University of Amsterdam
Msc Sociology: Gender, Sexuality and Society Final Thesis
Soyboys or plant beasts? The changing narrative and the construction of vegan masculinities.
Name: Roos Verhagen Student ID: 10735038
Supervisor: Dr Evelien Geerts 2nd reader: Dr Delphi Carsens Word count: 20174
Abstract
The aim of this research was to gather insights on how vegan men construct their masculinity. With growing knowledge on the impact of animal products on the planet, global health and animal wellbeing, the vegan movement is growing rapidly. Since the consumption of animal products, especially meat, has long been associated with masculinity, it is interesting to study what the growing group of vegan men think about masculinity. To find answered to this, six vegan men have participated in semi-structured interviews. The results indicate that vegan men share progressive, constructivist views on gender. In contrast to the dominant culture, these men are less susceptible to societal pressures concerning masculinity. The results further indicate that vegan men see veganism from a transcorporeal perspective; they are concerned about the impact of their daily actions on the planet, not only the animals. These findings could mean that the rise in vegan men might be accompanied with a rise in progressive, constructivist attitudes regarding gender and a growing awareness of the responsibility we all carry to care for the planet.
Prologue
I present the thesis ‘Soyboys or plant beasts? The changing narrative and the construction of vegan masculinities. This thesis is written for the purpose of graduating the Sociology Master track ‘Gender, Sexuality and Society’ at the University of Amsterdam. The thesis process started in February, just a couple of weeks before the spread of COVID-19 changed the lives of people all over the world. This certainly had implications for the process of this thesis. First of all, because I was forced to do this research project from home, a place full of distractions. In addition to that, I was unable to do the face to face interviews that I planned as the method for data gathering. Fortunately, we live in a time and a place where most people have access to tools that make online interviewing over video-calls possible. While writing a thesis in quarantine was not my preference, I must acknowledge that I am incredibly privileged for being able to pursue my education in this manner. Countless of people were influenced by COVID-19 in such horrendous ways that it is slightly uncomfortable for me to share my superficial difficulties within these uncertain times.
I would like to dedicate this thesis to all the animals in the world, as their oppression not only motivates this study, but all of the actions I take in my like. I will forever continue to fight for their freedom. I want to dedicate this thesis to one animal in particular, Balou. The cat that I shared a life with from the day she was born on my bed in 2006 until the day she passed in May 2020. We have been inseparable for the biggest part of my life, and she is the one that showed me the divine beauty of interspecies love and affection. Balou’s passing had a big impact on my thesis process, making the past months some of the most emotional ones I have every experienced. Despite the sadness, Balou’s passing gave me motivation to write a thesis that, hopefully, contributes to a compassionate shift in the way people think about an treat animals.
I further want to thank a number of humans without whom I would not have been able to write this thesis. First and foremost, thank you mom and dad for appreciating my loud voice against injustices ever since I was little kid. Thank you for listening to my endless speeches about animal oppression, sexism and racism with an open heart and mind. Thank you, mom for teaching me from a young age to be aware of injustices and my own privileges. You showed me that being sensitive to the suffering of others is not a weakness but a strength. I want to thank the two most incredible vegan men in my life specifically, my dad and my partner Daan. I am lucky to have two men in my life that aim to do the right thing for
the animals and the planet, not caring about the way in which their surroundings might respond to it. You inspire not only me, but so many people around you to think about the things they take for granted. Daan, thank you for dealing with me in these stressful times. Thank you for walking the dog, Mumka, for doing groceries and providing me with the much-needed coffee while I was continuously staring at my screen. Most of all, thank you for providing me with peace and love at the times I could not find it myself.
Lastly, I want to thank my supervisor, Evelien Geerts, and the second reader
Delphi Carsens. Besides supporting me and providing me with great feedback over the course of this thesis, Evelien has been an incredible tutor during this entire master track by
introducing me to many inspiring thinkers and helping me develop my own critical voice. And thank you Delphi, for opening up an entirely new theoretical field for me. I have only started getting familiar with new-materialism but I already know the perspective is incredibly relevant for all I am preoccupied with in life.
Table of content
ABSTRACT ... 2
PROLOGUE ... 3
TABLE OF CONTENT ... 5
THE RISE OF VEGANISM ... 6
STUDYING VEGAN MASCULINITIES ... 7
3. GENDER AND (EXPLOITING) ANIMALS ... 9
1. GENDER, SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED OR PERFORMED? ... 9
2. WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A MAN ... 11
3. CARNO-PHALLOGOCENTRISM ... 13
4. COMING BACK INTO THE NATURAL WORLD ... 14
5. THE SEXUAL POLITICS OF MEAT ... 16
6. MAKING KILLABLE AND NECROBIOPOLITICS ... 18
7. BIOPOWER AND DISCIPLINED EATING OF ANIMALS ... 21
2. GENDERED EATING AND VEGAN MASCULINITIES ... 25
1. GENDER WITHIN THE ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT ... 25
2. EAT LIKE A MAN ... 26
3. DO MEN WORRY ABOUT THE CLIMATE? ... 28
4. HEGEMONIC MASCULINE VEGANS, HEGANS ... 29
5. THE GAME CHANGER EFFECT: VEGAN MEN AS PLANT-BEASTS ... 30
5. HYBRID MASCULINITIES AND SOYBOYS ... 31
6. THE ROLE OF RACE AND ETHNICITY ... 33
3. METHODS ... 37
4. RESULTS ... 40
1. PERSPECTIVES ON GENDER ... 40
2. DOMINANT DEFINITION OF MASCULINITY ... 41
3. RELATION TOWARDS NONHUMAN WORLD ... 42
4. GENDER AND MEAT ... 43
5. INTERCONNECTED OPPRESSIONS ... 44
6. VEGAN MEN SEE THEMSELVES AS ... 45
Hybrid ... 45
Individual rather than relational ... 46
Treated with respect ... 46
More emphatic ... 47
Valuable to the vegan movement ... 48
Feminist (allies) ... 49
CONCLUSION ... 50
1. CONSTRUCTIVIST VIEWS ON GENDER ... 50
2. RELATION TO THE NONHUMAN WORLD ... 51
3. VIEWS ON OPPRESSIONS ... 51
4. MALE PRIVILEGE WITHIN THE VEGAN MOVEMENT ... 52
7. DISCUSSION ... 54 REFERENCES ... 56 APPENDICES ... 63 TABLE OF PICTURES ... 63 CONSENT FORM ... 63 INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ... 63 RESPONDENTS ... 64
The rise of veganism
Veganism is hip right now. With increasing knowledge about animal agriculture’s impact on the climate, global health and the wellbeing of animals, the choice for veganism has shifted from an ideological to a rational one. While veganism used to be associated with flavourless food and annoying hippies, it is now becoming mainstream in urban areas in Western countries, where new plant-based companies are opening up every day and more and the sales of plant-based products have risen exorbitantly the past years (the Guardian, 2016, Krijger, 2019). The definition of veganism, posted by the Vegan Society (n.d.) sounds as follows:
‘A philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and
practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals. – The vegan society, 2020.
