organization that always focuses on the interrelationship of human and nonhuman oppression. And other organizations have made these connections as well. But that is the exception rather than the norm.

White nationalists/nazis/white supremacists have been emboldened because they have their leader in the White House and are fighting back against movements like Black Lives Matter that claim the right of people of color to even exist in our society. This should matter for all organizations that advocate for an end to oppression. White supremacy advances the belief of the supremacy of white males over all beings, including nonhumans. Animal advocacy should be and can be a tool for ending white supremacy.

There is no choosing not to speak out in this moment. As Desmond Tutu famously said:

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

I do not expect animal advocacy organizations to change or expand their missions. But I do expect them to make some recognition that this fight is also their fight:

1. I expect them to say something about what is happening in the United States right now and condemn the emboldened racism;
2. I expect them to look very closely at how they perpetuate white supremacy within their own work and takes steps to undo those practices; and 
3. I expect them to incorporate the wisdom of vegans of color like A. Breeze Harper and Aph Ko into their work. 

There is no animal liberation without liberation for all marginalized and oppressed groups.

And there is no animal liberation without dismantling white supremacy.

Treating Women this Way is Unacceptable; Treating Nonhuman Animals this Way is Also Unacceptable

 

Once again some ignorant asshole has offensively compared women to nonhuman animals. And once again the feminist response, unfortunately, serves to objectify other animals. I started this blog and wrote my first blog post to address a similar situation. I wrote an entire law review article focused on another.

Erick Erickson's comments are certainly offensive and should be responded to. NARAL's response rightly calls out Erickson for his appalling view of women. However, NARAL's response fails to address the underlying hierarchical paradigm that oppresses both women - as well as other marginalized humans - and nonhumans.

First, I hate to break it to NARAL, but women are animals. There is nothing wrong with that. It is only because we have so degraded animals of other species that comparisons to them are offensive. That is speciesist.

Second, NARAL's response implies that certain forms of oppression are okay but other forms are not. This is a problem not only for the individuals who are further objectified by NARAL's response, but also for the women that NARAL is attempting to defend.

There is an industry that takes pregnant female animals, tears their babies from them, and crushes them. That industry is not Planned Parenthood or the reproductive health system; that industry is animal agriculture. Over and over. Day after day. Year after year. For billions upon billions of nonhuman animals, this is the only existence they will ever know.

Erickson was actually trying to make a point about scientific research on nonhuman animals and the treatment of fetuses. His point was misguided, offensive, and misogynistic, but objectifying nonhuman animals does not help. A more productive response would be that it is the woman, not their fetuses, who are being treated the way we treat nonhuman animals in labs when conservatives deny  - or attempt to deny - women access to health care and force them to carry unwanted pregnancies.

NARAL attempts to maintain a line that makes certain forms of oppression acceptable and other forms of oppression unacceptable. Unfortunately, no one has given NARAL or other feminists the authority to police that line. As long as the line exists - as long as some sort of hierarchy is seen as appropriate - there will always be people who place women (or Blacks, or gays, or transgender people, or disabled people, etc.) on the other side of the line. The problem is the line. The problem is the belief that some forms of oppression and exploitation are ok. Deciding that certain members of our community are not entitled to dignity and respect is not okay. Treating women this way is not okay. And treating nonhuman animals this way is not okay either.

bell hooks wrote:

I believe that violence is inextricably linked to all acts of violence in this society that occur between the powerful and the powerless, the dominant and the dominated. While male supremacy encourages the use of abusive force to maintain male domination of women, it is the Western philosophical notion of hierarchical rule and coercive authority that is the root cause of violence against women, of adult violence against children, of all violence between those who dominate and those who are dominated. It is this belief system that is the foundation on which sexist ideology and other ideologies of group oppression are based; they can be eliminated only when this foundation is eliminated.

 We need to fight for a world that is safe for animals of all species; then we will have a world that is safe for women and humans of all types.

Is Promoting Veganism about Policing Others' Food Choices?

