Veganism as Intersectional Social Justice (part 1)

Introduction
Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday...Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?--Derrick Jensen[*]

[Oppressions are ideologies—]“a set of socially shared beliefs that legitmates an existing or desired social order. Prejudice, on the other hand, is an individual predisposition to devalue a group of others… speciesism is also an ideology—that is, a set of widely held, socially inherited beliefs… When the psychological and moral (or immoral) bases of oppression are accentuated, social structural forces are downplayed or overlooked entirely… they tend to stifle any realization of the need for social change.” –David Nibert[*]

The discourse of vegetarian and vegan advocates is saturated with personal choice. Perhaps more persistently than any other social justice movement in America today other than the pro-choice movement, animal defenders emphasize the individual: the individual animal who suffers, the individual person who chooses three times a day to choose compassion over cruelty, the individuality of the movement, etc.

It is the individual who is responsible for the suffering of each individual animal because of some irrational prejudice. If only these people were just more enlightened about animal sentience, about nutrition, they would leave cruelty-free lives. It is also the individual who is responsible for world hunger because they selfishly feed the world’s grain to livestock. If only each individual chose a vegetarian lifestyle, there would be enough food for everyone.

When the individual person is not totally responsible for the suffering of each individual animal, it is because vegetarianism is too inconvenient and the law is too permissive of cruelty. If only restaurants and grocery stores offered more vegetarian foods (especially faux-meats), people would stop eating meat. If only there were stricter penalties for animal cruelty, less people would harm animals and there would be more justice. Thus the irony of the dominant discourse is that animal liberation is possible so long as humans become more rational and less self-interested; but, so long as people are self-interested, we ought to make vegetarianism as convenient and non-threatening as possible and make animal cruelty as inconvenient and punishable as possible.

In this post I will lay-out the myriad of ways the most popular forms of animal advocacy (at least in the USA) privileges a white, middle-class audience at the expense of including people of color and people of low-income. Drawing on the vast, original works over at The Vegan Ideal [TVI], I wish to demonstrate 1) how focusing on punishing, shaming, and dehumanizing individual animal exploiters a) draws attention away from the institutional oppression (i.e. speciesism) in favor of vice (i.e. cruelty) as well as b) how such punishment is often part of ethnocentric and nationalist projects, and finally, c) how such projects merely seek to substitute human cages for animal cages.

Further, I would like to point out 2) how focus on individual action and lifestyle changes often centers around "voting" with one's dollar, which a) privileges the middle-class at the expense of marginalizing low- and no-income classes, b) privileges non-profit dissemination of literature at the expense of real social organizing and mobilization that empowers people and communities, and c) encourages conservative discourse by said non-profits that target "mainstream" audiences with money that can be used to support said kind of campaigns.

At last, I 3) recommend vegan/animal advocacy that is incorporated into social and ecological justice movements based on Sista II Sista's distinction between taking power and making power, through which people model the change they'd like to see in the world. Such a new wave of vegan outreach can be accomplished through social capital (vs. market capital), alliance politics (vs. single-issue politics), and interspecies justice (vs. "animal rights").

Humane-Cruelty: Legislating the Symptoms, Maintaining the System
One general misallocation of resources is for the legislation of stiffer penalties for "animal cruelty." Aside from the unjust material consequences of these laws, the discourse of "humane" is a conceptual red herring just begging to be appropriated.

In his latest essay, "Forget Shorter Showers: Why Personal Change Does Not Equal Political Change," Derrick Jensen argues that

[This liberal perspective] incorrectly assigns blame to the individual (and most especially to individuals who are particularly powerless) instead of to those who actually wield power in this system and to the system itself.

In other words, the liberal perspective focuses on litigating personal acts and scapegoating marginalized people (often those with low-income, people of color, and Other cultures--but more on this later) rather than the powerful institutions/systems that are either at the root of the violence or a more significant actor whose violence is so profound it has become invisible or is assumed to be “natural.”

For example, rarely does one see a newspaper article or news segment on the institutional violence against women, the infrastructural violence against people of color, the discursive violence against Muslims, etc. These systems of violence are so ubiquitous they are not even popularly perceived as violence. Instead, they operate in the background almost as if they are natural, factual, and/or inevitable. Reporting on these systems, then, doesn't make sense because they are happening every minute of the day. Particularly violent acts, particularly illegal ones, however, occur less frequently and thus are more apt to be sensationalized as stories. Thus, extreme cases of cruelty to animals--when it is illegal and photographed--get much more press than the non-exceptional carnage at a local stockyard.

The same is true of animal liberationists, explains David Nibert in Animal Rights/Human Rights: advocates have a “tendency to overlook or minimize the social structural basis of oppression” by over-emphasizing “overcoming prejudice and immoral reasoning” without analyzing the underlying societal causes. A great example is a story that received a lot of press in which "[t]wo Wayne County men have been charged with stealing a calf from a neighbor’s barn, killing the animal and roasting the meat." According to a police investigator, “One guy led the calf by a rope around its neck, and the other shot it twice with an arrow. It still wouldn’t die, so he cut its throat.” They were then arrested and charged with third-degree burglary and possibly cruelty to animals. The 1) unnecesity of this act, 2) the youth of the victim, 3) the intervention of the state, and 4) the absence of our material benefit from the act make this a more alarming story even though this is how calves and other farmed animals are treated every minute in the US: they are "stolen" from their parents, they are killed, and they are cooked and consumed all part of the socially accepted institution, the dairy industry.

The greater outrage to cruelty to animals than animal other exploitation and slaughter is because it seems out of the ordinary, unnecessary, and perhaps unnatural versus slaughter and exploitation which are routine (55 billion terrestrial animals per year), necessary ("we need food/meat to survive"), and fundamentally natural ("humans are natural predators/top of the food chain"). "Cruelty" is perceived as exceptional in a culture in which institutional violence is accepted as the norm and in which such acts are out of sight. Erica Fudge notes that while we often think of ourselves as kinder today in comparison to times when there were no laws protecting animals, we are only less aware of our cruelty

The things that are done to animals now are done out of sight and out of mind… Only when killing becomes something visible and pleasurable does anyone get upset—in dog fighting and hunting and so on. So, we might not be kinder; we just don’t necessarily have such clear and frequent reminders that we are cruel.

Fudge's observation, in part, explains why there is so much acceptance of the hidden, institutional violence toward animals when there is so much dissent towards more visceral cruelty. At the same time, the whole logic of "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian" is flawed because people who work in slaughterhouses and many of those who watch footage of them, do not become vegetarian. Again, this is because certain violences are "natural" and "correct" according to cultural narratives and the law.

LAW, CAPITAL, and COMMUNITY
Law is the meeting point between metaphysics, political economy, and material culture. It is where metaphysics, or cosmology, can be inscribed into a permanent document/agreement and be used (circularly) as a just reason for violence--whether that be violence against non-"humans" or people who violate the law. Within speciesist, capitalist patriarchy, such violence is legitimate when property rights are violated, but not otherwise. Thus, so long as animals are legally classified as property, violence against animals is not in itself condemned, but only violence outside profitability (i.e. poor stewardship, towards companion animals, etc.).

Once these cruelties exist outside the accepted institution of capitalism in which people profit from the exploitation and slaughter (as "standard industry practices"), they are prosecutable because they break social order, especially through the act of burglary. Criminalized, the act no longer fits the present model, and the audacity of the act becomes visible. Yet, the primary wrongdoing of these men is "burglary," not "murder," because the class of murder challenges the entire political system, while burglary and cruelty challenges only the killing and exploitation that exist outside capital accumulation. It is only acceptable to pass "welfare" laws so long as it is not too inconvenient to the ruling classes/genders/races/nations etc unless sufficient people are willing to denounce their privilege.

We attribute such high prestige to the law because 1) it is written down (and thus seems more important, permanent, and objective than verbal contracts), 2) it is consented to by the community (a social contract), and 3) it is enforced both through the State/police and ideologically through parental/fraternal conditioning (the panopticon). Through the rhetorical targeting of "cruelty" and through the imprisonment of the targeted, 2 and 3 are validated and thus strengthen our psychological convictions that the law is good and right (or wrong and unjust).

The stipulation that "Meat is Murder" is popular because people understand that criminalized/punishable behavior is worse than non/less-punishable offenses. But "why," writes TVI, "should killing have to be criminalized in order to be morally significant?"

The increased moral weight attributed to "murder" comes from the fact that it carries a more severe punishment (e.g., life imprisonment or death) than other crimes... [but] [i]t suggests an intentional and malicious act of interpersonal violence, when the consumption of nonhuman animals is the result of an ideologically-based system of violence... [In contrast] calling nonhuman flesh – as well as all other products derived from exploiting nonhuman animals – privilege moves towards a way of thinking that is both literal and liberation-based... the material benefit (privilege), and not the killing ("murder"), is the logic behind turning nonhuman animals into "meat."

Just as the symbolic language obscures rather than clarifies the source of the oppression of animal others, so to do the actual rhetoric of "cruelty," "inhumane," and "barbaric," and the punishments such rhetoric encourages us to distribute misdirect our attention toward the symptoms and not the political pathology of oppression.

Take for instance poultry plant workers who are fired for “cruelty to animals” after an investigation in which the violence of the slaughterhouse becomes invisible and the corporation shifts its accountability for the institutional cruelty onto desparate, malaised workers. Or, how certain men are imprisoned for dog-fighting and cock-fighting, a means to demonstrating one’s masculinity-—an institution which is responsible for militarism and a rape culture. In both cases, the actual systems of species and gender privilege as well as class inequality that drive such behavior are absent from discussion.

HUMANE/CRUELTY
The rhetoric of "cruelty" substitutes recognizing the cultural and ideological underpinnings of such material acts for an unreflective communitarian presupposition that when the law is not broken, when things are going all according to plan and design, then "cruelty" does not exist. Animal abuse is thus framed as "personal" and not "political" since it is based in prejudice, ignorance, and callousness, not a political orientation. Here, education and/or reform are what are needed to solve the problem, not a cultural rethinking/transformation. As is noted at TVI,

[The] talk about "cruelty" and "humane treatment" is basically a way of depoliticizing oppression...these terms fail to address the oppressive power relations under which harm and suffering occurs... If cruelty to animals is "regarded as a pattern of socially and culturally unacceptable behavior," then speciesism – the very system of nonhuman oppression – is outside the limits "animal cruelty"... So cruelty is the exception that proves that speciesism rules

Rather than being useful to the political discourse on human-animal relations, "cruelty" and "(in)humane" actually obscure the radical political philosophy that is animal liberation. Rather than being opposing terms, "'humane treatment' and 'cruelty' are really paired terms, with the former suggested as the remedy to the latter."

The term "humane" is an extremely popular and effective rhetoric tool for leveraging public support for and against certain actions and products. Historically, the rhetoric of "humane" [ROH] has been used by animal welfare organizations to promote the reduction of suffering of animals at the hands of humans. However, because the influence of the ROH has been so successful (especially in regard to food), agribusiness has appropriated the term to market their own "products."

Despite the popular sway of the ROH, the effectiveness of the ROH is counterproductive to the liberation movements because it actually reinforces prejudices (speciesism, racism, classist) while also centering the moral issue with the identity and character of individual agents rather than those who are exploited by them and the systemic nature of the immoral consequences. The ROH ought to be abandoned because 1) it is preconceived in a speciesist language/world; 2) its definition varies to the degree which one is speciesist/humanist; 3) it is ultimately more about the consumer than the nonhuman animal and the human-animal relationship--appealing to a virtue/self-esteem...

First, the idea of "humane" suggest human exceptionalism in compassion, or at the very least, that it distinguishes the human species over others as a compassionate one (which seems to be quite the opposite case if you look at our history). Theoreticians from Adam Smith to David Hume to Charles Darwin have all argued that our morality, contrary to theologians, comes from our animality, not "humanity" (as in Reason). Recent studies, especially by cognitive ethologists like Marc Bekoff, have proved that such is more than probably the case given the extended evidence of moral systems in many mammalian species. So not only is the equation of the human(e) with moral-goodness factually incorrect, it is also speciesist because it privileges H. sapiens as superior to all other species based on this factual inaccuracy.

Furthermore, what we mean by "humane" is less about the act and more about the actor. When one says something is "humane" they cease discussing the nature of the act and rather turn the focus inward to the nature of the actor. Indeed, to proclaim an act is humane is to proclaim the actor as human and good (while those who do alternatively are less human and less good). When one labels something as humane, what they are really doing is identifying themselves as practicing "humanity," something that is privileged as superior to other forms of being and identity (such as animality). So when one says so-and-so is "humane" they are prescribing that act as something we ought to do (perhaps because it is something divine).

Take for example an article by Frank Rosci, in which it is asked, "Is agribusiness forgetting its humanity when treating animals destined for dinner?" The discourse of Rabbi Bradley Bleefeld is demonstrative of the humanism/speciesism of "humane" discourse whereby human and animal become ontologically independent of one another through kosher law. Bleefeld explains that kosher slaughter

is based on preserving our humanity...a prayer is said every time, with every animal, to remind the slaughterer that he is a human being and not an indiscriminate killer -- animals do what they want, but we can't

The killing of animals as done by Jewish people is suggested to be signatory of humanity, moral beings, as opposed to "animals." Because killing is ritualized by rite of law and thus not "indiscriminate," it can be justified against those who are not human, moral beings. But, as we will see, this very Jewish-exceptionalist logic is part of the anthropogenic machine that is always already ethnocentric.

RACE, CLASS, SPECIES
Since human identity has been one of the most important and contentious questions/topics in Western history, the use of "humane" can become a particularly violent tool for legitimizing one's own contentious actions simultaneously as establishing one's own preformed identity in opposition to another who is "inhumane" and "unethical." The humane proclamation is really nothing more than a performative apology for one's actions as a means to console ourselves with the sense that we are human and thereby good, abjecting the presence of the "monstrosity" of our actions and thereby the monsters that we all are. In locating the human inside us and the monster without, we buffer the anxiety surrounding the threatening idea that we sometimes are satisfied performing unethical actions.

This is where things get interesting, or as Royce Drake writes, complicated. Speciesism does not exist within a cultural vacuum; it is never a single-issue. Speciesism is always already situated within a network of other systems of oppression particular to each culture. As such, certain types of cruelty are accepted as others are not, and out from this ethnocentric moral system arises a means through which other oppressions can be expressed.

Through ethnocentrism and selective speciesism, concern over animal rights and welfare have often been used as arguments for the inferiority and expulsion of Other people. Royce explains this well at Vegans of Color:

The way we see, and judge speciesism is shaped by our own socio-cultural contexts... Racism, classism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, (and on and on) color our perceptions of animal oppression: Our families don’t whale, they don’t dog fight, they don’t experiment on apes... Our families may eat cows and chickens (Happy meat? Even better) and go to zoos, but that is something everyone does, and it isn’t as barbaric as something that those people do

So while many animal advocates may consider bull-fights and whaling the pinnacle of barbarism, parallel animal exploitation such as breaking in riding horses and fishing are less so, more “normal” because they are not a part of our culture, our being-in-the-world, our humanity. Those outside of our culture, outside our human-animal rites, are also outside our definition of humanity (or at least, they correspond with it less than we ourselves do).

It is not surprising then that the animal welfare movement has so often "dehumanized" human Others as "barbaric," "inhumane," and "savage"--a process inseparable from the socio-political institution of colonization. As others and myself have written on previously, vegans are not exempt from this criticism because they are opposed to all forms of animal exploitation[Korean dog-eating, Japanese dolphin slaughter, Cherokee bear pit, Makah Whaling, Non-white pet traders, etc]. Indeed, the rhetoric of barbaric, inhumane, and savage all have xenophobic and/or colonial histories. Even throughout the last century, they have been deployed to oppose non-Secular/Christian human-animal relations such as Kosher and Halal slaughter in Nazi Germany and Britain.

In the US and many other countries, animal welfare laws continue to be used to imprison and punish people from disadvantaged ethnic groups and classes as it has been since the first wave of the movement in the 19th century. As was the case then, acceptable human-animal conduct is informed by the norms and (human) identity of upper/middle-class Anglo-Saxons and declared through a discourse of character reform.

PRISON
As is explained by TVI, it is a lot easier for those with privilege to prosecute and imprison those with less privilege for acts of animal exploitation and abuse than those with equal or more privilege. If one were to

harassed a rich white man, say one who owns a meat packing plant that exploits both workers and nonhuman animals, the volunteer might end up in jail. However, by targeting people of color working on the street the same volunteer has all the support of the institutional racism and classism, including the LAPD

This of course was a major criticism of the crusade of animal protectionists to prosecute Michael Vick (an effort that is by no means racially-neutral within a white supremacist society wherein up to one-third of young black men are imprisoned). This is one reason why litigation is not only minimally effective, but also ultimately futile in bringing about real social change. If sending people to prison is primarily a measure to deter crime, but only the most vulnerable people in society who are the least responsible from animal exploitation ever go to prison, then prison only treats the symptom and not the disease. And as was mentioned in the citation above, attempting to bring justice to those who are both privileged and responsible for animal abuse may result in one ending up in prison themselves.

TVI also notes that while many vegans decry the contemporary witch hunts of animal activists—“green in the new red”--

"animal activists" promote more police suppression than they receive. As a general group, most "animal activists" are more "critical to the maintenance of state power" than they are "subversive"... activists are manufacturing increased police suppression that targets oppressed groups by actively promoting stiffer sentencing for anti-cruelty laws, and specifically criminalizing "animal cruelty" identified with poor people and people of color (i.e., dog fighting and cock fighting)

TVI continues its analysis elsewhere:

Not only does the concept of animal cruelty fail to address the oppression of other animals, it actually expands oppression in the form of the Prison Industrial Complex... That this approach centers a reliance on police, prisons, and the court system is itself problematic

To summarize TVI, not only is the legal system as it is setup now (i.e. The Prison Industrial Complex) incompetent, it actually produces violence upon which it was established to eliminate.

Therefore, by relying upon the law as a tool to outlaw animal "cruelty" so as to punish the "inhumane" through imprisonment, the animal protection movement, in contradiction to vegan principles, fills cages with some beings whereby it seeks to empty cages of others. This is why TVI illuminates the parallels

between veganism and prison abolition. Both call out the political relations of oppressions that are usually masked and depoliticized with similar terms. That is, both reject the calls for more "humane treatment" under the existing system

If vegans are to be consistent and fair in their theory and action, they thus ought to honor "the efforts of all who are striving for the emancipation of humans and of other animals" which includes supporting prison abolition. Continue reading "Veganism as Intersectional Social Justice (part 1)"!

