This is an open letter to my sister radical feminists. If you know me, you know I am not one for creating or engaging in drama; rather, I believe unnecessary hostilities has been one of the major detractors to the radical feminist movement since its roots in the late 1960′s. So, it is with a heavy heart that I write this post that I know will cause anger on the part of (some of) my vegan sisters.
I write in response to a recent post at The Radical Hub where the lesbian-feminist Sheila Jeffreys asserts that it is best for women to stop eating meat. Indeed, she states, “It is the eating of animals that creates the divisions between feminist,” in her closing.
I responded to this essay a couple of times, one briefly, and then, after some reflection, with a longer,more thought-out response. A vegan responded to me, and the comments now appear to be closed, although there is no note stating that this is the case. I cannot remember another thread with closed comments on The Radical Hub, but it is entirely possible that has happened.
I have been asked for some time to write a letter to the feminist community on why it is problematic that we have a vegetarian ethic pushed on us. There are women here and there, including in that very thread, that mention how painful sticking to a vegetarian diet has been; I also recall reading in the latest edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves, a quote from a woman who found eating meat, after many years of depression, helped her immensely. Convincing women to, “go veg,” is not simply a matter of education, the way I believed it was when I was veg*n. It is telling women to go against the nourishment for which their bodies were designed .Thus, I’m not writing solely, or even mostly, to defend *myself*, but rather because I know other women are quite upset about being shamed for eating what they need. To paraphrase what I noted on the RadicalHub thread, what’s so radical about telling women there is something wrong with the way we eat? Do we not get that message…ah…all the fucking time? Animal rights groups are specifically targeting teenage girls and young women, because they know we are the ones most likely to change our eating habits, as well as to have compassion for non-human animals. And yet, this is the exact same group that is most prone to developing eating disorders. Even if they don’t go on to develop a full-blown ED, they are the group most likely to obsess over their eating. It becomes a life-long struggle for women to resist the dictates of male supremacy; Jeffreys and the commentators at The Radical Hub know that damn well.
The poster who got the last word in was responding to what I wrote:
Paleosister, with respect, the phrase ‘survivors of veganism’ is an insult to actual survivors of things they were forced to endure: rape, torture and other forms of abuse. If we allow the term ‘survivor’ in a rad fem discourse (or indeed at all) to be ascribed to things like diet choices – and veganism is not an eating disorder however harmful you claim it is for your health – it loses its impact and that is a grave thing when fighting the patriarchy.
Wow, so no one who was an “actual survivor” would use that terminology?! Thanks for telling me about my life, Sea. Furthermore, I don’t “claim” it was harmful to my health: it brought on the most severe depression of my life, and my state of mind resulted in things for which I will never forgive myself. Since I have started regularly consuming animal flesh, I have never experienced anything resembling the above state of being. I can provide a list of people, including a family member who very much wanted me to stick to a vegetarian diet, who can vouch for the change they saw, but I know people believe what they believe, evidence to the contrary.
Honestly, at a certain point, I didn’t feel I chose veganism anymore; rather, I truly believed it was the only ethical way to eat and live. Since I draw a strict moral line between good versus bad behaviors, and consuming animal products was most definitely on the “bad” side, it was not something I was going to do, or even consider. My first communication with the radical feminist publication off our backs was to write a letter that included, among other things, encouraging women to go vegetarian. I now feel tremendous guilt for encouraging young women (especially) to go vegan with my hours of letter writing and handing out of pro-vegan pamphlets.
I would not be around, attempting to kick the ass of patriarchy, if I hadn’t started eating meat (meaning everything from shrimp to free range, grass-fed beef). I have known women who will avoid feminist retreats, simply because the food is entirely veg*n, and they know they can’t function on that. The promotion of veg*nism, and the pro-veg. movement, is not an experiment that has ever been tried before in the history of our species.
In conclusion, and in response to “sea,” (a woman I hold no grudge against but am upset with what was said in this post),to the women of The Radical Hub, and all my readers, I *do* feel I am a survivor of veganism. It has taken me so very long to come to terms with this; when I first started eating meat, I told myself I would be back to being vegan as soon as I could. But it just doesn’t work that way. I really did nearly die from attempting to live up to the moral standards set in front of me, and for that, I am a survivor.
When commenting, please keep in mind that although I discuss my own experience, I wish to open up a wider conversation within the feminist community about how we treat one another and how we would like to deal with food politics from here on out. All comments will be moderated before being posted.
It’s very clear that you’re a survivor of malnutrition. As are fat women who have found themselves malnourished and facing serious health problems after having dieted for years (while still remaining fat – there’s a whole lot of science behind this.) They are survivors of dieting.
