Corey Lee Wrenn's Blog

Banning Live Export in Australia

As of this writing, Australia has legislated to end the live exportation of sheeps to the Middle East and Asia by 2028. A ban is a big deal, as live export has been a mainstay of "meat," dairy, and "wool" industries in many countries for well over a century. Shipping "meat" "on the hoof" is common practice because it lowers the cost of production in taking advantage of cheaper, less regulated off-shore slaughter.

Live export is one of the most horrific acts of violence humans have introduced to animal agriculture. I will spare readers the details, but for those who do not know why live export has been heavily resisted by advocates, Australia's leading welfare organization, Animals Australia, offers more information on its website. This ban, if enacted, will bring considerable relief to the millions who endure it, putting victims out of their misery sooner rather than later.

A Win for Animals or Industry?
But anti-export campaigning is a welfare issue of pro-capitalist design and has nothing to do with rights. It is beyond convoluted that animals are purpose-bred to be forced into a situation of such intense misery that killing them sooner rather than later is considered a kindness.
Furthermore, animal misery is invisibilized in the official discourse. The Australian government is positioning oppressors as the true victims. For instance, it is prioritizing mental health support for affected farmers. I point this out not to dismiss the distress that a major shift in one's livelihood could cause, but instead to highlight how the suffering of human oppressors in a for-profit industry is centered and not the unimaginable suffering of oppressed sheeps. The Australian government is also issuing millions of dollars in compensation to these farmers to ensure that the industry is not significantly impacted, assuring them that that the transition will only make the industry stronger . The ultimate goal for ending live export is clear: to develop a more streamlined, profitable system that kills more nonhuman people.
A panel report comissioned by the AU government makes this goal explicit:

Our focus has been to establish a profitable and sustainable value chain for Western Australian sheep producers in the absence of live sheep exports by sea. The Panel believes that there is a strong future for the Western Australian sheep industry and its supply chain participants. There are opportunities to grow employment and value adding through increased onshore processing. We believe that with clear announcements, early actions and appropriate support, the adverse impacts of the transition away from live sheep exports by sea can be moderated.

Welfare Campaigns Strengthen Capitalism
This is not about liberation. Nonvegan campaigning only shuffles around suffering. Millions of sheep's will still be transported across great swaths of arid Australian territory to concentrated facilities where they will still be slaughtered in ever quickening kill lines. Cattle, not covered by this policy change, will still be marched--staggering, dehydrated, and frightened--into filthy cargo ships for a last harrowing torture before arriving at an offshore slaughterhouse.
Dinesh Wadiwel has argued that live export persists precisely because it relies on the exploitation of "free" animal labour. Nonhuman Animals must load themselves, struggle to avoid injury and stay alive for weeks at sea, unload themselves, and finally walk themselves to slaughter. Colonial and postcolonial conquest, Westernization, and globalization's development of free trade, permeable borders, and technological exchange have all contributed to the artifical cheapening of off-shore processing. Subsequently, exploiting animal labor across vast distances becomes the "rational" alternative to killing them on-shore and refrigerating their corpses for transport. "Improvements" to animal welfare in such systems are rare, but do occur. However, Wadiwel warns that it is most often the case they are intended to maximize exploitation of surplus value from Nonhuman Animals as commodities; they are not intended to respect the intrinsic value of Nonhuman Animals as sentient beings. This seems to be the case with the live export ban. The aforementioned report notes that the practice is highly volatile and will eventually become unsustainable. Preemptively transitioning away from live export is thus a strategic means to protect the industry, not sheeps.
If welfare improvements are designed to bolster violence against animals, any support offered from anti-speciesists is likely to humane-wash, not challenge, animal agriculture. Fellow vegan sociologist Nick Pendergrast (2017) has noted in his research on a similar, but overturned live export ban in Australia that the welfare framework predominates in advocacy discourse, obscuring possibilities for a broader discussion about oppression, exploitation, and liberation.
Indeed, activists too often align with speciesist frameworks in hopes of achieving some resonance. I recognize that keying anti-speciesist frames to some extent will be necessary, but I also recognize that it is on activists to change the frame. The default frame in the Western public sphere is capitalistic: consume well, consume plesaurably, and consume often. When advocates' welfare frame meets this master frame of capitalist consumption, Nonhuman Animals are rendered commodities and consumer interests are prioritized. Anti-speciesists are thus challenged to change the messaging from thta of individualistic, self-centered consumption to communal, self-less social justice.



Animal Nationalism
Anti-live export campaigning has instead aligned with this competitive, individualistic ideology of Western capitalism by drawing on nationalism. There is a tendency to focus on the "barbarity" of foreign countries receiving Australian animals, fanning anti-Muslim attitudes and racism in order to improve the campaign's resonance (Dalziell and Wadiwel 2017). This is not only problematic for so-called "barbarian" humans who are daily subject to structural discrimination and hate crimes, but it also ignores the extremely barbaric treatment of sheeps and other animals as everyday practice in Australian farming. As Sheep Advocate Australia explained to me, Australia itself is "the biggest target and an Australian leader in killing culture and patriotic worship."
Anti-speciesists must challenge the hegemony of capitalism and the normalcy of anthropocentrism with system-oriented vegan campaigning . We cannot simply ask the government-industry nexus to treat Nonhuman Animals nicer. Nice means nothing to Capitalism unless it can be monetized. Anti-speciesists must fight for a system in which Capitalism is no longer the arbiter of human morality. Yes, let us get sheeps off the death ships, but let us also start the conversation about getting them out of the slaughterhouse and acknowledging them as persons, not property. This will mean more than challenging anthropocentrism, it will also entail a radical revising of our current economic and political system.