In Combatting Reproductive Oppression, my law review article about the intersection of reproductive oppression and exploitation of humans and nonhumans, I address potential retorts that feminists might have to my arguments. One of those possible retorts is the idea that promoting veganism interferes with individual choice. I wrote:

Feminists have argued that promoting veganism attempts to dictate what women do with their own bodies and that animal consumption is a matter of personal choice. Moreover, because meat-eating has historically been associated with power, and there are significant class and sex disparities regarding who is entitled to animal protein worldwide, feminists may feel that animal product consumption is their right as equal members of society. As stated by [Carol J.] Adams, "Rather than being seen as agents of consciousness, raising legitimate issues, ecofeminist vegetarians are seen as violating others' rights to their own pleasures."

As I continued in the article:

These arguments erase the existence of the other individuals whose bodies are being exploited and consumed for the pleasure of humans and they perpetuate the same philosophies that the reproductive justice movement aims to deconstruct and combat. According to Adams: "[P]atriarchal ideology establishes the cultural set of human/animal, creates criteria that posit the species differences as important in considering who may be means and who may be ends, and then indoctrinates us into believing that we need to eat animals. ... This means that we continue to interpret animals from the perspective of human needs and interests: we see them as usable and consumable."

In real life, however, I have seldom encountered this type of push-back. When I talk to other feminists about the intersection between oppression of women and other marginalized groups and the oppression of nonhuman animals, they innately get it, regardless of whether they are willing to make personal changes as a result or not. Several recent experiences, however, have made me feel the need to revisit and expand upon these arguments and have raised several questions that I aim to answer here.

Do We Have the Right to Torture and Kill Other Individuals without being Challenged?

My answer would be No. There are a lot of limitations that we place on individuals in a free society. Most commonly, one person's rights end where they injure or harm another individual. Our freedom is not unlimited. Veganism is not about what you eat; it's about who you eat. At the point at which your individual choices result in the torture, exploitation, and death of another living, feeling being, they are no longer your choices to be made unfettered. Are the lives of the other animals with whom we share the planet worth so little that they can be brought into existence, tortured, killled, dismembered and consumed just because we've been socialized to enjoy the taste of rotting animal flesh? (Obviously, in our society, the answer is yes, but the idea that even questioning this paradigm violates peoples' rights  is demeaning and aims to silence those who advocate for individuals who are already marginalized).

Veganism is not even about food; veganism is an ethical philosophy that has an impact on numerous life decisions including diet. Veganism is no more about policing people's food choices than advocating for an end to police brutality is about interfering in how governments are run or advocating for LGBT equality is about interfering in others' religious beliefs.

Are Our Non-Vegan Food Choices Un-Policed?

Additionally, the argument that vegans are interfering with our unfettered choices about what to eat presumes that our decisions about what to eat are otherwise not policed. But the truth is that our decisions about what to eat are manipulated from a very young age. Many young children are shamed and socialized out of our innate understanding that harming and eating other animals is wrong. And we are constantly bombarded by messages telling us what to eat and the idea that being vegan is weird and abnormal. Moreover, our government subsidizes and promotes animal products, making those products much more affordable and available than kinder, healthier alternatives. Our decisions about what to eat are never made in a vacuum. Many people become vegan when they realize that they have been lied to and manipulated their entire lives. I, like many vegans, feel that my choices only became truly free, informed, and critical after I stopped eating animals and their secretions. People have the right to information and to hear the truth - regardless what they do with that information - and, in a world in which so many powerful interests work tirelessly to keep the truth from us, there is nothing wrong with trying to provide access to information that is largely suppressed. We do not have the right to silence those who aim to tell the truth no matter how much we don't want to hear it.

Does that Mean that Human Lives are Less Important than Nonhuman Lives and that Animal Liberation is More Important than Combatting Racism, Homophobia, Classism, Imperialism, Sexism, etc? 