From this definition, it is evident that veganism differs from other acts of omitting animal products like vegetarianism on an ideological level. Where vegetarians only omit the
consumption of meat, they still consume other products that are derived from the exploitation of animals, like eggs and dairy. So even though the two are similar, the philosophical
motivation of vegans is in contrast with the practices of vegetarians. This is not to say that vegetarianism is bad, as many use this practice as a step towards a transition to veganism.
What is noteworthy about the development and growth of veganism is how it is related to the dominant Western perspective on gender. Here, gender is considered a binary, in which masculinity and femininity are posed as opposite and mutually exclusive categories. In this view, one’s gender is determined by the biologically assigned sex category and people are conditioned to behave in accordance to the culturally determined attributes belonging to their gender (Butler, 1990). This binary influences consumer behaviour, which has led to the widespread notion of veganism as a feminine philosophy, while eating meat and dominating animals is associated with virility. To illustrate this, think about a group of people having a traditional barbecue. In real life but also in movies, books or television shows, the space where the animal flesh gets prepared, the barbecue, is the domain of the men, while women
are making salads and drinks in the kitchen. There is no biological argument for the connection between male bodies and meat, though this relationship seems to be prevalent within dominant culture, resulting in a vast underrepresentation of men in the vegan
community (Christopher, Bartkowski & Haverda, 2018). If the consumption of animals is so deeply engrained in dominant notions of masculinity, what does this mean for the masculinity of those men that choose to abstain from exploiting animals? That is the question that this research to answer.
It should be noted that research on vegan masculinities is, as the rise of vegan men, a fairly recent development. So, the amount of scholarship on vegan men is relatively small, which makes it a scientifically relevant topic to study. How do vegan men define masculinity if they refuse to dominate animals, the one thing that seems central in dominant notions of masculinity? The research question that I aim to find answers to in this thesis is ‘How do
vegan men construct their masculinity?’. New insights on shifting ideas of masculinity might
gradually influence dominant ideas on masculinity. Since the idealized type of masculinity, which theorists call ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell & Messerschmit, 2005), is context-dependent and changeable, an increase of vegan masculinities might influence this
relationship between dominant ideas on masculinity and animals over time. This could gradually dissolve men’s reluctance to go vegan, resulting in improved global health
(Campbell II, 2004), a significantly lower impact on the climate (Poore and Nemecek, 2018) and, self-evidently, less animal exploitation.
Studying vegan masculinities
This study starts with a literature review in which the relationship between masculinity and animals is studied from a critical (eco)feminist perspective. This is followed by an overview of the existing body of literature on vegan masculinities. The third chapter is a description of the research instrument and research process, which consists of interviews with a diverse group of vegan men. The findings from the interview are found in the following chapter, in which the most important results will be discussed. This thesis ends with a concluding theorization of vegan masculinities based on the findings from this research.
Before starting this thesis, I deem it important to provide a small disclaimer. Many social scientists would argue that research has to be performed objectively. The researcher should not have any relation to the topic that could influence their opinion, making the research biased. I do not agree with this. Donna Haraway (1988) argues that no research can actually
be objective since every researcher is positioned in some way that influences their values and research. As a solution, Haraway urges researchers to be transparent and explicitly note their positionality so that the reader is aware of the origin of potential bias. In the case of this thesis, I would first and foremost position myself as privileged. I am a white queer woman who spent most of her life in progressive urban social circles. I was brought up in a loving middle-class household where my decision to stop eating meat at the age of eight was entirely supported and facilitated. I consider myself a vegan ecofeminist, which I would define as a stance against all forms of exploitation and oppression. My stance has resulted in an interest into the interconnectedness of oppressions of humans, nonhuman animals and the planet. The central aim within my activism, as well as my research, is shared with other ecofeminists like Adams (2014), who aim to contribute to an egalitarian socioeconomic and eco-political transformation by decentring the white and male characteristics that have been overvalued everywhere for too long. To do this, we will start with an exploration of the
3. Gender and (exploiting) animals
1. Gender, socially constructed or performed?
Within social sciences, there is no consensus about the definition of gender nor how it is constituted in individuals as well as society. However, Marshall (2008), together with a wide range of social scientists, argues that, within feminist theory, gender is always seen as a phenomenon that is produced socially. This is in contrast to the conservative view in which gender is seen as biologically determined, implying that the gender of an individual is determined based on their biologically assigned sex category, which is seen as strict binary, male or female. Butler (1990) emphasized that not only gender but also sex categories are discursively-socially constructed, as the categorization of bodies is based on cultural
definitions of masculine and feminine physical attributes, like hormone-levels, reproductive organs or chromosomes. Some opponents go so far that they argue that gender and
biologically assigned sex categories are the same concepts. The social construction of gender, in contrast, implies that social worlds are constructed through meaning-making practices by humans (Marshall, 2008). In terms of gender, Simone de Beauvoir (1948) captured the definition of socially constructed gender roles with the phrase ‘On ne naît pas femme, on le
devient’, which translates to ‘One is not born a woman, rather becomes one’ (p. 301, 1948).
So, the meanings that people ascribe to specific concepts, like gender, shape the order of the current society.
West and Zimmerman were some of the first to theorize about the social construction of gender. In their acclaimed paper Doing Gender (1987), they argue that there is a strong societal pressure to behave in accordance to one’s biological sex category. According to West and Zimmerman, people behave in ways that conform to their sex-category because of the fear of social consequences. For example, a person that fits in the female sex-category living in twenty-first century Europe will probably feel the pressure to shave her armpits, because almost all women she sees have silken smooth armpits. The pressure to act in accordance with sex-categories is constant and inevitable, which creates the urge to re-establish one’s gender as often as they can. So, people ‘do gender’ in order to establish their sex-category. Within their definition of gender, West and Zimmerman (1987) place a strong focus on the role of interaction, because that is the context in which gender is practiced. The consequence, according to them, is that this behaviour leads to the idea that social arrangements that are
based on sex-categories are seen as normal and natural. These gendered practices become get established stronger with each generation that complies to them.