Works Cited

Dalziell, J. and D. Wadiwel. 2017. "Live Exports, Animal Advocacy, Race and 'Animal Nationalism'." Pp. 73-89, in Meat Culture, A. Potts (Ed.). Leinden: Brill.

Pendergrast, N. 2015. "Live Animal Export, Humane Slaughter and Media Hegemony." Animal Studies Journal 4 (1): 99-125.

Wadiwel, D. 2024. Animals and Capital. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Readers can learn more about the social movement politics of Nonhuman Animal rights and veganism in my 2019 publication, Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits. The beautiful cover art for this text was created by vegan artist Lynda Bell and prints are available on her website, artbylyndabell.com.

Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

 

Was Victoria Woodhull a Vegetarian?

Who was Victoria Woodhull?

Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) was, in the late 19th century, one of the most outspoken and well-known women's rights advocates. More than a feminist, she was also abreast of many other social justice causes of the era, including child welfare, food reform, and wealth redistribution. Many secondary sources hint that Woodhull had ties to vegetarianism (Donovan 1990, Robinson 2010), suggesting a potentially lost hero overlooked in the vegan feminist annals.

A survivor of child marriage, Woodhull advocated for the radicalization of oppressive marriage institutions and found herself dubbed “Mrs. Satan” for her radical "free-love" politics. Indeed, her influence (or at least tenacity) was so great, she was compelled to run for presidency under the Equal Rights Party in 1872.1 She believed in the human capacity to challenge injustice and progress society, but this position tended to reflect the eugenics discourse that was popular at the time. Indeed, Woodhull's politics were premised on the supposed social and biological malleability of society:

Social evils are caused, first, by unequal distribution of wealth--no one held morally responsible as regards the methods by which the wealth is acquired; second, too many individuals are over-fed and underworked, and too many are overworked and underfed; third, too many are badly bred.

(Woodhull 1892a: 53)

She adopted a Christian scientific approach, deeply contemplating the animality of human beings and how moral concern for others as well as the cultural advantages of civilization differentiated the species. While such a perspective could certainly be said to diminish other animals who are positioned as morally and culturally stunted by comparison, her aim was to wield modern scientific and ethical advancements to better society (Woodhull 1893). Slavery, marriage, capitalist exploitation, and other institutionalized inequalities were thought to stifle human progress.

For these reasons, Woodhull actually saw herself as a contemporary of Marx, and vegetarianism, if included, would certainly be positioned in line with her vision for social revolution. I examined some of Woodhull's work in hopes of uncovering this possible intersection.

The results were disappointing to say the least.

Eugenics, Animality and Social Change

Woodhull's politics are documented in the pages of her publications, namely the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly and The Humanitarian. Indeed, her journal would be the first to print Marx and Engel’s Communist Manifesto in the United States (Johnston 1967). These journals are also reported to feature discussions of vegetarianism. Woodhull had been very successful in the stock market (another feminist first), allowing her to self publish. Her writings are subsequently deeply polemical.

For instance, despite her dedication to socialism, Woodhull’s idea of progress did not bode well for society’s marginalized social classes, who, in one editorial, she refers to as “totally usless [sic] animal weeds” who “choke and sap the vitality of the fit” (1893: 53). She argued that humans, like “horses and roses,” should be bred for betterment, as “progress in evolution is accomplished by the elimination of the unfit” (1893: 52).

Thus, eliminating inequality was not just important as a moral matter to those experiencing it, but to society as a whole since social inequality made it difficult to determine who was “fit” or “unfit,” blocking “human progress” (1893: 52): “What wonderful solicitude is shown in the breeding of choice animals, and what utter indifference in the breeding of boys and girls, whereas it ought to be the other way” (1893: 52).

Perhaps we can grant that the intentions of many eugenicists, particularly those who were ardent social justice advocates like Woodhull, were well-meaning. Disability politics of the late 20th and early 21st century, afterall, are comparatively postmodern, questioning what constitutes “good,” “bad,” or “progress,” upsetting binaries, and advocating for the radical and compassionate accommodation of all individuals just as they are. These ideas, I can only assume, were not well known at the time or at least failed to resonate given the heavy excitement surrounding cutting edge evolutionary science. The late 19th century was truly emboldened by Darwinism, which instigated a dramatic shift in Western epistemology. It seemed increasingly possible that humans were not just divinely appointed on earth by some unknowable, uncontrollable power that relinquished little control over society's trajectory. Life on earth instead came to be seen as a work in progress, a work that might be adjusted through human agency.

That said, the particular vitriol of Woodhull’s position on persons relegated to the lower classes, people with disabilities, people with alcohol addiction, and even sex workers leaves little room for grace.

Vegetarianism, Animal Rights, and Humanitarianism

Woodhull's attachment to eugenics is extremely disquieting, and, given her ardent interest in controlling bodies--human or nonhuman--to achieve her idea of social and biological perfection, I held out little hope that her vegetarian position would offer any redemption as I continued through her periodicals. In fact, in my precursory search of Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly (published in the 1870s) and The Humanitarian (published in the 1890s), I was not able to find any promotion of vegetarianism.2 Woodhull's own writing dominated the periodicals, and primarily made mention of other animals for the purposes of comparison with humans who she believed ought to practice restraint and civility to distinguish themselves as a higher species. Domestication and the manipulation of nonhuman bodies were a point of inspiration for her eugenics agenda (Woodhull 1892b).