The Identity Politics of Breasts: Male Lactation and the Political Economy of Wo/Man (part 3)

PART II: Milk and the Nature of Things: Gender, Race, Class, Species
“The concealment of breastfeeding rests equally, if not more, on squeamishness relating to bodily function: the fact that food comes out of our bodies is an unsettling thought in a culture that rarely remembers food growing on trees”
--Fiona Giles Fresh Milk [*]

“Separate lexicons suggest opposite behaviors and attributes. We eat, but other animals feed. A woman is pregnant or nurses her babies; a nonhuman mammal gestates or lactates. A dead human is a corpse, a dead nonhuman a carcass or meat”
--Carol Adams “Foreword” to Animal Equality[*]

"[W]ithin Linnaeus terminology [Homo sapien], a female characteristic (the lactating mamma) ties humans to brutes, while a traditionally male characteristic (reason) marks our separation”
--Londa Shiebinger "Why Mammals are Called Mammals"[*]

Just as breasts (generally) come in pairs, so do their culturally conscripted “natures.” Londa Shiebinger writes:

the female breast ha[s] been a powerful icon within Western cultures, representing both the sublime and bestial in human nature. The grotesque, withered breasts on witches and devils represented temptations of wanton lust, sin of the flesh, and humanity fallen from paradise. The firm spherical breasts of Aphrodite, the Greek ideal, represented an overworldly beauty and virginity.[51d]

As we saw in parts one and two, female breasts may represent all that which is most beautiful and divine to humans (i.e. the virgin mother of God) while any digression from their use to titillate males (i.e. lesbian sensuality) or nurture the young (i.e. sexual feelings while nursing) may represent all that is wrong with the world.

I will argue here in section two that the function of the human breast acts as a particularly sensitive subject because it is a site that may not only contest gender identities but that which may also contest modern “white” men’s proximity to “the animal.” Just as gynecomastia, male breast cancer, and male lactation challenge presuppositions about male identity, so does the very biological function of human breasts. As Shiebinger notes, "that breasts have "long been considered less than human, yet simultaneously "more than human."[51f]

5. Interspecies suckling
Humans have been suckling other species (mostly dogs) thousands of years before they began drinking the milk of other species. Though interspecies suckling is fairly rare today, its presence in cultures around the world is much more common than many people would expect.

Women have been recorded breastfeeding animal others on every human inhabited continent throughout the ages. Most notably, Awa Guaja women (South America) have been known to kidnap baby animals from their mothers and nurse them as their own pets/children; Bishnoi women (India) suckle orphaned gazelles; certain Australian aboriginal women (Australia) suckle their dogs with equal amore as their own children; Guinean women (Papua New Guinea) suckle pigs and raise them as their own children until their husbands kidnap them for a reconciliatory slaughter; Ainu women (Japan) breastfed baby bears who were to become gods at their own slaughter; and wet nurses from the ancient and early modern Europe (France) and Middle East (Turkey)kept their milk flowing on long sea voyagers by suckling puppies.[46]

Despite the cross-cultural, transhistorical phenomenon, knowledge of interspecies suckling continue to shock, awe, and disgust people of the West. Stories of interspecies suckling have become “exotic,” sensationalizing the practices of “weird” and “odd” cultures. At Oddity Central, Spooky writes

I have no problems looking at pictures depicting animal moms breastfeeding and literally taking in babies of different species, I even find them very sweet. But for some reason, looking at these photos of women breastfeeding various animals makes me very nauseous, it’s just not natural, no matter what continent your from. [47]

While interspecies suckling among non-human animals is “sweet,” human females breastfeeding “animals” is nauseating. This is because, like male lactation, interspecies suckling between women and “animals” transgresses “natural” categories. Though Spooky may acknowledge that humans are animals, the historical construction of humans as other-than or more-than “animal” marks these relationships as monsterous, and hence disgusting—-eventhough it is unlikely Spooky considers the cheese and milk he consumes from cows “unnatural.”

So disgusting and dehumanizing, some bloggers conclude that these women only suckle the young of other species because they are "forced" to by their fragile financial situation.[47] Yet, there is much anthropological and journalistic evidence that many women enjoy and even choose to suckle the young of animals, even in societies (i.e. New Zealand) which are baffled by such practices.[46] SAM, unlike Spooky, does not have a problem with women suckling animal others in and of itself. Like DR. ROB, SAM understands the utility and perhaps sweetness of women saving the lives of animal others through nursing them; however, he, like Spooky, is very disturbed by women nursing animal other who do not need their milk for survival. For instance, he accuses a Japanese woman suckling an adult cat as “just doing it for what ever sick perversion shes got in her head.”[47]

Similarly, Charles Muede at Slog finds the practice of interspecies suckling wrong, not because of the act itself, but the sexually perverted intentionality. He writes:

The problem is not the milk but the sucking itself: We suspect that the women are getting some sort of sexual pleasure out of this seemingly innocuous (and very public) sucking and licking. Why else would they do it?… Their form of pleasure translates into our form of disgust.[48]

Charles fails to see any biological, economic, or religious reason for this interspecies relationship. For him, it is purely psychological: if it didn’t feel good, they wouldn’t do it, and if it does feel good, it must be in a sexually inappropriate way (because what other pleasure can come from female breasts?).

The sentiment of SAM and Charles was expressed most transparently in a letter to the editor of the Utne Reader after a photo of a Peruvian woman nursing a lamb was published in the magazine.

The photo mimics the innocent gesture of the mother/child images of our traditions yet it presents the perverted usage of a woman’s body to feed the appetites of an animal.[49]

Unlike some other readers, this woman interpreted the photo as a perverted parody of the sacred mother-child relationship between humans. Human mothers transmit more than just nutrients and antibodies to their children (to fulfill their appetites), they also pass on love and language (to fulfill their souls). Brian Luke further notes that others saw this human-animal bond a form of bestiality (because of the sexual nature of the breasts?), and “[o]ne lawyer who represents rape and murder victims had to tear out picture to look at magazine she was so repulsed.” Luke concludes that the “comments indicate moral evaluation, not the judgment that nursing between species cannot happen but it shouldn’t happen.”[49]

Returning to the point made in the last two posts, breasts are regarded as either for the sexual pleasure of men or the nurturing function of raising men’s children. Interspecies suckling is so baffling and disgusting because women’s breasts are not performing in either way to benefit Mankind. Interestingly, this is one case where women’s breasts are discussed as for ourselves, but this for ourselves can only be sodomistic in nature. Because of the heterosexist patriarchal discourse on breastfeeding, the nurturing of not just other human parents’ children, but of other species’ children is the ultimate promiscuity (and perhaps disloyalty). This type of nursing squanders valuable and divine resources on those who ought not be heirs to human prosperity.

Interspecies suckling is, however, more threatening than male lactation not only because it challenges both patriarchy and human supremacy, but also because it mocks the border which divides the human from the animals. According to those known as Terror Management Theorists [TMT], reminders of humans' creaturliness, their fragile mortal existence, prompt negative and conservative backlash. In one paper, “Mother’s Milk: An Existential Perspective on Negative Reactions to Breast-feeding”, Cox et al. found that after priming mortality salience in their subjects, those who were then reminded of human-animal similarities had increased hostility toward an image of a woman breastfeeding her child. In the context of hundreds of other studies that gave similar results, the authors conclude that

breast-feeding women serve as reminders of the physical, animal nature of humanity and that such recognition is threatening in the face of one's unalterable mortality.[50]

Concious of the impossibility to elide our own deaths, to control our own fate, many of us refuse to accept the humbling reality of our own animality and insignificance.

6. Farmed Animals and Femininity (dehumanization)
In light of modern Western humans' will to knowledge, power, and meaning, it is not so surprising Carol Linneaus chose to highlight humans' capacity to reason (sapien) as that which separates the men from the animals. Though reason is what makes humans an exceptioanl animal, Linneaus deliberately chose the breast as a marker of human beings' continuity with the animal kingdom. Shiebinger notes that "Linneaus created the term Mammalia in response to the question of humans’ place in nature" so that while "a female characteristic (the lactating mamma) ties humans to brutes... a traditionally male characteristic (reason) marks our separation."[51e]

Breasts, as organs of the body that function to nurse children, have been historically marked as part of a person’s Species being, a matter of her facticity, or determined nature. As popularly expressed by Simone de Beauvoir in her groundbreaking book The Second Sex (1949), “giving birth and suckling are not activities, they are natural functions; no project is involved” (94*). Unlike transcendental projects willed by individual human consciousnesses, breasts are more often associated with the immanence of the body because of their relationship to reproduction and the perpetuation of the collective species to which women are forced into servitude. The situation of the (feminine) body even constitutes a detriment to those human projects. “Nursing is also an exhausting obligation,” she writes, as “the nursing mother feeds the newborn at the expense of her own strength” (95*).

In contrast to a male’s freedom and expression which increase with the complexity of their species, a female animal “feels her enslavement more and more keenly, the conflict between her own interests and the reproductive forces is heightened… woman is of all mammalian females at once the one who is most profoundly alienated” (26, 33). As mother, woman is “like a phase of a species… her individual and separate existence merges into universal life. Her individuality is derisively contested by generality” (184). Women, in other words, lose their autonomy and individuality when their bodies conform to their biological function, becoming subsumed into the general species. Though, many feminists may no longer share Beauvoir’s attitude toward the female body today, her attitude generally reflects the metaphysical and material prejudices of modern Western culture.

Perhaps more than people realize, the Species being of women and the construction of femininity are intricately wrapped up in cultural constructions—both material and conceptual—of farmed animals. Just as women have been subsumed by the Species within patriarchy, so have farmed animals within specieisism.

Carol Adams highlights that species is gendered, animals are feminized, and women are animalized.[52] Particularly, all members of species exploited for their feminine bodies (i.e. eggs, milk) “carry the attribute of the female of the species... unless specifically identified as male.”[53] As Beauvoir stated before her, Adams writes “[t]he generic, unlike mankind, is female… Man transcends species; woman bears it. So do the other animals.” Joan Dunayer likewise notes that

“Whereas other species’ names appear as plurals (‘palm cockatoos’) or follow the (‘the palm cockatoo’), man does not. Frequent capitalization literally elevates Man above other animals. Functioning like a proper name, Man personifies our species as an adult male (13*)

Linguistically, the privilege accorded to “Man” is a site in which sexism and speciesism intersect. While “Man” is proper and particular, women and animals live mere generalized existences. “Man” is unified in his dignified individuality, while women and animals are interchangeable units in a collective.

Although de Beauvoir writes that “The term ‘female’ is derogatory not because it emphasizes woman’s animality, but because it imprisons her in her sex,” she later goes on to describe anthropomorphic vices men have used to describe various female animals—sluggish, eager, artful, stupid, callous, lustful, ferocious, abased—all of which men project unto women (3). Indeed, Dunayer in “Sexist Words, Speciesist Roots” (as well as many other feminist thinkers) have analyzed the intersections between misogynistic and speciesist rhetoric. Terms like catty, shrew, dumb bunny, cow, bitch, old crow, queen bee, and sow are intended, at least originally, to denigrate women, mostly through their analogy to constructions of farmed animals. Women and their lifestyles are also trivialized in the way in which the lives of animals are trivialized. For instance young women are often called chicks while more mature women are said to be old hens who are cooped unless they attend hen parties with their brood.[54]

The distinction between women’s animality and her imprisonment within her sex is very fine since our understanding of female sexuality is partially influenced by human reproductive management and regimes for female farmed animals. In her essay “Thinking like a Chicken: Farm Animals and the Feminine Connection,” Karen Dawn notes that while many people valorize and sympathize with the plight of “wild” animals, there has been a “culturally-conditioned indifference” toward “domestic” animals. Keystone environmental thinkers have privileged those animals that are “natural, wild, and free” over farmed animals which have supposedly been “bred to docility, tractability, stupidity, and dependency.” Though many men have

traditionally admired and even sought to emulate certain kinds of animals, even as they set out to subjugate and destroy them… they have not traditionally admired or sought to emulate women [or farmed animals]… men essentially give to themselves a new lease to run with the predators, not the prey, and to identify with the "wild" and not the "tame."[55]

Women and farmed animals, both who have been domesticated and valued for their feminine docility, are too boring and slavish to admire and emulate; they lack all that is most valued in modern patriarchy: freedom, power, and intelligence.

Ultimately reduced to edible commodities, farmed animals—even more so than “wild” animals—are also dispossessed of agency and particularity. In being reduced to “meat,” farmed animals lose their particularity, “someone has becomes something, an object with no distinctiveness, no uniqueness, no individuality” [56]. As Carol Adams observes, “When you add five pounds of hamburger to a plate of hamburger, it is more of the same thing” [56b]. Further, farmed animals lose their agency through the story of meat and milk eating in which “we reposition the animal from subject to object by making ourselves the subject of meat-eating" [57]. Similarly, because of the stories we tell about dairy cows, the embodied subjectivity of cows is elided: “Milking is done to her rather than by her” [54]. No wonder the minds behind Barnyard chose a male gender for its udder-ed protagonist: “the people producing this film didn't think it was possible to have actual female cows being humorous or wild”, after all, cows are dull and boring.[58]

Through the values and prejudices of patriarchy, women have been marked with animality and thus face a similar negative treatment as animals do. At least metaphorically, women too become exchangeable objects whose agency is evicerated through the objectifying, fragmenting, and consuming male gaze. Adams explains that through the metaphor of being “treated like meat,”

[f]eminists have used violence against animals as metaphor, literalizing and feminizing the metaphor…Whereas women may feel like pieces of meat, and be treated like pieces of meat—emotionally butchered and physically battered—animals actually are made into pieces of meat… [this metaphor often results in an] occlusion, negation, and omission in which the literal fate of the animal is elided [57b]

While many people feel that the objectifying and exploitative treatment of animals (i.e. being “treated like meat’) is unjust when applied to human animals, they uncriticaly accept that it is “natural” and right to treat “animals” as such. By doing so, these people do not challenge discrinimation, objectification, and exploitation themselves, but only that these actsnot be performed against a certain class of privileged subjects.

Beauvoir and the majority of more contemporary femininsts cannot simply elide the risks of dehumanization (a speciesist word) by supporting their defense on the metaphysical foundation of liberal humanism in which humans are either other-than or more-than “animals, but never “mere” animals because they possess self-consciousness. By creating a negative zone of exclusion, the animal body, of which humans transcend, biologist Lynda Birke warns that

we are inevitably going to face problems [because] analogies are drawn between human society and that of other species… if animals are ‘mere’ biology, puppets of their genes, then there will inevitably be inferences made about the mere biology at the heart of human nature.(11*)

The animal body which modern Western people have abjected to form the sanctity of its subjectivity will continually beseeche them, as the abject ceaselessly threatens to collapse the demarcation between it and the demarcating subject.[59] As long as human subjectivity relies upon the abjection and occlusion of “animal” and corporeal subjectivity, those who are marked as closer to animality and corporeality will likely face abject treatment.

As we shall see in the final part of this series, the bodies of both women and cows have been exploited and excluded from the political sphere in the creation of the modern, capitalist Nation. Within the political economy of nursing, the structural parallels and intersections of the exploitation of proletariat women, female slaves, and cows becomes evident. Sadly, while times have changes, oppressive structures have not. Within our capitalist state, human slavery may be outlawed but working class and black women still face temendous obstacles breast-feeding their children and cows have become the primary wetnurses of our society. Continue reading "The Identity Politics of Breasts: Male Lactation and the Political Economy of Wo/Man (part 3)"!

The Identity Politics of Breasts: Male Lactation and the Political Economy of Wo/Man (part 2)

Is it to men that nature confided domestic cares? Has she given us breasts to feed our children?”
--Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette quoted in "Why Mammals are Called Mammals"[*]

Experience may tell you that producing milk and nursing youngsters is a job for the female mammal, not the male. But your experience is probably limited, and the potential of biology--and medical technology--is vast.
--Jared Diamond "Father's Milk"[*]

"For those who claim male lactation is "unnatural," I would have to ask: how natural is canned formula from Nestle' or pacifiers made from petrolium byproducts? If milk production in men were truly unnatural, it wouldn't exist.”
--Laura Shanley "Milkmen: Fathers who Breastfeed"[*]

3. Male Lactation: An Unnatural Act?
The identity politics of human breasts come to full fruition in the question of male nipples. As male children we are taught that girls have “boobs” and boys have “chests,’ but the question of male nipples cannot be evaded. For thousands of years breasts have been one of the most significant markers of one’s gender, and hence male breasts and their nipples pose an existential dilemma to those who identify as male. This has never been truer than within the present visual culture that fetishizes the (female) breast.

Take for example the reception of the 2006 Nickelodeon film Barnyard. While critics had diverse opinions on the film, nearly all their reviews shared one particular quip: the protagonist of the film, a steer, had utters. As one late reviewer ranted:

Every single review whether by a critic or just your average John Q. Moviefone seems to be possessed by the urge to point out their extensive knowledge of bovine anatomy and remind the reader that male cattle do not, in fact, have udders.[22]

While filmgoers often suspend disbelief during films, especially animated features, the audiences could not suspend “the truth” about male anatomy. And, of course, there is also the double standard. Female pigs (who have ten or more nipples) and chickens (who don’t have any mammary glands) are often represented with a pair of giant breasts in cartoons yet male reviewers say nothing—they probably are not even conscious of these transgressions. The existence of DD breasts on a chicken somehow seem quite natural, but udders on a male, no! (But if male goats can grow udders, why not steers?)[*]

Indeed, men face tremendous existential anxieties when their perceived masculinity is challenged by breast growth and breast cancer. In his dissertation on ecofeminism and sociology of the body, Richard Twine (2001) discusses the role of cosmetic surgery in marking and constructing “natural” bodies. Twine cites that the fourth most popular cosmetic surgery among men is breast reduction. Though 60% of men have a “proliferative development” of breast tissue called gynecomastia to different degrees, the assignment of a title to such a common condition marks large male breasts as a quasi-“disease” to be treated within medical discourse. Twine calls gynecomastia a

medical construction that occurs in the context of a culture that rigidly polices the demarcation between what is constructed as the male and female body… ‘gynecomastia’ is potentially disruptive of heterosexist understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality. This can be taken as an illustration of how cosmetic surgery perpetuates a culturally constructed ‘natural’ body.[23]

Further citing Morgan (1991) and Kathy Davis (1996), he considers cosmetic surgery “conformity on a deeper level,” and “not about beauty, but about identity.”

