The term ‘intersectional’ as we know it within social justice causes, was coined by critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. She describes it as follows:
Most modern human rights organisation will approach their work through an intersectional lens, otherwise they will be seen for what they truly are— hypocritical. Though one aspect of injustice is commonly forgotten by human rights activists, and that is the fact that as human animals we enjoy a huge privilege in contrast to non-human animals. Speciesism is likely at play here, meaning those individuals may not see sentient animals as persons capable of experiencing suffering that is worth avoiding, where possible.
Of course, the inverse of this is also true. Many animal rights activists often fail to take into account human rights abuses and atrocities currently ongoing in the world. Many of the biggest voices within the community have stayed silent during the ongoing genocide in Gaza, whether through fear of speaking out and losing one’s audience, or a lack of care.
The fact of the matter is that the ugly reality of non-human animal abuse cannot simply be extrapolated from human abuse. Therefore, it is imperative that the vegan activist space should be a safe area which is open to all members of oppressed groups. A vegan campaign which refuses to promote itself as an intersectional space that is pro-feminist, anti-racist, anti-ableist, anti-classist, and queer-allied is only succeeding in recreating wider societal systems of oppression.
Unfortunately, the intersectional approach is not one that all vegan activists will embrace.
“A member of any ‘oppressed’ group could be a meat-eater, fur-wearer and leather user. Not going to fight for them, sorry,” writes a commenter on Plant Based Bride’s website, under an article about how to be an intersectional vegan. The quotation marks around the word oppressed are telling. It’s as if, for a lot of these people, the animal rights issue is the only issue that matters, and nothing else is equally as deserving of their attention. It is a myopic belief that is rife among the online vegan community.
Another commenter writes: “This is fucking idiotic. Being confined in filth, raped, having your head sawn off, your children stolen from you, or enduring the destruction of the environment and economy, not to mention thousands of people who starve to death every day, isn’t the same level of offense as not being able to marry or not getting a job. Anyone who thinks those things are ‘equal’ needs to kill themselves immediately.”
To be clear, the author of the article was not equating such actions. They were simply highlighting the importance of fighting for all just causes under an intersectional movement. But many men (most of the hateful comments on posts about intersectional veganism, though by no means all, appear to be from men) respond with hyper-aggression when their position is challenged to take into account a more nuanced approach.
The hyper-masculinity of some within the vegan activist movement almost seems like a response to the ‘soyboy’ rhetoric so often touted by right-wing media. This hyper-masculinity breeds a lack of care for wider, systematic issues. It is rooted in white veganism, which is to say a strand of veganism that does not equally take into consideration the voices of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) vegans.
According to PEW research, Black people within the United States are currently the fastest growing population group identifying as vegan — eight percent of Blacks within the country identify as vegan or vegetarian (in comparison to three percent for all Americans.)
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this growth is not mirrored in the animal rights activist space or within animal rights organisations.
Those who maintain white veganism will refuse to be inclusive and severely lack cultural sensitivity in their activism. For example, vegans who perpetuate white veganism may prescribe a plant based diet universally and entirely neglect the inequitable access to healthful foods and alternatives that many marginalised communities across the globe face. Moreover, they may even refuse to accept the argument that Indigenous peoples who rely on the land for their sustenance should be allowed to do so.
This is neither fair nor helpful to the overall human and animal liberation movement.
Veganism is often reduced to what is put on your plate. But it should go much, much deeper than that. Our food and agricultural systems provide us with an opportunity to see how intersectionality can play a role in our day to day lives. This global food system relies on the oppression of marginalized people (who often work in conditions few, if any, of us in the Western world would accept) to grow, harvest, package, and distribute our food. By adding the necessary and important layer of intersectionality to veganism and food production, it allows us to become better advocates against global unjust systems.
The capitalistic plant-based food industry, dominated by a handful of corporations that hold nearly complete power over global food supply chains, is eager for their products to been seen as the solution many are asking for. It should come as no surprise that food giants like Tyson, Nestle, and JBS don’t actually care for the environment, or the workers, or for the animals put through their food supply chains — rather, they are looking to capitalise on the latest market trend.