Dietary pieces were sometimes featured but did not advocate vegetarianism that I could see. A typical example can be found in a submission she published under the "Medical Department" of The Humanitarian, within which the author discusses ways to cure and process animal bodies for optimal consumption (Welles 1893a). In another article, the same physician rejects vegetarianism, as "the teeth of man" are "adapted to the mastication of animal flesh" and "animal food, thence, reorganized, furnishes immediately to man that highly organized and stimulating nerve food, from which the higher and nobler development of brain power is the manifest result" (Welles 1893b: 45). He goes on to justify human "supremacy over other animal life" by drawing on Innuit people of the Arctic and other Indigenous communities of the Americas as evidence to the supposedly natural way of human beings. The same weak (and colonialist) logics that stand in opposition to veganism today, to summarize, were touted in Woodhull's Humanitarian periodical.3

Her use of the term "humanitarian" is telling here. By the late 1870s, Woodhull was living in the southwestern United Kingdom, where the periodical was published and circulated. She was a contemporary of Henry Salt (who also lived in southern England) and would surely have been familiar with his own humanitarian writings and activism. Salt's (1892) Animals' Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress was one of the first major publications on the topic of anti-speciesism. His own Humanitarian League (now the League Against Cruel Sports) centered the Nonhuman Animal cause in its agenda. Woodhull (1892a), by contrast, makes no mention of them at all in introducing her otherwise intersectional humanitarian platform as presidential candidate.4

It seems very unlikely that Woodhull, a socialist-feminist humanitarian active in the same region as Salt and a multitude of other socialist-feminist anti-speciesists, would not have been familiar with their political claimsmaking.

"Humanitarian" Vivisection

Further evidence of Woodhull's well-rounded speciesism can be found in another socialist article printed in The Humanitarian which explores the science of physical labor and its impact on the body. The evidence presented undoubtedly derives from vivisection. Woodhull anticipates criticism from her readers, including a quote from prominent vivisection-defending physician William Gull5 at the end of the article:

Sir William Gull was asked by a lady if he did not consider experiments on animals as cruel. "madam," he said, "there is no cruelty comparable to ignorance."

(Woodhull 1892: 39)

Of course, the cruelty of Victorian vivisection theaters and laboratories are the epitome of cruelty, enacted for the most wonton of curiosities without anaesthesia or any other offer of alleviation from fear or pain. These are just the sort of cruelties that surely lurk behind the labor study that Woodhull spotlights in The Humanitarian, seeing as how it aims to understand the detrimental impacts of extreme distress on muscular and cardiovascular systems. Nonhuman Animals are almost always slated for dangerous and gratuitous experiments such as these.6

Another case of vivisection is spotlighted in support of prison reform. One contributor recounts his travels abroad in Corsica, where he and his travel party killed several pigs to dissect for the purpose of learning more about their eating habits. Apparently, pigs, being opportunists, will eat all manner of things and persons, including deers, birds, other pigs, and even humans. This research is supposed to serve as a rudimentary criminology, explaining why criminals might engage in violent, seemingly unnatural crimes as do pigs (Rothery 1892). Whatever might be gleaned from the stomach contents of murdered pigs, it certainly does not support the notion that Woodhull was accommodating to vegetarian politics.

Conclusion

I want to be clear that my analysis of Woodhull's writings is anything but comprehensive. It is based on a cursory and purposive sample of convenience. It may be the case that pro-vegetarian or anti-speciesist essays exist byond the handful of digitized copies available to me, but it is quite clear that Woodhull's first political interest is the sexual liberation of women, and her second is improving the moral and physical character of society through eugenics. Nonhuman Animals only surface as points of comparison, "nourishing" ingredients in food, and objects for scientific experiments. Nonhuman Animals, in other words, are merely fodder for her vision of a progressive society. The view that other animals are sentient beings capable of suffering and worthy of political action--a view that was widely adopted by other progressive era activists, especially suffragettes--was not adopted by Woodhull.

Ultimately, Woodhull's campaign to include women in the 14th amendment to the Constitution, the amendment that granted suffrage to recently enslaved African American men, sat uneasy with some. Her insistence on free love—which prioritized women’s autonomy over men’s institutional and personal entitlement to them—sat even uneasier. Her politics were indeed so radical that she was eventually dropped by the American feminist movement, unsupported in her time but also unrecorded in feminist anthologies and thus forgotten in women’s history. Even Marx found Woodhull's socialist campaigning noxious and disingenuous. Unfortunately, if there were to be any redeeming qualities to be found in her support of vegetarianism, I have yet to find them.

Notes

Woodhull is considered by many to be the first woman to run for president, however she would have been too young to legitimately take office in the event of her election. Furthermore, her appointed running mate Frederick Douglass was likely unaware that he had been added to her ballot, suggesting the campaign was only symbolic.

The Woodhull & Claflin Weekly is available through the Hamilton College Library. I browsed a few issues manually for mention of anti-speciesism or vegetarianism, but I also used a key word search for "vegetarian" which did not turn up any matches. Some issues of The Humanitarian are hosted online by The International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals.

See Benny Malone's How to Argue with Vegans (2021) and Ed Winters' How to Argue with a Meat-Eater (2023).

Woodhull's platform, does, however, heavily emphasize the importance of providing substantive, healthy, and unadulterated food.