We have just to think of Thomas Beatie, the first man recorded to give birth, and his reaction to his breast reduction during a sexual reassignment surgery: “That day was—the most liberating day of my life. I literally felt like a weight was lifted from my chest."[24] Interestingly, Beatie considered downsizing his breasts a more significant step toward manhood than the optional removal of his uterus, which he did not feel “will make you any more of a man or any less of a woman." At least for Beatie giving birth is a gender-neutral act while a breast reduction was a masculinizing one.

But men don’t just need to grow large breasts to feel threatened by them; merely by recognizing them as inseparable from their existential condition does masculinity come under threat. In one paper, “What Makes a Man a Man? The Lived Experience of Male Breast Cancer,” the authors explore the unique lived experience of men with breast cancer, an experience they consider “unparalleled in other disease profiles.” According to the authors,

[t]he idea of living with a feminized illness was very distressing and stigmatizing for some men. Furthermore, treatment resulted in a profound change to the concept of their embodied selves and constituted a significant change to body image and sexuality. This was reinforced in participants who experienced erectile dysfunction related to tamoxifen therapy.[25]

Though there breasts did not grow larger or become more physically visible to the public, their cancer had marked their breast and categorized them into a body mostly composed of women—breast cancer patients. Within the dominant discourses of breasts, masculinity comes under threat in it’s proximity/association to female breasts and their milk.[*]


Also see this video of man pumping his own milk

As Jared Diamond notes in his book Why is Sex Fun? (1998), our knowledge of male breasts are limited. To the surprise, and perhaps dismay, of many Americans, men can lactate. Male lactation has been recorded in species including humans, cows, goats, guinea pigs, and most notably the Dayak fruit bat. Males may have less well-developed mammary glands, but they nonetheless have them and the potential to lactate if provided with the proper stimulation or hormonal input. Diamond writes that direct injections of hormones released during pregnancy like estrogen and progesterone have catalyzed breast growth and milk in virgin and male mammals. Cancer patients, too, will begin lactating when injected with prolactin. With the proper does of chemicals humans straight from the womb can lactate (“witches milk”) as well as those in their 70s. Recovery from starvation is another exceptional state that was believed to cause thousands of men confined in Nazi and Japanese POW camps to spontaneously lactate as they struggled with bouts of hunger.[26]

Not only can biochemical changes trigger spontaneous lactation in male mammals, so can intentional states. Diamond informs us that with this knowledge, “The remaining obstacle will then no longer be physiological but psychological: Will all you guys be able to get over your hang-up that breast-feeding is a woman’s job?” Dan Raphael was among the first to claim in a publication that lactation in males could be induced with manual stimulation of the nipples in his book The Tender Gift (1978). Unassisted child birth advocate Laura Shanley not only confirms that manual stimulation can unlock males’ latent potential to lactate, but that so too can the power of suggestion. Through rigorous meditative exercises, her husband was able to achieve lactation.[27]

Desperation may also hold the key to unleashing male milk. In 2002, a Sri Lankan man whose wife had just perished, put his eldest daughter (18 months old) who would not drink formula to his breast and miraculously began to lactate.[28] Stories of men going wetnurse after the loss of their wives go back centuries. A collection of them are contained within the compendium Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine (1896) by George Gould and Walter Pyle. One story told by a Prusian naturalist is of a Brazilian man who served as wetnurse when the female villagers’ breasts had shriveled up, he being the only supply of milk.[29] The same naturalist also wrote of a Burmese man who nursed his children, and naturalist David Livingstone reported on a like occurrence in the Scottish highlands. One blogger additionally cites a 55-year old man who served as a wetnurse in Baltimore and a man in Zaire who nursed his son in 2002.[30]

Though this information may come as a perverse surprise to many, male lactation was not something entirely unknown in earlier times. In the Descent of Man (1871), Charles Darwin acknowledged the male mammary, writing

It is well known that in the males of all mammals, including man, rudimentary mammae exist. These in several instances have become well developed, and have yielded a copious supply of milk. Their essential identity in the two sexes is likewise shewn by their occasional sympathetic enlargement in both during an attack of the measles[31]

Later, he speculated that both sexes once nursed their young in earlier times before the male mammary became latent. Male lactation is also suggested in the Torah:

Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers? (Numbers 11:12)[32]

One may wonder, if such “anomalies and curiosities” have been known throughout the ages, if the knowledge of male lactation has been erased by late modern scientific discourse. Perhaps knowledge about the potential of males to lactate, like the female orgasm, has been suppressed my medical and political authority, a product of an epistemology of ignorance.[33]

Further, Claudia McCreary suspects that male breastfeeding is so rare because it would already be seen as a perverse monstrosity if done in public, not to mention it would increase the size of a man’s breast and further stigmatize him. And ,of course, even ones most trusted intimate partner may not accept such a decision, and thus any male breastfeeding must stay “underground.”[34] Transgendered people already face a tremenduous amount of violence and ridicule, even from medical authorities who are supposed to look out for their patients. Thomas Beatie describes the discrimination he faced when seeking medical care during and even after his gender reassignment surgery. Some doctors refused to use the pronoun “he,” and others even demanded he shave his facial hair and see a psychologist. Beatie’s own brother was insensitive to his loss of his embryos and fallopian tubes, telling him it “it’s a good thing that happened. Who knows what kind of monster it would have been.”[35] Worse of all, after going public, Beatie and his family began to receive death threats.[24]

Men who are interested in transgressing gender roles in one of the most intimate and cosmological senses—by becoming wet nurses—would be faced with threats beyond social stigmitation. Since maternal breastfeeding is considered natural and sacred, the American public accepts breastfeeding so long as mothers don’t report any pleasure other than maternal feelings. Take Karen Carter, a 28 year old single mother, who in 1991 called into her local crisis center asking, "Is it normal to feel aroused during nursing?”[36] It took Carter two-years to regain full custody of her children after she was charged with “sexual abuse in the first degree”.

Not surprising then, the idea of a man breastfeeding becomes a transgressive/monstrous act, demonic rather than divine. This sentiment is expressed by Jessica at the blog Imperfect Parent, upon learning of male lactation:

I can’t help but feel that a man breastfeeding is pedophilic… [and] need[s] to talk to a psychiatrist... An emotionally retarded father’s desires should not supersede what is morally right for the child… [male nursing is] unacceptable in a civilized society.[37]

Here, male breastfeeding breaks “civil” order and moral law; a man must be psychologically ill or “retarded” to feed a child. Jessica cannot but suspect that a man do anything to nurture a child, he must have ulterior motives. Similarly, Joseph Nicolosi of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality states that the stigmitization against men breastfeeding children is right because “a gay man imitating a woman by nursing a baby is an affront to human dignity. We were not created to masquerade as the opposite sex--and no man can truly 'mother' a baby."[38] Shanley explains that she knows of gay men who breastfeed their adopted children but who are unable to speak about their experiences because they are afraid of losing them because of these attitudes.

Jessica and Nicolosi’s positions belies the naturalness of “Nature.” She associates civil law and natural law as one and the same and a reason against the “unnatural” act of male breastfeeding. But as Shanley writes

For those who claim male lactation is "unnatural," I would have to ask: how natural is canned formula from Nestle' or pacifiers made from petrolium byproducts? If milk production in men were truly unnatural, it wouldn't exist.[27]

Male nursing only seems “unnatural” because we never see of hear about it, not because it actually doesn’t exist. So what of the nature of Nature? Greta Gaard describes this gaping contradiction within the dominant discourses surrounding queer identities and sexualities in her essay “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism:”

On the one hand… the dominant culture charges queers with transgressing the natural order, which in turn implies that nature is valued and must be obeyed. On the other hand… Western culture has constructed nature as a force that must be dominated if culture is to prevail… [thus] the ‘nature’ queers are urged to comply with is none other than the dominant paradigm of heterosexuality—an identity and practice that is itself a cultural construction.[39]

The crux of the mystique behind male breastfeeding is a metaphysical discontinuity between masculinity and femininity. Ultimately, as Nicolosi mentions, the lactating male breast, one that challenges the idea of bifurcated sex, threatens the “dignity” of such a distinction between man and woman.


4. Queering Milk Economies: Breast for Ourselves
I have argued herein that fe/male breasts are not in the slightest “natural” objects. Human breasts are among the most culturally constructed objects, and not jus tin the sense of surgical augmentation. Human breasts are highly significant markers of our identities as male and female, and disrupting those identities through alternative breast practices shakes the cosmological core of human identity in modern Western societies, manifesting existential anxieties over one’s own identity (as in the case of breast cancer) and gender identities in general (as in the reaction to male breastfeeding). Male lactation can thus serve as a practice that undermines “naturalistic” attitudes about the female body, motherhood, and compulsory heterosexuality.

While men and woman sharing the responsibility of nursing their children may sound like a novel, postmodern idea, such practices already exist in other cultures. The Aka Pygmy have been sharing child care for at least a century. Barry Hewlett believe that the Aka have one of the most impressive gender egalitarian records when it comes to parenting. Male and female roles are “virtually interchangeable” as men and women alternate between hunting/gathering and childrearing/domestic chores—each spending approximately half their time within reach of the children. Hewlett notes that there is no loss of status from nursing as there is no privilege assigned to other tasks that would make raising children less valuable.[40]

Perhaps not only the ethics of double standard of toal motherhood should be called into question by the practice of male lactation, but so should also the exclusive motherhood Blum critiques. A more community nursing approach, one that relies on cooperation and not monetary capital to purchase the labor of wetnurses or “steal” from human and bovine chattle, provides a better model for egalitarianism than one based on family ties alone. One such practice, cross-nursing--the nursing of your friends and relatives children while they are away at work or elsewhere--is a growing phenomenon. According to a Babytalk survey, 40% of people thought it was a good idea, but 45% thought it was “disgusting” and/or “weird.”[41]

Though, cross-nursing is a way to share intimacy without the exclusivity, it is exactly that unexclusive intimacy that repulses people. Those who were not taken with the idea emphasized that “nursing isn't just about nutrition,” implying that the only positive value that could come out of cross-nursing is biochemical, nothing social.[42] According to one mother who cross-feeds, opponents “assume that anything that is to do with breasts has to be sexual… [it’s] bad enough if you're doing it with your own child. But then, you add another child to the mix and they're really concerned about it.”[41]

Returning to Blum’s arguments, much of this exclusive commitment to one’s own biological child is based on a patriarchal lineage and class-based institution. There is thus a sense that a mother is being promiscuous if she cares so intimately for those other than her own. Because cross-feeding doesn’t fit within modern, heterosexual, middle-class “good motherhood,” there must be ulterior motives, a perversion. According to Balsama et al. (1992) erotic feeling during breastfeeding transgress the “only erotic feeling allowed to the mother in a patriarchal society, that connected with the adult male” [cited in 45]. Any breast practice that does not conform to the pro-creative, exclusive, total motherhood, is thus cast into sexual suspicion.

Male lactation may challenge total motherhood and cross-feeding may challenge exclusive motherhood, but to liberate the breasts from patriarchal discourse women must also escape from chaste motherhood by accepting the sexuality of breastfeeding. Hence why Blum emphasizes the importance of actual skin-to-skin contact between mother and child and not the yuppified breast-pump-milk-in-the-bottle “breastfeeding” of exclusive working mothers:

the mother in her body, her pleasure and needs, satisfactions and pains, have been largely erased… the career-breastfeeding Supermom seems to transcend” these needs and desires.[20f, g]

Similarly, lactivist Ted Greiner has begun promoted “breastfeeding as an experience,” not merely a substance after learning that transgenic mice were being bred to produce nutrients in human milk for baby formula.[43] Substances, afterall, are substitutable and instrumentally valuable, experiences are unique and valuable in and of themselves.

Part of reclaiming female breasts from male hegemony may be acknowledging the centers of pleasure breasts may be, not for men, but for the women to whom they are a part of. Though there is much nutritional, anthropological, and feminist scholarship on breastfeeding, few books have really explored it’s quirky, fun, humorous, and sexy sides. Fiona Gile’s book Fresh Milk (2003) is among the few that do. Gile describes lactating women’s breastplay during sex, from their partners almost giving them an orgasm from suckling to women ejaculating milk as they come during intercourse. Gile’s laments that

it is only in pornography, and some rare examples of religious art, that alternative images of lactation are currently available…images that celebrate and extend a real and complex aspect of female bodily expression.[44]

Breasts, she believes, out to be parts of ourselves we can take pleasure in, laugh at, and play with.

Young also wishes to reclaim women’s breasted experience from the hegemony of patriarchy. She notes that while men generally privilege the sight of breasts (as they tend to be more visual oriented), women tend to value touch and the sensuality of their own bodies.[21d] Instead of conceiving breastfeeding as work, Young proposes framing it as a reciprocal and sexual give and take. Young expresses that she does not want to overeroticize or romanticize motherhood; she merely would like women to be less ashamed, fearful, and private about the bodily pleasure they can derive from it.[21e]

Sex educator Allison Bartlett praises Young and Giles for their subversive discourse on breasts. She cites Master’s 1966 sexology study in which women reported they became sexually aroused during nursing and some even reaching orgasm. After all, in many ways, the sensitive tip of an erect nipple pushing into an open warm and moist mouth that rhythmically sucks on it while lubricating the nipple with oral juices resembles vaginal intercourse. By discussing the sexual experience of breastfeeding, women can shift the discourse away from benefits, rights, and nature, to one of women’s agency and pleasure. This discourse

is consistent with understanding breastfeeding as an embodied experience which involves intense physical exchanges… as well as an emotional relation of intimacy, care and often passionate engagement.[45]

This, these feminists believe, is a much more empowering discourse on breasts whereby the breasts are for ourselves, not for others. Through appreciating the sensual, if not sexual, experience of nursing, mothers’ breasts can be valued in and of themselves. This has consequences not only for human sexuality, but also for our relations to the animals whom we breed and use for milk.

To be continued
In the following section, I will explore how interspecies suckling and breastfeeding in general challenge a person’s “human” identity, and how privileging so-called “human being” over other animal beings provides the architecture for domination and exploitation of any and all female bodies based on a “natural” order. Here we shall see in a glance, the conceptual and historical intersections and development between the instrumentalization of farmed animal bodies (especially the dairy cow) and peasant and slave women under capitalist patriarchy. I’ll conclude by advocating the necessity of perceiving female’s breasts (regardless of species) as for themselves, not for men, for babies, for masters, or for money.
Continue to Part 3 (Interspecies Suckling and Farmed Animals & Femininity)
Continue reading "The Identity Politics of Breasts: Male Lactation and the Political Economy of Wo/Man (part 2)"!

The Identity Politics of Breasts: Male Lactation and the Political Economy of Wo/Man (part 1)

[M]ale dominated society tends not to think of a woman’s breasts as hers. Woman is a natural territory; her breasts belong to others—her husband, her lover, her baby. It’ hard to imagine a woman’s breasts as her own, from her own point of view, to imagine their value apart from measurement and exchange.
--Iris Marion Young "Breasted Experience"[*]

According to Kristeva, the infant must substitute speech for its mother’s breast. It takes pleasure in the materiality of speech just as it did in the materiality of its mother’s body… this substitution takes place when child realizes that its mother is a separate being who can leave and does not entirely exist for its own gratification... the move from breast to speech is an organic evolution of the psyche through which speech is ‘literally’ substituted for the breast.
--Kelly Oliver "Nourishing the Subject"[*]

Milk is the one bodily fluid that is clearly symbolic of all that is clean, fresh, and wholesome.
--M. Potts, R. V. Short Ever Since Adam and Eve[*]

INTRODUCTION
What is the nature of the human breast?

Far from a dryly medical, if not slightly erotic, inquiry, inquiry into the nature of the human breast holds the potential to disrupt unquestioned dominant discourses in our society. The subject of this post is not the mammary gland; and if it were, such inquiry would be only skin deep into “the nature” of the human breast. Rather, the “nature’ of human breasts is a cultural one, a “nature” with a history no younger and clean than the history of “civilization.”

The human breast is a battleground. It is a cultural site at which pervasive dominant discourses in western societies demarcate “nature” from culture and politics, “woman” from man, “Man” from “animal,” spirituality from sexuality, and altruism from self-interest. Just as breasts (generally) come in pairs, so do their culturally conscripted “natures.” The powerful emotions that may be evoked by the sight or touch of the breast may not be solely aesthetic; they may also signify deeper subconscious anxieties over our very identities as men, women, humans, animals, straights or queers.

The discourse, cultural currency, of female breasts are various. Within late 20th and early 21st century U.S. America, the female breast has been most popularly depicted as an object for men, after having been re-appropriated by cultural conservatives and corporations. The commodification of the female breast for heterosexual male desire, however, has been critiqued by radical feminists and lactivists, advocates of breastfeeding, beginning in the 1970s.

Many lactivists seek to end not only the manipulative marketing of inferior formula to unwitting mothers around the world, but often also the sexualization of the breast. The female breast, they say, is not “naturally” a sexual object, but rather “naturally” a nutritional object for babies. The sexuality of the breast is culturally contingent and perhaps even immoral because such sexualization had made women either disgusted by the act of breastfeeding itself (a “need” of the child) or dismayed to do so in public, within the realm of the male gaze. While it had become quite culturally appropriate for advertisements in public spaces to contain nearly-bare breasts, it had also become culturally inappropriate for women to expose their breasts during suckling.

However, missing from both of these discourses—breasts as objects for consumption by (heterosexual) men and objects for consumption by babies—is the value of women's embodied experiences. For the greater portion of western history, women’s bodies and sexuality have been abject. Because women’s bodies have been framed as “animalistic,” their sexuality has been linked to animality if ever for their pleasure and not for procreation—which, as some have noted, is a contradiction since humans share procreation in common with all animals, but with very few, sodomy.

As such, the female breast has been the site of national and racial politics in which “Others” are to be subordinated to the public pursuits of white men. Within certain practices of “wet-nursing,” some of which continue today, the bodies of poor, black, and “foreign” women as well as dairy cows have been commodified as resources to nurture a new generation who will inherit a great nation, almost always at the expense of the health of such “Others.” Both conceptually and materially, public life, men, whites, and H. sapiens in general are privileged over private life, women, people of color, and “animals.”

Yet, these linking dualisms which structure our normative perception can be dismantled through the completely “natural” and cultural practices of male breastfeeding and the embodied sexual satisfaction of breasts. Although male lactation was known of hundreds of years ago, such knowledge has been forgotten by the development of an epistemology of ignorance designed to separate man and woman to accord women to the home and men to the public arena. Through male lactation, women are liberated from the walls constructed by the rhetoric of “natural motherhood.” Male lactation opens new possibilities like queer child rearing so breastfeeding may no longer dominantly be stipulated within heterosexual and strictly monogamous relations. Further, by taking pleasure in breastfeeding, breasts can be sites at which motherhood and spirituality are no longer mutually exclusive of sexuality.

