My Coming Out Story: On Being Agender

I rarely talk or think about being agender. Most of the time it feels pointless. I will forever be her, reminding myself to turn around when someone has called out a name that is unfamiliar and doesn't belong to me. I can't change that, but my silence feels complicit. I don't want to be an accomplice with a world that refuses me my own gender identification.

Passing

Passing is a term in feminist circles meant to suggest that someone of a minority is assumed to be "normal" or what everyone else is. The minority is typically a stigmatized group and by passing as "normal" they will receive preferential treatment. If you saw me on the street you would immediately think she. I pass as female. For the last year my hair was a bubblegum pink curly bob. Now it's aqua and long ocean hair somehow makes me girly. I wear dresses and purple short shorts with yellow flowers. I even regularly hold hands with a person that passes as male, making us pass for a heterosexual couple. This is how I pass, and I do so knowingly.

As an asexual panromantic agender person, passing has been a point of frustration for me. I am assumed female and heterosexual until I prove otherwise. Proving is dangerous though. Telling every person you meet, "please don't refer to me as she", or "just so you know, there is zero chance I will be sexually attracted to you, thought you might like to know", is a social transgression. I could try and look androgynous so I wouldn't have to say it, and I have done this in the past, but can't I wear a dress, menstruate, and not be a woman?

Passing holds a very precarious place in my heart. I love that I can look in the mirror and see someone very femme. But I don't want to be assumed female. I cringe every time someone reads my name (Talia or Natalie) and then immediately after the pronoun she comes into vogue. I also know by passing as female, I am safe from transphobic violence. I am physically safe, but feel like I don't really belong anywhere. Many trans people are male to female or female to male or look androgynous, but that is not where I stand and that is not my story. I live through the benefits and pain of passing.

Coming Out

My agender coming out story practically never happened, which is perhaps why I find it so intriguing. By this point my mother knew that I was a vegan asexual feminist. Her response to all of these labels was she wished I wasn't, I was making my life harder. My mother was driving me somewhere and I was sitting in the front seat of the car. I was talking to her about agender people because one, I find the topic fascinating, and two, I was dipping my feet in. When she hadn't gotten angry yet I quietly said, "Mom, that's what I am." Then she let out this sigh and said, "Of course you are." And the topic changed and that was the end of it. I asked her about it another day and what she had meant was, Talia, you're already all of these weird identities, of course you're another one. It was like she was sighing and saying, just your bad luck. Or, here we go again. Like I said, not much of a story, but it's stuck with me.

I have not repeated my agender coming out often. None of my other family members know I am agender. I go through life being she. I am her, the female, with the boyfriend.

The only exception is online. Almost all of the cisgender (people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth) male friends I've met through playing online video games have been supportive. They hear my voice over voice chat programs and assume I am female and I will tell them quickly that while I may seem female, and am called female, I do not identify that way. I don't think any of them get it, but they accept it. At worst they forget it, but in a well meaning way because it just doesn't fit into something they can understand. They tried though, they always do. I think it's the distance that makes it safe to out myself. It's also the masculine atmosphere of World of Warcraft that compels me to identify as agender, pointing out I am not a male buddy, and I am not a female conquest either. I am outside of your boundaries and I want you to make space for me. I think they do, or at least they pretend to.

The Fluidity of My Gender

Although I have said I am agender up until this point, it is not that simple. I am not always this nothing beyond a binary system. If I think about it long and hard there is no word for how I feel. It is an experience of nothing, and yet it doesn't feel empty. It is just what it is, complete in its own ineffability.

Other days I will wake up and there are words for it. I can be femme or feminine. On those days I even giggle at being called a princess or being greeted as miss or lady. I know they are meant as terms of endearment and they amuse me because they are not too far off. Not right, but just outside the boundary of the inexplicable I am. Lesbian almost seems appropriate, but in the way Monique Wittig meant it and not in that I'm sexually attracted to women. I am still asexual. On those days I still don't like she. She is always someone else, someone not me. Like being called the wrong name by someone you don't know very well and you sigh, wondering, should I correct you? What will be least uncomfortable for everyone involved? Because there is no way to avoid the discomfort.