Gull's grim and uncompromising defense of vivisection has been cited as evidence by several web sources as to why this physician is thought a suspect in the "Jack the Ripper" case by some.

Vulnerable humans were often exploited for vivisection as well, including people with disabilities, women, enslaved people, Irish immigrants, and people in poverty. It does not seem clear that Woodhull was aware of this important intersection in her support of vivisection.

Works Cited

Donovan, J. 1990. "Animal Rights and Feminist Theory." Signs 15 (2): 350-375.

Johnston, J. 1967. Mrs. Satan: The Incredible Saga of Victoria Woodhull. London: Macmillan.

Robinson, S. 2010. "Victoria Woodhull-Martin and The Humanitarian (1892-1901): Feminism and Eugencs at the Fin de Siecle." Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies 6 (2).

Salt, H. 1892. Animals' Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress. London: Macmillan & Co.

Rothery, G. 1892. "The Unlikely Human." The Humanitarian 1 (4): 65-68.

Welles, C. 1893a. "Practical Dietetics." The Humanitarian 2 (5): 69-70.

Welles, C. 1893b. "The Habits of Health: Food." The Humanitarian 2 (3): 45-46.

Woodhull, V. 1892a. "The Humanitarian Platform." 1 (4): The Humanitarian 54-58.

Woodhull, V. 1892b. "Pedigree Farming." The Humanitarian 1 (2): 25.

Woodhull, V. 1892c. "The Standard Value of Labor." 1 (3): The Humanitarian 38-39.

Woodhull, V. 1893. “Address by Victoria C. Woodhull (Mrs. John Biddulph Martin), at St. James’s Hall, Piccadilly, 24th March, 1893.” The Humanitarian 2 (4): 49-55.

Dr. Wrenn is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She is the co-founder of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and is a member of the Research Advisory Council of The Vegan Society. She has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute and has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Environmental Values, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis.

Veganism and In Vitro Meat

The Vegan Society has rightly raised concerns with the continued physical violence that in vitro development entails, including using cultures from nonhuman animals and other forms of vivisection. Sociologically, however, it is important to recognize the symbolic violence that cultured meat sustains. Here I suggest that the feminist movement has much to offer. Many have suggested that prostitution and realistic sex dolls are “ethical alternatives” for men who wish to own, control, exploit, and abuse women, supposedly reducing their desire to enact violence on others. Aside from dehumanizing prostituted women, this logic masks the fact that such an approach effectively normalizes the ownership, exploitation, and commodification of women. Encouraging products and services that mimic or contain systemic violence only supports a culture in which violence is enjoyable, acceptable, and for sale to those in power.

The normalcy of speciesism and sexism, incidentally, is clearly demonstrable in the fact that these debates about capitalist “solutions” to develop analogous, consumable victims are engaged at all. We would never for instance, encourage white supremacists to enjoy themselves with AI-generated slavery as an “ethical alternative” to white supremacy. We would never encourage teens to take pleasure in video game simulations of school shootings as an “ethical alternative” to real-world mass murder. We intuitively understand that these symbolic acts of violence could have consequences for people of colour and children. Women and other animals in today’s culture, however, remain so objectified that nonprofits and venture capitalists collaborate to profitably continue this objectification, albeit masked in language of ethics and scientific advancement to resonate in a “woke” and “sustainable” 21st century.

While the symbolic ramifications of further commodifying animal flesh create serious misgivings, it also remains the case that in vitro meat completely overlooks the billions of other nonhumans raised in the food system who are not directly slaughtered for their flesh. For that matter, in vitro technology also does nothing for the billions of oppressed animals who suffer in non-food related industries. Dairy cattle, veal calves, wool producing sheep, layer hens, and racehorses, for example, all go to slaughter when their bodies become “spent” and inefficient. And what of “leather” and “fur”? In vitro meat does nothing to reduce the demand for animal flesh used in fashion. What of rodeos, zoos, and circuses? In vitro technology is totally unrelated. These animals will not be spared by lab-grown meat. Veganism, as an ethic, philosophy, and political vision, considers humanity’s oppression of other animals holistically. In vitro meat development, alternatively, is better suited to creating wealth for shareholders by globally expanding animal protein in the human diet.

Indeed, 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. In vitro meat purports to meet the supposedly insatiable public demand for Nonhuman Animal flesh, but this is a demand that is artificially controlled by industry. By reducing the cognitive dissonance that consumers experience in grappling with the suffering, death, and considerable environmental pollution their food choices cause, in vitro meat may further fuel the normalcy of speciesism and meat consumption. In vitro meat will become the next “happy meat,” allowing consumers to retreat into industry-led myths that the flesh they eat comes from humanely-treated animals. Indeed, it is likely that consumers will be completely unaware of the institutionalized violence that remains in the production of in vitro meat. Producers will employ similar tactics to those they currently employ to block public knowledge of the nonhuman experience. The consumer awareness and ethical discomfort with speciesist consumption that vegan movement has been building for more than a century will be necessary for real change. More importantly, this individual-level work must be coupled with challenges to oppressive social institutions.