No. Unfortunately, some animal advocacy groups damage the cause by failing the recognize the intersection of oppression, relying on sexism to promote their campaigns, and trying to compare oppressions without any sort of nuance or actual intersectional analysis. For example, VeganRevolution recently tweeted this horrible tweet that the wonderful intersectional vegan feminist Breeze Harper addressed here.

As I wrote in Combatting Reproductive Oppression:

Animal advocacy organizations also sometimes seem to forget that humans are animals and to similarly ignore the reality of intersecting oppressions and the need to end the exploitation of all marginalized groups. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), for example, purposefully uses sexualized women in their campaigns. Not only does PETA perpetuate the sexism and misogyny that is part of the patriarchal system it should be trying to dismantle, these efforts alienate potential allies in the struggle for nonhuman animals.

This seeming belief that nonhuman lives are more important than the lives of marginalized human groups was one of the things that alienated me from veganism and the animal rights movement for a long time. Even when I became vegan, I did not want to be associated with the animal rights movement.

But PETA is not the animal liberation or veganism movement.

Feminists and social justice advocates are well aware that the civil rights movement had issues with sexism and misogyny; that the women's rights movement has issues with classism, racism, and  heterosexism; that the LGBT movement has issues of classism, racism, and transphobia. We do not use this as a basis to dismiss the numerous valid points made by these movements. We do use it as a basis to call them out and urge them to be more inclusive. And so we should do with the animal liberation movement. Many vegans recognize the interrelationship of oppressions and strive to address not only oppression of nonhumans, but racism, police brutality, transgender rights, violence against women, etc. But we can always do better. But even when we do worse, that does not mean our underlying principals are invalid.

As I explain in greater detail here, I became vegan because I am feminist and because the feminism that I subscribe to recognizes that violence, oppression and hierarchies are wrong and are at the root of all the major problems on Earth. I want no part of a veganism that's not intersectional. I also want no part of a feminism that does not recognize that violence and oppression are wrong and that deciding that some groups do not matter is speciesist.

Do We Have the Right to Destroy the Planet for Our Palate Pleasure without Being Challenged?

Since veganism is not just about animal liberation, a related question relates to our right to destroy the planet for our food choices. Our planet - the only one we have - is in crisis, and we are on the verge of driving ourselves and all of Earth's other inhabitants out of existence. Animal agriculture is a major factor in just about every type of environmental disaster including climate change, species extinction, rainforest destruction, water, soil and air pollution, etc. Factory farms, which are often in impoverished areas, are public health nightmares for the surrounding communities. Despite the fact that the Global North, and Americans in particular, have disproportionately contributed to this mess, the impact of these disasters falls most heavily on marginalized populations: the poor and inhabitants of the Global South. Do we have the right to ruin the planet and make its most vulnerable inhabitants suffer because we aren't willing to give up our bacon cheeseburgers?

While my answer would still be no, that question is a bit more complicated in the context of the U.S. legal, cultural, and political system.While we recognize that our freedoms are limited where they would injure other people, we have been largely unwilling to offer protection to the Earth. While many countries and some U.S. states provide constitutional environment protection, the U.S. as a whole has long been loathe to do that. Nevertheless, I don't think we have the right to destroy the planet, forcing already vulnerable groups to bare the brunt. At the very least, we don't have the right to shield ourselves from even learning the truth

Do We Have the Right to Destroy our Own Health without Being Presented with the Truth? 

The consumption of animal products is the total or partial cause of almost every major cause of human death and disease in the U.S., including heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer, and many more. According to one expert, of the 15 leading causes of death, only one - accidents - cannot be prevented, treated, and/or reversed through a plant-based diet. Does that mean that people should have to be vegan? No.

I think people do have the right to destroy their own health, but even this question is more complicated than it would seem. My health insurance and taxes pay for the choices that other people make that damage their health. I'm ok with that. In fact, I would be happy if my insurance paid for other things, like universal access to abortion and contraception. We have insurance to spread these risks across the population and to care for others who need care. And I do things that aren't the greatest for my health - like drink a lot and ride a bike in DC traffic - that I have no intention of stopping.