Not long after the release of this paper, Judith Butler released Gender Trouble (1990). This book ended up being one of the most sold -and cited- books worldwide. Though her view does find some overlap with the social constructivist perspective discussed above, Butler’s perspective on gender is also inspired by linguistics, speech act theory, theatre studies and psychoanalysis. In line with previous social constructivists, Butler argues that gender is indeed external and assigned to the specific individual. In addition to this, she also agrees that gender is fluid and unstable to such an extent that it requires constant redefinition. I would argue that Butler is critical of scholars, like West and Zimmerman (1987), who state that gender is produced only in interaction. Besides interaction, discourse and the way they are structured by particular systems of meaning, for instance, phallogocentrism play a crucial part in the production of gender. This includes how people talk and write, but also the role of media, law and other institutions. In addition to this, Butler extensively critiques the
oppositional construction of sex and gender within the dominant discourse and the problematic essentialized connection between assigned sex-category and gender. In this binary opposition, sex is seen as natural while gender is considered as culturally constructed, which implies that there should be a strong distinction between the sexed body and the culturally constructed gender. Butler goes on by arguing that this distinction is, in fact,
produced discursively. One can impossibly know their sex apart from its relation to gender, as the sexed body is already situated and connected to cultural interpretations (Butler, 1998). With this, Butler follows Derrida’s (2010) to critique of humanism by deconstructing these hierarchized oppositional limits. By illustrating how gender is constituted by essentialized cultural ideas on biologically assigned sex categories, Butler deconstructs the humanist distinction of nature and culture, as the nature/culture dualism here relates to the sex as natural and gender as cultural.
Being inspired by perspectives of theatre studies and Goffman’s dramaturgical
analytics, Butler argued that gender constituted through the repetitive performance of stylized acts (Lawler, 2015). This process is what Butler defines as gender performativity. The
performative nature of gender implies that gender is constructed through actions and speech, it constitutes the thing it aims to be, for instance, masculinity. Butler emphasizes that the performativity of gender only happens in compliance to the dominant societal standards, where it gets produced and reproduced over long periods of time. Important to note is that
This is where the biggest difference is found with Goffman; in his theory of self-presentation, he argues that there is a given self inside everyone, for him a performance resembles the wearing of a costume, make up and a wig, all attributes that can be taken off. Butler, however, adds to Foucault’s (1976) theory of the regulatory power of sex by extending this to the case of gender, stating that regulatory power does not just exist on pre-existing subjects, but that regulatory power in fact shapes and forms this subject. So, for Butler, the subject is the effect of the performance (1988).
As gender is an indispensable topic in this research, I would argue that Butler’s definition of gender is the foundation of following discussions regarding gender. It is,
however, important to state that, within this research, I will highlight specific actions, objects or attitudes and their relation to masculinity or femininity. It is crucial to keep in mind that this is not the view of me, the researcher. The gender normative views displayed in this thesis are being used to understand specific development in a world that, unfortunately, still strongly relies on binary notions of gender.
2. What it means to be a man
Now that we have established that gender is performative rather than biological, we can study what type of implications this has on masculinity. To do this it is important to first explore the dominant ideas on masculinity in general. One of the best-known masculinity scholars is Connell (1995) who argues that masculinity can only exist in opposition to femininity. The two are seen as mutually exclusive categories of identification. The binary take on
masculinity and femininity is relatively new, argues Connell. No less than one and a half century ago, women were not seen as opposite of men, but as lesser, incomplete versions of men. This does not imply that the modern binary view on gender has eroded the hierarchical division between genders. Connell argues that gender is a set of power relations, in which men have been domination women in different ways. This masculine domination is not only derived from individuals, Connell (1995) argues, institutions can also be masculine and comply with the existing gendered power relations. Though none of the references in her article on Hegemonic masculinity reference Foucault, it is evident that Connell’s theory has been inspired by Foucault. Foucault argues that we should not search for objective truth, as that does not exist. Instead, Foucault aims to study the dominant truths that have been taken for granted in different cultures, something he called Regimes of Truth (1976). These regimes are constructed in cultures and institutions through discourse;
“Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true” (Foucault, 1980, p. 131).
Connell uses this theory to explain how specific types of masculinity are valued most in different cultures. Because this dominant form of masculinity seems incontestable, it resembles the subjectively constructed truths Foucault talked about. Furthermore, Connell argues that the dominant norms evolving masculinity and the hierarchical division of multiple types of masculinity are also constructed by institutions.
There is no single type of masculinity that is valued most because there is a multitude of different masculinities constructed over time and locations. Connell (2005) argues that there is one specific type of masculinity that is characterized by its hegemonic position in a given pattern of gender relations, hence the name hegemonic masculinity. The use of the term hegemony refers to the definition given by Gramsci (1971), stating that it ‘refers to the cultural dynamic by which a group claims and sustained a leading position in
social life’(2005, p.77). So, despite the multitude of masculinities, there is always one specific
form of masculinity that is dominant and most culturally accepted and desired, a masculinity that aims to legitimize the society’s patriarchal structure. This form of masculinity, which is characterized by rationality, detachment of emotions, toughness, autonomy and (financial) independence, is seen as the most honoured and desired masculinity (Mansfield, 2006). In contrast to other masculinities, hegemonic masculinity is rarely completely embodied by subjects, it is seen as an idealized version of masculinity, containing characteristics that most men in a specific culture strive to have.
This relational view on masculinity can be placed within Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988) notion of becoming. This valuable framework when analysing the construction of masculine identities. Summarized, the becoming of an individual is always related to a multiplicity. Deleuze illustrates this by the use of wolf packs whose identities are derived from their relation to the mass. This also accounts for humans; every self is constructed through its relations to the multiplicity, of which the centre consists of dominant norms. It is through subversion of the powerful centre that we can create unity, is what Deleuze and Guattari argue (1988), and what Butler tries to illustrate by her concept of performativity.
performed through the repetition of specific acts that either comply to or subvert a dominant norm (Faber and Stephanson, 2011). So, hegemonic masculinity could be seen as a set of idealized norms that are placed in the centre of a multiplicity of masculinities. ‘Other’ masculinities, like queer, racialized or, in fact, vegan can be seen as subversive and
challenging the dominant gender norms, as well as the gender binary. The following section will explore the role of animals in the establishment of masculinities.
3. Carno-phallogocentrism
When thinking about the theories involving relations between humans and nonhuman animals, Derrida is often the first thinker that comes to mind. His theorization of animal subjectivity has led to the revival of a new and improved field of animal studies. This is not to say that Derrida was the first person to put nonhuman animals on the agenda; Fraiman (2012) highlights that many women, especially feminists in the second-wave movement, have spoken and written about these issues long before Derrida. Still, his theory concerning
carnophallogocentrism is relevant to date, and it has influenced many of the leading scholars within the field of animal studies and ecofeminism (Fraiman, 2012).
In one of his written-out lectures, The beast and the sovereign (2009), Derrida shows to be critical of the humanist tradition of thinking in commonly accredited oppositional limits, like nature/culture, but also human/nonhuman. His conceptualization of
carnophallogocentrism was a start of overcoming these oppositional limits, as will be
elaborated below. What Derrida means with carnophallogocentrism was first explained in his interview with Nancy (1974), where he argues that there has not been placed enough attention to the anthropocentric nature of dominant western philosophical ideas on subjectivity as well as the anthropocentrism in the more critical post-humanist critiques of subjectivity.