‘Plant-based’ has become equated with ‘good’ in the 21st century, but the truth is much more nuanced. Meat companies providing plant-based options under the guise of providing alternatives is strictly a business move and nothing more. To hold these corporations to account and ensure the creation of a more fair and just agricultural system, intersectional vegans should think critically about who holds power in our society, and that means being conscious of race, class, and gender inequalities as well. Putting our collective faith in corporations to ‘do the right thing’ and ease the world into a plant-based future is a pipe dream— global capitalism ultimately hinders the progression towards what a true vegan society would look like.
Ideally, we need a food system that is focused on local, sustainable, and ethical practises. A whole-hearted disavowal of plant-based capitalism should be the requirement from vegan activists, as well as public acknowledgment of the fact that as a group we will never end the oppression of humans and non-humans under an economic system which is inherently based on exploitation.
Throughout history there have been a number of activists in their respective fields who have make the connection between human oppression and what we do to animals. Civil rights activist Dick Gregory is quoted as saying: “Because I’m a civil rights activist, I am also an animal rights activist. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and vicious taking of life. We shouldn’t be a part of it.”
Angela Davis, who rose to prominence during the 1960s for her work with the Black Panthers and the Communist party, is another. “The fact that we can sit down and eat a piece of chicken without thinking about the horrendous conditions under which chickens are industrially bred in this country is a sign of the dangers of capitalism, how capitalism has colonized our minds.”
It is further well known that many of the suffragettes were vegetarians and promoted such a lifestyle, drawing links between the unjust sufferings of women in their society — their lack of autonomy and freedom, enforced on them by the patriarchal norm — with how animals were treated within the meat industry. As the Vegetarian Society note, “It’s unsurprising that many of the suffragists, who fought so tirelessly against being treated as secondary, identified with this cause.”
Suffrage events and dinners would often be held at vegetarian restaurants of the time, allowing the campaigning feminists a place of refuge and somewhere to organise. These restaurants would become so significant to the activists that the Women’s Freedom League (WFL) would go on to open vegetarian restaurants, raising funds for the cause.
American social psychologist Dr. Melanie Joy, best known for coining the term ‘carnism’ (the ideology behind why humans are conditioned to eat certain animals — essentially, the opposite of veganism) has written extensively on veganism and the movement’s lack of a strong, structural feminist intersection.
Joy expands on the fact that her relationships with men in the animal rights movement began to suffer because of her attempts at conversations around feminism. When trying to bridge the knowledge gap of these men with her recommendations on feminist literature, she notes: ‘They’d offer me a quid pro quo: “I’ll read a book on sexism if you read a book on how feminism has gone too far,” thus wholly denying the literacy gap. Imagine a non-vegan saying they’ll read Animal Liberation only as long as the vegan reads The Vegetarian Myth, as though the vegan hasn’t spent a lifetime being spoon-fed carnistic propaganda just like everybody else.’
She adds: ‘Awareness is also central to transforming sexism — awareness of the nature and dynamics of sexism, of feminism as the ethical alternative, and of the defensive structure that keeps sexism in place by causing men to resist becoming aware: male privilege. We need to recognize the specific ways that sexism is manifested and perpetrated — many of which are subtle and undetectable without a base of knowledge of sexism and gender dynamics — and we need to make visible the ways male privilege distorts men’s perceptions and blocks their empathy, turning potentially enlightening discussions about sexism into destructive debates that reinforce, rather than transform, the problem.’
With this bridge of the ‘literacy gap’, we create a more robust, empowered movement, allowing for a stronger understanding of the systems that keep all of us down.
Imagine a world in which each individual social justice group collectivised and fought with an intersectional approach. If vegans championed the rights of the Indigenous community as much as they do the rights of non-human animals; if every feminist group fought for the rights of ALL women including sex-working women and trans-women, not just those who are cis-gendered; if every one of us felt the urgency the environmental groups do in their fight to combat climate change; if we could feel the same rage against the capitalistic machine and billionaire class that continue to pollute our planet on the daily as we do over a plastic straw stuck in the nose of a single turtle.
We would add billions of voices to each of these vital causes and create safe, welcoming spaces for rational, constructive conversation. An intersectional approach to social justice should therefore been seen a moral imperative and a requirement if we are going to chance this planet for the better.
In the words of the 19th century Jewish activist and poet Emma Lazarus: ‘Until we are all free, we are none of us free.’
