Yes, let’s get sheeps off those ships, but let’s also start the conversation about getting them out of the slaughterhouse. This will mean more than challenging anthropocentrism, it will also entail a radical revising of our current economic and political system.
Continue readingVeganism and In Vitro Meat
I argue that the most glaring shortcoming of the in vitro scheme is that it overlooks speciesist attitudes and institutions as problematic in of themselves.
Continue readingSexism 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 readingAdvancing Veganism in a “Post-Vegan Society”: A Review of Veganism: Politics, Practice, and Theory
Veganism’s strength lies in its deep contemplation of complicated issues drawing on sociological theory and qualitative research.
Continue readingWomen and Vegan Civil Resistance
Although vegan feminism is a relatively new theory of social change in the West, it has had a rich background with a variety of innovative tactics, developed by innovative women in the resistance. In “Vegan Feminism Then and Now: Women’s Resistance to Legalised Speciesism across Three Waves of Activism” published in Gendering Green Criminology (Bristol University Press 2023), Lynca Korimboccus joins me in exploring this history through the efforts of three outstanding activists we take to represent feminist approaches to anti-speciesism across three primary waves of collective effort.
Continue readingShocked or Satiated? Violent Imagery Traumatizes Rather than Motivates Veteran Activists
Sociologists James Jasper and Jane Poulsen have argued that activists’ deployment of emotionally triggering ‘moral shocks’ can stimulate recruitment for movements, particularly for those which are less successful in recruiting through social networks. Others have suggested that, more than a recruitment tool, these moral shocks are useful for sustaining activist motivation. I wondered, however, if activists might actually find violent imagery in campaigning to do the opposite. Perhaps it demotivated, instead?
Continue readingThird-Wave Vegan Feminism and Feminist Animal Studies
In my chapter for Feminist Animal Studies (Routledge 2022) edited by Erika Cudworth, Ruth E. McKie and Di Turgoose, I argue that vegan feminist activism has entered a millennial third wave. This wave, I argue,Continue reading
Eating Vegan vs. Being Vegan: The Vegan Society and Depoliticized Capitalist Campaigning
Veganism is a threatening concept for those monied institutions which benefit from exploitation and support the third sector. “You don’t have to be vegan” is a means of depoliticizing veganism while also positioning it as congruent with consumerism favorable to capitalism.
Continue readingPETA, Dahmer, and Intersectional Failure
In 2014, the home of infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer went on the market. This sale was understandably a contentious one. Seventeen boys and men, many of whom were children, gay, prostituted, and/or persons of color were raped, tortured, killed, and sometimes eaten by Dahmer at the site. Twenty-five years later, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) made a bid to purchase it.
Continue readingHow Do I Positively Engage My Non-Vegan Family?
Sharing vegan food with family members will not only increase their familiarity with that food; it also creates positive associations with veganism and hopefully reduces any tension.
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