‘Going much too quickly here, I would still try to link the question of the ‘who’ to the question of ‘sacrifice’. It would be a matter not only of recalling the concept of the subject as phallogocentric structure, at least according to its dominant schema: one day I hope to demonstrate that this schema implies carnivorous virility. I would want to explain carno-phallogocentrism, even if this comes down to a sort of tautology or rather a heterotautology as a priori synthesis, which you could translate as
“speculative idealism”, becoming-subject of substance”, “absolute knowledge” passing through the “speculative Good Friday”: it suffices to take seriously the idealizing interiorization of the phallus and the necessity of its passage through the mouth, whether it’s a matter of words or of things, of sentences, of daily bread or wine, of the tongue, the lips, or the breast of the other.’ (1995, 280)
The widespread term phallogocentrism is composed of two concepts. Phallocentrism, which refers to the overwhelming masculine aspects of social institutions and ideas on subjectivity in the West, and logocentrism, which refers to the Western philosophical prioritization of rational, self-aware, speaking subject. Derrida added ‘carno-’ to the term to illustrate that the subjects of posthuman critique are not just rational, self-aware and masculine but also that they are human, flesh eating subjects (Adams & Calarco, 2016). Like Butler’s (1990) notion of the performativity of gender, carno-phallogocentrism is also highly unstable and
precarious, meaning that carno-phallogocentrism needs to be constantly reiterated and performed in order to create a sense of subjectivity for the flesh-eating subject. With this, Derrida aimed to show how meat-eating is indispensable in constructions of subjectivity.
4. Coming back into the natural world
So, Derrida used carno-phallogocentrism as a notion to problematize humanist thinking, specifically the way of thinking about humans as detached from the natural world.
Posthumanism, a relatively new and interdisciplinary philosophical perspective, has paved the way for an ontological shift or the affective turn. The affective turn, as described by new materialist philosopher Rosi Braidotti (2018) implies a distancing from anthropocentric apathy by recognizing and revaluing the agency of non-humans. Instead of seeing the gendered, racialized human as being transcended above the natural world, we should see humans as an actor in non-hierarchical relation with the natural world. So, how should this be imagined? To answer this, Alaimo (2018) developed the concept transcorporeality:
‘The trans-corporeal subject is generated through and entangled with biological, technological economic, social, political and other systems, processes and events, at vastly different scales’ (Alaimo, 2018, p. 436).
This concept originated from environmental science, as it provides a way to look at small, daily activities and how those have an impact on humans and nonhumans over time and location. Alaimo (2018) uses factory farming to illustrate how these are overlooked within our anthropocentric, consumer-driven society. Trans-corporeality makes it possible to look at the negative effects of these seemingly unproblematic activities, like eating a cheese sandwich, on others, like the planet and the animals that had to be exploited for it. In her book ‘Exposed:
Environmental politics and pleasures in posthuman times’, Alaimo (2016) emphasizes that
species extinction, can impossibly be resolved through the patriarchal paradigms that are currently still centred, as these paradigms are precisely what created this environmental crisis.
Instead, Alaimo (2016) argues, we should reconsider the human as a non-human, which happens if we place humans back into the natural world. I would argue that living vegan is a step into this direction, first of all, because veganism is a practice that aims to overcome the hierarchical organization of species, called speciesism, and specifically the idea that the human is superior to other nonhuman species. Secondly, because there is a large group of conscious people within the vegan movement that, besides abstaining from animal products, adjust their consumption behaviour to the impact it has on the planet and other humans as well. These groups, for instance, minimize their plastic consumption out of concerns about the coral reefs and buy their clothes second-hand because they do not want to contribute to the exploitation of garment workers in the fast-fashion industry. I have to admit that I am, or at least try to be one of those people. It can be somewhat exhausting to try and disclose that the product you buy does not have any problematic effects on the natural world. It can lead to feelings of guilt and shame when you discover that something you bought contains plastic or dairy. However, there is an incredibly fast-growing market of products that promise exactly the purity of mind I long for.
But what is this purity, this ethical way of living that I, and countless people like me, strive for? Alexis Shotwell (2016) brings important considerations to the idea of purity. In her book ‘Against purity: living ethically in compromised times’, Shotwell (2016) problematizes the idea of purity, as it obscures our relationship with the natural world. The reason for this is the fact that the notion of purity produces a definition of the human that is once again
demarcated and racialized. For instance, somebody buys sustainably produced quinoa as it fits into their vegan wholefoods, low-waste lifestyle. The superfood promises a range of
important nutrients providing the socially conscious buyer with a range of arguments why it fits into their desired state of purity. All these arguments seem to obscure the fact that the global interest in quinoa has resulted in an increasing price. The result is that the Andean populations, who have produced and consumed quinoa as a staple food for over 7000 years, are now unable to afford it (Winkel et al, 2016). And what about the bugs being killed for the growth of vegetables? These examples illustrate that we should not strive for purity, as there is no perfectly moral way to live and not be complicit in pollution, colonialism, animal suffering or climate change. Shotwell’s argument can be summarized as a critique of ethical individualism, which implies that the actions and thoughts of an individual determine the ethical analysis. Instead, the approach to ethics should be distributive, meaning that we should
focus on the networks and relationships of multiple actors contributing to a specific event. So, instead of striving for purity, Shotwell
“Our obligation, should we choose to accept it, is to do our work as individuals
understanding that the meaning of our ethical actions is also political, and thus something that can only be understood in partial and incomplete ways” (Shotwell, 1016, p. 130).
So, not consuming animal products is a great way to limit one’s contribution to animal
suffering. However, we should not think of our way of living as inherently ethical. It is crucial to be aware of our complicity in other systems that involve suffering and inequality.
5. The sexual politics of meat
With her book The Sexual politics of meat, Adams (1990) showed how the daily practice of eating relates to another system, the system of gender inequality and gendered
violence. Her conceptualization of The sexual politics of meat has been prevalent in gender- and animal studies since its creation in 1990 and has inspired the academic vegan-feminist essays I wrote during my studies. The sexual politics of meat refers to the structural, social and cultural situation that makes the creation of the carnophallogocentric subject possible. This theory consists of three parts. The first part refers to the widespread notion that meat-eating is strongly associated with masculinity. The second part consists of the structure that develops the absent referent. Adams came up with the term absent referent to refer to the moral abandonment of a being.
