Veganism, Sex and Politics. C. Lou Hamilton
a European, Christian worldview that placed human beings above other animals.32 Veganism as widely understood today arose in response to a specifically Western history of human exploitation of other animals. While it is now followed by many people outside this context, veganism should not be used by Western thinkers and activists as a universal moral baseline, to be adopted in a particular way by all people, including those populations colonised by European nations and whose traditions may have involved less exploitative human-animal relations. It is this colonialist conceit that has sometimes made veganism a flashpoint in debates about animal advocacy, racism and imperialism.33
This book acknowledges the importance of the pathbreaking work of Singer and Regan, as well as early animal activists. But it dedicates more space to new generations of vegans who are changing what it means to practise veganism in the contemporary world. The pages here are especially inspired by feminist and queer theories that emphasise veganism as an embodied practice or an expansive expression of care for other-than-human kin.34 It is informed by writers who understand veganism as a contextual and ever-changing practice, an aspiration rather than a moral absolute, an ongoing process of questioning one’s place in the world rather than a secure sense of self. I follow those who understand veganism not as a rationalist calculation of right and wrong, but an expression of the recognition of our dependencies on other animals. The vegan artists, activists and thinkers I cite draw on a range of cultural and intellectual traditions, including, but not exclusive to, animal rights discourse. They recognise that practising veganism does not mean avoiding all forms of death or violence against other animals.35 And they understand veganism as a practice integral to, rather than in competition with, struggles for justice for human beings.
While I welcome wholeheartedly the rise in numbers of people practising veganism, I am wary of turning “vegan” and “veganism” into modern myths, frozen in history and ceasing to be open to change.36 The word “vegan” proliferates on the windows and menus of eating establishments in my East London neighbourhood, and in many of the cities I have visited in Europe, Canada and Mexico. While this trend makes veganism more accessible to some, it also helps to associate veganism with consumerism and healthy, expensive eating. Likewise, the internet is an important resource for vegans and I have used it substantially in this book to access contemporary debates. But I am concerned that the word “veganism” sometimes circulates in social media as a static concept defined exclusively as a plant-based diet. At the same time, I am conscious of the productive use of “vegan” in activist circles in a range of contexts. My own first regular contact with veganism came in turn-of-the millennium queer anarchist circles in London, where vegan food was shared among activists engaged in migrant solidarity, sex worker rights and anti-capitalist campaigns. More recently, on a trip to Mexico in early 2018, I discovered that many animal rights activists use the terms “vegan” and “anti-speciesist” strategically to signal their opposition to animal exploitation in the context of neocolonialism, rather than as a form of consumerism or identity politics. Practising contextual ethical veganism means recognising and being open to these differences, as well as to changing definitions of vegan and veganism.
Beyond moralism and identity
One of the most frequently repeated clichés about vegans is that we are are self-righteous and believe ourselves holier-than-thou. In a world in which moralism plagues so much of political discourse, in which righteousness so easily slides into self-righteousness, it is notable that vegans take the rap for this more than most. As someone who practises veganism I have much more frequently been accused of being moralistic (or of being in cahoots with moralisers) than I have been for supporting any struggle against the oppression of people, even though feminist, queer and anti-capitalist movements are by no means free from obnoxious ranters. In fact, as I show in chapter 6 of this book, vegans can be accused of being moralistic even without opening our mouths. Our very presence is enough to provoke accusations of moralism. This suggests that the gripe is not with vegans ourselves, but with our message. As the philosopher Cora Diamond wrote over four decades ago: “I do not think it an accident that the arguments of vegetarians have a nagging moralistic tone. They are an attempt to show something to be morally wrong, on the assumption that we all agree that it is morally wrong to raise people for meat, and so on.”37 It is perhaps also not an accident that as arguments in favour of veganism become more forceful — in the light of evidence of animals’ abilities to feel and express pain, the abuses of animal agriculture and climate change — enthusiastic meat- eaters find it easier to dismiss the messengers than to engage seriously with the message.
When I say that veganism is not a form of moralism I am resisting not only the bad arguments of some omnivores, but also the bad arguments of some vegans. I am thinking in particular of claims that veganism is a “moral baseline” or “moral imperative” for anyone who cares about the rights of animals. This view is put forth by the vegan legal scholar Gary Francione and the philosopher Gary Steiner, for example, and can be understood as a universalist argument that goes against the principles of the contextual ethical veganism espoused in this book.38 Similarly, I reject claims that veganism is a form of self-sacrifice.39 While veganism does mean giving up certain things, it does not mean giving up a part of ourselves, our most cherished values or interests. Nor should veganism be understood as a form of moral or physical purity. It can only ever be an aspiration, never a perfection. Vegan bodies are not free from the traces of other animals, for many reasons.40 There is no being in the world without killing and death. As Sunaura Taylor puts it: “vegans are not opposed to death. We are opposed to the commodification and unnecessary killing of animals for human pleasure and benefit.”41 Practising veganism means recognising that as human beings we have much to do to minimise violence in the world, even if we can never eliminate it entirely.
By measuring the credentials of individual vegans, arguments in favour of moral baselines or self-sacrifice actually deflect attention away from animals and back onto people. I do not say “I am vegan” in order to emphasise my own impeccable ethics. I usually say “I am vegan” for practical reasons. If I want to coexist with other human beings in an omnivorous society I constantly have to tell them what I do and do not eat and the activities involving animals (dead or alive) I do or do not participate in. I do not conceive of veganism as a statement of who I am — in short, as an identity — though it is sometimes understood in this way. For example, Laura Wright, author of the book The Vegan Studies Project, begins from the premise that “vegan” is a “culturally loaded term” which signals both an identity and a practice. Wright acknowledges that as an identity “vegan” is unstable. There is a “tension,” she writes, “between the dietary practice of veganism and the manifestation, construction, and representation of vegan identity” because “vegan identity is both created by vegans and interpreted and, therefore, reconstituted, by and within contemporary (non-vegan) media.”42 In this sense, we could compare vegan identity to categories such as gender, sexuality, race and class — identities that are constructed through the ongoing, complex interaction between self-identity and wider social forces and discourses.
Without wishing either to dismiss the experience of vegans for whom veganism is experienced as an identity, or to create a hierarchy of different identity categories, I think it is fair to say that vegan differs in important ways from, for example, gender, “race, sexual orientation, national origin, or religion.”43 For one thing, although the latter categories are all historically contingent, they nevertheless carry a substantial historical weight and collective meaning in a way that vegan does not. Few people are born into vegan families, are assigned vegan at birth or experience discrimination or privilege for being vegan. Some may object that it is just a matter of time before veganism becomes something inherited, complete with a recognised community history and collective memory; and others might claim that vegans can be the targets of discrimination. Yet I suggest that vegan is less an identity than an ethical, and for some political, commitment to end the exploitation of other animals. In that sense, “vegan” has more in common with “feminism” than “woman,” is more akin to “anti-racist” than “Black.” But even here there is an important difference: while one can certainly identify as a feminist without identifying as a woman (to give one example), to “be” vegan is by definition not to belong to the community of beings