Letters to the Editor
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2.3% Vegetarian?
Source? Sounds low, like the surveys on atheism ... who's asking the question, and how is it asked and what does the question say? And how is 'vegetarianism' defined? etc.
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Stop with the blanket statements about vegans
Your write up doesn't mention that the NYT article also quotes many prominent members of the vegan community who are against using sex to "sell" veganism. Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Bob Torres are both quoted about being against this. Yes there is debate amongst vegans about the use of such images to promote veganism. However, most vegans are feminists who are tired of sexist bullshit that PETA and their ilk put out. Many of us dislike that the authors of Skinny Bitch are preying on women's insecurities in the name of veganism. So please don't paint us all with such a broad brush as most everyday vegans don't approve of exploiting women in the name of veganism.
While I am a radical and a vegan, this whole "radical vegan movement" sounds similar to "radical islamofascists". It's sad that desiring a cruelty-free society is such a radical concept that we get talked about in terrorist like tones.
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OMG!
We live in a morally ambiguous complex world! And people whose set of ethics is different from mine do things that I think are unethical! Who knew?
What this article could use would be some analysis of the ethical bases of animal rights and whether there's something inherently contradictory in animal rights groups using sex to sell their cause.
Ms. Lloyd pieces seems to assume either that such a contradiction exists or that sex (or, at least, sex-as-commodity) is always exploitative. Either assumption should be delineated or explained.
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It's not T&A. It's tapping into women's insecurities.
I don't think "Sex Sells" is the tactic PETA's using at all. I read "Skinny Bitch," and the message I got from it was that if you eat meat or animal by products you're basically nothing more than a disgusting, slothful waste of bio-matter, whereas Vegans are chic, lithe and gorgeous. Quite a big change from the stereotype of vegans as smelly, crusty, hippies!
The tactic is really no different than any other used to sell products, services, lifestyles, books, etc. to women: Tap into they're insecurities about body image and then promise an "ultimate solution." As I read in a Salon review on Skinny Bitch, the narration of Skinny Bitch essentially reads like the voice inside the mind of an anorexic, which is always calling the woman "lazy" and "fat pig."
What's really sad is that this might be the most successful tactic to date! It's a shame that a simple message of respect and kindness toward all living things just isn't bankable.
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The Political Palate
I have a set of cookbooks put together by a lesbian collective during the 1980s with the above title. The subtitle: Feminist Vegetarian Cooking. There have always been associations between red meat and manliness, and these women saw their diet as one way of separating that. But even as a vegetarian and a feminist, I personally never really cared about that connection. I just like the recipes. And I think there is just as much to be said for the Virgin Huntress myth; you think Artemis ate salads? I don't think there is any particular fixed connection between feminism and vegetarianism, and I know lots of fellow feminists who are also farmers. OMG, THEY EAT THEIR HENS AFTER THEY STOP "LAYING"!!!
Please. If you refuse to become selectively obsessed with the old dualistic Aristotelean mythos, you can eat whatever you please. The idea is to be trusted with your own choices, and to make them mindfully. As the above-mentioned moldy old dead rigid white guy once said, the unexamined life is not worth living. Even the King of Dualism knew that, so why can't we seem to get it?
I might not like the tactic of half-nude models in cages, but I seriously doubt that those women did it against their will. In fact, one might argue that that particular image speaks as much to women's rights as to animal rights.
And while I do think it's sick to hear an animals rights person throwing around words like feminazi, that sort of group has always thrown words and images around just as shamefully as any anti-abortion zealot. It is one of the reasons I don't give them money, even though I agree with their basic cause. You don't really HAVE to be an asshole to get attention. You could work hard and do grassroots organizing like Planned Parenthood does. But, waah, that's SO much work!
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Sex doesn't just sell, it's healthy and good.
Remember girls, your choices about your own sexuality are only valid when they're approved by carol lloyd.
It would be nice to read some sex-positive feminists in this space.
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Also noted in the Times piece, but not here,
is that consuming the flesh of killed animals is socially constructed normatively as a sign of masculinity, not to mention normalcy. Maybe Mr. Diablo’s misguided efforts represent a defensive reaction to being marginalized as irrelevant, effeminate, or gay? Who knows?
But how is it that the tongue-in-cheek snark used in “Skinny Bitch” to promote a healthy diet and body constitutes “exploitation of women”? Is it actually that women who have not developed control of what they eat (sorry, “Check me out, I can eat a big steak just like a high-status man!” doesn’t count) are distressed by women who have?
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Vegans are like the rest of us
Vegans are not a uniformly puritan moralistic lot. It's nice to know that diet does not define them... Sex sells to vegans as it does to the rest of us. Now address the "sex sells" issue in general, if you want, but don't single out vegans.
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What you started to talk about but then seemed to back away from
is something that disturbs me a lot not only about the vegan movement but a number of other reasonable causes. It's disturbing enough that many of them often become in their essence religions, but that in their confidence in the righteousness of their cause, decide that any means is justified.
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Re: Exploiting women to protect animals?
It should be pointed out that not all vegans approve of such tactics. I'm vegan but I refuse to support PETA because of their sexist ads (among other things I don't like about them). In fact there is a feminist movement within the animal rights movement that points out how women's bodies have been conflated with meat, designed for men's "consumption", in advertisements and pop culture. Carol J. Adams' book The Sexual Politics of Meat discusses the intersection of women's and animal rights.
And I also doubt that the vegan strip club is catering to vegan men, as I would guess there are few vegans who visit strip clubs anyway. It's just a way to get omnivorous strip club customers to try vegan food and discover that it can actually taste quite good.