She argues that there is an absence behind every meat dish a person consumes, the absence of the animal that was murdered for the meat to come into being. The absent referent functions in three ways. First, to separate the meat-eater from the animal whose life was compromised for the end product. Secondly, the disconnection is strengthened and maintained by
gastronomic linguistics (for an example, see picture 1). The flesh of a pig is called pork, cow’s flesh is beef, that of chickens is poultry and even the wing of that chicken is ‘chicken wing’, instead of ‘chickens wing’. Third, the animals are used as a metaphor to describe other
Picture 1: Pigs are denied subjectivity by the gastronomic term for their flesh, pork, while sexualized, 'consumable' women are the absent referent in this advertisement (Lady Edison Pork, 2020)
experiences, for example, the experience of a sexually assaulted woman who claims that she felt ‘like a piece of meat’.
This brings us to the last part of Adams
Sexual politics of meat, which implies that, in
a patriarchal society, women are positioned together with animals as different, but
overlapping, absent referents. Adams gives the example of the word rape, which ecological writings have used to describe human’s treatment of the planet, by stating that there is a rape of the earth happening. This is how victims of sexual violence are made into an
absent referent. Through the absent referent, there is thus an intersection of the (sexualized) violence against women and the violence against animals (Adams, 1990). In her later work, Adams theorized this further and found that this system is maintained because animals are feminized and sexualized, while women are being animalized (Adams, 2003). This book is supplemented with over 200 images that illustrate this. These are, for example, fast food advertisements with sexualized women and sexual referencing in there (see picture 2). The connection between sexual violence of women and the killing of animals is that both go through a cycle of objectification, fragmentation and consumption (Adams, 1990). First, the person (animal or women) is seen as an object by the oppressor. Second, the object is stripped of their ontological meaning, which makes consumption, that is eating of the animal flesh or sexual violence, possible.
Adam’s sexual politics of meat has shown that the oppression and violence towards women and animals are related, partially overcoming one of the commonly accredited oppositional limits Derrida (2010) was critical of, more specifically the human/nonhuman oppositions. Rothgerber (2013) agreed with Adams after concluding that the denial of animal suffering is related to hegemonic masculine ideals like stoicism, toughness and emotional restrictions. He argues that men are not expected to have compassion or pity for animals nor women (Rothgerber, 2013). Once familiar with the sexual politics of meat, it is hard not to see the overlapping forms of oppression. I have further often used this theory in my conversations with non-vegans, especially non-vegans that identify as feminists. Adam’s theory can be used to highlight the interconnectedness of these oppressions and emphasize the importance of
Picture 2: Sex sells, and fast food advertisers know that. (Burger
defragmenting these movements in order to unify and critique the connected sexism and speciesism in dominant culture.
6. Making killable and necrobiopolitics
Like Adams and Butler, Haraway also poses an effort to go against binary oppositions of humans and animals. This is very clear in her use of the term ‘species’, when referring to specific (non)human animals. By adhering to these linguistics, Haraway poses a posthuman discourse in which humans also belong within the group of animals. In her Companion
species manifesto (2003), Haraway introduces us to the idea of making killable. Haraway
constructed this concept as a substitute to the widespread claim ‘thou shalt not kill’. The latter claim is deemed problematic and impossible because, according to Haraway (2008), killing is an inevitable aspect of life. Her alternative serves as an attempt to stand up against the killing of nonhuman animals by deconstructing and criticizing the categorization of entire animal species as killable. Though this notion is not necessarily problematic, it does highlight an ambiguity in Haraway’s work on human-animal relations.
The first aspect that highlights contradictions in When species meet is the vocabulary she has chosen to use, such as the use of the word ‘meat’. Referring to Haraway’s earlier work on nonhuman animals, Adams argues that this word is problematic since it is a
gastronomical term for the flesh of a dead animal, concluding that the word directly relates to the category of ‘killable’ (2006). Another term that illustrates Haraway’s covert
categorization of animals as ‘killable’ is ‘livestock’, which she uses when proudly describing how a purebred sheepdog herds a flock of sheep. The word ‘livestock’ directly strips the animals of their subjectivity, as it is a direct abbreviation for ‘stock that is alive’, posing sheep as merely an object to own and herd. Lastly, Haraway aims to make a case for chickens, pleading for living circumstances and more compassionate treatment. This is remarkable because she does not problematize the fact that those billions of chickens are in that industry precisely because they are deemed ‘killable’. Adams argues that Haraway reproduces the dominant ontology in which specific animals are seen as edible, bargaining with the established order she is opposed to (Adams, 2006).
Haraway’s conceptualization of ‘making killable’ could be aligned with Mbembe’s ‘necropolitics’ (2003). Mbembe developed the concept in response to Foucault’s idea on biopolitics, which shortly relates to the sovereign state’s power to ‘make live and let die’ of a population (Foucault, 1976). Mbembe is critical of the idea, arising from biopolitics, that
power only targets life forces. Bento (2018) illustrates that biopolitics conception of ‘letting die’ refers to the nonexistence of state-developed policies that promote death. As a response to this, Mbembe shifts Foucault’s words and defines necropolitics as the power to ‘kill and
allow to live’ (Mbembe, 2003, p.12). With this, Mbembe raises questions concerning which
people are targeted by death and which are allowed to live as well as the question of which structures and systems facilitate this process. Mbembe changed the biopolitical conception of ‘making live’ into ‘allowing to live’, as a means to illustrate the how the state does little to improve possibilities and conditions of life so that only the ones with enough resources can stay alive. In contrast, the people who lack these resources are left to die or even made to die. In contrast to Foucault, who abstains from describing hierarchy and power disparities between the structures promoting life and death, Mbembe argues that death is central to the making of living, and necropolitics are used to expose how certain social groups are encouraged to live and reproduce while others are categorized for death. This does not imply that biopolitics and necropolitics are not related. As Rosi Braidotti argues, they are ‘two sides of the same coin’ (2013, p. 122), as they are both lenses that fuse to facilitate the analysis of power in relation to politics of life and death. Lastly, Bento (2018) argues that an analysis of necro- and biopower must be included with a critical perspective on the current market, as death plays a crucial part in the accumulation of capital.
Although both biopolitics and necropolitics are developed to address the situation of humans, it is hard to ignore some robust similarities with Haraway’s ‘making killable’. Haraway has clearly shown a prioritization of dogs in her theorization of animal subjectivity and human-animal relationships, while the aforementioned sheep and chickens are
categorized by her as living stock that is brought into the world only for the use-value of their bodies after their death. This is also where the role of the market comes in. Companion species like dogs and cats are loved deeply by western societies insofar that their ethical treatment is established in the law, making it illegal to harm, exploit and kill them. On the contrary, these same countries bring life to billions of chickens, cows, pigs and more species only for the financial profit their bodies generate either by being exploited and having their children killed or by getting killed themselves.