I once had someone tell me I think so much, I thought my gender away. I looked and looked for something, and found nothing, so I decided there was nothing. I'm not sure he's wrong. Sometimes I wonder if gender is as much a discourse as Foucault's sexuality and while it is multiplying while everyone else looks for its secrets, I've looked in a different way and found nothing there and been surprised at it all. To say that though would mean a lot. It would mean something about your gender and I don't think I want to go there right now. I'll just speak for myself, but the feeling remains. If Beauvoir said women are made, not born, maybe I am unmaking myself? I can't help but wonder. Which leads me onto my troubles with feminism.

I am an agender Feminist

In Gender Trouble Judith Butler said one of the problems with feminism is that it assumes a female subject, constricting the very identity it hopes to liberate. Over twenty years later and this hasn't changed much, from what I've seen. Yes we've got trans feminism and intersex feminism and all kinds of fantastic third wave stuff that makes me squeak with delight, but when it comes down to it I am still sitting in feminist classrooms being taught by women to women who are all feeling pretty damn safe because I am a woman. Put one "man" in the class and it throws the whole vibe off. Once he admits he's gay everyone settles down a little (as occurred in my intro to women's studies class), but everyone is still aware he is there. To be a woman in a woman's studies class is to be in the know, to be included. To be spoken for. The foundation of the theory largely relies on the fact that I am a woman, but I'm not.

So I feel this weird backwards pull, the desire to be a woman amidst feminist. Yes, I menstruate! I want to say. Yes, I understand what it's like to be afraid of the dark at night and to pick my shoes based on how likely I am to be raped based on where I'm going! Through these affirmations I realized I do belong, these theories speak for me, whether I am a woman or not. I am, as some feminists have said, in the class of woman. I belong to the social organization called woman, but I am not a woman. I am something else, I only fit neatly into this patriarchal category we all bond together inside. So this is a liberating thought, when I remember it. If I, an agender person, can be in the class of women, what about men? Is there room for them in here too? Sometimes, although they, like me, need a little wiggle room. We need our own theories, but I'm confident we'll get there safe and sound.

I am an agender vegan

I first thought against writing this post because, what does agender have to do with vegan, and isn't this a vegan feminist blog? But I am a vegan feminist and my life is this complex web of intersections. Being agender and vegan do intersect, or, more importantly, they don't. Being trans or agender is a non-issue in the vegan community. By non-issue, I mean it is not spoken about as far as I have seen. I'm not sure if this is a "don't ask don't tell" policy or similar to their feminist policy, which is generally "if we're vegan for political reasons, we almost certainly accept feminism as important. Not the most important, but important." I suspect the latter, so there isn't much to write, aside for this: lately for me I've grown a little disenchanted by animal rights. We vegans say time and time again that we will not save the world or be at peace by putting humans first. Feminists say this too in a slightly different way. We need to find peace for everyone all at once. We can't leave anyone behind. I especially have begun to feel this way after reading Derrida's The Animal That Therefore I am.

Vegans need to be a little bit more open about saying all rights, for all animals, right now. Not because we'll get some humanists or other people who will say, well we think you hate humans, but because we are all equally important. Our campaign posters should simultaneously say we support animal rights, the end of animals as property, being queer, being trans, and all of those other variations humans can be and are. Yes animal rights is important, but we're all here together. We know we can't just save pigs, we've got to save cows, and chickens, and fish too. Dogs while we're at it. Humans as well. We're animals too.

Killing Animals is Environmental Destruction: Why Feminists and Environmentalists Shouldn't Eat Animals

Feminism and the Environment

Feminism and veganism should both be concerned with the environment, but I write should because there are many people who ascribe to these philosophies and do not value or actively participate in environmentalism. An ethic that includes the environment is integral to veganism and feminism.

