Sex Sells—-Animal Rights?
Here’s a timely little story about using sex in marketing. It’s from today’s New York Times. There are interesting questions about essentialism underlying some of the comments made. Why would we expect vegans to be feminists? And then there is the dispute among feminists–are we celebrating women or objectifying them? Who is in control of the images? I don’t think I’ve seen the PETA ads with naked men that are referred to, but it’s an interesting idea. Would that make it all better?
Tags: feminism, images, media, women
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March 27, 2008 at 8:54 am
We’d expect vegans to be feminists (if you’re definition of feminism is respecting women) because vegans should, by definition, respect and have compassion for all living beings.
March 27, 2008 at 12:51 pm
It’s an appealing and hopeful thought. But would we also then expect vegans to be anti-racist, sensitive to issues of power and poverty and so on? Perhaps we do expect that , or wish we could. I am just not sure about the reality.
March 28, 2008 at 6:32 am
Nearly all vegans I know are ardent feminists, but because their understandings of feminism’s goals differ they certainly fall on different sides of the issue presented in the article.
Ultimately, their positions seem to be a matter of whether or not they endorse radical or libertarian strands of feminism, a debate which occurs outside the realm of veganism.
I think the article is kind of silly for suggesting that this is a vegan issue as such.
March 28, 2008 at 6:45 am
julieshapiro’s suggestion that vegans as a category are insensitive to racism and other social injustices is beyond absurd. I wouldn’t argue that there aren’t at least some vegans who aren’t concerned with social issues, but on the whole, vegans are typically _much_ more concerned with social justice than the average person.
Indeed, this comment, in its haste to marginalize based on the minority of vegans, bespeaks a defensiveness characteristic of ‘liberal’ academe. In my mind, a very good question to ask is why the /vast majority/ of feminists - who claim to be attentive to issues of injustice - are not vegan.
March 28, 2008 at 7:32 am
As to Jason’s first comment—perhaps what is essentialized here is not so much veganism as it is feminism? As if there were a unitary body of feminist thought or a single feminist position on an issue?
As to Jason’s second comment–I didn’t mean to suggest that vegan’s were particularly racist or sexist or anything else. What I meant to suggest was that vegans, like the rest of us, probably run the range on a lot of these issues. I assume people are vegan for a variety of reasons, some of which need not imply feminism or anti-racism. For example, if you are vegan because you think it’s more healthful, that doesn’t necessarily make you more likely to be a feminist than the nearby omnivore. Of course, it is quite possible to be vegan and be feminist, but the two don’t always go together.
And finally-Jason’s closing question–why aren’t feminists vegans? It’s a fine question, and I think the answer is a variation on the one I just gave. Because there isn’t any essentially feminist position. Many different things lead people to be feminists and some of them do not lead to veganism or even vegetarianism or even liberalism generally. Would that it were so?