Last but not least, in recognizing the value in the embodied experiences of breasts, we should also promote mother cows' positive embodied experiences as mothers and lactaters which presently are utterly ignored within industrial and even some traditional farm practices which alienate mothers from their labor.


SECTION I: Got Milk?: The Nature of Women or the Culture of Men
1. Breast for Men (commodification)
Desmond Morris famously hypothesised in his book The Naked Ape (1967) that evolution has favored large breasts in humans because they analogous to the buttocks which stimulate male sexual desire through sexual signaling.[1] Because humans are bipedal, breasts have supposedly largely substituted the sexually signalling rump for the visually titlating breasts as they are much more congenial for human sight. Yet, in contrast to Western and especially late 20th century American culture, most cultures find little eroticism in female breasts. As lactivist Katherine Dettwyler notes in her book Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives (1995), Ford and Beach (1952) had found that only 13 of the 190 cultures they studied assigned any sexuality to the female breasts.[2a] To this day, the sexual “nature” of female breasts continues to be a cultural presupposition.

In a review of Marilyn Yalom’s A History of the Breast (1997), Benjamin Roberts paraphrases the book in a seven words: “behind every great bosom stands a man.”[3] In a similar but more critical review, Natalie Angier summarizes that “Throughout Western history, breasts have symbolized anything and everything to men… very little in the [historical] record to indicate how women have felt about their breasts: whether they took pleasure in them, the extent to which they chose to display their breasts or if they had any say in the debate over wet-nursing.”[4]

According to Yalom, the discourse, representation, and normativity of female breasts have adapted to the political goals of each era in Western societies. The preference for large breasts is thus no mere historical accident. Roberts’ paraphrases Yalom again, writing that “during troublesome times in history the biological differences between men and women tend to become more emphasized,” something that in part explains the proliferation of figures like Marilyn Monroe and other big buxum beauties during the McCarthy era.[2] Likewise, in her book Breasts (1998), Carolyn Latteier writes that “The longing for security and a return to normalcy spurred a nostalgia in women’s dress… Large breasts offered security value and also stood as emblems of plenty during the era of greatly expanding prosperity.”[5] The emphasis on the breast over the past half century, in other words, may have served as a protective barrier, offering security to distinguish male from female bodies in an era in which natioanl and political identity were existentially challenged.

However, as Latteier states, large breasts also represented the economic fecundity of the post-war swelling economy. Breasts, or rather “bombshells,” were first used in advertisments to “sell” the war effort in the 1940’s, only afterwards to be used as props to sell commercial products. Just as the shift in the male gaze in the early modern period from belly to bosom symbolically served the “needs” of the seveenteenth century—eroticism and productivity—female breasts serve similar “needs” in the present century whereby the the erotic and commerically productive are frequently one and the same.[5]

Far from “natural,” societal preferences and evaluation of female breasts are the product of the times, and within modern capitalism, constructed through visual culture and media. Indeed, the intersections of 20th century American capitalism, technology, and pornography are much more intimate than is commonly understood. Within an androcentric capitalist visual culture, breasts have become mere things, toys for men to handle--knockers and knobs--, more decorative than functional. In a presentation at the 2007 Feminist Anti-Pornography Conference, Gail Dines discusses how the success of Playboy over Penthouse and Hustler was contingent upon its popularity among advertisers. Further, the men’s magazine did wonders for the American economy by creating a new male identity, the playboy, in which men could have unlimited sexual access to women.[6] Breasts, formerly symbols of the sacred nourishing life forces of the planet, have now become so mundane from their incessant use for selling merchandise, they have become commodified in and of themselves, even to the point of becoming a mere gimmik signifying male fascination with the feminine Otherness.[10][*]

Yet, worse, female breasts also have become the loci of women's value, a value to be measured in juxtaposition to other women's breasts.[21a] Large female breasts had become popularly constructed as accessories to mark one’s own femininity and eventually a requirement to achieve an ideal feminine body. The preference for larger breasts and smaller bellies has created nearly-unachievable beauty standards; nearly, because one can sometimes achieve them if one has the financial resources to pay for surgical intervention. In 1983, the American Society for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons deployed a (pseudo) medical discourse to advocate on the behalf of breast augmentation as a treatment for some women’s “disease” (i.e. small breasts) to cure their low self-esteem in women.[7] In 2006, breast augmentation was the most popular cosmetic procedure on women, being performed on over 380,000 women.[8] The over-representation of “perfect” breasts in visual mediums becomes reproduced as large, firm breasts become increasingly common among a public with augmented breasts. Over the previous ten years, this elective surgery is now almost four times as popular as it once was.[9] Even after losing their breasts to cancer, women's losses are rendered invisble by expectations that they accept a prosthetic replacement "like a man," despite breasts being "the home of her being... her energy."[21b]

The female breast has become so commodified as a sexually charged object to titillate the male gaze that its biological function as a source of nourishment for newborns has become marginalized to the point that images of suckling babies has become obscene. In 2007, one blogger who sells breastfeeding promotional t-shirts on her website, including one that parodied the National Pork Board’s slogan “The Other White Meat,” “The Other White Milk,” initiated a threat of a lawsuit against the site because it “tanishes the good reputation” of an organization that mass slaughters millions of pigs a year.[11]

More indicative of this development, was the reader response to a 2006 issue of Babytalk that featured a full cover picture of a child suckling on his mother’s breast. Readers were so incited that the editors received a flood of critical letters. Readers reported turning over the magazine cover, even ripping it off, so that their sons and husbands would not see. According to a couple readers, "A breast is a breast—it's a sexual thing," "Men are very visual… When they see a woman's breast, they see a breast—regardless of what it's being used for.”[12] Linda Blum notes the paradox that the most common place we now see breastfeednig is in ads for infant formula.[*] Accordingly, female breasts are supposed to remain private and covered from the public.

However, lactivists have pointed out the irony that while mothers must conceal their breasts and use filthy bathrooms to feed their children, women are welcomed and even encouraged to display cleavage at popular restaurants such as Hooters as well as in public advertisements. So it is the maternal breast that has become private and profane while the pornographic breast has become largely public and sacred (as it is worshipped by fans of female pop stars). The sexual objectification of breasts in the public sphere, as found by one study, suggests that it is one influential factor in discouraging women from breastfeeding their children.[13] Indeed, as Young notes, because women’s sexuality must be shut off during feeding to maintain the purity of all-giving maternal love, husbands may sometimes feel that they are competing with their children. This jealousy in combination with the potential disgust factor of milky breasts and the taboo of mixing sexuality and maternity result in shorter commitment to breastfeeding so that women’s bodies can again return to pleasing their husbands [21c] To this extent, the sexual objectification of breasts as it exists in American culture today is not only harmful to women but potentially also their children.

Ironically, the very lactivists that are critical of breasts being perceived solely as sexual objects deploy similar tactics to “sell” their message to the public through the highly valued discursive currency of sex and pop culture.[14] For instance, the one blogger who was threatened by the NPB sold shirts such as "Dairy Diva" and "Nursing, Nature's Own Breast Enhancement.” The sexualization of maternal breasts was purpotedly promoting breastmilk “beyond merely for infant consumption.”[11]

Although historical cross-cultural studies have confirmed the contingency of the sexual nature of the female breast, especially as an object for men to visually and economically consume, the dominant discourse of breasts for men has remained fairly stable. On the other hand, as Angier notes in her review of Yalom, over the last half of century women have contributed alternative stories and discourses on their breasts such as taking pleasure in the act of breastfeeding, dispensing with their bras, and producing breast art.[4] From all these studies, we can determine that neither the “nature” of the female breast nor the dominately preffered shape and size are apolitical.


2. Breasts for Babies: (objectification)
While capitalism and corporations may be the drivers behind the present American obsession with female breasts, the counter arguments for breasts for babies can be just as culturally conservative, reaffirming the patriarchal order of women’s confinement to the private/domestic sphere oriented toward selflessness and prudeness. The breasts for babies position, thus, does not ensure women’s breasts are liberated anymore than they have been while breasts have been for men.

Some of the discourse Dettwyler deploys suggests such a conservative naturalism, whereby the “Natural” (or perhaps Christian) order is “good,” and “unnatural” deviation from it is “bad.” For instance, a subheading of one of her chapters is “All God’s Mammals Got Breasts.”[2b] In a separate chapter, she uses data from cross-cultural studies, on human molar development, and the troublesome[*] analogy to Chimpanzee weaning to recommend a “natural” range at which humans would be weaned outside of culture:

“acknowledging that humans are primates, and recognizing that lactation and weaning take place according to certain regular patterns in nonhuman primates, then what do these patterns suggest would be the natural age of weaning in modern humans if these behaviors were not modified by culture?”[2c]

Dettwyler approximates that in pure “Nature,” humans would be weaned no younger than at 2.5 years of age and no longer than 7 years, even though the cross-cultural mean is between 2 and 4 years old. The implication is not only that this is, but also that this ought to the case. To wean an infant at 6 to 12 months is nothing short of defying the “natural needs” of the child.

But, of course, breastfeeding cannot be separated from culture; humans as we understand them, cannot exist “outside” nature. As anthropologist Tim Ingold discusses in his paper “Becoming Persons,” reducing breastfeeding to pure culture not only denies the biological reality of the mother-child bond, but also the mother-child relationships in other species. Likewise, reducing breastfeeding to a purely natural phenomenon ignores how personhood is “delivered within a context of social relations;” breastfeeding practices are neither nature or culture, but both.[15] Cross-culturally, there is an incredible diversity in how and for how long infants are breastfed. In fact, infants are largely breastfed for such long periods of time by their mothers because doing so is a kind of contraceptive practice whereby the birth of the next child can be postponed for another 2.5 years.[16, 60]

While breastfeeding seems to be a matter of personal choice, a private matter, it is far from it. Lactivists have done nothing less than champion it as a political cause in modern America. As Kitty O’ Callahan writes, “breastfeeding is a private choice, but make no mistake, it's a public issue. Everyone from the security guard at the mall to your Aunt Sadie wants to have a say in when, where, and how long you breastfeed.”[17]

Yet, far from being a private choice, women in modern patriarchal cultures have perhaps been the most pressured by the medical establishment as a matter of biopolitics to breastfeed. In a critical rebuttal of the guilt-inducing lactivists and American medical establishment, Hanna Rosin writes of how she has personally experienced that “[i]n certain overachieving circles, breast-feeding is no longer a choice—it’s a no-exceptions requirement, the ultimate badge of responsible parenting.”[18] Rosin categorizes the mandate to “optimize every dimension of children’s lives” into what Joan Wolf calls the new ethic of “total motherhood.” According to this ethic,

Mothers are held uniquely responsible for predicting and preventing any circumstance that might interfere with their children’s putatively normal development…[breastfeeding is] cast as a trade-off between what babies and children need versus what mothers might like… [which] derive[s] from an ethos which presumes that a moral mother will subjugate herself completely to a culturally defined, all-inclusive notion of the needs of children… Each mother is responsible for adopting behavior that reduces even minuscule or poorly understood risks to her children, regardless of the cost to herself.

The ethic of total motherhood leaves Rosin wondering whether breastfeeding has become “this generation’s vacuum cleaner—an instrument of misery that mostly just keeps women down.”

Rosin and others have been especially turned off by moralistic and sensational campaigns such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ public service announcements. In one television advertisement, a pregnant woman rides on top of a mechanical bull and gets thrown off. The captions read “You’d never take risks before your baby is born. Why start after?… Babies were born to be breastfed.”[19] The message is that breastfeeding is something that is the default “choice” that you choose not to do, not one choice among many which has its own costs and benefits for each individual woman. It also equates the severe harm that can effect a child’s fundamental physical and psychological development (i.e. falling) to the exagerated health risks that come from not breastfeednig.[18]

Like Rosin, Linda Blum in her book At the Breast (2000) notes that breastfeeding has frequently been “the measurement of a mother” that includes an aassumption that “good mothers ‘naturally’ put their ‘children’s needs’ first and that ‘children’s needs’ are fixed by ‘nature’ and progressively more knowable.”[20a] Blum most poignantly explains how concepts of “good motherhood” are situated in discourses on race and class. “Which women should mother?,” she asks. “Whose babies will be valued?… which mothers ‘deserve’ provisioning?… Which women’s bodies need to be controlled?”[20b]

Mothers with more socially unquestioned respectability—those with a husband, a "legitimate" child, a disposable income, and white—are more likely to enjoy breastfeeding. Working-class women often have difficulty incorporating breastfeeding into their lives and feel the State intrudes too much into their efforts. Working-class black women feel less guilt than white mothers from not breastfeeding, though they breastfed in higher numbers earlier in the 20th century; now they are twice as likely to use formula as whites.[16] Additionally, Black women, in part from the legacy of slavery and continual presence of racism in America are extra conscious of the “animality" of breastfeeding since they are popularly stigmatized for being too animal-like. Further, Black mothers are considered disreputable by medical authorities who cast them as “undeserving” since their children are often born out of wedlock and they have no immediate intention of attaining a husband.[20c] Not surprisingly, the different situations of middle-class white women and working-class black women result in different attitudes toward breastfeeding and medical authorities. The demand that Afro-American women ought to breastfeed despite their discomfort doing so consequentially attacks the survivors of a racist medical institution rather than the racism and calssism that have created the negative attitudes and material provisions that stand as obstacles.

Through an ethic of total motherhood, a disproportionate responsibility is placed upon the female parent in a male-female couple. While the husband can largely attain his full autonomy as an actor who may still share some house chores and child care, he is free of six to twenty-four months of “babysitting” late into the night, the guilt of not feeding enough, and the dilemma of managing a job and feeding the child. “When your husband heads out the door,” Callahan empathizes, “your spitup-encrusted nursing chair can feel as if it's equipped with leather straps holding you down.”[17] While Callahan still emphasized the potential beauty of breastfeeding, Rosin had lost all “maternal nirvana” by her third child, jealous of everyone who seemed to have more freedom.[18]

Further, Blum explains that the exclusive motherhood as promoted by middle-class lactivists is brimming with white and single partner privilege. “This singular mother…was and continues to be a white, status- and class-enhancing project. Exclusive motherhood had its origins in the idealized female domesticity of the eighteenth-century European middle-classes.”[20d] The singlular mother more often than not relies upon a working husband or dispensable wealth to spend on a servant or wetnurse just as it also is instrumental to patriarchy in which to create a legitimate heir to the family.[20e] Of course, the absence of maternity leave in the USA is also responsible for a lower frequency of working-class breastfeeding since these families often do not have the financial resources to afford only a single parent working.

Though many countries in the global North give at least 12 weeks of maternity leave at 80-100% pay, in the USA pregnant and nursing women are only entitled amaximum of 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Up to 40% of women are unable to even take unpaid leave for six months. Much of this is because unions gave little priority to women work rights after the men returned to work and were seeking employment again. Naomi Baumslag, D. Michels, and R. Jolly write

In a country that continues ot view the female labor force participation as voluntary, rather than necessary, it is not surprising maternity entitlements and child-care provisions are severely lacking in the United States…In spite of its view of itself as a world leader and champion of human rights and feminine equality, the United States was the last industrialized nation in not mandating family leave.[16]

Inconsistently, the US government promotes the "breast is best" philosophy but does little support that idea through its policy. The USA has decidedly prioritized corporate efficiency by not mandating paid maternity leave, instead, leaving mothers to choose between their career and their children (unless they are able/willing to pump themselves or bring their children to work). Far from being purely breast for baby, much of lactivism is also situated still in the breasts for men orientation whereby patriarchy relies upon the unpaid domestic work of women to raise a generation of new sons and whereby men have greater access to jobs within a society where maternity leave is severely lacking.

We have only remember the revolutionary era in France when the popular advocacy of exclusive breastfeeding corresponded with "political realignments undermining women’s public power and attaching a new value to women’s domestic roles" whereby "the scientific fascination with the female breast helped to buttress the sexual division of labor in European society by emphasizing how natural it was for females—both human and nonhuman—to suckle and rear their own children.”[51g]The supposed progressive advocacy of many lactivist organizations may be "wolves in sheep's clothing" for coercing women out of work and back into the home if the promotion of breastfeeding is not accompanied by larger political-economic changes whereby women may recover from their pregnancies and nurture their children without being financially penatalized.

But what if women were not the only partners who could breastfeed the children? How different would the world be if male parents could participate in this form of childcare? Might there be greater maternity/paternity leave benefits like there are in Sweden? And how would male breastfeeding challenge the ethic of total motherhood? Would fathers be incorporated into this ethic, or would the ethic be dismantled as men would think it too severe? Perhaps we’ll discover the consequences soon, because, despite popular belief, men can breastfeed!
Continue to part 2 (Male Lactation and Queer Families)
Continue reading "The Identity Politics of Breasts: Male Lactation and the Political Economy of Wo/Man (part 1)"!

Skinny Bitch and Bulimic Vegetarians

Introduction
In 2007, few people would have expected a "no-nonsense" book of "tough-love" for American females to become one of the most successful vegetarian advocacy publications in the Western hemisphere. This book, Skinny Bitch, spawned a whole slew of products including a cookbook, an instructional book on pregnancy, a journal, and now three work out videos. Already, the original book has become an international bestseller, hung onto the New York Times bestseller list (including a brief spot at the top), has sold two million copies, and has been translated into 20 languages.

While many vegetarian and AR activists have welcomed this book with open arms, too few people have heeded to the criticisms that this book preys on female body insecurities. Below, I will discuss why disguising a vegetarian message within a frame about weight-loss/management is not only detrimental to the health of adolescent females and young women but also trivializes the radical political orientation of veganism by conflating it with a self-interested, faddish diet. In light of continuous research that links the adoption of vegetarian diets by teens to disguise and/or justify their eating disorders, the sizist discourse that shames and blames "fat" people, and the vogue-ing of vegetarianism for the mainstream, I suggest that vegans ally instead with feminist and radical social justice groups to promote body acceptance and HEALTH rather than societal acceptance and "health."

"I am a vegetarian: I don't eat meat... or anything for that matter."
For a while there has been some discussion over whether many young female vegetarians choose their diets as a way to manage their weight by having a socially acceptable reason to decline eating a large percentage of the food available to them; however, not until recent years have researchers ever had substantial evidence to conclude whether this was true or false. Just several weeks ago, a paper published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association proved such fears true. The authors of the study conclude that

[a]dolescent and young adult vegetarians may experience the health benefits associated with increased fruit and vegetable intake and young adults may experience the added benefit of decreased risk for overweight and obesity. However, current vegetarians may be at increased risk for binge eating with loss of control, while former vegetarians may be at increased risk for extreme unhealthful weight-control behaviors. It would be beneficial for clinicians to inquire about current and former vegetarian status when assessing risk for disordered eating behaviors.

