Acts of cannibalism offer one of the most profound challenges to human identity.
Continue readingVegan Halloween: Remembering the Dead
Samhain, for vegans, should be a time to honour ancestors, but also recognize that “harvest time” has been a period of intense violence across the ages. Just as the mass killing of witches has been cause for sombre remembrance, so should that of Nonhuman Animals who have been harassed, killed, and “sacrificed” for entertainment, sustenance, religious bargaining for a deity’s favour, scientific advancement, and so on. For those who practice it, Halloween might be a time for vegan baking and sharing plant-based sweets, but it might also be a time to hold space for other animals. This could mean lighting a candle, sharing food with other animals, or taking a tip from the feminist witches and hexing the anthroparchy.
Continue readingVeganism and In Vitro Meat
Sexism in Animal Advocacy: The Case of Foie Gras
Foie gras victims are usually male, and both women and men are involved in victimizing them as producers and as consumers, but, because patriarchal, woman-hating culture is most accustomed to viewing women as frivilous consumers and sexy victims of violence, the Nonhuman Animal rights movement regularly employs female activists to take on these convoluted roles in protest.
Continue readingMainstreaming Veganism: Full Interview with Imagine5
Vegan culture is likely to move more and more into environmental claimsmaking, as that has proved most successful in achieving institutional changes that support a transition to plant-based foodways. I would like to see, however, more social justice claimsmaking made for nonhuman animals themselves. Sadly, in all the discourse over healthy food, capitalism, and climate change, the animals themselves remain hidden from the conversation. This is a real travesty, as they have the most to gain from a vegan world.
Continue readingVeganism and the Problem of Cultural Diversity
In our postcolonial world, the high consumption of animal products is now related to aggressive Western marketing, heavily subsidized animal agriculture in Western countries that gluts global markets, exploitative and often violently enforced use of land and resources outside of the West (such as the destruction of the Amazon rainforest for beef production), forced removal of Indigenous communities, predatory lending and capitalist ventures led by global financial entities such as the World Bank, and increased consumer power made possible by globalization. Diets heavy in animal products are not culturally diverse; they are products of Western imperialism. The global majority cannot digest lactose (dairy) beyond the age of weaning (a normal process among mammals), and, as animal flesh is expensive to produce or shunned in certain spiritual practices, traditional diets of the world have been based in fruits, vegetables, legumes, and pulses. Plant-based diets are more cost efficient, sustainable, and healthful, accounting for their foundational and ubiquitous presence across almost of the world’s cultures.
Continue readingEating Vegan vs. Being Vegan: The Vegan Society and Depoliticized Capitalist Campaigning
The Only Vegan in the Department: Science, Anti-Veganism, and the Illusion of Objectivity
Weber reminds us that reality is more than the material–it is also found in shared subjective meanings. Objectivity, knowledge, facts, and truth are subsequently vulnerable to political maneuvering. If no science is value-free, what values will we apply? Values of violence or values of justice?
Continue readingCan We “Have Our Cow and Eat Her, Too?”
The weaponization fo science and naturalism to rank the worth of marginalized groups, dictate their moral worth, and control their lives (usually in highly exploitative ways) is a classic project of Western, white supremacist patriarchal colonial conquest. The entitlement to other living beings, both in reality and symbolically, should be challenged.
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