I have been having an argument with myself about whether or not I should post this. In general I'm fairly strict with myself about not pedantically defining things and forcing others to adhere to my definitions. For example, I would never tell you what it means to be a woman, or a man, or a conservative, or a liberal, or trans, or queer, or even vegan, believe it or not. Yes, I have my views on what all of those things entail, especially veganism, but if you want to call yourself a vegan and still use wool, I'm not going to jump down your throat about it.
But now I am faced with an issue that completely flies in the face of my live and let live logic...mostly because it involves actual lives...the lives of non human animals.
I really think that being a feminist just goes hand in hand with being vegan. Now, don't fly off the handle at me and accuse me of dictating to you what it means to give a shit about femininity. I've heard it all before...in fact I'm pretty sure I've said it all before. I actually recall being about 14 years old and insisting that feminists were stupid. To be fair, I was 14 and had no clue what being a feminist actually meant. I thought it was a dirty word used to describe man haters. Some of you probably still feel this way. I hope you will change your mind.
So, for a moment, please hold in your shouts of righteous indignation while I try to get my point across, and then we can have an actual discussion about it.
Meat, dairy, and eggs are feminist issues. Here are some things that I know to be true about feminism. First, feminism is about subverting and sometimes entirely rejecting patriarchal social norms and constructs that marginalize, objectify, and demean women, and femininity more broadly. Feminism is about understanding that ones actions towards women can easily contradict their stated belief systems about the value of the feminine - for example, when someone says they respect women but regularly make casual sexist jokes. Feminism is also about recognizing that all "women" matter, even if they do not define themselves as women, or even if society tells us that these women are sexually male. It is also about recognizing that all people matter, regardless of their gender orientation. Feminism is about respecting female reproduction and understanding that an individual has the right to choose whether and how they become a mother. Feminism is about, first and foremost, freedom, dignity, and respect for all.
Where do meat, dairy, and eggs come into the picture, though? Well, my friends, where do you think they come from? Here are some facts about meat, dairy and eggs.
- Meat is the product of animals who are objectified to the point of reducing their value to nutritional content...or worse, taste.
- Both eggs and milk are products of the female reproductive system.
- In order to produce 'livestock' for the meat, dairy and egg industry, female animals are routinely raped to produce more offspring, and in the case of nearly all these pregnancies the animal's offspring is taken from it to be used for meat, or to be raised until these animals too can be raped to produce offspring.
- The violence of slaughterhouses spills out into the everyday world. There is a verified link between the existence of a slaughterhouse and violent crime in communities that house them. Read this article for more information. Violent crime in non urban areas unequally impacts women, who are more likely to be victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.
More than this, though, it seems nearly impossible to me to disconnect the bodies of animals from the bodies of women. From the time I was very young I have felt objectified and sexualized. I think that many young women have felt this way. We are groped in school hallways or by friends of our parents in quiet smokey corners; we are whistled at by strangers on the street; we are called names like whore or slut if we dress in a way deemed inappropriate, and called worse names is we like sex and experience sex with multiple partners in any period of time. We are made into objects, even by those who claim to only want what's best for us. Our reproductive rights are taken from us and we are scolded for refusing to adhere to a system that demands we alter our bodies chemically or physically in order to enjoy a sexual life (read: we take pills and get inserts to stop something "bad" from happening). We are taught that we must be modest because you never know what a man might do if he sees your thigh or breast. We are confined and yet we are sexualized by the media and used to sell products to other confined and sexualized people. We are made to be pieces of meat.
How can we recognize that all of this is true and subject animals to the same tortures? We take away their freedom, we objectify them, we cut them up and put them on Burger King billboards, bare naked as naked can be - without bodies, bones or skin. We literally confine them behind closed doors and blacked out windows so that the world cannot see what is happening to them - mirroring the hisotircal attitude that what happens to a woman in the home is not politically or socially relevant. We take advantage of their reproductive systems. We rape them. And then we justify that rape as a necessary and natural norm, when it is really a cultural construct. We do to animals what has been done to women for centuries, and then we put them on our plates and we eat them. Women are figuratively meat; animals are literally meat.
Now, I will get flack for this, perhaps. This overzealous feminist rant about the bodies of women becoming meat. People will say,
but men are sexualized too! They will say,
men are put upon, men are demeaned, men are seen as culturally inferior. This is a deeply problematic argument. Sure, men are increasingly sexualized in our culture, and increasingly made out by movies and television to be "big dumb oafs" who require a woman's supervision. Yes this is problematic. Shouldn't the goal be to raise women up, not bring men down? But there is another side-effect our culture's increased painting the man as animalistic oaf: it justifies all those problems that impact women as well. It justifies rape culture. It justifies the whistles and the gropes. It justifies abuse. The men can't help it, our pop culture declares, they are like animals when they see a female piece of flesh. This is why I shouldn't show my breasts or wear short shorts. Because if I do then they can't help it if they assault me. I was asking for it.
This is a parallel between the painting of man as oaf and the animal as meat. We as a culture cannot help our desire for flesh, and therefore it is justified. But men are not oafs and women are not meat. Likewise humans are not oafs and animals are not meat.
I am tired of being told by men that their dicks will cure me of my veganism, or that their dicks will cure me of my sexual desire for women. I firmly believe that until we stop viewing anything as meat, our culture will not be able to escape viewing women as meat.
For some really great thoughts on this you should read
The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol Adams.
I found a great article last year on Everyday Feminism that gets at some of the other issues, including the perpetuation of rape culture, and the naturalization of problematic social norms.
Read it here.
This wasn't a very happy post, but I still want you to have a nice day, so Happy Friday, veggie friends and friends of veggies!
-J
