Veganism, Sex and Politics. C. Lou Hamilton
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promote plant-based diets. In the digital age, information about the negative impacts of animal agriculture and the consumption of animal products, along with alternatives, circulate readily and rapidly to large audiences, increasing access to information about veganism.7 According to the presenter of a BBC radio programme on vegan diets broadcast in February 2019, “When I ask people why they would like to give it [veganism] a try they usually say that something they saw on the television or on social media has changed the way they’ll think about meat and dairy forever.”8 Some people celebrate the growing enthusiasm for veganism as proof of increased compassion for animals and greater awareness about the dangers of climate change, especially among younger people. But not everyone is happy about veganism going mainstream. Some fear that it is losing its political edge, becoming just another middle-class lifestyle choice, complete with celebrity backers. Evidence that a preoccupation with healthy eating and the environment is behind veganism’s popularity prompts some to fear a loss of focus on animal rights.9
There is certainly room for criticism of vegan consumerism. But in this book I argue that it is a mistake to assume that veganism is nothing more than a lifestyle choice. I am also wary of accusing some vegans of having self-centred rather than properly political motives, or of being driven by the wrong kinds of politics.10 It is not possible, or desirable, to think of the lives of other animals, human health, economic inequalities and environmentalism as separate issues. If discussions about climate change teach us anything, it is just how deadly the ideology of limitless economic growth, and the day-to-day activities of many of us living in the West, have become — for ourselves, the rest of the world’s human population, other creatures, and the planet as a whole. The deadliness of many aspects of Western culture and consumerism is hardly news. But it is given new dimensions by the current planetary crisis. The turn towards veganism is one expression of a growing consciousness about the enormous costs of global capitalism and anthropocentrism — the worldview that promotes human beings and our interests as the centre of the universe.
As it becomes more popular, veganism has become a hot topic. We can find a plethora of vegan cookbooks, blogs and online cooking classes, veganism is in the news on a regular basis, and there is even an emerging academic subfield of vegan studies.11 Activists, journalists and scholars debate the pros and cons of veganism for human health, animal welfare, food security (the ability to feed the world’s growing human population), food justice (equal and fair access to healthy food for people) and the earth’s future. So veganism is also hot as in “hot potato.” It attracts attention because it reflects changing attitudes towards animals, food and the environment; but it also creates anxiety in relation to other social, economic and political issues, including class, race, gender, sexuality, disability, gentrification, globalisation and environmental protection. Why does veganism raise hackles? In this book I explore some ways we might think critically about veganism so that we can appreciate its values and better understand the controversies it causes, without equating it to those. Amidst the sometimes stifling debates, I want to give veganism some space to breathe.
I define veganism as an ethical commitment to live, as far as possible, without commodifying or otherwise instrumentalising other animals for our own human ends. Adapting Deane Curtin’s theory of “contextual moral vegetarianism,” I advocate the practice of contextual ethical veganism. Although I believe it is impossible to draw a sharp distinction between the care of other animals and care of one’s self and other people, I follow common usage among vegans by using “ethical veganism” to signal a commitment motivated by compassion for other creatures and not primarily a concern about human health. While “ethical” and “moral” are used largely interchangeably in everyday speech, I choose “ethical” in order to avoid the easy slide of “moral” into “moralism,” a term sometimes (incorrectly in my view) associated with veganism. Following Curtin, I include the word “contextual” in my definition in order to signal a recognition that veganism defined in strict dietary terms may not be appropriate to all situations, given significant differences among people, our histories and our circumstances.12 Those who are able to practise strict veganism need not — indeed, should not — adopt a universalist position by arguing that everyone, regardless of material and cultural context, must practise veganism in a particular way. Finally, following common usage in writing on animal rights and welfare, I refer collectively to nonhuman species as animals, while remaining aware that people too are animals. I try to avoid lumping all other-than-human animals together by being specific, wherever possible, about which species I am referring to.
In practical terms, in contemporary Western societies, practising contextual ethical veganism means avoiding as far as possible the consumption of products made from animals instrumentalised for human ends, and seeking to minimise other practices involving the exploitation of other species. Whereas in popular parlance veganism is normally associated with diet, this book goes beyond food to consider some of the other ways people consume or instrumentalise animals, including for clothing, medicine, pleasure and work. While the book offers a defence of veganism, it draws attention to what I consider unsatisfactory or even dangerous arguments in its favour. It also examines the merits of some arguments against veganism and takes into account some of the challenges of practising veganism today.
The book’s objective is twofold: to invite readers from different backgrounds to take veganism seriously as an ethical practice with important political implications, and to encourage readers to think in ways they may not have before about the relationship between veganism, sexual politics and other political issues, including anti-racism, environmentalism, anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism. My words are neither the first nor the last; I draw on existing discussions, try to take them in different directions, and hope to keep the conversations moving.
Veganism, sex and politics
Sex is also a hot topic, but in a more obvious way than veganism. Why sex, politics and veganism? If you picked up this book hoping for tips on how to find your ideal vegan lover, or help to boost your sex life through a plant-based diet, you’re likely to be disappointed.13 I’ll leave the hottest vegan competition to others.14 Instead, I set out to examine some of the ways veganism crosses paths with sex and other political topics. Sex, sexuality and sexual politics provide examples of how ideas about veganism and people’s relationships with other animals get caught up in complex questions about intra-human relations.
I use “sexual politics” in a broad sense, incorporating sexuality, sexual orientation and sexual relations, as well as power dynamics among different groups of gendered human beings (women, men, transgender and non-binary people). To many readers, sexuality and veganism may not seem immediately related. Yet both share the widespread and persistent perception, on the left as well as the right, that they are luxury issues, not serious political questions. This book begs to differ. Perhaps the most obvious connection between sexuality and veganism is that both are linked to bodies, our own and those of others. These days it is something of a cliché to say that “food is the new sex”; food and sexuality have become intimately tied through the themes of desire and identity.15 But when we expand the scope of veganism beyond food we relate to bodies in different ways: through the medicines we take, the clothes we wear, the intimate relationships we form with human and other creatures, and the ways we travel and move in the world. Thinking about veganism in relation to sexual politics has helped me better to understand the extent to which eating, dressing, playing and taking care of our bodies and those of other people depend and impact upon the bodies and lives of other animals.
The book also examines how different power relations among people — including, but not exclusively, gender relations — intersect with definitions of animality and humanity. In the early twenty-first century most people who study the history of human-animal relations agree that there are ideological and historical connections between the ways in which animals, women and other oppressed human groups — people of colour, Indigenous people, Jews, queers, workers, disabled people — have been represented and treated as less-than-human by people with power. There is also a recognition that the construction and treatment of certain people and collectives of people “as animals” is structurally connected to the (mal)treatment of other animals. Where there is less agreement is how exactly these connections work, and where and when it is