As Braidotti (2013) argued, necro-and biopower are always connected. I would argue that the two work together by valuing and devaluing the lives of specific populations. In his examples of necropolitics, Mbembe named slavery and the violence and colonization of Palestine. Davies, Isakjee and Dhesi (2017) emphasize that necropolitics is not necessarily performed by specific actions, but also by inaction. A recent and European example these
researchers gave relates to the inaction of European states concerning the exorbitantly high number of forced migrants. They illustrate that necropolitical practices are performed through the active biopolitical mechanisms of documentation, which leads the forced immigrants to resort to living in unofficial camps, ‘producing stark suffering of refugee bodies and the
potential for “slow death” (Davies, Isakjee and Dhesi, 2017, p. 1280). So, on this globalized
planet bio- and necropower work together by differentiating between people who are given the right to live in a country in which they feel safe and protected, while others are denied this existential right. In general, biopower and necropower work together as dualist categories for groups of people who are given life and whose life is protected, while people in the latter category are presented with death-promoting circumstances. For humans, this categorization seems to be influenced by the valuation of race, class and ethnicity in populations, while the bio- and necropolitical treatments of animals are related to the subjectivity and use-value dominant culture ascribes to them.
This categorization of nonhuman animal species has been theorized and given a name by Joy (2011). In her book Why we love dogs, eat pigs and wear cows, Joy introduces the public to the concept ‘carnism’. Like other -isms, carnism functions as a belief system that reproduces a specific oppression, in this case, the oppression of specific animals. Carnism is very context-dependent, implying that different cultures ascribe different moral value to specific nonhuman animal species. This can be illustrated by looking at the act of eating dog flesh, which is an old eating tradition in several Southeast Asian countries, like Korea and China. It is not hard to imagine that Haraway would be disgusted by the idea of dog meat festivals like those in Yulin, China. This disgust is shared by most flesh-eating individuals in western countries. From a vegan’s perspective, the hypocrisy in this reason is hard to
overlook. Why do people in Western countries get so angry about eating dogs while they are eating the flesh of animals that equally wanted a life without exploitation and killing? Carnism serves exactly as a way to justify this by arguing that the context-dependent way of categorizing and exploiting animals is Normal, Necessary and Natural. The reason the
population keeps reproducing this division is that the belief system that facilitates it, carnism, is invisible to them (Joy, 2011). Joy argues that the invisibility of the carnism makes it seem as if eating animals is the normal thing to do, while it should be seen as a deliberate choice, especially in countries with an abundance of plant-based food available, like the Netherlands.
7. Biopower and disciplined eating of animals
To further understand how carnism became so engrained in society we will turn to Foucault. When theorizing on veganism, consuming animals and masculinity, I have come across multiple ways in which Foucault’s concept ‘biopower’ could be applied to the topic. In short, biopower relates to the form of power that arose in the 18th and 19th century in which multiple techniques are applied to gain control over bodies of populations (Foucault, 1976). A crucial tool for this is statistics, a type of mathematics in which normal distributions are used to study and make expectations for a large population. In contrast to previous, deductive and violent forms of sovereign power where the emphasis is on the threat of death and taxation of production, biopower is characterized by a positive emphasis on the administration of life. This from of power is more effective than the traditional sovereign power, because the
constant threat of being observed, for instance by security camera’s, causes people to regulate their behaviour. What is also new in disciplined societies is the fact that people are punished for behaviour that might not be punishable for the state, but for society. Disciplinary power subjugates individual bodies through enclosed institutions like schools, the army or (mental) hospitals by targeting the individuals that behave deviant from a norm. In contrast, biopower has a more macrostructural emphasis on the entire population and the regulation of problems concerning them, like life-expectancy, healthcare or birth rates (Taylor, 2014).
Foucault (1976) argued that power is inherently connected to knowledge, which is why institutions of knowledge, like science, schools or universities are powerful. The Dutch state, for example, disciplines its population to consume animal products is by creating a norm in primary school, a norm in which the state provides cow-milk for every child that wishes to drink this during the breaks. This is accompanied by teachers (and often parents) who tell children to drink their milk because it will make them strong and healthy. So the state disciplines individuals to consume animal products, which already starts at school and is followed state-funded dairy- and meat campaigns and a medical field that is highly influenced by biased nutritional science that is funded by the industries themselves, resulting in the idea that humans need animal products to be healthy (Simon, 2013). In addition to this, many children’s books and cartoons evolve around farming, where an image is created of small-scale farms with happy animals that gladly produce eggs or milk for the farmer, an image that is everything but representative of animal agriculture in general. So not only are children disciplined to consume animal products for the sake of their health, the inaccurate depiction
of the happy animals in the small farm also leads to the idea that the animal (by)products they consume come from happy animals. This disciplining shows its effectiveness not only in children, but also in grown-ups who excuse their animal consumption by the argument that they only buy organic, assuming that those animals must have had a nice and comfortable life.
This is how, according to Taylor (2012), dietary practices undergo a similar process of normalization as sexuality, so eating behaviour is, much like sexuality, a product of
disciplinary power. From a Foucauldian perspective, humans in Western countries like the Netherlands are thus disciplined to think that the consumption of animal products is normal. In this sense, vegans actively go against this norm by critiquing it and doing the opposite, abstaining all animal products. What then, would be their place within the biopolitical framework? Taylor (2012) found that alimentary practices and sexuality are analogous and even mutually reinforcing. This is why it is expected that men who challenge the dominant dietary norm also challenge heteronormativity, which explains why vegan and vegetarian men are often expected to be queer. According to Adams (1990), all vegan men can expect to have their sexuality ridiculed or challenged, based on their decision not to consume animals. The analogy can be extended to the psychiatric field as well. Within psychiatry, non-heterosexual sexualities have long been treated as a disease or disorder, resulting in, for example,
conversion therapy. Taylor (2012) illustrates that a similar thing is happening to vegans, whose preoccupation with animal-free food is often categorized as orthorexia, an eating disorder in which the individual has an obsession with healthy eating. I would not suggest that all diagnosis of orthorexia amongst vegans are faulty, however I agree that doctors and
psychiatrists often unjustly connect an individual’s decision not to contribute to the suffering of animals to an eating disorder which is, like queer sexualities, treated with specific therapy. So biopower not only influences the general population to eat animal bodies, it also
problematizes the ones that do not eat them. However, is the notion of biopower only applicable to humans? In order to bring this analysis into an ecofeminist perspective and decenter humans, it is important to analyze how biopolitics affect the nonhuman animals. As Foucault (1979) argued:
“If human bodies can be colonized for their vitality and reproductive power, then similar techniques can be applied to the discipline of animal bodies. The goal is to forge “a docile body that may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved”
The animals in the agriculture industry are strongly subjected to biopolitics, as they are mainly viewed and valued as a population, rather than a cumulation of individuals. One way in which biopower is exercised is though surveillance. Examples of this surveillance relates to the separation of sows into narrow gestation crates or calves of dairy cows in isolated cells, making it easy to track their health, weight and behaviour. Their deaths are clearly planned out and the impregnation and birth of the animals are often strongly induced by the behaviour of the human. Even more control is exercised by trying to eradicate the stereotypies that occur in the animals caused by their confinement, like chickens pick the feathers of other chickens and themselves or pigs chewing on the metal wires and biting their tails. The industry aims to minimize this behaviour by the application of cruel practices on their bodies, like cutting the beaks of chicken and chipping the teeth and tails of pigs, more often than not without
anaesthesia (Novek, 2005).