Though there may be health benefits from adopting a vegetarian diet, many who choose such diets do so as a guise to manage their weight in the most unhealthy ways.

John Cloud from The Times recentlyreported on this latest study:

Although most teens in Robinson-O'Brien's study claimed to embark on vegetarianism to be healthier or to save the environment and the world's animals, the research suggests they may be more interested in losing weight than protecting cattle or swine...in a 2001 study in the Journal of Adolescent Health, researchers found that the most common reason teens gave for vegetarianism was to lose weight or keep from gaining it. Adolescent vegetarians are far more likely than other teens to diet... [and] teens with eating disorders are more likely to practice vegetarianism than any other age group.

So while the public and socially acceptable answer many teenage vegetarian girls for their vegetarian may be "to save the animals/environment," at least one out of five (and potentially over half) really adopted the diet primarily out of concern for the health and/or image of their body.

Cloud continues, summarizing the results of the study:

approximately 20% of the [teen] vegetarians turned out to be binge eaters [and had engaged in extreme weight-control measures], compared with only 5% of those who had always eaten meat...This disparity in extreme behavior disappeared between [the]... ages 19 to 23, with about 15% in each group reporting such weight-control tactics. But among former vegetarians, that number jumped to 27%. The findings suggest that age matters when it comes to vegetarianism

Interestingly, teen vegetarians were four times as likely to be binge eaters than omnivores, but young adult vegetarians were no more likely, suggesting that many teen vegetarians started extreme dieting prior to their omnivorous counterparts. Most concerning is that over one of four those who had once been vegetarians as teens, but quit, were extreme dieters. That's twice the rate of eating disorders as among young adults who had never been or who still were vegetarian! The moral: the adoption of a vegetarian diet as a teenager for the primary purpose of body-management sets one up for serious risk of eating disorders in the future.

I Love them Bitches: Don't Have a Cow, You Fat Pig, LOL!
The authors and publishers of Skinny Bitch are not naive to the "self-loathing" young (and old) women feel as a product of modern capitalist patriarchal culture. The official Skinny Bitch website gives a concise description of the book, or at least why someone should be interested and pick the thing up:

If you can't take one more day of self-loathing, you're ready to hear the truth: You cannot keep shoveling the same crap into your mouth every day and expect to lose weight.

The answer to self-loathing, the book suggests, is not to accept and love one's body, but to stop eating crap and lose weight--never mind that many of the readers of the book are probably already at a healthy weight. In fact, if you didn't already know, "fat" does not always = unhealthy.

As one blogger writes, "[t]hough Skinny Bitch is meant to be dramatic, its overall message, inspiring self-loathing complete with the names to call yourself was over the top." The blogger cites a quote from chapter 12 that particularly disgusted her. In it, the authors explain how they, as "skinny bitches," empathize with their audience of "fat bitches:" "we have some fat, gross body parts, too. We’re women." In other words, the authors agree with mainstream misogynism that, yes, women are just kinda disgusting; no matter how much you alter and manage your body, it'll always be just a little "gross," a tad "fat."

Of course, the point of the book is not to make girls into "skinny bitches" but into veg*ns with jarring editorializations of meat processing and propaganda. The title is just a diversion to get people to pick up what Julie Klausner, in a scathing review of the book at Salon described as "a PETA pamphlet in chick-lit clothing and an innovative fusion of animal rights with punitive dieting tactics that prey on women's insecurities about their bodies." According to a previous review in the New York Times

[o]ne South Cal botique has sold more than 2,000 copies of Skinny Bitch because "[customers] just like the title." Likewise, one fashion publicist said that she "would never have read 'The Omnivore’s Dilemma.' I’m not even sure I know what an omnivore is. But I know what a skinny bitch is, and I know I want to be one."

To put it simply, the Skinny Bitch franchise is so popular largely due to the clever marketing that went into it. As the fashion publicist said, women know skinny bitches, and they know they want to be them; they don't necessarily know (or care) what an omnivore or a vegan is. With a title like Skinny Bitch, the book drew on a much larger, mainstream audience, like a magnet for body-insecure women. But is this more of a success for vegetarianism or perpetuating body-image anxiety?

Klausner would probably agree with he latter: Skinny Bitch is more likely to perpetuate eating disorders than to nurture a sustainable compassion for animal others. For instance, the book exploits metaphors that are both misogynistic and speciesist as part of its "in your face" coaching:

The relentless bullying peppered throughout the authors' advice accounts for much of the book's humor, including quips like "you need to exercise, you lazy shit," "coffee is for pussies" and "don't be a fat pig anymore." It was a formerly anorexic friend of mine who nailed it when she read excerpts from the book. "When you have an eating disorder," she told me, "that's the voice you hear in your head all the time."

Likewise, Joanna at Vegans of Color believes the book is being marketed as a tool to shame women into a vegetarian diet so they ca be skinny. She adds

I feel like the idea behind the book, & certainly how it’s being talked about, definitely plays the shame game. And competition & jealousy — I mean, women who don’t care about animal rights are picking this up because they want to be skinny

The authors of the book, understand that bullying voice internalized in women from all races, classes, and regions of America that drives them toward unhealthy eating, and they are not afraid of exploiting it to humorously shaming/motivating people into eating "better" food.

Angie at Voice of Dissent further notes that the tag line, "Stop being a moron and start getting skinny," "is playing directly into the stereotype that all overweight people are stupid, ignorant and lazy." Not only the readers being shamed for being "fat," but all the bad stereotypes associated with it: fatness is something that could be overcome if you weren't too stupid not to be disgusted by your body and too lazy to exercise and cook healthy food. How ever tongue-in-cheek the humor of their tough-love style is, it trivializes that oppressive voice within women's heads and further validates false associations between fat/stupid/lazy/bad and thin/smart/agency/good. In many ways, the humor actually is apologetic for that oppressive voice as well as misogynism and sizism.

Nonetheless, some counter the criticism by noting that the authors admit at the end of the book that they tricked the reader into reading this pro-vegan book, that they really don't care about being skinny. Johanna, however, is not so convinced that such jest makes any difference. Johanna writes: "Well, I flipped through the book yesterday at a store, & this epilogue is about 3 paragraphs long. Not only that, I almost missed it — & I knew it was there & was looking for it!" The discreetness of the true intent of the book, whether the authors' decision or the publishers', ultimately betrays the good intentions. Consequentially, most readers will read/skim through the book without ever realizing the political agenda behind the text; and if they do, they probably won't even care since the agenda--the "real" values behind the text--are such a marginal theme.

Klausner continues by noting the irony that the L.A. boutique cited in the NYT article which has already sold 2,000 copies, is a place where purchasers of the book are "only to be blindsided with accounts of live cows skinned alive on the assembly line." Will people change their minds about animals used for clothing after reading the book--now feeling disturbed and disgusted at skins wrapped around their bodies--or will these readers celebrate the sizes they've dropped by purchasing a whole new wardrobe of "sexy" leather pants and wool sweaters? Johanna, again, is skeptical.

from my own experiences, & from what I’ve heard other folks talking about, those who convert to veg*nism for health reasons... are less likely to stick with it, unless they also have a strong ethical reason for eating the way they do

Most vegans I know will also agree that the reason for one choosing to become veg*n is important in determining whether one will maintain their lifestyle or trade it in for an old or a new one.

If one goes veg because they value justice and compassion for animal others, they are more likely to commit to veg*nism than someone who prioritises their self-interest or external opinion. If one cares about animal "rights," veg*nism is essential to putting their values in practice, but veg*nism is only contingent if they care more about body-image, which can not only be attained a number of ways, but is also something that cannot be guaranteed by a strict vegetarian regime. Certainly one can be "vegan" and eat unhealthy foods and not exorcise, but some people are not naturally disposed to being "thin" as others--making the pursuit of thinness a futile journey. In the end, those people striving for thinness on a veg*n diet may be unhappy with the lax results and move on to "the next big thing" to lose weight so that they can achieve their "ideal" body size.

PETA: People Encouraging Teen Anorectics?
The title of this section may be hyperbole, but I also don't believe it is totally out-of-hand or false. On the contrary, the success of the Skinny Bitch franchise comes after almost two decades of PETA "selling" vegetarianism and sex in the form of attaining a more beautiful and virile body, which is almost always abnormally thin and fit and often (though this is less and less the case) white. It is not surprising then that Ingrid Newkirk endorsed Skinny Bitch, saying that "If I had it in my power, I’d provide a free copy to every young woman in the developed world; we could then become, instead of the fattest next generation in history, the healthiest." [Note that she wrongly equates fatness with both veg*nism and health. I'll touch on this in a future post ("The Fat, the Thin, and the Hungry")]

Skiny Bitch, in fact, has successfully done what PETA could only dream of doing, tapping into millions of young, impressionable female minds and promoting vegetarianism. The book has even increased the number of requests for vegetarian starter kits. According to Gina Anderson of the Colorado Daily

The New York Times bestseller "Skinny Bitch" is creating a new wave of vegetarians and vegans -- especially on college campuses..."'Skinny Bitch' has helped to introduce millions of mainstream Americans to veganism," said Ryan Huling, the College Campaign Coordinator for PETA2, the youth division of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals..."For example, we have been distributing our free 'Vegetarian Starter Kit' for years, but by some estimates as many as 25 percent of those requests in 2008 were as a result of the requester reading 'Skinny Bitch,'" Huling said. "That is thousands of new vegetarians and vegans."

Certainly, it is good to hear that some people who picked up the book are interested enough in requesting a veg starter kit from an animal welfare organization. But again, the question is not how many "new" vegetarians are there today, but how many 5-year-long vegetarians will there be in five years.

Yet, PETA, which unlike Skinny Bitch, does not garb its political agenda in weight-management discourse, is no less the culprit of perpetuating body-image anxiety. The organization often utilizes fat phobia and sizism to shame/motivate people to adopt a veg*n diet. For instance, Vegan Kid notes that, according to PETA's video"Chew on This: 30 Reasons to Go Vegetarian," the #3 reason to go vegetarian is because "meat and dairy make you fat." Of course, many other things "make you fat," and meat and dairy need not be any of these things. They prioritize this "fact" because they know that most people are already insecure if not ashamed of their weight and size, and as such, it may be more compelling than reason 11 "because it is violence that you can stop."

Another example of the "fat" phobia/shaming done by PETA is in a response to Jessica Simpson's "Real Girls Eat Meat" shirt on the official PETA blog. According to this PETA employee, the #4 reason that "Only Stupid Girls Brag about Eating Meat" is that

Meat will make you fat. All the saturated fat and cholesterol in chicken wings, pork chops, and steak eventually leads to flabby thighs and love handles. I hope the upcoming "Jessica Simpson's Intimates" line comes in plus sizes! Going vegetarian is the best way to get slim and stay that way.

Here again, just like we saw with Skinny Bitch, is the perpetuation of the stereotype linking size to stupidity--something that has been common at least since the pseudo-science of physiognomy. The reasoning goes as such: only a "stupid" person would eat meat because they'll get cancer and fat; just think how ashamed of herself she'll be then when she gets caught shopping in the 'plus size' section, gasp! Even worse, is that this fat phobic response is neither logical nor scientific: saturated fat and cholesterol intake are no more connected with weight-gain than carbohydrates and protein.

Worse of all is that PETA even has the audacity to distribute "Chicken Chump Cards"--which are still available at their online store and Petakids.com--to kids, of which one shames fat children. On the front of the card is a sad, morbidly-obese child entitled "Tubby Tammy;" on the back it explains "how" chicken makes you so fat you'll have to wear a bungee cord for a belt. Also, since this card is part of a series of other cards including "Cruel Kyle," "Sickly Sally,' and "Feathered Friends," there is an implicit position that being "tubby" is analogous to being "sickly" and "cruel," not something conducive of friendship. Fatness is thus framed as a mix between a social disease (i.e. cruelty) and a biological one (i.e. sickness).

Again, these three cases of fat phobia/shaming are in no way trivial. Each is part of a highly calculated marketing tactic to "sell" vegetarianism as a social panacea. The discourse in the blurbs and visuals has little to do with enhancing and sustaining health (or even a healthy body weight), but about looking your best for society which will reject you as a big fat, stupid person who is probably less compassionate and more self-indulgent than the other kids.

Unfortunate for the well-intentioned female animal advocates of PETA, those who do not conform to the mainstream's socially acceptable standard of beauty for women, the very standards PETA perpetuates, will be harassed and shunned. Take for instance the reactions at Perez Hilton to a publicity stunt in which a pregnant woman posed in a mock-gestation crate to protest hog farms. Comments included:

Yikes, I get the picture, but hmm... saggy boobs= kinda gross!!!!

What's a tubby naked bitch in a cage got to do with eating pork??

She needs to go on a diet

wtf is this about

ewwwwwwwww

Moo cow..UGLY

Why couldn't they have chosen an attractive female?

Of course, no one deserves to be called such horrible, misogynistic and speciesist names; but it would not be surprising if PETA, or some animal advocates in general, used the same rhetoric to attack a woman who was promoting pork. As is suggested in their anti-fur ads, "Be Comfortable in Your Own Skin," one blogger comments, PETA "is basically saying that yes, you should let animals keep their fur because you should be comfortable in your own skin–as long as you’re a size 2 and conventionally beautiful."

In a devastating critique of "fascist" beauty standards established by many ARAs to promote vegetarianism as a "healthier" and "sexier" diet, Sabayon at Vegans Against PETA examines how certain advocates alienate and ostracize vegans who do not look "as good as they should." According to Sabayon:

so much of the animal rights movement, thanks mostly to PETA, has built itself around the idea that vegans, particularly vegan women, are hot...They try to convince people that being vegan will automatically make you hot if you're a woman, and if you're a dude you'll suddenly have all these hot women flocking to you...And what does this emphasis on looks mean for us vegans who don't measure up, for vegans who are fat or have acne or, like me, have thin hair...It means we're a failure.

She cites one blogger (and believe me, I've heard these comments from several animal advocates in person) as an example of some of the fat-hate ARAs have to deal with, particularly women:

Fat vegans, however, have failed one important animal: themselves...their audiences of meat-eaters and animal-abusers may be so distracted by their appearance that they cannot hear the vital issues of animal rights

So not only do "fat" vegans have to deal with fatphobia in the mainstream world, but also among their supposed allies. Yet, so much of this is borderline hypocritical since people's agency is not necessarily to "blame" for their "fatness." The result: body-insecure vegans rushing out to buy body products that have been likely tested on animals in order to look "good" and "sexy" to promote the cause.

It is thus ironic that, after all the fat phobic media PETA has produced and distributed, in a press release, PETA's Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch would be cited saying

The AKC's fetish for body image causes dogs health problems that mutts don't usually have...The AKC is directly responsible for the promotion of purebreds, which means money for breeders but creates sick dogs and vet bills for their guardians--and leaves pound pups homeless.

Of course, one could also argue PETA has a "fetish for body image" since they not only publicize fat phobia, but also advertise themselves through images that capitalize off the bodies of conventional beautiful women which "means money for [them] but creates sick [girls] and [hospital] bills for their [parents]." As Angie notes,

[t]he majority of PETA’s messages include promoting a certain type of body. All of their models tend to be thin, young and fit contemporary society’s definition of beautiful. They have ads blatantly telling women that body hair is unattractive and comparative to wearing animal skins. They [even] have ads making fun of overweight people.

In face of the constant letters they receive pleading them to stop objectifying women and using only abnormally thin women in their ads, PETA has yet to end its tactics that more than likely to some degree create sick teen females with the dominant "fetish for body image."

Lettuce Entertain You: Vegetarianism is the New Black
In contrast to past anti-fur ads that are occupied by naked and nearly naked small-sized women, PETA's recent ad campaign, "Let vegetarianism grow on you" features women in more graceful than haughty clothing. However, even these ads have raised some concerns. Take the new ad featuring long-time film actress, Cloris leachman. Ophilia at Feminocracy

highly doubt[s] Peta would have run the ad if Cloris had wanted to be naked. Placing Cloris in a lettuce dress reaffirms the sentiment behind their previous ads–that the female body is meant for consumption, and when that body begins to show age, it must be covered to protect our sensibilities (however, it is worth note that the dress conforms to her figure–so they’ve got to have their sexy factor in there somewhere).

The accusation of ageism may seem trite to many people, especially since Alysa Milano, who certainly isn't particularly an "old" woman, has also been a part of the "Let Vegetarianism grow on you" ad campaign and thus also robed in a lettuce dress instead of the typical lettuce bikini of Pamela Anderson and others. Another blogger notes that she "doubt[s] they would dress Carmen Electra in a cabbage gown" because she both wants to and is "supposed to" be seen as a sex object. Those without the proper body, as was the case above in the mock-gestation crate, are publicly ridiculed for not hiding theirs beneath clothing.

The following blogger brings up another excellent point: Ms. Leachman may be older than typical PETA poster girls, but she isn't exactly "fat" or "overweight." Is it solely a coinicidence that Elizabeth Berkley, the original Lettuce Lady,

started the trend by sending a postcard with her ad and a note to every restaurant in the U.S.' 10 fattest cities urging them to do their part to help diners slim down by beefing up on vegetarian selections[?]

PETA's official Lettuce Ladies website further validates this suspicion by listing the reasons lettuce ladies choose vegetarianism: "vegetarian celebs are hot!," "vegans make better lovers," "a vegan diet gives you a lean sexy body," and "eating meat causes impotence." None of these reasons actually have to do with being veg*n; they are all contingent--equally true of someone on a Mediterranean diet who works out and reads Cosmo. Yet, all of them praise sexually virile bodies (see their "Sexiest Vegetarian Next Door" competition) and shun those that do not "perform" in socially acceptable ways. [Note: the website does also feature a small "amateur photo gallery" reserved for people wearing custom-made lettuce bikinis, many of whom are non-conventional sizes.]