Malnutrition is a grave illness. If we talk about breast cancer “survivors”, we can certainly talk about survivors of malnutrition. The etiology of the malnutrition can be various (including, of course, situations of famine). But the life threatening condition itself malnutrition is one that women are fortunate to survive.
Hey Mary Sunshine,
That’s an interesting perspective. To me, though, it’s important to name what I’m a survivor of; just saying “I’m a survivor of malnutrition,” is bound to mislead people, if not intentionally.
Also, in her response, see mentions survivors of eating disorders as having validity as using the word “survivor.” But if instead of wanting to be the most thin, one wants to be the most ethical, the word “survivor” can’t be used?
Oh, Paleosister, thank you so much for writing this. You know that I find you careful to bridge differences, and nurturing in the gentlest sisterly ways, and this is yet another example of what you do, and do so well.
I’m a survivor of vegetarianism, ethical and health-based; I’m now diabetic — so much for the health biz — and have, thankfully, expanded my understanding of what the real ethics are. Lierre speaks (eloquently, and yet also gently, nurturantly) about how there is a more mature view possible, wherein we acknowledge our animal bodies, acknowledge that to live is to kill, to consume. It simply is. The flip side is equally important: the truth of what veg*nism often does to a body, to a psyche. I had the most horrific panic attacks; I was immobilized, couldn’t think, certainly couldn’t plan or react. When I ate meat again they were gone, and for good. It’s been two decades, almost, about nineteen years, and they are still gone.
It’s so important to me that we each know we’re not alone in this, that we have the support from other sisters who have personal experiences that call into question the veg*n demand. Thank you, again.
Thank you for sharing more about your story. I did not know about the panic attacks, you poor thing. And thanks for all the compliments for the way I write. I do wish fellow feminists would read Lierre’s book, not necessarily for the food politics, but because she describes so well how agriculture is destroying the planet.
Thank you so much, Paleosister, and all of you. Lierre has called some of the vegan movement behavior like a cult and I agree wholeheartedly. What else do you call it when ex-vegans who tell their stories are given death threats? One blogger told her story in such emotional detail, including how agonizing it was for her to give up being vegan, and she gets weekly death threats.
Meanwhile, a woman who insists she’s a “radical feminist” and “old friend” of Lierre’s has reposted the video showing the cowardly men in masks attacking Leirre because she dared to speak publicly about her beautiful book. This vegan laughs about a disabled woman being hit in the face by 3 masked individuals, and now wants to further humiliate Lierre by lying about how she ate as a vegan. and by showing the video for vegan pleasure. But it has backfired because it reveals the level of cruelty in this kind of vegan politics and how it is the opposite of feminist.
Wasn’t a basis of our radical Feminist movement that we would believe women who no one else believed who dared to say they had been raped by their fathers or other male family? Or that we believed rape victims that police would not believe? But those who say their health was permanently destroyed by being vegan is not believed? Why are these enforcers, policers of vegan policy so patronizing? How dare they question your use of the term “survivor?” How many former vegans have not survived? There have been far too many suicides.
“I know other women are quite upset about being shamed for eating what they need.”
The critical word here is “shamed”. Once shame enters into the equation, nothing can ever be right about it.
I responded on Radfem Hub and am glad you are writing about this. I have great respect for Sheila and her work, but I do not see consistency in her argument about veg*nism. As I stated on the Hub, my doctor suggested I try beef since I was anemic. This doctor is a vegetarian! Iron pills made me feel sicker. I am also gluten sensitive, and veg*ns promote eating of grains that make me sick. Some other women on there were saying that they could not eat a veg*n diet and stay healthy.
When I and others posted that on the hub, saying we’d had health problems and needed to eat meat, and then women came back with posts insisting veg*n is the only ethical way to eat as a feminist, this seemed not to acknowledge what we’d said, nor any concern about the health of other woman. The only conclusion is that they don’t care if women get sick or even die from a diet that hurts them.
When someone mentions PETA on a radfem website, I cannot help but feel I’ve been sold out. Their ads are some of the most women hating I’ve seen in a long time. The misogyny is clear, why would a radical feminist be associated with them? Why equate all meat eating with factory farming? I do not understand this.
There are many women in the world with many kinds of diets. I believe that not accepting the foods that other women eat, a barrier is put up. Many women eat whatever they can find. We need to be able to reach out to all kinds of women.