From a human perspective, in vitro meat is also deeply problematic. There is already a thriving industry of healthy and tasty plant-based products, including those that convincingly mimic the flavour and texture of animal flesh. Because consumers are aware that these analogues are plant-based and not of animal origin, they do not threaten to reinforce speciesism to the same degree that in vitro flesh might. It must be emphasized, furthermore, that animal protein is toxic for humans and the effort to globalize heavy animal protein diets is rooted in colonialism, racism, and classism. Normalizing in vitro flesh will aggravate serious diet-related public health crises that disproportionately harm vulnerable human communities that lack the resources and infrastructure to cope. Vegans should not be promoting toxic products, especially when healthier, more affordable alternatives are available and have been available before Western capitalism began to privatize land and undermine traditional food production across the globe. The more practical response to ensuring world nutrition would be a governmental investment in plant-based food security, a strategy that vegans can support.

As a sociologist, it is my position that vegans should be sceptical of campaigns that purport to solve the inherent problems of free market capitalism with yet more free market capitalism. In vitro meat may be palatable for venture capitalists, but it is unlikely to create meaningful social change for nonhuman animals. Capitalism aims to exploit materials and labour for the purpose of reducing input costs, increasing efficiency, and creating surplus value; it is not designed to liberate. Instead, it has a well-documented history of objectifying and commodifying everything and everyone in its pursuit of that profit. In vitro meat should remain outside the remit of vegan advocacy.

 
 




Readers can learn more about the social psychology of veganism in my 2016 publication, A Rational Approach to Animal Rights .
 
Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

Mainstreaming Veganism: Full Interview with Imagine5

I was interviewed by Imagine5, a nonprofit working to popularize scientific ideas about sustainability through storytelling. The full interview can be read here, where I am joined by fellow sociologist Matthew Cole. The majority of my interview was cut for space, but is shared here in its entirity.

How would you describe attitudes to vegans in wider society over the past decade or so?

We’ve seen considerable strides in social acceptance. In the UK, for instance, veganism is now protected as a philosophy, meaning that vegans can no longer be discriminated against in schools, the workplace, prison, and other institutions. With success, however, will come the inevitable pushback. As veganism gains traction, it has been battered by other legal efforts to undermine it. For instance, in the United States, the Animal Enterprise Protection Act was reworked into the Animal Enterprise Terrorist Act in 2006 to reframe vegans from protestors to terrorists. By way of another example, in the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union, there are considerable legal barriers regarding the marketing language that vegan alternatives utilize. For instance, in the EU, “oat milk” cannot be labeled as “milk.” In the US, it has even been uncovered that the egg industry colluded with the USDA to block the success of Just Egg (a popular plant-based alternative to mayonnaise and other chickens’ egg products) due to labeling concerns.

How do you explain the negativity that vegans often seem to face?

Social psychological research is uncovering considerable vegan stigmatization. This phenomenon can be attributed to “do-gooder derogation,” a negative reaction to positive deviance (ie. people who behave more positively than average). People with authoritarian and conservative type personalities are also shown to be less receptive to vegans and animal rights messages.

Sociologically speaking, however, there is intense countermovement resistance against veganism because it challenges state, industry, and gender power structures that rely on and benefit from animal oppression. The capitalist co-optation of veganism in the past few years doesn’t help. Although plant-based eating has been practiced by the global majority for most of human history and vegan diets have been shown to be, on average, lower in cost, the commodification of veganism has moved it away from a diet that is healthy, affordable, and accessible whole foods to one that is expensive, hard to find, and heavy with animal-replacement products that are often high in sugar, salt, and fat.

What's it like being a vegan in this type of culture? Do you have personal examples you could share?

I’ve been vegan since 2001, and I’ve seen a lot of changes in that time. After moving to the United Kingdom, I’ve been amazed at how advanced veganism is. Perhaps the change I’m most grateful for is the legal protection I now enjoy; I recently had a meeting with my university’s human resources team on accommodating me as a vegan in the workplace and was astonished that my concerns were taken seriously.

Everyday living as a vegan is also a lot easier. Just about every restaurant has multiple vegan options, and all the major fast food chains are offering signature vegan products. Drug stores and grocery stores all clearly label vegan products.

Although America has a long way to go in these regards, it is still the case that major progress has been made. I recently visited the grocery store where I grew up in a small railroad town in southern Appalachia. I was astonished at the variety of vegan alternatives for sale—more than I can find in my university town in Canterbury, England, an hour outside of London. The residents of my hometown are disproportionately older and lower class, folks who are more vulnerable to diet-related disease. My guess is that these folks are turning to vegan options for their health.

Plant-based diets are becoming much more mainstream. How have you seen attitudes change over the years? Are people nicer to vegans these days? More open-minded? Are vegans themselves bolder about it? More willing to talk about it? Less concerned of what people will think? Do you have a sense of when this changed or what the 'milestones' have been?

As I’ve said, I think there are some gains and strains when it comes to veganism in the 21st century.

The average person is now familiar with veganism as a concept, and many people have tried veganism or now incorporate plant-based meals into their omnivorous diet. A recent UK survey found that almost half of Brits identify as flexitarian, suggesting that cutting back on animal products is now seen as a social good.

I do think this is emboldening vegans on a political level. In just the past year, Animal Rising, a UK animal rights group, has worked with several UK and European universities to transition the student catering facilities to 100% plant-based. Students are using their unions to create new plant-based policies, with major wins in many universities, my own included. Because of the ever worsening climate crisis, it’s becoming more and more difficult to ignore the science that connects our consumer behaviors to serious environmental consequences. Animal Rising’s Plant-based University campaign has been very bold in demanding universities disinvest from animal agriculture—I was personally skeptical that they would make any headway, but it seems the environmental angle and the utilization of student democratic channels has been a wise strategy.

How do you see the culture around veganism changing in the years to come? What might you expect to see/hear in 2025 or 2030, for instance?

