My fellow vegans/animal rights activists: Who is the audience for the above meme and what are you hoping to accomplish by sharing it?
Before you reply, I not only have some thoughts of my own to share but I reached out to poet and animal rights activist, Alicen Grey, for her valuable insights. “The problem I have with animal rights infographics like this, is that they aren’t concerned at all with saving animals,” said Grey. “Their interest is to make people feel stupid and ashamed.”
With that in mind, I ask you to please consider the following:
This meme is inaccurate. Eggs are not “chicken periods.”
It’s also misogynist. Demonizing menstruation in the name of animal liberation? Really? “The reason this image appears effective at first glance,” Grey explained, “is because its message is amplified by our patriarchal, cissexist culture that associates menstruation with femininity, and by proxy, with things that are ‘gross’.”
Yes, it is indeed cissexist. Not only women have periods and not all women have periods (or ovaries).
It’s stigmatizing. Some fluid-bonded, consenting adult humans would take serious issue with the opening statement.
It’s ineffective. There’s no need to take the anthropomorphic route to illustrate the inherent cruelty, environmental damage, and widespread health dangers of an industry profiting off the human consumption of bird eggs. “If defending marginalized nonhumans means trampling upon other marginalized beings in the process – in this particular case, cisgender women and transgender people – then it is not effective, it is downright harmful,” said Grey.
It’s counterproductive. Such an approach seems less like useful outreach and more like yet another reason for vegans to exude moral superiority. Added Grey: “As long as our campaigns continue to rely on patriarchal, cissexist rhetoric, we will only see more and more people turning away from animal rights – or worse, we will only ever have bigots joining our movement.”
Memes like this are but one item on the long list of animal rights tactics that have failed to galvanize the public and garner longterm results. The relentless war humans are waging upon non-humans continues unabated and the only chance we have of stemming the tide is to drastically increase the ranks of those willing to work in solidarity towards collective liberation.
As Alicen Grey concluded, such tactics should have no place in our activism: “Because despite what you’ve been taught, it is indeed possible to care about humans and animals at the same time. In fact, it is not only possible – it is obligatory.”
To become more inclusive – and thus more effective – we must step far outside the insular vegan echo chamber, check our privilege, listen, learn, and become allies within all struggles against oppression. Period.
Further reading/viewing:
- Sistah Vegan Project
- Vegans of Color
- Ten Ways for Men to Be Vegan Feminist Allies
- The Only “Single Issue” is Collective Liberation
- How the Animal Rights Movement is Failing