Thank you so much for writing this. You are very brave! I consider myself a survivor of veganism, as well. And I like how you point out that at a certain time it ceases to feel like something you have chosen, and becomes instead something you must do or else you feel like a horrible person. It is pummeled into your head (and I cringe when admitting that I used to be a vegan doing the pummeling) that veganism is the ONLY ethical diet, and part of being a decent feminist. It can be hard to abandon that, even as your health and vitality are crumbling right in front of your eyes. I regret so much that I used to equate veganism with feminism, I fell for it hook line and sinker. I am so glad I finally realized that I was no threat to the patriarchy while vegan – I was too weak to get out of bed, what kind of feminist could I be!?! If someone can be healthy on a vegan diet, that is wonderful and they should eat how they feel best. But veganism must stop being equated with the most ethical or compassionate or environmentally responsible diet. It is not. And it is hurting people and eroding the feminist movement.
Tasha!! It’s wonderful to see you post here.
“But veganism must stop being equated with the most ethical or compassionate or environmentally responsible diet. It is not.”
Right. So, we were suffering for absolutely no reason whatsoever! If land has to be cleared for the growth of legumes, corn, wheat, what-have-you, your destroying the habitat of all the animals that use that land as their home. Today, every living thing is cleared off the soil including the bacteria. Humans do not have the right to destroy the habitat of so many animals; this should be basic to any AR philosophy.
I have read almost all your blog (as much as my vegan brain could take anyway) and it very much reminds me of FOX News website. It is arguably biggest stack of lies, misinformation, and false unproven statements on the entire internet.
Your can not be taken serious if you state in your first post this blatant lie.
“11,000 years ago our ancestors did not eat carbohydrates in any significant quantity.”
Perhaps you could explain then what our ancestors ate, because sure as hell they did not eat meat. Through our whole evolutionary development up until relatively recently human ancestors were fruitvores, just like bonobos whos DNA is closer to humans than that of chimpanzees who do occasionally eat meat.
All other present day primates are almost exclusively fruitwores what is undeniable proof that evolution eliminated all omnivore primates. We were never equipped by nature to acquire and consume meat. Humans have no way to kill cow using nothing but bare hands let alone eat any piece of it. Our digestive system has no ability to get rid of uric acid without compromising our immune system.
Are you lying to yourself or are you just so ignorant and do not realise that to grow 1 calorie of meat you have to produce 4 calories of corn. Wast majority of corn and soy produced in the world is not eaten by humans, it is eaten by animals to produce meat. We could have 50% less areable land if we all stop eating meat.
Your alleged 11 years of suffering on vegan diet looks to me suspicious if not completely false.
You name yourself paleosister yet you admit that you don’t stick to paleo diet either. Are you perhaps McD munching, Coke drinking, M&Ms consumer pretending to be something else for on the internet just to be famous in your imaginary world?
Marcin,
I”m gonna guess you’re part of that 30 bananas a day site, considering your putting forth the fruitivore mythology. I let your comment through to show the kind of comments I get on this website.
Also, this is a common mistake veggies (and, to be fair, others, make):
“Are you lying to yourself or are you just so ignorant and do not realise that to grow 1 calorie of meat you have to produce 4 calories of corn. Wast majority of corn and soy produced in the world is not eaten by humans, it is eaten by animals to produce meat. We could have 50% less areable land if we all stop eating meat.”
The natural diet of cows, pigs, and chicken is NOT the corn and soy they are fed today, just as they were never meant to be factory farmed. The corn, soy, and wheat grown today is done so by major corporations who have zero interest in disturbing food equally “if we all stopped eating meat.” They are doing what makes the most sense in economic terms by feeding it to the poor non-human factory-farmed animals.
hello, how can i contact the person running paleosister?
Hi Andrea,
I just sent you an e-mail. Let me know if you didn’t receive it.
@ marcin “Perhaps you could explain then what our ancestors ate, because sure as hell they did not eat meat. Through our whole evolutionary development up until relatively recently human ancestors were fruitvores, just like bonobos whos DNA is closer to humans than that of chimpanzees who do occasionally eat meat.”
Fruitarians point to the fruit-loving chimps as proof – they’re our closest living relatives (though not as close as the purely carnivorous Neanderthals were, not that they’d acknowledge that little fact) and they eat a diet of roughly 70% fruit, with some insects and other plant matter thrown in. If they’re our closest living relatives, doesn’t it follow that our diet should be pretty similar to theirs? I dunno about you, but I consider six million years of evolutionary change to be a pretty significant amount of time (http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2009/10/01/tech-biology-hominid-fossil-ardi.html)
chimps hunting a monkey http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDFh5JdYh7I
chimps using weaponry http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/22/AR2007022201007.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248497901615
fossil evidence that shows hominids actually manipulated bones “on which flesh was abundant… rather than defleshed from field kills.” We weren’t just starving opportunists. We actively hunted animals, large and small, to obtain large amounts of meat and fat.