In the next couple of years, I expect to see public familiarity with veganism grow with more and more people incorporating vegan foods, reducing their consumption of animal products. The number of vegans has not really grown considerably in the past few years, but perhaps that will start to change, particularly as the climate emergency worsens. I also expect to see greater strides made in the developing world. I’m seeing quite a lot of amazing vegan activism happening in India, and even a rise in plant-based eating in China (the government of China, incidentally, has pledged to reduce its consumption by 50% in the next few years). Because rapidly expanding animal consumption is tightly linked with a legacy of colonization and Westernization, I think it is important to see these types of resistance outside of the US and UK.

Overall, however, disinvestment in animal agriculture is unlikely, as meat and dairy have strongholds on governing bodies at the national, international, and non-profit level. The recent UN Climate Change Conference (COP) meeting was absolutely deluged with meat and dairy lobbyists this year, for instance, keen to reframe animal agriculture as consistent with sustainability; even preventing COP organizers from serving a fully plant-based menu for attendees. Even the UN, known for its reliance on scientific expertise, leadership in challenging animal agriculture, and its ability to coordinate global actors for meaningful social change, cannot free itself from industry influence. For that reason, I do see activists, students, and consumers as the main drivers of the vegan revolution.

Vegan culture is likely to move more and more into environmental claimsmaking, as that has proved most successful in achieving institutional changes that support a transition to plant-based foodways. I would like to see, however, more social justice claimsmaking made for nonhuman animals themselves. Sadly, in all the discourse over healthy food, capitalism, and climate change, the animals themselves remain hidden from the conversation. This is a real travesty, as they have the most to gain from a vegan world.

Read the final interview here.

 

 
 

Readers can learn more about the social psychology of veganism in my 2016 publication, A Rational Approach to Animal Rights.
 
Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

Animalizing Appalachia: A Critical Animal Studies Analysis of Early SociologicalSurveys of Southern Appalachia

Animalization is both a symbolic and structural process that renders some bodies cognitively, physically, biologically, and even evolutionarily “Other” to the effect of normalizing and rationalizing unequal modes of production and structural violence. In my article published with the Journal of Appalachian Studies, I argue that Appalachians, like the peoples of other colonized regions, have historically been framed as less than human, ignorant, dangerous, undeveloped, and in need of civilizing. Relatedly, the introduction of institutionalized speciesism in the region (namely, the “fur” trade and animal agriculture) facilitated an in-group/out-group binary that would permeate colonial culture and establish an economic system built on the domination of others.

To initiate a critical animal analysis of Appalachia, I start with the field of sociology. Turn-of-the-20th-century sociological research surveyed Appalachia as a space of unique backwardness amidst American progress. I suggest that this early sociological work may have contributed to the animalization of Appalachia, and, in doing so, also contributed to a legacy of cultural and political marginalization of Appalachia peoples. I demonstrate this by applying critical animal studies theory to foundational sociological surveys of the region. I then briefly analyze and ascertain how researchers’ depictions may have shaped Appalachians as animalistic “Others.” For instance, early sociologists regularly emphasized the rough living conditions of Appalachian peoples, as well as their high birth rate, relative ignorance, proximity to domesticated animals, reliance on "hunting," and overall close-to-nature lifestyles.

Critical animal studies acknowledges the role that science has played in constructing and legitimizing categories of difference, particularly that related to species distinctions, evolutionarily ideas about group inferiority and superiority, and the goal of social development. As such, my research explores how sociological research has traditionally animalized its Appalachian subjects and used this animalization as an explanation or rationale for inequality. Sociological surveys are important cultural influencers given their scientific authority and presumed objectivity. Furthermore, they were often used in government efforts to manage Appalachia. For instance, Hollow Folk (Sherman and Henry 1933) had considerable cultural reach, having been spotlighted in the New York Times. It was also pivotal to the displacement of locals in the construction of Shenandoah National Park in western Virginia, as it provided scientific support for state intervention and forced removal.

Ultimately, this research is intended to begin a conversation on the importance of intersections in species, animality, and environmental concerns in Appalachian studies, a field that has traditionally prioritized mainly class, race, and ethnicity.

 Read the full article here.
 

Readers can learn more about the sociology of veganism in my 2016 publication, A Rational Approach to Animal Rights.
 
Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

Shocked 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 that 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 that exposure to violent imagery in campaigning achieves the opposite. Perhaps it demotivates, instead?

In a study now published with Emotions: History, Culture, Society, I explore the tendency of activists to disengage from moral shocks as a means of managing difficult emotions such as compassion fatigue, burnout, and psychological distress. Although many respondents see the utility of moral shocks as an outreach tool, they carefully consider their own exposure to protect their emotional well-being and protest sustainability.

I utilized email-based qualitative interviews with twenty-five newly recruited activists and established activists in the Western Nonhuman Animal rights movement and found that established activists, by and large, actively avoided exposing themselves to moral shocks. Most activists reported feeling traumatized or otherwise demoralized from exposure, particularly for those who have been in the movement for five years or more. However, the debate as to whether or not moral shocks are effective tended to overshadow activists' decision to personally engage with them. I suspect this is because moral shocks are ubiquitous in Nonhuman Animal rights efforts. Not only is it, in practice, difficult for activists to avoid them personally, but to eschew them in their activism runs counter to norms established by the movement, thus putting the onus on the activist to explain their defection.