But right now - as I've explained in detail elsewhere - we don't just have a system that allows people to make bad dietary decisions, we encourage them to do so through our system of agricultural subsidies and government promotion. People have the right to know the truth and not the propaganda we receive from the government, the food industry, and the pharmaceutical industry. Many people are horrified when they learn they needn't have suffered for years with diabetes, high blood pressure or heart disease. And many more people die needlessly.

So, putting aside what I've written above for the moment: Yes, I think people have the right to eat whatever they want regardless of the damage to their health. But they don't have the right to do so without being informed, and I am all in favor of governmental programs that disincentivize these decisions and try to account for some of the externalities of the animal agriculture industry. According to one analyst, as a society, we spend more than $400 billion a year in the United States dealing with externalities imposed by the animal agriculture industry. So sure, eat your Big Mac, but pay the full $12 it actually costs.

Do We Have the Right to Eat Lots of Beautiful and Delicious Food?

Absolutely!

So is Promoting Veganism and Animal Liberation about Policing Other People's Food Choices?

No. Veganism is a social justice movement that advocates for the most marginalized and oppressed individuals and communities in our society. And belittling it as being about food choices is just one way that those in power work to maintain the current, incredibly unequal power structure. That's something that anyone working to dismantle patriarchy, white supremacy, and homophobia should understand.

The rest of what I've written here is just food for thought.

He "looked like he was trying to kill a deer running through the woods"

 

That's what the father of Walter Scott, the South Carolina man who was gunned down by police officer, Michael Slager, earlier this month, said upon viewing the video of his son's murder.

This quote evidences not only the belief that Black lives don't matter, that Black men are seen as less than human, but also the belief that some lives - nonhuman lives - clearly do not matter. As long as that is true, it will be that much more difficult to change the paradigm under which Black lives do not matter.

We try so hard to move the line, to argue that, not only do straight, white, Christian men matter, other people matter too. Women matter. Muslims matter. Trans people matter. And Black Lives Matter. We are all human.

But we maintain the line. We maintain the hierarchy. We maintain the system that makes humanity a necessary component of gaining respect, dignity, liberty and life. And maintaining that line makes the ultimate goal of social justice that much more difficult.

The confluence of racism and speciesism allows society and people like Michael Slager to place people like Walter Scott on the other side of the line, to treat them like they are less than human. And while we fight for Walter's right to be on the human side of the line, we ignore the "deer" and the billions and billions of nonhumans who are tortured and killed every year simply because they are less than human.

We need to destroy the line. We need to get rid of the hierarchy. We need to fight for the dignity, respect and life of every sentient being. Only then will all lives matter.

A Product to Honor Feminist Icons Shouldn't Rely on Female Exploitation

Recently, a woman, Amanda McCall, called attention to the fact that Ben & Jerry's has largely ignored women in creating ice cream flavors to honor famous people. As a result, she has created ten fictitious ice cream flavors honoring feminist icons.  Most recently, she added an eleventh flavor, Ruth Bader Ginger, in honor of Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. There is even a Change.org petition urging Ben & Jerry's to create Ruth Bader Ginger. It currently has almost 750 signatures.

There is only one problem. Ice cream, if it is made from dairy milk, exists only because of the exploitation of female cows. Because cows must have recently given birth in order to produce milk, cows are forcibly impregnated. Then, rather than allowing the newborn calf to drink the milk that nature designed for him or her, the mother and baby are separated so that we can use the milk, a very traumatic experience for both of them. Female cows are forced to go through this over and over until their bodies break down. They are usually slaughtered and turned into meat after about five years, despite a cow's natural life span of more than 20 years. This is not feminist.


One of McCall's fictitious flavors actually is vegan: CaramEllen Degeneres Fudge. That is apparently in respect of Ellen Degeneres' veganism, but it fails to take into account the underlying reasons for her veganism. Feminism and cow's milk consumption are not compatible.