-andrea ( also a survivor of veganism)
‘(bonobo)This primate is mainly frugivorous, but supplements its diet with leaves and meat from small vertebrates such as flying squirrels and duikers,[31] and invertebrates.[32] In some instances, bonobos have been shown to consume lower-order primates.[33][34] Some claim that bonobos have also been known to practice cannibalism in captivity, a claim disputed by others.[15][16] However there is at least one confirmed report of cannibalism in the wild as reported by researchers Gottfried Hohmann and Andrew Fowler.[35]‘
How did people hunt without weapons? It’s very easy, they were good runners and ran the animals to exhaustion. There are some remarkable youtube videos that show this and a recent book about it, Born to Run. “Tarahumara Indians . . . custodians of a lost art. For centuries they have practiced techniques that allow them to run hundreds of miles without rest and chase down anything from a deer to an Olympic marathoner while enjoying every mile of it.” (From book review on Amazon). I haven’t read the book, so I can’t give details.
Thanks for the help. It’s time consuming and irritating for me to have to respond to utter nonsense.
Plus, we laid in wait and grabbed them. I caught hundreds of frogs when I was a kid. A few thousand years ago, I would have eaten them raw, or given them to my mother to cook.
True about the frogs, kids can catch them. We also tried eating fried grasshoppers once. But maybe they don’t qualify as animal protein. . .
Sure, they do! (Hey, this is coming from a former vegan!
).
[...] feminism to the animal rights movement rather than vice versa, pro-veg*n arguments have certainly caused rifts within the feminist movement. I’d rather not provide more examples to outsiders than the one [...]
My comment is probably a bit late, but I was first reading Sheila’s article, which then led me to your blog and this post.
I must say this has been a very interesting and thoughtful debate, thanks for all the great contributions. I’m a happy vegetarian myself – purely out of feminism – but only since 6 months and so far have only felt positive effects about it (I generally feel better and more energetic). However if at one split moment I notice any kind of health problem that is related to lack of meat, then too bad, my health goes first, there will be no hesitation.
I had no idea veganism could be so health threatening for some, I’m glad I got to read more about it, as well as the politics within the vegan movement. I definitely agree with the point that it’s counter-feminist to shame other women for their eating habits: for one, that’s what patriarchy does all the time in order to destroy their will, strength and self esteem while starving them; it only divides the movement and wastes precious feminist energy; and choosing to be a vegan in itself will not kill patriarchy. Only feminist revolt will! (By the way, we always keep saying that, but nobody, including me, has come near to describing how precisely that’ll come forth). : P
But the vegan/vegetarian/animal-eating debate does bring me to a few puzzles:
if we do eat animals and accept that part of life is killing and consuming, what distinguishes morally between killing members of other species rather than our own? Sometimes people can have more affection for animals than human beings, so why should animals be killed rather than humans for consumption? (I’m not advocating this by the way, simply raising what seems to me a moral paradox).
Also, I’m pretty sure plants feel harm and the desire for life to, as all life does – they consume each other as plants as well – so when and where do we decide that consuming one sentient being is better than consuming another?
I have no answers, but whatever they are, one thing I am sure about is that the patriarchal way to go about life in general is definitely what we need to get rid of, no matter what we eat.
It’s never to let to comment!
Thanks for sharing a bit about yourself. I do think vegetarian diets (ones that include eggs and milk) do work for some people. It also depends on their background level of health. As I’ve mentioned before, when Tibetan monks went to India and followed a vegetarian diet, they got very sick. So being veg. just doesn’t work for everyone.
“if we do eat animals and accept that part of life is killing and consuming, what distinguishes morally between killing members of other species rather than our own? ”
This is an important question. I highly recommend reading radical feminist Liere Keith’s book![]()
, if you haven’t already. My best answer is that humans, like all animals, have to eat to live. In extreme circumstances, humans have been known to eat other homo sapiens. I could be wrong, but I don’t believe we evolved by doing this, however. Anyhow, if you’ve read Keith’s book, then you understand that no matter what we eat, other beings will die. Eating annual monocultures–which is essentially all the soy, corn, legumes, and on and on are not saving the planet. Entire ecosystems are destroyed from this practice. This is not to blame individual vegetarians or vegans, but it’s simply to say we can’t have a healthy planet with annual monocultures.
As an aside, I was excited to see an article on the paleo diet on the progressive site Alternet. I’m so used to seeing the veggie diet promoted, that it was a real treat to see the diet that works for me–as challenging as it is to follow in the real world–be discussed.
I look forward to seeing you around the feminist blogosphere more, Witchwind!