If PETA wants to get people to eat more vegetables and less meat, Chris L. astutely wonders whether "it make more sense to show celebrity advocates, you know, EATING vegetables, instead of wearing them?" To this I have a couple responses. First, as I will argue in a future post ("The Sexual Politics of Vegetarianism"), PETA knows much of its mainstream audience will not consume veggies without also consuming "meat." In this metaphoric sense, PETA "serves" up the "meat" (i.e. erotic women) to their audience, garnished--or rather "dressed"--in lettuce and other vegetables. Rather than challenging the entire system of privilege which requires the subordination of Others, PETA perpetuates it by downplaying the subjectivity of one marginalized group (women) for another (animals). Lettuce ladies wear vegetables to be looked at, as they ought to be "consumed" just like the vegetables they wear. Both "food" and women ought to be "consumed" by the arrogant eye, or male gaze, and be denied their independence from the observer. With these ads, however, "the animal" is what Carol Adams has called the "absent referent"--the subject that is being referenced, but not directly. Thus, veg*nism can be promoted through the dominant means of denying the subjectivity of another without ever mentioning the real reason people should adopt the lifestyle: by acknowledging Others' subjectivities.

Second, and perhaps more relevant to the topic at hand, nearly all of PETA's ad campaigns utilizes not just any woman (or man), but celebrities, and not just any celebrities, but particularly physically attractive ones who are actors and musicians. These celebrities, thus, are visual icons. There are few, if any ads of famous (and beautiful) female scientists, photographers, authors, scholars, etc. suggesting the organization values (or at least values the people who value) "entertainment" over "art," science, and literature. Such famous people may not be "cool" enough for PETA's campaign targeting youth. Vegetarianism and AR is being "sold" as the "in" thing, and as is evident with anti-fur slogans in the movement that publicly shame (cisexual) women for wearing fur (as well as trans people for just being "rediculous") (i.e. "worse dressed," "the Trollsen Twins," "Fur is worn by beautiful animals and ugly people," "Fur is a Drag," etc.), women who do not conform are not only morally but physically ridiculed.

Toward Radical Vegan Outreach: Out with Mainstream Advocacy, in with Alliance Politics
Let me emphasize that the use of such visual celebrities is very deliberate, and, as I believe, very misguided. The use of these celebrities over others emphasizes not any moral, political, artistic, or intellectual of the particular person being associated with vegetarianism and AR, but an image. One should go veg because vegetarians are pretty, hot, bad ass, or funny, not because they are social/political radicals healing injustices everywhere or writing/discovering something that will change the world. (Unfortunately, television, cinema, and the internet have made the former celebrities' images much more prominent and at the expense of the great works of scholars, scientists, artists, and social entrepreneurs).

To return to Chris' point, PETA dresses-up celebrities in vegetables instead of showing them eating vegetables because PETA doesn't really care what people eat so long as their "food" does not come from animals. For all they care, vegans could just eat a Boca burger, potato chips, and a soft drink--not exactly a nutritional powerhouse. The ads are not intended to promote HEALTH, but to promote an image. By dressing up celebrities in vegetables, PETA is marketing the vegetarian diet as either sexy and/or graceful. Vegetarianism, in a sense, is the latest fashion, "the color" of the 21st Century.

However, note that by framing vegetarianism and AR as an image, as an "in" thing, it easily can become an "out" thing. Many of these ads and campaigns which target younger audiences may influence thousands of people to try out vegetarianism and AR, but the question becomes "for how long?" If vegetarianism is a matter or being like a particular "cool" or "hot" celebrity, especially one whom may be obsolete in two years or turns out not to actually be vegetaraian, as soon as another "cool" celebrity comes around who eats animals or people realize how potentially challenging a vegetarian diet can be (all the social and emotional maintenance that is involved) they may shrug it off; it's just not worth it, just as those irksome designer heels are just not worth it.

On the other hand, if vegetarianism is advocated as a political-ideological-intellectual orientation and commitment, it becomes a part of one's values, and hence one's more permanent identity until those values change, if they change. Instead of going for numbers, if non-profits and other organizations went for outstanding citizens, we may have much stronger and longer-term advocates on our hands. So much of these attempts take the "shotgun" approach by trying to hit any and everyone in a mass audience.

In contrast, rather than appealing to the masses through ads that cater to juvenile longings to be like a superficial and scandalous celebrity, organizations can target more radical and politically active social agents committed to multiple social justice causes by demonstrating how vegetarianism fits into their world view (rather than the typical self-interest/altruist trichotomy of health, environment, animals). Tragically, many of these politically active and radical people are being "turned-off" to the vegetarian message and thousands of dollars are being wasted because these ads and discourses more than likely alienate and offend potential ARAs who are not "thin" like the women in these ads, and more generally, unjustly contribute to the anxiety of girls outside the movement about their own body image.

A Healthy Conclusion
This is why I advocate HEALTH and not "health." As I will more thoroughly describe in the future ("What is Health?"), HEALTH cannot be achieved by individuals alone; true health is the consequent of an entire community flourishing mutually together. Modern reductionist approaches to health, define "health" as something that can be achieved independent of Others and often at the expense of them (i.e. (over)fishing to consume more fish oil, enslaving people to pick tomatoes, wiping out wildlife to grow organic leafy greens, "curing" diseases by giving them fist to millions of "animals," etc.). Within this outlook, veg*n outreach that promotes veg*nism as good for "one's health" is playing into the liberal, antagonistic discourse of self-interest. Instead, promoting veganism itself--an anti-oppression philosophy--does not allow for the appropriation of "health" (the privilege accorded to "self-interest") discourse. Since Health must be achieved together it ought not, as much as possible, come at the expense of the health of Others.

In this sense, appropriating mainstream means of advertising (i.e. using the promise of becoming a conventionally sexy and beautiful women) so as to exploit common insecurities over body-image (o)pressed into the minds of young women is not healthy. Exploiting, and thus perpetuating, oppression as a means to a "good" end can never be healthy, even if it promotes "health," because it ultimately subordinates the health of Others. Since it is more than likely true that these ads and discourses prey upon insecurities over one's own body, of which often lead to extreme and even fatal weight-management, they are not morally justifiable.

If as the recent study suggests, that young women who become vegetarian for body-management issues (and later give it up) are twice as likely to practice extreme dieting, we ought neither promote nor celebrate books such as Skinny Bitch and organizations like PETA if they continue to prey on unjust insecurities. If the Skinny Bitch franchise and PETA wish to redeem themselves, they ought to empower young women and other marginalized groups (including those that have been marginalized by them in the past) rather than appropriating their oppression to "sell" an agenda, no matter how benevolent it may be. Though I doubt they will change any time soon, by doing so, they will be more authentically applying the principles of veganism and augmenting a very powerful task-force for the cause of not only "animals" but everyone on the planet.
Continue reading "Skinny Bitch and Bulimic Vegetarians"!

Privilege: The U.S. Vegan Movement, Whiteness, and Race Relations (review)

Table of Contents

Part 1:
• Are Animals the New Slaves?
• What Went Wrong?
• Racism, Speciesism, and Cross-racial Misunderstanding
• Are human-animal juxtapositions reductionistic?
Part 2:
• Animal Rights or Animal Whites?
• Animal White Supremacists?
• Vegan Colonialism
• One Word: Empathy
Part 3:
• A Colorful Movement: Debunking the White Lie of White Exceptionalism
• Making us Invisible: The Epistemology of Ignorance
• The White Activist's Burden: Engaging the "Other"
Part 4:
• Killing Us Softly: Narratives of Alienation
• With Us or against Us –or- “Sit Down and Shut Up, Little Brown Girl”
Part 5:
• Eating the Other: "Exotic" Food Fetishes
• Are Vegans Oppressed?
• The Police & White Privilege
• Freeganism: The Privilege of Free Food?
  
• Classism & Consumer Advocacy
• Toward a Mutual Trust: Veganism as a Safe Place
  

Why analogizing human and animal exploitation/oppression often produces outrage and not empathy:

1. aim to provoke people into debate in contrast to inviting people into a discussion
2. are sponsored by organizations/people who have little or no history in promoting the “liberation” of the marginalized group whose oppression is being analogized to animals
3. are insensitive to the existential trauma of and the meaning of “animal” to individuals of the marginalized group,
4. assume that their oppression is history
5. infer that their group lacks agency (just like "animals") and thus could not liberate themselves and depended upon an enlightened class of privileged citizens.

How do POC see vegans and AR activists (in general)?
The consequences of the aforementioned errors include the perception that vegans and ARAs

1. exploit and appropriate the oppression of others for there own ends (without any prior request for consent and understanding)
2. are racist because they fail to recognize the difference between human and non-human liberation (i.e. humans are self-organizing resisters, “animals” are not) and thus reduce the marginalized group to an “animal” condition of passivity
3. cater to the white middle-class because they have taken no measures to make POC feel comfortable in their campaigns or abstain from consuming “cruelty-free” products that come at the expense of POC.
4. care “more about animals than people (or color)” for the above reasons.

How do some white advocates alienate advocates of color from working together?

1. Stereotype: “Have you ever eaten dog or cat?;” “Do you speak English?”
2. Instrumentalize: “we need a black vegan for this event;” “if we adopt children of color, there will be more diversity in our movement”
3. Exotify: “The best part of being vegan is getting to eat all kinds of exotic food”
4. Marginalize: “Comparing human and animal oppression may hurt your feelings but it will help animals”
5. Suppress: “Don’t criticize so-and-so because you’ll just be helping animal exploiters”
6. Blame: “Don’t bring race into this! Why do you have to be so divisive?”
7. Invalidate: “Get over it!” “You’re upset because you just don’t understand.”

How do (white) vegan and ARAs become better activists and allies?
The actions and their resulting consequences above serve both to hurt and alienate people of color from the animal/vegan movements(s) and construct the movement(s) as white middle-class, thereby creating a vicious cycle insensitivity and alienation. Therefore, a race-sensitive approach to promoting animal liberation and veganism ought to

1. Be proactive! …don’t assume that POC are disinterested because they are not present
2. Develop an understanding of POC’s existential condition and (one’s own) white privilege
3. Humbly invite POC into a discussion (vs. use shock tactics and potentially offensive comparisons)
4. Actively build bridges between movements and become an active ally in their liberation
5. Engage with POC in issues they are already interested in (vs. using them as a means to your ends)
6. Avoid language that alienates them by inferring that they are marginal Others (i.e. exotifying vegan food, homogenizing ethic groups, and scapegoating ‘foreign” cultures and nations).

Additional Resources:
I sincerely hope this series has been informative and influential. I have done my best to let the voices of vegans of color on the web speak for themselves, not only to persuade you that I’m not making shit up, but mostly because I’m not some omniscient white male authority. I have by no means covered everything on activism, white privilege, and coalition building in this series—I myself am very new to these issues—, so I encourage others to read more if they would like even more growth in cross-cultural communication. Below are a few great resources to look over for additional perspectives. Happy trails!

• Sheila Hamanaka gives a nice introduction to race-relations in the AR movement in Satya Magazine
• Patrick Kwan and Sheila Hamanaka discuss racism in the animal rights movement on Animal Voices
• Noah has created an awesome series of study groups of which one is for “Whites Challenging Racism”
• Breeze has put together a nice reading list on her blog for those who’d like to delve head-first into post-colonial and critical race theory
• Elaine Vigneault has an “Anti-Racist Vegan Activism” series (that has preceded mine) on her blog
• Tim Wise on White Privilege (10-minute video on the history of "race")

Blogs and other things related to Vegans of Color:

• Afrikan Raw Vegan Talk
• Afronautica
• Black to Nature
• Brownfemipower
• Free Slave, the
• Hermana Resist
• Lagusta
• Little but Fierce
• Sistah Vegan Project
• United Farm Workers
• Vegan About Town:
• Vegan Ideal, The
• Vegans of Color

Notes and Acknowledgments
Though this series may frame veganism as a privileged political position and lifestyle, a careful reading of these posts (especially parts 3 through 5) ought to prove otherwise. As I have documented previously, historically within Western culture (especially in modern times) "meat"-eating corresponds with male, white/European, and class privilege;* and as I suggested in part 3, veganism should be thought of a socio-political justice movement that challenges all privilege that comes at the subordination of others.

Finally, I'd like to acknowledge all the intelligent posters and bloggers who participate on Vegans of Color for inspiring me to investigate and compose this series as well as the author of the Vegan Ideal for their original ideas that have consistently challenged me to question my accepted beliefs about and understanding of veganism and the animal rights movement(s).
Continue reading "Privilege: The U.S. Vegan Movement, Whiteness, and Race Relations (review)"!

Privilege: The U.S. Vegan Movement, Whiteness, and Race Relations (part 5)

After having argued that there is actually quite a bit of racial diversity in the international and domestic vegetarian and animal rights movements, I discussed reasons for why the movements are nonetheless perceived as so white: epistemologies of ignorance (i.e. a whitewashed history, framing veg*nism as a lifestyle rather than a social justice philosophy/diet), disinterest in outreach and collaboration within communities of color, self-fulfilling prophesies about race (i.e. scrutinizing "others" rather than scrutinizing our tactics), and alienating interested persons at events and conferences.[part 3]

Afterwards, I exclusively focused on several ways in which well-intentioned vegans and ARAs alienate vegans of color: They may (obliviously) make blatantly racism comments, treat VOC as tokens to flag in front of the public rather than full-fledged allies, be ignorant of/indifferent to how their discourse and tactics are offensive to VOC, suppress criticism of/concerns about said discourse/tactics ("you're being divisive"), marginalize the emotional trauma/rage triggered by said events (b/c "some good will come of it"), and invalidate their feelings ("get over it"/"you didn't get the message"). [part 4] In this post I will also add the alienation that arises when VOC are "Othered" through discourse of "exoticism."

The remainder of the series, which I will conclude here, will cover additional areas in which white and middle-class privilege go ignored by the majority of the U.S. ARA and vegan movements. Specifically, I'll discuss the greater obstacles and consequences VOC encounter within direct action (i.e. open rescues) and freeganism (i.e. dumpster diving), and why vegans are not "oppressed." In addition, I will briefly discuss the classism present within the dominant discourse of animal activism and veganism. I will conclude by acknowledging the limits of how much privileged persons can understand the struggles those without it face, and the need for them to "liberate" themselves from ignorance before they can become allies in their liberation.

Eating the Other: "Exotic" Food Fetishes
As addressed in part 2, representations of vegetarians in the U.S. have been disproportionately white, thus constructing an "epistemology of ignorance" surrounding the racial diversity of animal advocates around the country and world, as was discussed in part 3. It is no surprise that many vegans of color feel marginal and alienated within the vegan community and particular communities of color. As Afronautical reports:

I realized that everyone thinks they know what a White vegan looks like– but no one seems to have a clue about what a... vegan [of color] looks like...What bothers me is being invisible to other folks of color... [there are] no veg*n folks of color in movies, even as an in-joke.[7]

Yet, vegans of color don't always feel marginal as I wrote extensively about in part 4. Sometimes vegans of color are inappropriately placed at the center of attention as objects on exhibit. Such is how some vegans report their experiences when around others categorizing their childhood and/or comfort food as "exotic." Johanna of the Vegans of Color blog expresses great discomfort from hearing other people call certain food "exotic" because one must always wonder to whom is this food "exotic:" "It assumes so much about the audience racially & culturally"[62] Veganabouttown explains that "using words like that aren't just saying that I'm 'different,' they're saying that I'm 'other.'"[63] The "exotic" is what is foreign, is what is Other-than-oneself. It is "interesting" and may even become fetishized as such. To be sure, the "exotic" is never "we" or "us," it is "them," it is "different," and it is kind of "weird."

Carolina begrudges having her food at vegan potlucks being "spoken about as if though it were a strange “exotic” treat, not an edible healthy vegan delicious part of a meal."[51] She asks us to imagine a person commenting to a parent that their green-eyed, dark skinned child is so exotic (because you think by doing so, you are giving a complement). Many reasonable people would be offended if any one were to do this, immediately pointing out that doing so would be racist, labeling the child as "the Other." Yet, rarely do many people transfer this logic to labeling certain "ethnic" foods as "exotic." Labeling food as "exotic," Breeze indicates, "is a marker that [non-White/American]people are “The Other” while “whiteness” is the continued invisible norm."[51] While British, American, and pretty much any western European cuisine is not ethnic, because it is "our" food, "our" heritage--"our" being here, of white/western European tradition. White people/cultures are just white, one does not think about their "ethnicity" because they are already the norm/default in the U.S. Ethnicity and race only become marked and visible within deviation from that norm.

Essentially, the hurtful consequences of labeling food (and people and their cultures!) as "exotic" or a synonym is not because labeling a person as "different" or "other" is necessarily bad, but because of the socio-historical context.

I realize it's just semantics but semantics are important, because they indicate attitudes - so really, it's not that I have a problem with the word 'exotic,' it's that I have a problem with the attitude that leads to its use, that the food I eat is 'not normal,' that it is other, that I am other.... I don't need to feel like some sort of foreign novelty whilst I'm doing it.[63]

Basically, constructing certain food as "exotic" objectifies it, casting it under a colonialist gaze of the dominant subject (i.e. white/european) which is assumed to be the subject--all others being objects to be consumed visually or nutritionally. "Exotic" food is

there purely to titillate your (white/Western/etc.) self (which also implies that white people have no culture — a convenient excuse used by people participating in cultural appropriation, but not actually true). It's a "safe" way to imagine you're experiencing other cultures without... actually engaging with the people whose cultures you're attempting to eat via their food.[62]

In short, by exotifying food as "ethnic" or as a novelty, vegans marginalize vegans of color by implying that they are "the Other" vegans because their cultural heritage is "foreign" and objectify them as if veggieburgers and soy ice cream could not also be considered "exotic" by other American vegans.