Luckily (and deliciously) feminism and ice cream are not mutually exclusive. There are numerous delicious vegan ice creams on the market, but as of yet, Ben & Jerry's does not offer one. Coincidentally, however, at the same time as the RBG petition, the Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM) has launched a campaign, in concert with free cone day on April 14, urging Ben & Jerry's to offer vegan ice cream. There is also a Change.org campaign for that. It currently has almost 12,000 signatures. Were these campaigns to join together, they'd be that much stronger, and, if Ben & Jerry's were to create an ice cream flavor honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg or another feminist hero, it wouldn't rely on the reproductive oppression of our nonhuman sisters.

Cow's milk is for calves. Feminist ice cream should be vegan.

Baseball and Hope Spring Eternal

Life's not all about veganism and feminism.

Exactly six months ago today, I sat through the worst event of my baseball fandom career. We went to see the Washington Nationals take on the San Francisco Giants in the second game of the NLDS. The Nationals were widely projected to go to, if not win, the World Series. It was a lovely fall day. Nationals Park was packed and full of energy completely different than a regular season game. We watched an absolutely fabulous game in which Jordan Zimmermann – coming off pitching a no-hitter in his last game of the regular season – pitched a complete-game shutout that the Nationals led 1-0. Unfortunately, with 2 outs in the 9th, rookie manager Matt Williams pulled Zimmermann, and reliever, Drew Storen – already infamous for costing the Nationals a trip to the NLCS in 2012 – gave up a run to tie the game.

That was the start of entirely different game. In that game, while the Nationals pitchers were great, the big bats came up over and over and failed to deliver. Nine times the Nationals came to bat, needing only one (g*dd#$m f&^cking) run to win the game, but that never happened. It got colder and colder. And later and later. It felt like it was never going to end. And 18 innings later, we were left to make the very cold, very long bike ride home after a Nationals loss. While the series continued after that game, that was essentially the end of the Nationals’ playoff hopes in 2014. We’ve spent the last six months trying to recover.

My love of baseball began when my sister and my mom started watching Cubs games on WGN, so I was a Cubs fan first. When Colorado got a team in 1993, I became a Rockies fan. The blessing of being a Cubs and a Rockies fan (which I never recognized at the time) was that they never had any real chance of winning. While this seemed like a downside at the time, it limited the amount of possible heartbreak involved in following them.** Between 1996 and 2003, when I lived in Southern California, I followed the Dodgers, but I was never really a Dodgers fan. Therefore, my love of baseball waned between 1996 and 2012. While I’d gone to several Washington Nationals games a year since the team came to town in 2005, I’d never followed them closely.

In 2012, that all changed. I noticed that the Nats were doing pretty well. Because we don’t have cable and can’t get the Nationals games on TV, I asked Mike if he wanted to listen to a game on the radio. While neither of us realized it at the time, that question changed our summer and our lives. We started listening to every game on the radio and we both became hard core Nats fans (although Mike will still claim he only follows them for me). We listened to the games sitting on the front porch enjoying the summer heat. Sometimes our neighbors stopped by and listened for an inning or two. It’s became a summer tradition.

2012 was the first time the Nationals broke our hearts. On another October night that got colder and colder, and sadder and sadder as time went on, we listened to the Nationals quickly pull ahead to a 6-0 lead and a trip to the NLCS seemed just around the corner. Then, we listened as they slowly gave it all up, once again losing in the 9th inning and failing to advance to the next round.

But that year wasn’t just about heartbreak. The first playoff game I ever attended was on October 11, 2012. On that evening, we saw the Nationals carry a 1-1 tie into the 9th inning and then win it and keep their hopes alive following an incredible 9th inning homerun from Jayson Werth. And as much as the eventual loss hurt, we had the joy over the season of watching the Nats come from nowhere to make it to the playoffs and win more games than any other team in baseball.