Findings suggest the need for more research to ascertain the utility of moral shocks for mobilizing the public and effectively advocating for other animals. But they also suggest greater attention is needed for the emotional support of activists, particularly those who are in it for the long game. Repeated exposure to violent depictions of speciesism can lead to compassion fatigue and psychological suffering. While this is certainly a harm for activists themselves, it also constitutes a disadvantage for the movement more broadly, for if activists are feeling traumatized, helpless, and burnt out, they are not likely to be an effective force for social change.

Lastly, I argue that the heavy reliance on violent imagery in the Nonhuman Animal rights movement reflects patriarchal ideologies and movement strategies. Violence is normalized as both the problem and solution to speciesism, activist exposure to speciesist violence is expected to trigger a macho savior response, and personal suffering in this "war" against speciesism is dismissed as irrelevant. I suggest that further investigation into softer feminist tactics that embrace compassion and inclusion could prove relevant for building a sustainable activist repertoire.

Read the full article here.

Readers can learn more about the social psychology of veganism in my 2016 publication, A Rational Approach to Animal Rights.

Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

Animal Rights and Environmental Inequality

I'm pleased to have a chapter on Nonhuman Animal rights included in the Handbook on Inequality and the Environment, edited by Michael A. Long, Michael J. Lynch, and Paul B. Stretesky (under whom I studied as a PhD student at Colorado State University). This chapter reviews the concept of Nonhuman Animal rights in the context of environmental inequality.

Historically the environmental inequality discourse has centered the human experience, although a number of environmental injustices have impacted human and nonhuman minorities in intersecting ways and Nonhuman Animals are arguably the largest minority group harmed. The assault on nonhuman communities, for that matter, is a lead driver of climate change. The exclusion of Nonhuman Animal constituencies, therefore, is not only a scientific oversight, but also a serious ethical inconsistency.

Vegan feminist theory is introduced to address the anthropocentric intersectional failure that typifies mainstream environmental justice efforts, arguing that the false divide erected between nature and civilization has historically abstracted freeliving Nonhuman Animals within larger conversations about ecosystems and species, undermining their individual rights. This divide also makes little space for domesticated animals who are neither categorized as part of nature (being human constructs), nor civilization (as animals), despite their considerable capacity to benefit from environmental justice initiatives. Environmental justice must balance the individual rights of nonhumans, ecosystem needs, and the intersectional experiences of humans and other animals to truly embody its aims to rectify and redress environmental inequalities and to effectively incorporate the aims of Nonhuman Animal rights for a sustainable and fair multispecies society.

Readers can learn more about Nonhuman Animal rights in my 2016 publication, A Rational Approach to Animal Rights.
 
Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

The Problem with Badge-Allies

The abolitionist faction of the Nonhuman Animal rights movement is unique in the movement because it specifically values intersectionality. That is, abolitionist activists recognize that sexism, racism, heterosexism, and other isms are as morally problematic as speciesism. Indeed, many abolitionists recognize that these systemic discriminations are actually entangled and mutually reinforcing.

Intersectionality is not only applicable to general society, it has relevance within social movement spaces as well. The Nonhuman Animal rights movement is male-dominated with a female majority and sexism has been heavily documented. It is a movement that is also white-dominated with few activists of color offered platform or leadership and a notoriously racist past with regard to campaigning and claimsmaking. Acknowledging these connections in social justice efforts is so very important for counteracting oppression.

In a movement that opposes inequality but still evidences inequality in its interactions with activists and members of the public, a strange situation occurs in which inequality may persist unchecked amidst efforts to resist it. Following many years of social justice campaigning across several social movements, few would openly admit to being bigoted today. Most like to think of themselves as upstanding and moral. Similarly, in an era in which diversity is theoretically embraced as a social good, most people champion diversity. If most agree that bigotry is bad and diversity is a worthy goal, why the persistence of bigotry and exclusion?

Because discrimination is often hidden or abstracted through institutionalized practices, it becomes more difficult to identify. With discrimination hard to "see" (at least to those who benefit from it or who are otherwise not impacted by it), a disconnect between theory (philosophical support for social justice) and practice (physical support for social justice) emerges. Oppression is systematic, and, at least in the West, individualism makes it difficult to understand how each one of us is shaped by that system and how we, in turn, contribute to that system through passive (or active) compliance. Those who are relatively privileged may view themselves as allies against oppression, but will not always recognize responsibility for that oppression or personal benefit from it. 

It gets even trickier in a social movement space in which activists actively embrace intersectionality theory and diversity goals. More than the average citizen, a social justice activist is personally invested in an anti-oppression identity. For some, this means regular interrogation of oppression in all its forms paired with active self-reflection. Being an ally is not easy, as it can require unlearning quite a lot of socialized norms and values, resisting entrenched social systems, and giving up privilege. It takes humility and a willingness to make mistakes and feel uncomfortable sometimes.

For many others, however, the intersectionality identity simply becomes a badge to be worn. Anyone can wear the badge, whether or not they actually do anything to earn it. Even worse, the badge can become a form of authority. With the badge brandished, it becomes difficult to challenge activists who engage in harmful or problematic practices. The badge can also create a psychological barrier for the wearer who may become less willing to acknowledge challenges as valid.

Unfortunately, this is a persistent issue in anti-speciesist spaces, including the abolitionist faction (despite its principled commitment to intersectionality). Privileged abolitionist vegans regularly flash their ally badges while simultaneously blocking intersectionality efforts. Some years ago, Sarah Kistle of The Abolitionist Vegan Society terms these persons "Badge-allies." Badge-allies create another barrier to meaningful feminist discourse and complicate the possibility of implementing anti-oppression practice.