Are Vegans Oppressed?
Since the passing of specific legislation such as the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act [AETA], there have been many analogies made between the witch hunt for communist and socialist sympathizers during the McCarthy era and the witch hunt for animal liberationists, particularly those who participate in illegal, direct actions. Yet, even before it had been declared that "Green is the New Red," many veg*ns have had the feeling that not only their political and ideological orientations have been marginalized, but they themselves have been marginalized as a class of people, some advancing that veg*ns--like women, queers, and people of color--are themselves "oppressed" by flesh-eaters.[64] According to this view, "The notion of veg*n pride isn’t about appropriation; it’s about cultivating a cultural identity for veg*ns, many of whom don’t know a single other veg*n in person."[65]

While certainly veg*ns are often the targets of ridicule, framed as the pest or problem at family and occupational dining events, and generally trivialized or sneered at by "omnivores," this need not mean that veg*ns are "oppressed." Marilyn Frye responds insightfully to accusations that privileged groups of people are oppressed in her essay "Oppression" in her book The Politics of Reality (1983)

The statement that women are oppressed is frequently met with the claim that men are oppressed too...But this is nonsense. Human beings can be miserable without being oppressed, and it is perfectly consistent to deny that a person or group is oppressed without denying that they have feelings or that they suffer...The root of the word "oppression" is the element "press."...Presses are used to mold things or flatten them or reduce them in bulk...Something pressed is something caught between or among forces and barriers which are so related to each other that jointly they restrain, restrict or prevent the thing’s motion or mobility...The experience of oppressed people is that the living of one’s life is confined and shaped by forces and barriers which are not accidental or occasional and hence avoidable, but are systematically related to each other in such a way as to catch one between and among them and restrict or penalize motion in any direction. It is the experience of being caged in: all avenues, in every direction, are blocked or booby trapped...one can study the elements of an oppressive structure with great care and some good will without seeing the structure as a whole.[66]

While men, in this case, can be oppressed as queers or disabled people, they themselves cannot be oppressed as men/males. Oppression occurs at a macro/systemic level and is experienced as a caging in from all sides by interrelated, complex socio-political forces. At the macro-level, men are privileged and free as a group, so they cannot be oppressed as such, though individual men who belong to a marginalized group may be, though not as men. With veg*ns, the same holds true. Certain veg*ns may be oppressed as members of certain socially constructed groups, but as veg*ns they are not. While "omnivores" are privileged over veg*ns in North American culture, this rarely manifests itself into structural privilege in which veg*ns are a priori the targets of discrimination in which their freedom of actions are restricted from the outside (i.e. glass ceiling, restricted from membership at clubs, additional obstacles in purchasing homes, profiling by police, etc).

Perhaps more clearly, veg*ns do not internalize the animosity of those who hurt and discriminate against them. Those who are veg*n for ideological reasons are at the worst ambivalent about their commitment and at best, most commonly, proud of their political stance. Contrast this to many women, people of color, poor, disabled, and queers who are institutionally instructed of their inferiority. These groups are not instructed to feel guilt that their actions create inconveniences and disrupt social harmony, but shame toward their very identity which can be hidden, but never wholly erased. Rarely do veg*ns feel shame about their moral/political/spiritual convictions; in almost all cases their hurt emanates from the guilt of non-conformity and ill-convenience. In light of a recent AR PR event in New York City, the "Veggie Pride Parade," Pattrice explains why such an appropriation of queer culture is inappropriate.

Being queer was something you were supposed to hide. Even supportive straight folks urged us not to be too "flamboyant."... In that context, a "pride parade" makes sense, as both an antidote to shaming and an assertion of the right to walk down the street being yourself... They *appropriated* the pride motif as a catchy way to get attention. Since vegans are (mis)characterized as monolithically white and since white folks are known for misappropriating the symbols of other groups, I didn't think that was a wise tactical choice.[65]

While veg*ns are often embarrassed to "come out" about their diet/beliefs, the animosity/hatred of their identity/acts are not internalized, and thus need not be sublimated in a public ritual. Since many privileged animal activists already appropriate the images and discourses of multiple human oppressions, the "pride" motif was another instance in a series of events in which the oppression/empowerment of others was trivialized by a weak analogy.

Noah ruminates on the reasons some vegans (often white males) may identify themselves as oppressed persons:

In my experience, it's very hard for white, middle class men who don't experience any other sort of oppression to fully comprehend how oppression (in general) works... Vegans are oppressors struggling to be allies to animals... But this is really a much broader problem in the mainstream animals rights movements generally–speaking "on behalf of" animals, being a voice for the "voiceless" and so on, so it's not surprising that some humans confuse themselves with the oppressed animals.[64]

Since animal advocates often deploy the discourse of "being a voice for the 'voiceless,'" they may at times feel that when their voices are marginalized, not only are animal others being oppressed, but so are they, since their voice is "the voice" of "the animals." But the truth is that they are no more oppressed as a group than white anti-racists or straight queer activists when their voices are squashed; they are simply allies of the oppressed.

Further, it is no longer very difficult for most animal advocates to keep a vegan diet, nor is it obvious that there is a single, unified vegan movement. As Lagusta writes, the veg*ns who claim they are oppressed are "almost always [privileged] dudes... who are secretly so incredibly happy to be oppressed in some way that they act like the typical dudes that they are underneath the veganism--boring mainstream non-feminist dude dudes."[67]

Again, it is often those who are not familiar with being oppressed themselves who do not necessarily support other liberation causes that identify as the oppressed. Stentor speculates that "many white (and otherwise privileged) men have a secret desire to be oppressed, because we feel like that would give us one corner of life where we don't have to feel guilty and can focus on attacking someone else."[64] By categorizing themselves as "oppressed," many veg*ns with white, male, and heterosexual privilege can cast-out some of the collective guilt they have over being given unearned privilege that comes at the subordination of others (see part 2). At times, wrongfully identifying as "oppressed" allows these advocates to evade acknowledging such privilege and subordination as well as to silence those who raise concerns over actual oppressive discourse deployed by fellow advocates (see part 4).

The Police & White Privilege
Since the passing of the AETA, animal and environmental activists have insisted on parallels between the federal framing of animal/earth liberationists as "terrorists" and liberals and socialists from the McCarthy era as "communists" who must be blacklisted and arrested. Certainly a parallel exists, however, some animal advocates have wrongly (and offensively) asserted they are now significant victims of police and FBI surveillance and misconduct simply because the Animal Liberation Front [ALF] (among other groups) is regarded as the "top domestic terrorist threat" in the U.S.[68]

The Vegan Ideal passionately refutes the misguided belief that animal liberationists are particularly mistreated by law enforcement in a response to a "call for papers" for an anthology linking the oppression of queers, animal others, and (to some degree) animal advocates:

First, "animal activists" do not "bear the brunt of police suppression" in the U.S. This is so ridiculous that it would funny if not for the fact that it is such a deadly serious issue...Applying this term [political prisoner] to "animal activists" implicitly claims that their [sic] are nonpolitical prisoners. It ignores how the prison-industrial complex is a political system, and how all people within it are in fact political prisoners.[69]

Indeed, it is almost laughable that (the poorly worded assertion that) animal advocates have it particularly bad when one closely monitors the anecdotes and statistics such as that "blacks [are] almost three times more likely than Hispanics and five times more likely than whites to be in jail"[70], that blacks and Latinos may be stopped by police on highways many times more often than whites [71a, b], and institutionally racist policies that result in greater punishments and arrests for black men than for white men.[72a, b, c]

Noah explains that

one of the reasons why we even "notice" that (a handful of) animal activists go to jail is because it's like, what a minute! Educated, middle class white men aren't supposed to prison--what's going on here!? Whereas the millions of other people in prison are "supposed" to be there.[69]

Whereas a man of color "could end up being killed by the cops for engaging in such crazy behavior as driving or walking down the street," it is as if "the only reason we [middle-class white people] would ever go to prison is for engaging in animal activism."

To add to Noah and the Vegan Ideal's analysis, racial "minorities" and "the poor" are expected to be police targets, to be incarcerated, but college-educated, middle-class white people are not expected to be such targets; thus, their imprisonment is much more visible because it is out of the ordinary. Further, because of unsatisfactory inter-racial relations between white advocates and advocates of color, many white advocates may have little exposure to understanding the (racial) injustices built into criminal law enforcement and American society in general.

The disparities between the treatment of middle-class, cisexual white people and low-income, trans, and racial "minorities" by law enforcement ought to be taken into consideration when animal advocates intend to engage in illegal direct action.[73a, b] Since a white activist may face a substantially less severe sentence and treatment than a person of color, it is reasonable that a person of color has much more to take into consideration than someone with white privilege.

When animal liberationist celebrities like Peter Young advocate jail time as a reasonable sacrifice activists should make for animal others, this is truer for white activists than others. Young's learning experience of "how insignificant jail really is" because "it's absolutely worth" going to jail to liberate animals since animal advocates don't have to give their lives as people in other movements sometimes must do, is of course coming from his experience within a cissexual white male body.[74] Imaginably, Young may have (or would have) different words of wisdom if he were not already privileged within a racist and cissexual society. [So while I personally find Young's words--"There's a tremendous freedom that comes from not being afraid of prison. And it's one of the most liberating experiences you'll ever feel"--very inspirational, I take note that this feeling may not apply to all people equally].

Freeganism: A Privilege to Free Food?
Another example of white and class privilege taken for granted is within the subculture of freeganism, particularly the act of dumpster diving. For instance, in a story covered by CNN, Adaora Udoji reports that most of the freegans in New York she followed were "not exactly the people you would expect to find rummaging trough mounds of trash," including an executive at a Fortune 500 company, a high school teacher, and college students. The implicit suggestion is that one would "expect to find" people out of works, out of home, and out of school--and perhaps also, more people of color.[75a]

In another news story, Peter Thorno reports that the freegans he follows in New York are "not homeless, they're not broke...they're New York's garbage gourmets," rummaging through the trash of upscale Eastern New York grocery stores [75b]. Noteworthy is that most of the freegans within this group are financially secure and white. One must wonder whether these people have greater access to this particular trash because they live in these upscale neighborhoods and/or because they are not harassed by police.

Several months ago, I was speaking with an Afro-American co-worker who attended a liberal arts college in New York and asked her if she was into dumpster diving; she immediately responded that she was not. She expressed that most of the students she knew who would dumpster dive believed that they could perform "class-suicide" by picking items out of the trash. Having been brought up in a very poor neighborhood on the West side of Chicago, she had known many people who had to do such as a matter of meeting their daily needs for food; the dumpster diving she saw her peers doing felt as though it trivialized the situation of some people felt who do not have a choice between purchasing food and foraging for it.

My friend's response did not come all that surprising after reading Royce Drake's post on Vegans of Color only weeks before as I was preparing for this series on privilege. Royce wrote that though he has met quite a few freegans, he has encountered very few, if any at all, freegans of color. "Where are these freegans of color?" he asks:

Freeganism is a largely white middle-class movement (that seems to forget that poor folks have been eating garbage forever). And when I'm dumpster-diving I seem to have a few more issues to deal with, as a Black male, than my white comrades. They aren't nearly as afraid of the police (or security), or threats of calling the police (or security), nor do they get harassed by law enforcement while diving to the degree that I do. I got harassed by security several times while diving on my own campus.[76]

As mentioned above, freegans of color are not to be seen in the videos, which may very well have to do with the Royce's concern over police harassment and brutality as a black male. Amalgamated adds

I have noticed that many of my white friends have completely different attitudes towards the police than I do...I still have to deal with being the only brown person in these situations without them understanding my increased paranoia. They are more violently anti-police in general, I suppose, and I'm more afraid of them, yet, they don't get it.[76]

In short, dumpster diving may serve as a rebellious and public-service performance by some white anti-consumerists and anarchists in which the police represent the oppressive State, but for dumpster divers of color, the police aren't so much a symbol for the hated enemy as they are a real force to be feared.

Royce, like my friend, also touches on another point: tokenism and representation: "I'm also extremely embarassed[sic] for people to see me diving, because I can tell that I'm not just me, I'm also a representation of Black people in general."[76] A white freegan need not worry about being a token representation of his or her people during dumpster diving, but a person of color does because 1) they are most often a racial minority, 2) they are already popularly depicted as poor and dirty, and 3) they are marked as people of color in contrast to "whites" whose race is most often invisible (to other white people that is). Similarly, those like my friend who came from low/no-income households also experience a double consciousness and shame. Meep writes: "I've gotten things from around the dumpsters, but I don't tell my family because it's sort of shameful."[76] But then again, perhaps there are many freegans of color, but as Johanna ponders, "there are other freegans of color but they just would never name themselves as such because the term is so white-identified."[76]

Classism & Consumer Advocacy
Middle-class freegans are not really performing "class-suicide" as they can usually return home to their financial security after a disappointing night of dumpster diving. While many, if not most, of these freegans are very socially conscious and sympathetic allies to the under-privileged, other socially-conscious people (and perhaps some freegans as well) take for granted their privilege their discourse. For instance, the metaphor of advocacy = voting with $ is substantially popular among many socially-conscious animal advocates.

Yet, this discourse is offensive and discriminatory against people with less money; after all, if you have less money, that means less voting power, which means you are not helping as much as you could do otherwise. As The Vegan Ideal observes, "This would mean that the more disposable income a person has the more potential that person has of being a "real activist." It sure explains the class bias in what passes as the dominant form of nonhuman animal advocacy these days" [i.e. memberships to non-profit organizations].[77] Also implicit within this discourse is that social change can be bought through the market, and that each of us can do our own little individual part so that our small actions all "add up."

Many middle-class vegans also ought to appreciate that fresh produce is unfortunately a "privilege" and not a "right" or a "security" in this country, and that while it may be cheaper at times to buy whole produce, people in tighter financial and family situations may not afford the time it takes to prepare the food.[78]. In a brave and stirring narrative, Noemi writes about her original reluctance to label herself as "vegan" because she was so unlike the token vegan who was neither poor, Mexican, nor "a single parent with no time ever ever to eat veg*n."[79] As a child

growing up meat was a luxury. Meat was for special occasions...My mom would buy those 5 pound tubes of ground beef and would work that baby for two weeks for a family of six, using smallest possible amount and still have meat for dinner because it was a status-we have meat to eat for dinner, we are not starving...If lunch or dinner was rice and beans, it was because we couldn't afford meat, because it was all we had.[79]

For those who struggled to put "meat" on the table for much of their lives, not having may be a source of shame. Because of this, it is best not to frame veganism as a consumer movement, a movement of consumer activists. Instead, we can re-frame "meat" as a privilege of excess and oppressors that catalyzes shame, as well as the right to affordable wholesome produce for everybody.[80a, b] To frame veganism as a boycott or consumerism would be to alienate much of the world and country from participating as it will be perceived primarily as an elitist, privileged movement rather one about social justice and anti-oppression.

The same applies for the purchasing of animal and ecologically-friendly products. Breeze writes insightfully on the class-privilege implicit within eco-consumerism:

Rarely do I see mainstream ads, workshops, and lectures about looking at "green" in terms of environmental racism...It just feels like "green" is all about making money from a very class privileged USA view of "ecosustainability"... why should someone need to be "economically privileged" to guarantee that they can afford clean water...[and non-toxic materials]? And if they can't afford it, why are they looked down upon as "contributing to the global warming problem" or "not caring about their health"?[??]

So often such labels as "green" and "veganism" are marketed as "health" products (meaning they are only "healthy" for the individuals who can afford them) or "environmental" (so they can appease the romantic spirit the consumer has toward the more-than-human-world). Less commonly, these products emphasize, or even embody, fair trade and environmental justice principles. And even when they do, there is always the feeling that people who do not have the privilege to purchase these products are not doing enough or are powerlessly contributing to the problem.

However, the implicit classism within the consumer advocacy framing of the movement(s) would change if, as The Vegan Ideal beautifully writes "people understood veganism as anti-oppression, which it really is. In this case, a session on "How Vegan is Enough?" would not focus on consumer habits, but rather on the need to re-center POC and low-income people... ignoring the power structure of white supremacy and the structured subjugation of people of color is obviously not vegan enough."[??]

Towards a Mutual Trust: Veganism as a Safe Place

First, I am not intending to upset anyone here, so please, everybody keep an open mind here...then criticize later...if I don’t see many POC, I naturally assume those POC that I dont see ( as groups not individuals ) arent interested in the subject matter enough to participate... if I were to ever be called out on terms of “white guilt” or “colonialist” or othet terms for trying to go to events that are more inclusive of POC or run/by or sponsored by POC, then I will not be inclined to participate in those events.[51] --kram

It’s quite confusing and little surprising that in a “safer” space that is VOCs, my specific questions looking for a specific type of experience is met with what I see is resistance to… to emotionally connecting with the visceral experiences of VOCs[51] --breeze

Kram's comments, as you should realize by now, are classic examples of the indifferent attitude and privileged subjectivity of too many white advocates in the movement(s). First, he acknowledges he is going to hurt people's feelings with his comment, then has the nerve not to criticize his ideas when he is the one violating their safe place and criticizing them! Second, he "naturalizes" his racist assumption that people of color "as groups" don't care about animals. And third, he justifies his lack of participation with people of color because he does not want to be uncomfortable (although it is perfectly acceptable for them to feel uncomfortable at his events). Further, kram frames the power dynamics as reverse; that is, he frames people of color as the problem and perhaps the oppressors, himself being the innocent white guy. In each instance, he totally ignores the subject of the post which focuses on the marginalized subjectivity of vegans of color at white AR events.

One cannot expect white advocates to simply know about white privilege and how it feels to be a person of color in our society, but this does not let-off white advocates from making an effort to understand and empathize. Just as most of us vegans and animal advocates learned about speciesism from readings and conversations, white advocates must learn about white privilege and how to improve interracial-relations through similar means. Of course, the problem/privilege is, as Breeze speculate, "you can simply never FEEL (versus intellectually know) this emotional pain (yes, it’s painful. I’m not sure how else to describe it)[51].

A more hopeful orientation than attempting to really know how a person of color feels might be what Noah calls "liberating ourselves from being oppressors."[81] Rather than attempting to identify with the oppressed by claiming oneself is oppressed, in a sense, choosing "oppression," vegans ought to consider themselves as allies of the oppressed whomever they may be. This means following Lagusta and neither prioritizing one oppression over another nor framing ourselves as victims of oppression. After all, "[n]o need to play the victim - we're the winners."[67] If, as the Vegan Ideal says, "[v]eganism is a type of anti-oppression that can lead to learned helpfulness," white vegans should engage with people of color and patiently listen to their concerns rather than being dissonant or indifferent.
Continue reading "Privilege: The U.S. Vegan Movement, Whiteness, and Race Relations (part 5)"!

Privilege: The U.S. Vegan Movement, Whiteness, and Race Relations (part 4)

Introduction
In part 1 of the Privilege series, I examined a particular case of when vegan outreach goes wrong (i.e. the public juxtaposition of images in which "animals" and people of color are being oppressed) and discussed how such tactics generally alienate people from the cause rather than welcoming them into it. In part 2, I delved into the issue of race relations a bit more by discussing how many white AR and vegan activists are oblivious to their white (and sometimes class) privilege and thus unintentionally oppress others through their rhetoric and discourse. In part 3, I documented how, despite the overall whiteness of the movements, people of color are active in vegetarian and animal advocacy around the world and how epistemologies of ignorance make it seem otherwise.

In each of the aforementioned parts, I concluded by emphasizing the importance of inclusiveness, empathy, and partnership. In part 4, these three criteria for effective and appropriate outreach/relationship with people of color come together and it becomes clear how white ARAs and vegans can alienate their allies. Racism comes in many forms. Here we will see it in the form of blaming, stereotyping, suppressing, marginalizing, fetishizing, and reversing victimization.