A different way in which the consumption of animals is related to biopower is
presented by Clark (2012). Within industrial animal agriculture there has been a great amount of research and regulations that permanently alter the nature of the animal’s bodies. For example, chickens have been given growth-hormones for countless generations which has resulted an exorbitant growth of baby chicks. They grow so big in such a short time that their body weight is more than their legs can handle. They might not be able to stand on their legs properly, but this alteration is convenient for the industry since the chicks are big enough for slaughter at an earlier age, reducing costs of the industry. Body alterations like these happen all over animal agriculture, cows are bred to produce an amount of milk that infects and overloads the udders, sows are bred to birth more piglets and hens are bred to lay more eggs in a week than they would have naturally laid in a week. The reason for these cruel bodily alterations is for the industry, as well as the state that the industry belongs to, to generate more profit without increasing impact it has on the climate (Clark, 2012). According to Clarke, policymakers are more inclined to permanently change the animal’s physiology then to call for the human population to omit from buying animal products and creating self-regulating bodies whose eating practices are aligned with the needs of animals and the environment (2012).
Another relevant theory on control comes from Deleuze. In his postscripts of societies
of control, Deleuze argued that we are currently in the middle of a transition from disciplinary
societies, to societies of control. This type of control is different, since it is based in freedoms, like traveling and online communication, banking and shopping. Because of the influence of the internet, people are no longer restricted to enclosed institutions, we are all in several
non-spatial states at the same time. Deleuze argues that we are encouraged to communicate online, as this is a way for corporations to gather personal information about each individual using their platform. The power lies in the ability to take away one or more of those freedoms by manipulating the flows of information. This way, a corporation or state has the power to choose what information one has access to. For example, vegan activists often visit slaughterhouses to witness and capture the suffering that happens in there. However, once they want to share these pictures with their Instagram followers or Facebook friends, the pictures are often deleted for being too graphic. One of my activist friends, who visits slaughterhouses all over Europe is in ‘Facebook jail’ regularly, having her account blocked. Her freedom to protest and confront non-vegans with the production process behind their food is taken away by social media, while the truth about the industry is being made unavailable for the consumer to see, contributing to the disciplining of society to consume animals and their by-products.
So why would corporations actively hide this truth? Even most of the governing political parties have shown resistance to the idea of camera surveillance in the industry (Ouwehand, 2017). With this changing society comes a changing form of commodities. Commodities used to be defined as products that can be bought, material objects. Cooper (2011) argues that living bodies are now the product of commodification. This relates to people working in the service industry. Especially with the rising number of self-employed humans, it is evident that many want to perform their specific skills in exchange for money. However, not only human bodies are being commodified, also those of the animals. Chickens are valued by their body weight while dairy cows are valued by the amount of milk their bodies make. But besides the animals in agriculture, other animals are turned into
commodities too, as the lives of rare wild animals are sold for thousands of dollars to trophy hunters (Naevdal, Olaussen & Skonhoft, 2012). One could argue that the monetization of animals is yet another step into stripping them from their subjectivity by valuing them as consumable objects.
2. Gendered eating and vegan masculinities
1. Gender within the animal rights movement
When I was a new vegan, over three years ago, I idealized the vegan movement. People who fight against the exploitation of animals, what could be wrong with that? I thought that their moral beliefs would include the fight for human justice as well. That was until I learned about the prevalence of sexism and gender inequality within animal rights organizations.
It might seem contradictory that a movement, founded by women and consisting of a majority of women, is also a movement of sexism and gender inequality. The first
manifestation of this can be found in animal-rights organizations. Philosopher, academic and activist Lisa Kemmerer (2011) analysed the positions with the big organizations in the United States. She found that, although women make up a majority of employees and volunteers, the positions with the highest pay and the most power are disproportionally occupied by men. In addition to this, the men with hiring powers tend to hire other men for leadership positions, creating a network of men dominating the animal rights movement. Kemmerer emphasizes not all of these men contribute to this disparity on purpose, but that ‘it is now painfully clear
that some men most certainly have purposefully done all of this—and much more’
(Kemmerer, 2011. P. 281).
Unfortunately, the patriarchal facets of the animal rights movements do not stop there. In chapter one, we discussed the role of advertisement in the objectification of women’s bodies within the industry of animal products. If I display my critique of that, it is crucial to address the use of objectified female bodies for the purpose of animal rights. Many examples of this are created by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), one of the biggest animal rights organizations worldwide. Their strategy for creating
awareness about animal suffering is the development of controversial advertisements campaigns and street activism, often including celebrities. Although their purpose is to raise awareness on animal rights issues through gathering media attention, Pendergrast (2018) argues that the sexualized nature of their campaigns exceeds this purpose, as media mainly question the effectiveness of PETA’s strategy rather than the use of animals.
Picture 3: Famous actress and former playmate Pamela Anderson’s body is used in a sexualized way for a PETA campaign promoting
For their street activism, PETA relies heavily on the naked bodies of women, many of whom are unpaid. Social justice movements have a long history of going naked for their cause without actively wanting this to lead to the sexualization of bodies. Posthumanist philosopher Alaimo (2010) explains undressing as a form of protest is used to dehumanize the women and put them in the natural world with the aim of raising compassion for the animals that are positioned in this world as well. As Wrenn (2016) points out, thin, white female bodies are overrepresented in this type of activism, which inevitably leads to the sexualization of their bodies. The problem is that the consequences of this sexualization are experienced less intensely in these young white women and more in marginalized women (Wrenn, 2012). Because one of the aims of these actions is to gather financial donations and mobilize
recourses for the organization, Wrenn (2016) argues that this should be seen as sex work. The cause of this industrialized social movement sex work, according to Wrenn, is neoliberalism, as it forces social justice organizations to generate wealth. It is important to state that bare protesting and women’s naked bodies should not be problematized without the needed nuance. Women’s bodies have long been unwillingly sexualized.
Right now, we are in a time where undressing can be seen as a form of women’s empowerment. However, tracing back to the overrepresentation of men in leadership
positions within the organizations, ideas evolving women’s empowerment through undressing are put in a different perspective. With the patriarchal structure of these organizations, I would argue the idea of empowerment is a disguise for the covert sexism within the industry. The gender disparity within the organizations and the sexualization of female bodies within the vegan movement seem to be analogous of the gender inequality the large structure of the patriarchal society. It would then be interesting to study the vegan men’s attitudes concerning this topic. Are they compliant to the societies widespread gender inequality or do they
actively critique it?