By way of some examples, women who have critiqued patriarchy in the movement have been accused of "misandry" and subjected to coordinated stalking and bullying campaigns. Women of color introducing conversations about race have been harassed and deplatformed, as their criticism of white supremacy is interpreted as "racist." The majority of the accusers, bullies, harassers, and gatekeepers in these cases were white men (and many white women). Wielded in these ways, intersectionality becomes a strategic weapon for privileged people to protect their privilege and protect themselves from criticism.

These actions reflect an element of conscious discrimination, but they need not always be intentional. Microaggressions are also heavily used by Badge-allies. Again, few persons today see themselves as bigoted, but they can still engage in discrimination in unintended or unconscious ways. Microaggressions can include interruption, cat-calling, sexualizing, or desexualizing, misgendering, tone-policing, delivering or laughing at a sexist or racist joke, dismissing, downplaying or ignoring the experiences of a marginalized group, and denying the reality of sexism, racism, and other forms of oppression. Badge-allies are less likely to see microaggressions of this kind as aggressive or discriminatory because they have self-identified as intersectionally conscious.

Being an ally means more than simply wearing the identity like a badge. True allyship requires action and open dialogue with the marginalized groups that are being represented. Intersectionality is not a means for protecting privilege and shutting down critical discussions. It was developed as a philosophical tool for acknowledging a variety of experiences and how several core systems of inequality and mechanisms of oppression operate in similar, mutually supportive ways to shape those experiences. Intersectionality is a map for resistance, not a manual for maintaining a broken system.

An earlier version of this essay first appeared on The Abolitionist Activist Vegan blog on April 2, 2015.

Dr. Wrenn is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She is the co-founder of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and is a member of the Research Advisory Council of The Vegan Society. She has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute and has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Environmental Values, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis.

She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016), Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits (University of Michigan Press 2019), and Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain's First Colony (State University of New York Press 2021).

Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

2nd Wave Vegan Feminism

As the animal rights movement expanded in the late 20th century, fuelled in large part by the popularity of the civil rights movement, vegan feminism took shape as a potent and explicit critique of patriarchal oppression women and other animals and the male-centeredness in anti-speciesist mobilization.

In addition to the influences of anti-racism, feminism, and other social justice movements of the era, the environmental movement also offered a much-needed seedbed for theoretical development. Vegan feminism might be identified as a theory of animal rights, but it owes much of its development to the ecofeminist movement of the late 20th century. Many scholar-activists from the animal rights movement, such as Carol Adams, Greta Gaard, Lori Gruen, and Marti Kheel published and presented extensively in ecofeminist spaces.

Ecofeminism emerged in resistance to the androcentrism of environmental philosophy and activism, arguing that gender inequality served as the foundation to environmental destruction and subsequent violence against women and the natural world. Vegan ecofeminists expanded this discourse in the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s by explicitly acknowledging the oppression of nonhuman animals as important for advancing ecofeminist theory to its fullest intersectional expression.

As vegan ecofeminism gathered strength, it began to take on the Nonhuman Animal rights movement with more confidence. This culminated in the formation of Feminist for Animal Rights in 1981. For the next twenty years, FAR would develop an activist-oriented theory of vegan feminism that would interrogate anti-speciesism as a gender-neutral affair.

Dr. Wrenn is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She is the co-founder of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and is a member of the Research Advisory Council of The Vegan Society. She has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute and has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Environmental Values, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis.

She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016), Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits (University of Michigan Press 2019), and Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain's First Colony (State University of New York Press 2021).

Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

Feminism in Men’s Meat Market

The cultural drive for men to consume other animals is well understood in the social science literature, but less research has examined how women as a distinct social class might also wish to consume Nonhuman Animals, and, more specifically, why women might actively resist vegan outreach efforts.

For some women, the alignment with male consumer behaviour and value systems could indicate an attempt to bargain with patriarchy, a strategy some women use, whether consciously or not, to protest their station as a woman or even improve their status by aligning with male power.

Other women may celebrate their consumption of other animals as a demonstration of their improved social status in a “postfeminist” society. Women and girls, after all, have been systematically denied access to higher-value foods, such as animals' flesh. Many are deprived of sufficient calories due to cultural norms.

Women’s access to animal bodies may therefore signal “We’ve come a long way, baby.” Claiming “meat” allows women to claim their power. To this end, many feminists are resistant to vegan claimsmaking, arguing that food deprivation and dietary dictates are sexist.

Although feminism has historically employed consciousness-raising to awaken women to their personal and shared oppressions, the neoliberal influence over contemporary feminism has encouraged more feminist attention on individual freedom and considerably less on collective liberation. As a result, mainstream feminism has obstructed solidarity with other animals, as the requisite adoption of a vegan diet is dismissed as a matter of “personal choice.”

Sociological and psychological research on the relationship between gender and veganism often feeds the scientific trend in reifying gender essentialism (assumed fixed differences between women and men), focusing on women's tendency toward plant-based eating and men's tendency to eat more "meat." More research, however, is needed to address a trend that is frequently overlooked in the literature: despite women’s cultural affiliation with other animals, most women continue to them.

Dr. Wrenn is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She is the co-founder of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and is a member of the Research Advisory Council of The Vegan Society. She has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute and has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Environmental Values, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis.

She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016), Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits (University of Michigan Press 2019), and Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain's First Colony (State University of New York Press 2021).

Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.