Killing Us Softly: Narratives of ALIENATION
BLAME
First, let's examine a classic example of some white advocates/allies who just don't get white privilege, even when it is clearly laid out in front of them. Take for instance, Breeze Harper's very honest expression of her feeling of alienation and anxiety at events where she is one of the few people of color (i.e. most large AR events)

I constantly feel uncomfortable– not just in predominantly white bodied AR and vegan spaces- but in just about ALL predominantly white bodied spaces. But, I feel even more frustrated in instance when I’m participating in an experience that SHOULD be linked to radical ways of thinking about social justice. What hurts the most is that when I try to express it, I am made to feel like it’s “all in my head”. My experiences of emotional pain...are MY PROBLEM. It is “individual” and not a symptom of structural and institutional inequalities [51]

It couldn't be clearer that Breeze's "emotional pain" stems from other ARAs thinking that the racism she perceives is "all in [her] head" and is thus "[HER] PROBLEM" for reading too much into things. Breeze wants her readers to know that it isn't her, though; it's the institution of white privilege that not only creates the problems she is addressing, but also makes those very problems invisible to the people she is addressing.

Yet, still, some well-intentioned white vegans don't get it. Sue writes in response:

I don’t know what to think about that, except that you might feel less discomfort if you brought your friends along — or if you could find a way to connect with other people.[51]

Almost as if Sue had not read Breeze's words, she suggests that the problem is internal to her and not an institutional problem that would make Breeze feel that way to begin with. It becomes Breeze's responsibility to bring a person of color to share her experiences with or talk to the very people whom are alienating her. A Vegan About Town responds:

So the issue doesn’t have anything to do with the lack of inclusion in the vegan community to vegans of colour at all, it’s *our* responsibility to connect with other people? It’s that sort of attitude that precludes some vegans of colour from getting involved in AR/veg events, and completely supports breezeharper’s point.
[51]

As I discussed in the previous post, such blaming the victim for their own alienation only further alienates them. It is such treatment of vegans of color that turn them away from working with white ARAs. Again, this should not be framed as their own divisiveness, but a pre-existing divisiveness that is "colorblind" and does not acknowledge and appreciate the obstacles a person of color must overcome (without any assistance) to feel included in white communities within an institutionally racist society.

TOKEN
In 99 per cent of cases, however, advocates such as Sue do not have the courage and/or interest to pick up a book on racism or read a vegans of color blog. In most cases, advocates have to rely on common sense and minimal social etiquette to appropriately interact with vegans of color. Pathetically, even common decency is not always in place; sometimes advocates will ask obliviously racist comments in an attempt to be "friendly." Take for instance, Afronautical's account of interacting with fellow vegetarians:

When I told White folks that I was vegan or vegetarian soon after came some question about soul food, fried chicken, or chitlins (chitterlings to some). And soon after this question the person would reassess me– look at my Propagandhi cd, my tight jeans, my copy of Manifesta under my arm, and decide that either a) I was an uppity little negro, b) an oreo to be made fun of (in fact only White folks have ever called me an oreo), or c) one of the good ones (not really Black in their eyes is what they would say). These reactions came from both White veg*ns (usually option c)… .[7]

Basically, Afronautical was considered a "good"(read: white) Afro-American because they were vegan, not a fried chicken fanatic. I'm sure most veg*ns have better common sense than this, but regardless, here we see how some veg*ns may consciously associate white with morally good and black with, well, not so good--not a good idea if you want that person to be your ally.

Even more painfully poor examples of social etiquette are described by anti-racist Sheila Hamanaka:

Patrick Kwan...said, "At the first demonstration I went to someone asked me ‘Do you speak English?’—and that was in New York City!” He’s gotten these comments from white staffers of “pretty big AR organizations”: “I can’t believe how Asians treat animals” and “I don’t like Asians.”...Kris, an African American activist, describes how it feels to experience tokenism: “They haven’t done outreach to the community, but they call—‘Hey we need a black face at the protest.’ I go, but it’s not a unifying way, it’s a marginalizing way of organizing. You’re not one of us, but we need you.”[6]

Both Patrick and Kris experience alienation within the familiar company of their very allies. As Breeze expressed, these are spaces where they should feel included, not alienated as "the Other." Patrick, like Afronautical above, is one of the "good" Asians; and Kris, as with the "Engaging Ethnic Minorities" workshop at AR 2008, is an object to be worked, not a subject to work with. The comments cited above may sound shockingly inappropriate in the context of this post on racism in the movement, but it is actually not as uncommon as one might hope. Just remember that these comments came from staff members of large, influential animal organizations.

IGNOR(ANC)E
Of course, sometimes "common sense" may work against race-relations, since often what is common sense makes sense to the "common" people, who in a white society are white. Many advocates, again, well-intentioned people, don't really understand the institutionalization structure of racism--I admit I was pretty oblivious to it until the last year, and I still have much to learn. In another essay, Breeze courageously expresses her vulnerability and hurt

that so many white-identified people I have met do not understand why-- no matter how irrational it is-- so many blacks would support Vick, "because he is black"... There is a lack of compassion by so many white-identified well intentioned AR folk to learn about the socio-historical context of why a person of color would be fearful when a black man is arrested, period.[9]

Breeze notes that Michael Vick, like OJ and other black men put on trial, are often supported by the black community who see their arrests as racist, but who are considered guilty by many non-blacks because they see their arrest as racially-neutral.

Likewise, Jillian expresses feeling fed up with most white ARA activists after

the Michael Vick situation… it never even occurred to PETA and other white AR activists (and even semi-activists who post on forums but certainly don’t go to rallies) that there would be reason to avoid the appearance of a white lynch mob. It didn’t occur to them to reach out to POC and ask for our participation.[51]

As Jillian notes, the context of a bunch of angry white people yelling that this black man should go to jail triggers what Breeze discussed earlier as post-traumatic slave syndrome. The socio-historical context of the last hundred and fifty years of being abused and sentenced to death by police officers for simply being black overrides the particular context of dog abuse. But for the most part, white advocates have little access and knowledge of this phenomenon for they have not been institutionally targeted, raped, and killed by the police. Whether or not this history actually matters in Vick's case is less relevant than the fact that it matters to the black community, and to suggest otherwise would to be invalidate their concerns from a standpoint of privilege.

Some people, yet, are of the opinion that individuals are only accountable for their own private and deliberate actions, not at all of those actions performed by their associates and ancestors. In an otherwise lucid post, Dan over at Unpopular Vegan Essays explains

we don’t need to be an activist for every, or even any, given cause. As long as we’re blameless – which is to say as long as we’re not violating baselines or intentionally engaging in injustice or unnecessary harm ourselves... [such as] [a]voiding racism, sexism, and heterosexism by treating people...fairly and equally to our own...[54]

Recall what Breeze expressed earlier about blaming the individual (whether the "victim" or the oppressor)? Well, here Dan mistakenly considers racism an individual, irrational prejudice rather than an oppressive institution that an entire group of people (i.e. "whites") privilege from. In this sense, white people are never absolutely blameless. The blameful/blameless dichotomy is false; one does not have to be intentionally racist to be involved in racism. Further because racism is a system, as mentioned in part 3, the individual is not the sole locus of accountability when it comes to race issues. The only acceptable "baseline" in cases like Vick's is to be racially-sensitive and conscious and do as Jillian suggested and sincerely locate support within communities of color. [Of course, there is the whole debate over whether using the prison system violates a moral baseline, but more on that in part 5].

With Us or against Us –or- “Sit Down and Shut Up, Little Brown Girl”
SUPPRESSION
Not every white vegan and ARA, however, are racially insensitive and/or ignorant. In fact, many vegans are very race conscious; but because they are not fully empathetic and/or aware of their privilege they will sometimes tolerate or reluctantly promote racially insensitive campaigns and discourse and decry that people who criticize such campaigns are hurting the cause by being divisive. So when vegans of color experience hurt and alienation from things their allies are doing and they have the integrity and courage to stand up and correct them, most of the time they are told figuratively to "sit down and shut up." As Breeze mentioned earlier, Carolina writes that

During activist conversations I cannot bring up topics relating veganism to my own culture, POC and many times the queer community without getting vacant looks or shifty eyes. It seems to be a combination of fear, ignorance, and lack of understanding that causes most of vegan community to turn their heads and change the topic... I have no apologies for what I have to say because it is my experience. Yes, I may seem angry but there are reasons for it...Being marginalized is no f***** picnic in the park. [51]

Caroline, like many others, find it difficult to talk about their particular embodied experiences as vegans within their communities because few people take interest or care to recognize difference. No effort is made to be open and listen, and thus allies like Caroline are marginalized.

Often, fellow advocates can be just plain divisive and rude. Take one response to one of Breeze's podcasts on the intersections of oppression. The post was tited “90% racism, 10% veganism," and the commenter wrote

This is one bitter, whiney and non-constructive podcast. If you wanna focus on what “colonialism” has done to the black “diaspora” and never let go, you’ll LOVE this. If you wanna learn about veganism, or get inspired or get ideas about how to help animals, build a better world, or improve your health or environment, you’re wasting your time here.[57]

The commenter seems almost offended as if Breeze bring these topics up in a podcast about veganism, as if one should not be concerned about the health and exploitation of people of color and environmental racism. This person does not care to discuss or even debate Breeze, just be a sarcastic snob and shoot down a unique and thoughtful piece on veganism. He (I presume) does not care about being an ally who insists (wrongfully) to "agree to disagree," but to just shun a person of color from sharing her knowledge and feelings. This is not a matter of sharing feelings, but of displaying animosity.

One of the responses that I received to part 2 of the series also provides an example of a typical response to people who bring up concerns over racism and white privilege. mep writes:

Quite frankly, I find the whole premise of the vegan movement being "privileged" and "white" a way to turn the focus back to the black community's only real concern -- their own struggle...Put the focus back where it belongs -- on the suffering of the animals and stop trying to turn this into a race issue. If black people want to be help animals then help animals and stop whining about it.[48]

Here, for whatever reason, mep assumes I am a black person, and accuses me as well as all black people of turning the focus back onto themselves--after all black people only care about themselves, right? It's not as if white people are ever selfish, have racial solidarity, and want to turn the focus back on themselves (or away from "racy" topics)... right.

The token part of this response is not the blatant racism, but the final part about people of color "whining." One does not whine about rape or murder or theft; one "whines" about trivial, marginal things, like ordering a Pepsi and getting a Coke instead. Here, my non-confrontational, conversational post exploring race-relations to create a more healthy and diverse activist community is perceived as a waste of time. Who cares? We [i.e. white guys] don't! Do something useful, these last two commenters insist, not too differently than the old white men on the streets passing us by at demonstrations telling us to get jobs on a Sunday morning as they walk into Macy's. Essentially, these reactionaries are framing animal advocacy as fully with "us" [i.e. activists wit white privilege] -or- against "us" [and the animals] be selfishly focusing on your own little identity politics thingy... but remember, factory farming is like the holocaust and the KKK because all oppression is the same.

This is the type of attitude and thinking that is truly divisive and why people are not just frustrated, but outraged when animal advocates use such analogies. If they really cared about racial oppression, they would not be squashing voices addressing racially insensitive tactics and language! The analogies, as was discussed in part 1, are made in a socio-historical vacuum as if slavery, the KKK, and other systems no longer existed and "now it's the animals' turn."

RATIONALIZATION/REVERSAL
Many vegans and ARAs hold a consequentialist ethic in which an end (so long as the consequences are the best) justifies any reasonable means. Some advocates will thus condemn vegans and non-vegans alike for publicly criticizing a certain tactic (i.e. PETA dressing up as the KKK) intended to raise awareness, since doing so will not only distract further from the message (assuming it was being received in the first place) but also makes ARAs look bad. Johanna, as always at her best, paraphrases the thought process of many ARAs:

those of us concerned with anything else rather than the suffering of non-human animals are divisive, are weakening the vegan cause, are traitors... Such vegans divide the world into two parts: people who are vegan, & thus allies, & those who are not vegan[58]

For instance, one white blogger told a blogger of color that she had "NO right to criticize PeTA because she was not a vegan.[63] Although this blogger had in the past written on anti-racism, she nonetheless used her white privilege to barge in onto a woman of color's blog to tell her what she could and could not say. (I went over the problem with this in part 2). Her reasoning was that "no one was physically hurt...PETA deserves criticism, but it should stay in-house, from VEGANS, not anti-vegans."[64] Surely she acknowledged the (emotional) hurt this stunt had caused--otherwise she would not have qualified hurt with "physical" and condemned PETA--, but nonetheless she imagines that some utility can come out of it. More importantly, though, vegans of color should keep their criticism private because otherwise they'd only reduce the utility of the stunt that exploited their oppression. Further, non-vegans of color should not criticize, their voices don't count because, while they may be oppressed, they are the oppressors.

Angel H replied that she "totally invalidated [Womanist's] own anger and hurt as a Black woman - and mine, for that matter - by telling her that they should be concentrated more on the AKC, than at PETA."[64] Another blogger countered the criticisms, writing "PETA does amazing things for animals...Do you care about animals?...Wake up please! Your ignorance offends me," as if PETA and ARAs should be the one's upset! Instead of even acknowledging another's concern, one already dismisses it outright as blasphemous: since you're not with us you must be against us! Fortunately, Royce Drake quickly turned the table:

Do you care about racism? I want all people and all animals eliminated from systems of oppression. That doesn’t mean I turn a blind eye to PETA’s blatant racism and sexism. Perhaps you are the one who needs to wake up?[64]

Of course these critics of PETA "cared about animals!" Why else would they be participants on a vegan blog? The real question, as Royce put it, is whether these defenders cared at all about people of color. If they did, why were they so reluctant to validate the hurt? Again, racist tactics are what divide the movement, not the advocates who criticize such tactics.

MARGINALIZATION
As utilitarian animal advocates will say, anything you do to hurt the cause hurts animals; vegans are against hurting animals, so if you hurt the cause, you are "anti-vegan."[59] Advocates like Dan believe we ought to choose our causes as long as we don't personally violate the baseline of another cause, but such baselines are not always clear. For instance, would one violate the baseline of human rights if one recommended Taco bell as a place to get "vegan" food at a time when the Immokalee workers were on hunger strike against slave conditions? Matt Ball of Vegan Outreach either didn't think so or didn't care:

I do vegan outreach because I do believe it is the most important, most pressing issue... I will not ignore the importance of convenience just to avoid allegedly giving an anti-Taco Bell person an excuse to continue to eat animals... we must remain focused on the main issue: the immense suffering of the animals. I don't think that the animals are best served by spending an inordinate amount of our limited resources on trying to build certain bridges.[60]

Mr. Ball is essentially framing animal welfare/rights as "the main issue" and slavery as a marginal one. From his utilitarian calculation building coalitions to human rights campaigns is a waste. He answers the question ARAs hate to be asked: a human or a dog/pig? Ball chooses the animals because he believes it is "the most important, most pressing issue." People of color are morally subordinated. How fortunate Ball is not to have to worry about the oppression of white middle-class people, because perhaps then he'd have to consider which oppression is more pressing than the other.

Ball is by no means alone. Dan [sorry, if it seems I'm picking on you. Really, it's only because I liked your blog enough to read it] expresses a similar opinion: "Our current use and treatment of animals...is simply the worst atrocity humanity has ever engaged in as a species."[54] Hold on there: what about rape? mass genocide? child prostitution? the torture of untrialed prisoners of war? Who's to say which is worse, and exactly how does one generalize the last few decades of the treatment of animals to a three million year history of the human species?

Brownfemipower responds to these prioritization of oppressions by asking why many vegans are so concerned about animal welfare but not brown person welfare.

Why is it so easy to prioritize cruelty inflicted on animals over cruelty inflicted on brown people? Why can people list a whole litany of wrongs committed against animals by the food industry–but at the same time those people "never really thought" about what happens to the workers?[10]

Do you think this has anything to do with white privilege and the racial contract in which people of color are never fully considered equal citizens/people? Breeze also notices an indifference amongst some consumers of "green" and "vegan" products about the labor conditions in which they were made and the people who live next to where they are dumped after use; these sell "to many vegans who only seem to solely be focused on the fact that the product...is "cruelty free" because it has been labeled as "vegan""[61] On the other hand, if we are to think of veganism as a social justice philosophy and include social justice advocates (i.e. Walker, Chavez, Gandhi, Greggory, the Kings) as our primary models rather than philosophers and celebrity artists, clearly veganism is no longer solely an "animal issue" just as feminism is not a position reserved exclusively for women.

In the end, Johanna writes,

We're being asked to identify as vegans over any other aspect of our identities...Some of us don't have the luxury of seeing things that simply. Some of us will never, ever have the privilege of ignoring, if we want to, the rest of who we are in favor of focusing solely on our diets[58]

In other words, asking a vegan of color to ignore their biographical identity is like being told to ignore apart of one's self, something only those without privilege must do. In some ways this is the role many Afro-American women are expected to play when it comes to (not) reporting sexual assault and rape because so many black men are already imprisoned jail, many unjustly. But one should not be forced to choose between one part of one's identity and another (i.e. vegan/korean, black/woman). Each part is crucial and valuable to one's existence and neither should be marginalized, especially by those with the privilege of not having to make such a choice.

Carolina adds that "Ignoring POC and other issues within the vegan community is what will hurt the cause of veganism...You have millions of POC who could be possible vegans but if vegan events are not seen as welcoming" well, there goes your base.[51] Dan explains the situation well from a philosophical standpoint:

Because of this common ground, anytime a “progressive” person or group espousing one such cause... trivializes or intentionally ignores another cause... that person or group undermines the underlying substance of his or her own cause by arbitrarily (and often unwittingly) endorsing exploitation or oppression which is merely in different form.[59]

One cannot consistently advocate for the rights of animals without advocating for basic human/civil rights. To arbitrarily marginalize another's cause is to logically legitimize the arbitrary marginalization of one's own by another. If some vegans and ARAs will not support anti-racism and human rights causes, they should not expect those advocates to accept their own cause, nor do they have the entitlement to criticize others for ignoring their cause when they trivialize the causes of others.

To be continued
Wow, what can I say? Actually, there is way too much to say. And to think I was going to originally cover all this in two parts! Writing these posts has really been a learning experience for me. I really do hope, though, that other white advocates can get some use out of these. Don't worry, I'm not through yet. There's still enough material for another one or two parts. Hopefully, I'll cover all the rest of the material in part 5 so I can do a roundup review for part 6. Anyway, look forward to a discussion on whether vegans are an oppressed group as well as issues such as class, "exoticism," and prison. Peace. Continue reading "Privilege: The U.S. Vegan Movement, Whiteness, and Race Relations (part 4)"!