I was going to refer to some old posts of mine on veganism and sexism...but it seems that they were made on earlier blogs, which I've since deleted. Oh, well.
Today, Thom emailed me an NY Times article on veganism and sexism/feminism. The article isn't bad, it's well written and gives lots of different view points, from a vegan strip-club owner who oh-so-cleverly-and-creatively calls feminists "feminazis," to anti-porn feminist Carol J. Adams' book The Sexual Politics of Meat. (As well as my favorite cookbook author Isa Chandra Moskowitz. w00t!)
To me, the article is a summary of really annoying ways of "selling" veganism, naked girls and fat-shaming among the two most popular, the former of which is ironic since most vegetarians and vegans are female.
To be honest, I think the idea of "selling" veganism is laughable because it's almost impossible to do. People will think of almost any excuse not to go vegan, like tradition, convenience, "it just tastes good," "free-range" meat, some dumbass idea of how hard it is for humans to stay at the top of the food chain, not giving a shit, etc. Even for people who would seem to be perfect candidates for veganism, like animal lovers, pacifists, and bleeding-heart liberals, any excuse not to be vegan is a good excuse. A friend of ours (bless him) is THE most bleeding-heart liberal I have ever met in my life. He lives in the backwoods of Virginia and campaigns for the democratic party there. Relating an anecdote about positive racial dialogue will literally bring him to tears. But he's also overweight, to the point where it's causing health problems. Even in the face of the facts that dropping meat from his diet could benefit his health, the environment, and animals, he'll make up some excuse for continuing to eat meat.Thom told me about this and although I'm usually not a vegan prosletyzer, I tested it one day. He was talking about how methane is damaging the environment, and I said, "Well, if there were fewer cows because people stopped eating them....." and he literally shut down the conversation right there. He refused to hear another word. So, no, I don't think you can "sell" veganism because people are creatures of habit, and even when the facts stare them in the face, they still won't change unless it's something they've thought about long and deeply.
This doesn't stop people from trying to "sell" veganism, oh no. Those with the money will try to sell it just as you would try to sell anything else:
“Sexuality is what society will turn its head for more than anything
else,” said Ingrid Newkirk, the president of PETA, who added that the
recent advertisements were just one of the group’s strategies. “We try
to reach everybody in different ways.” She noted that the group has
also shown naked men in ads.
Setting aside the bogus notion that men and women are sexualized in the same way and to the same extent, it's clear that PETA has very little idea of what their ads featuring naked women actually mean. Like other ads featuring the sexualized, idealized bodies of women, they implicitly tell you that, "You'll get hot chicks if you do/buy this." Well, that's what it says to heterosexual men, anyway, who are seen as the universal arbiters of experience by advertisers. What do the ads say to women, who are the ones most likely to convert to veganism? "You'll be this if you go vegan." Not too different from the million other messages we get every day. So, more fat/non-mainstream beauty shaming for us. And then there are the ads that blatantly shame us for fat/non-mainstream beauty. "Lose weight by going vegan," a very popular message with PETA.
I'll just come out and say it: "You'll get hot chicks if you go vegan" and "You'll lose weight if you go vegan" are bullshit reasons to go vegan. Motivated suchly, someone might try veganism for 21 days (btw, did Oprah stay vegan?), but as soon as they saw that they didn't get any hot chicks, or they didn't lose that much weight, they'd go back to being an omni. Which is not to say that my own reasons for going vegan aren't self-serving. Obviously, deep down somewhere, I feel I'm getting some sort of payback for being vegan, even if it's not in the form of weight loss or making money or whatever. BUT, if you want people to go vegan, give them a reason that isn't bullshit.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are reasons like in Carol J. Adams' book. (For the record, I got a good way into this book, but didn't finish it because the writing annoyed me so much. The paragraphs just seemed to be jumbled together with no apparent connection between many of them, so when I got the main idea, I gave it up.) It goes something like this: "Feminists should stop eating meat because here are a bunch of anecdotes about how men treat women like meat, and about how pornography looks at women like meat, and how meat is thought of vital to masculinity. Therefore, it is IMPERATIVE to you as a feminist, who are disgusted by all pornography, all erotic representations of women, and masculinity in general, to stop eating meat out of PRINCIPLE."
Oh, dear. This means that I have to agree with Adams' feminist politics before I can find a good reason to stop eating meat. I am a feminist, but I don't have a problem with men, or all erotic representations of women, for instance, so I find it hard to get on board with her. It's hard to get someone to go vegan on principle, especially when the principles involved are controversial and, in my humble opinion, somewhat dubious.
On the whole, I think "selling" veganism as sexiness or coolness or an admission ticket to Feminist Heaven is a waste of time, and probably does more harm than good. There are a few good reasons for veganism I can think of: farm animals are the number one producers of greenhouse gases, the terrible working conditions in meat packing plants, the needless toxins taken into the body by a diet high in animal products, and the fact that right now, not in principle, there are animals in battery cages, gestation crates, and incredibly tiny stalls who will be slaughtered and face the very real possibility of being boiled or dismembered alive during the slaughering process, and for the feminist angle -- female animals who live longer lives of more suffering because of their reproductive capacity. All of that is based on stuff that's happening right now, not on principle, not on wishful thinking.
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