2. Eat like a man
The previous chapter started with a discussion on gender, which concluded with the notion that gender is performative; consciously and subconsciously, people actively act in
accordance to their gender which, in dominant culture, is connected to ones biologically assigned sex category. A growing body on sociological scholarship shows the gendered food dichotomy (Nath, 2010). This chapter will serve as an analysis of gender and food with a
to perform a hegemonic type of masculinity. Kimmel (2012) noted that the relation between meat and masculinity was strengthened at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as a means to maintain patriarchal values as a response to growing feminism and the feminization is society. Aside from the hegemonic masculine practice of subjugating animals and women (Adams, 1990), the connection between gender and meat is theorized from other perspectives. One of the first sociologists to theorize about the relation between meat and masculinity was Twigg (1986), who emphasized the connection between virility and red meat in particular:
‘It is part of the traditional image of John Bull, the beer quaffing, beef eating, fine
figure of a man, and negative perceptions of vegetarianism within the dominant culture echo these ideas.’ (Twigg, 1986: 24)
In this sense, vegetarian or vegan men subvert dominant norms of masculine behaviour. One explanation of this relation between meat and masculinity in western culture is presented by sociologist Bourdieu (1984), who argued that the fact that meat is filling results in the idea that one needs a strong, ‘masculine’ appetite. The general idea is that eating meat makes you strong, even though a range of nutritional research has proven this untrue (Campbell II, 2004). In contrast, women are expected to eat more fruit and vegetables. This can be explained by current beauty ideals of women’s bodies to stay slim, explaining why women are more conscious of their food consumption in general (Adams, 1990).
In a research project on the advertisement of food, the link with gender was highly visible in meat advertisements, specifically the advertisements of large fast-food chains (Rogers, 2008). Rogers found that these advertisements visibly oppose feminism and environmentalism, portraying these as a growing threat to masculinity. The solution? Meat. The consumption of animal flesh is portrayed as the single best way to solve the crisis of expanding feminism and environmentalism. Knowing this, it should not come as a surprise that Thomas (2016) found that society views vegan men as less masculine than meat-eating and vegetarian men. However, the perceived masculinity of vegan men is dependent on their motivations for veganism, as the level of perceived is not affected when men claim that they are vegan because of the climate or their own health. So, only the men who are concerned with the wellbeing of animals are perceived as less masculine in society (Thomas, 2016). I would argue that this can be explained by the previously discussed attributes of masculinity, like stoicism and the suppression of emotions. Regarding these dominant gendered food norms, one would expect that men who abstain from eating meat would be met with more
resistance in their social circle then women. On the contrary, Merriman (2010) found that men’s choice to eat a meat-free diet was received with neutrality and respect by their friends and family, while women’s decision was met with significantly more hostility, specifically from men. Merriman (2010) explains this disparity as a product of a double standard, in which men are expected to have the capacity to govern their own bodies, while women are not.
So, food is being used as a tool for gender expression in which meat is strongly associated with masculinity while fruit and vegetables are associated with femininity. What then, can be said about people that consume in contrast to these norms? Are men that abstain from animal products automatically considered less masculine? Vegan masculinities are relatively new within gender- and critical animal studies. Two different types of vegan masculinities have been constructed from popular culture and the limited amount of scholarship in the topic; hegans and soyboys. Because veganism is closely related to
environmentalism, we will first look into the role of gender within environmentalism before describing the existing research on hegans, soyboys and vegan men.
3. Do men worry about the climate?
In the previous chapter, we have discussed the Derridean tradition of critiquing oppositional dualisms. One of the dualisms that influenced ecofeminist theory strongly is that of nature and culture. Though notions on gender differ greatly amongst time and location, one thing is very evident in the vast majority of gender ideologies over time, nature is feminine. La naturaleza,
la nature, la natura. The Spanish, French and Italian words for nature are all effeminized.
Furthermore, the planet we live on has been referred to by many populations as ‘mother earth’. In the dualism ecofeminists aim to critique, culture is seen as the rational space that belongs to men, while women’s space is nature. Nature and culture are hierarchized similar to the two gender categories; an overvaluation of cultural attributes that is contrasted by a devaluation of nature (Plumwood, 2003). A masculine identity is also characterized by personal distancing from nature, according to Piersol and Timmerman (2017). It is not surprising then, that women in the West are more likely to show environmental concern than men (Blocker & Eckberg, 1997, Gifford and Nilson, 2014).
The cause of this disparity can be traced back to the early age of the actors. From a young age, children are socialized in differing ways, based on their gender. Where boys are
autonomy, girls are being socialized for a caregiver role, learning values that are associated with altruism, like empathy and kindness (Wood and Eagly, 2012). Since concern for the climate is closely related to other individuals, human and non-human, it is more strongly associated with feminine attributes. What does this mean for men who are actually, and rightfully, concerned about the state of the environment? According to Blenkinsop, Piersol and Sitka-Sage (2018), environmentally concerned men display a type of double
consciousness. Double consciousness is a term, developed by Dubois (1903) to illustrate how
“One is always looking at one’s self through the eyes of another, of measuring one’s soul by
the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (Dubois, 1903, p. 11). Though
the original concept of double consciousness relates to black men in America, the
aforementioned researchers argue that the term could also be used to illustrate the experience of boys and their relation to nature, as most show affiliation and interest in the natural world at a young age, but at the same time experience pressure and violence from the dominant culture (Blenkinsop, Piersol and Sitka-Sage, 2018). So, overlap can be found between
environmentalism and veganism, as both are characterized in dominant culture as effeminate, resulting in a strong pressure for men not to perform this. Since the pressure starts at a very early age, this will consequently have effects on men’s attitudes toward nature later in life.
4. Hegemonic masculine vegans, hegans
Heganism can be considered the most disputed type of vegan masculinities. The term is coined in a Boston Globe article by Pierce (2010). Heganism is defined as an identity that builds an association between veganism and hegemonic masculinity. Wright defines heganism as an
“alpha-male-alignment, who became vegan after establishing their power and prowess while they were eating meat. (...) The need to align ‘heganism’ with physical strength and such so-called alpha male characteristics as political and financial prowess points to both the increased visibility of male vegans and the ways that dietary choice is now being co-opted by the media as a form of appropriate masculinity, even if only for exceptional men” (Wright, 2015: 126).
So, heganism is only applicable to a small selection of middle-aged and grown vegan men who have established their hegemonic masculine characteristics to such an extent that their decision to live vegan does not have an impact on their perceived masculinity. One important aspect to these men’s relation to veganism is their motivation; hegans choose veganism for
