I am feeling somewhat strange as I sit down to write this post. I've been planning it for a while. I envisioned it being uplifting and positive in tone, and I was greatly looking forward to highlighting some of my favourite activists out there who defy mainstream culture in some way, or who are raising awareness of human and animal rights issues simultaneously. I still want to infuse that sense of positivity and hope into what I write today, as I have some truly badass people to cover here. ❤️
However, my thoughts have acquired a sombre tone after hearing about the woman who shot and injured a number of people at the YouTube headquarters yesterday. She used to make videos about veganism and animal rights. The vegan community around the world has been left shocked and dismayed by this awful incident. I simply cannot write a cheerful post about vegan activism that totally ignores what has happened. My heart and my conscience won't let me do it.
It has been said that the woman was driven to carry out the shooting because she believed that YouTube was suppressing her videos and stunting her channel's growth. There must have been deeper problems than that going on in her life, of course – many people have been angered by YouTube's business model over the years, and as far as I'm aware, none of them have been driven to go out and shoot people over it – but that is the motive being reported in the media. The woman is dead now. She cannot explain what drove her to carry out this attack. All I know is, she was not adhering to the core principle behind veganism when she did this. She was not demonstrating a sense of respect for her victims' right to life and safety.
There is one other element of this tragic incident that really needs to be highlighted. I am neither a U.S. resident nor a person of colour, so I would never claim to be an expert on this issue, but the one thing I do know is this: shooting at innocent human beings with the aim of seriously wounding them or ending their lives is always a reprehensible act, and the racial background of the perpetrator should never be a relevant factor when judging these cases ... but the truth is, it so often is. There have been countless cases over the years where white people have walked free after killing unarmed, defenceless people of colour. These cases have rightfully provoked enormous outrage, but it seems that very little is being done to address the problem.
Christopher Sebastian – a black vegan activist whose work I will describe in this post – ironically remarked, "Well now, what’s really interesting is to see if we can get some gun control going if female Muslim vegans are shooting up white workplaces."
The fact that the person behind the YouTube shooting was female is also a highly unusual feature of this case. According to an analysis by USA Today, women are suspects in just 6% of U.S. mass shooting incidents. I don't want to engage in any further speculation about the incident – I didn't know the woman, I don't know what was happening in her life, and I don't know the full facts of the situation – so there is not much more to be said, except that it must have been deeply distressing for all involved. I hope with all of my heart that everyone who was injured makes a full recovery, and that all who witnessed the attack – or were in the building when it happened – can access any psychological support they need to cope with it.
So ... now that I've started this post on a somewhat depressing note (I do apologise for that – as I said, I simply couldn't bring myself to write a cheerful, upbeat article on vegan activists that totally glossed over the seriousness of what happened yesterday), I will try to raise the tone by highlighting a few great people whose work on human rights issues – in addition to animal rights issues – inspires me on a regular basis.
Honey La Bronx, the Vegan Drag Queen
Image Source: ecorazzi.com
I love Honey LaBronx for her sass and humour. She is a native of Wisconsin who moved to New York City in 2000. Honey uses her drag performances to help spread the vegan message, and has even hosted her own vegan cooking show. As a member of Queer Rising, Honey was heavily involved in the 2011 struggle for marriage equality in New York State, and she even went to jail fighting for marriage equality alongside her drag mother, Bob The Drag Queen (who won Season 8 of RuPaul’s Drag Race). There is a certain irony in the fact that her name is Honey, but she explained in a recent Facebook post that this was her drag name long before she became vegan, and as it was a name that she liked, she stuck with it. "It’s a question I don’t enjoy answering because I get asked far too often. Kinda giving myself permission to stop answering it and just let people deal with it," she added. You can check out her website here.
Aph Ko
femalefirst.co.uk
Aph Ko is an independent digital media producer, a decolonial theorist and the founder of Black Vegans Rock. Along with her sister Syl Ko, she is the co-author of Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters. This book arose from a series of essays, articles and thought pieces that were originally published on the website aphro-ism. In the book, Aph explained, "Aphro-ism began as a website that I decided to launch after being fatigued with guest blogging on websites that other people owned. I wanted to offer a space that was dynamic, that tackled the deep entanglements of oppression, and simultaneously offered ways of moving closer toward liberation without privileging page clicks or compromising the analysis for vapid visibility. As a person of color who holds decolonial sensibilities, I felt like I didn’t really fit into any movement at all; therefore, I knew that I needed to carve out my own space. She decided on the name “aphro-ism” because it sounded like “aphorism”, which means “truth.” Her website is aphko.com.
Christopher Sebastian
Image Source: arzonepodcasts.com
Christopher Sebastian, also known as Christopher Sebastian McJetters, is well-known within the field of vegan activism and academia for his in-depth examinations of the complex relationships between speciesism, racism, and queer oppression. He regularly contributes to the blog Striving With Systems, if you would like to read his writings there. He is an adjunct lecturer at Columbia University. In a recent talk at the university, he summarised his work thus:
The mainstream vegan movement usually focuses almost exclusively on the consumption of animals’ bodies. I want to talk about the psychology that goes into why we do this, the way that we do this and the ways that animal violence and exploitation manifests itself outside of our food system. What we do to other animals informs how we treat one another on this planet, and it is always — always — someone who doesn’t have institutional power, and they’re usually brown. The commonality of [black people and animal] oppression under the scope of white supremacy … does not mean it is making a comparison; it is the fact that whiteness has analysed us and decided that we are not worthy of our individual selves and our individual bodily autonomy and that we get to be objectified and used. Both of us, black people and animals.
Frankie Mouche
Image Credit: Queer Vegan
Frankie is a non-binary, autistic vegan writer who lives in Britain. On their website, Queer Vegan, they document their thoughts on animal rights issues, transitioning, the challenges of autism, gardening and vegan food. I love the point they make in a pertinent blog post called Animal Rights Ideology about welfarism, as it touches upon one of the reasons why I am really not a big fan of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). They wrote:
Welfarism focuses on a single issue at a time, for example a reduction or termination of the use of primates in medical research. This is said to be “baby steps” towards creating a world where animals are not abused by humans. The main ideology is that it is okay to use animals as long as you are nice about it. For example, it is okay to raise and then slaughter a cow if she has had a nice life. Big charities such as PETA make money from welfarism and single issue campaigns. They call for more humane methods of slaughter (oxymoron) such as controlled atmosphere killing (CAK) saying that it will greatly increase the welfare of chickens, for example. They get their unknowing volunteers onto the streets to educate people about this campaign and then ask for donations. In the meantime, they are in discussions with the likes of KFC telling them how much more of a profit they will make because people will feel better about eating their product and their efficiency will be up. Once KFC agrees to this, PETA hail “victory”, and people feel like they have made a difference for animals. In reality all they done is make animal agribusiness more profitable and moved further away from animal liberation, whilst filling the charity coffers.
My rant about PETA will have to wait until another post. 😉 In the meantime, thank you so much for reading!