We faithfully made it through the following year when the Nats failed to live up to expectations and didn’t even make it to the playoffs. Then, last year, the Nats once again won their division. Expectations were high and hopes were even higher. We all know how that turned out. This year expectations and hopes are even higher. Just about everyone has, once again, picked the Nats to make it to if not win the World Series.

Mike and I have spent the last six months contemplating whether we want to go through it all again. Baseball is a major time commitment since we spend just about every evening listening to a game (sometimes two) on the radio. I also feel a sense of guilt associated with filling our evenings this way. Mike had no interest in baseball until I got him hooked. It’s not just my life that’s impacted. While the hope of hearing the Nationals win – or at least reach the World Series – is tempting, they’re just as likely to lose and leave us heartbroken again.

Opening Day is on Monday. While we won’t be at Nationals Park like we have been the past two years, I’m pretty sure we’ll be following them. We hold onto the hope that we will feel once again what we felt when Werth hit that homerun and an entire field – and town – erupted in ecstasy. But there’s more than hope pulling us back. The start of baseball is proof that we’ve made it through the winter. And there is Dave and Charlie, the Nationals’ radio announcers. For night after night, their voices fill the summer night creating a picture for us. They share our pain, our anger, our joy. They’re our friends. Spending time with them again is a major force pulling us back. That, and the hope that, as much as it hurt to see the Nationals lose, that’s how good it will feel when they finally win. Ultimately, will it be worth it or will it only result in more heartbreak? Only time will tell.

And even if the Nationals win the World Series, the season will end, summer will be over, it will get cold again, and eventually the next season will begin from scratch as though the previous season never happened. Why are we doing this again? Why do we love this game?

I don’t know. I can only say: Go Nats!

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. ~ A. Bartlett Giamatti

** It is true that the Rockies made the playoffs in 1995, but the expectations were much lower, and just making it to the playoffs was awesome. The Rockies also it to the World Series in 2007, but I had long ago stopped following them closely, and, while I watched the Series, I was not really invested.

Striving for Peace in a very Violent World

The other day I read this horrific story about a man, Los Angeles actor Dimitri Diatchenko, who killed his girlfriend's companion rabbit, ate it, sent her the pictures, and threatened to do the same to her.

The story is so horrible that I didn't even want to read it or write about it. But I felt like I couldn't ignore the interrelated violence against animals and women.

Feminists and social scientists have long recognized the interrelationship of  intimate partner violence and companion animal abuse. This is one of the topics I briefly explore in my law review article on the intersection of animal rights and reproductive justice. Abusers both harm companion animals to inflict psychological pain on their partners, and survivors are fearful of leaving abusive partners for fear their companion animals will be harmed if they are not there to protect them. As a result, advocates have pushed for laws that recognize companion animal abuse as part of intimate partner violence and that provide housing for companion animals so that women can leave abusers.

While this connection between violence against women and violence against companion animals is well recognized, seldom do feminists and other social justice advocates extrapolate that connection to broader society. We march for peace and to end violence, while at the same time eating the severed body parts of tortured individuals whose lives are no less important than those of our companion dogs and cats. We torture and kill billions of animals every year. I believe that as long as we are engaged in such incredible violence every day, we are never going to achieve our dreams of peace. As Leo Tolstoy said:

"As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields."

Gary Francione often says, "We are all Michael Vick." I thought about entitling this post "We are all Dimitri Diatchenko." However, the intention of his actions, to cause psychological pain and fear seems to make them more appalling than those of Michael Vick or of any of us in our everyday interaction with animals.

On the other hand, no matter what the intention, the resulting psychological pain is the same. Every day, babies are torn away from their mothers, male chicks are ground up alive and fed back to their siblings, and cows and pigs scream out in fear as they watch one after another of their friends and family members led to their deaths. Just so we can eat animal milk, eggs, and flesh.

Our reason for inflicting such pain and suffering surely doesn't excuse it. Not only do we have no need to eat animal products, but doing so is damaging to our own health and the health of the planet. So, while I don't quite feel comfortable saying that we are all Dimitri Diatchenko, we are not much better.