Feminism, largely focusing on women, has long analyzed the environment because women have been equated with the environment. As far back as Darwin and even much earlier in Aristotle's writing, the female pronoun "she" is used to replace the environment. The environment has been feminized in literature; it has been equated with the female. This is extremely apparent in religions and stories that refer to nature as "mother earth" and bestow life-giving abilities in her. From the womb, the soil, she can make life. Although this is not a trait all women have, women alone have it.

Many feminists, most notably ecofeminists, have embraced this female-nature hybrid. They write that the land, like women, can be raped (read Tong's book Feminist Thought for more on this). Pain is experienced similarly because they are the same, or at the very least have historically been treated by men and patriarchy the same. Women, the land, and nature, have been dominated. This argument says that we should be concerned with the environment, as feminists, because this is a similar oppression to one we already oppose. To some, this is the origins of the oppression of women. Women are oppressed because they, like everything else (including nature) must be subdued. Along with that train of thought comes all sorts of complications (that puts females closest to nature, what about men or trans people?), but my point is only that the environment matters in a feminist discourse. The environment is oppressed in some way that maps onto female oppression and so to oppress the environment is similarly wrong as it is to oppress women.

The Nature/Culture Divide

Western society loves dualisms, especially nature/culture. Nature is set up as everything culture is not and culture as everything nature is not. They are incompatible opposites. There is no gradient and no overlap. The nature/culture dualism means that humans fall under culture (as creators of culture) and are not nature. Humans, and their creations, are not natural. This has led humans to be disconnected from nature. Every time a building is constructed nature is obliterated. Nature is something out there, not here, and our entrance into it often destroys it. One person can enter nature and become a small, insignificant, witness to nature, but if too many people enter it nature is gone. This is a problem because it means humans can never be part of nature, enjoy nature, or want to protect nature just because it is kin (although this is not true for all humans of course).

So we've got this nature/culture divide with humans on the side of culture, and I believe it it this divide that is to blame for our inability to realize that killing animals is environmental destruction. Cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, and other farmed animals are "made" by humans. We breed their parents (forcibly, we rape them with instruments or we arrange for their rape), we raise them, and if we don't like what we have, we selectively breed them so as to produce certain offspring. The farmed animals are part of culture because they are objects made by us, so we think. This ideology extends to all animals we kill eventually. The deer we hunt or the geese we shoot are not nature. We have allowed them to live in a land controlled by humans, their death only the inevitable end. We already owned them in our minds and thus, when they do die, we are merely ending the lives of our property and not nature. If they were their own free agents it would be a crime to kill them... but I get ahead of myself. All animals that humans kill are part of culture because as the creators of culture, we own them because we have the right to kill them. Humans feel as if we govern all animals.

The whole dualism is problematic, but the most troubling part is that animals are placed under culture and human dominion because it allows us to kill them without seeing this as killing a living being (a part of nature).

Killing Animals is Environmental Destruction

It's very interesting to define the environment; the first image I get in my mind is a bunch of trees. Then I remember that there are ecosystems and insects and mice and all sorts of animals that make up this system. Trees, on their own, are not really an environment. They are not a nature... right? Cutting down a forest because it is just trees is environmental destruction because the trees are the environment. It's interesting then that killing a deer is not environmental destruction. Why not? It has memory, sensation, and life... to take those things away is very destructive, and it is just as much part of the environment as the trees. The trees are nature, the environment, because they are out there. So are deer, but they are only dragged down by the illusion that we own them, but property rights is a human invention. It really has nothing to do with deer. Similarly, cows are part of the environment. We only fail to realize this because out contact seems to have contaminated them. They are, at their core, natural beings. If we had a field of cows, not owned by humans, this would be nature. Our sense of ownership is the only thing that gets in the way, but this sense is a human cultural fiction made up to allow us to continue using and killing animals without moral calamity.

When we return animals to the side of nature, it becomes destruction to kill them. Killing a cow is just as much an end to nature as cutting down a tree. No matter how many water bottles you recycle, you still participate in environmental destruction by eating cow flesh for lunch. The cow, an environment in itself, is destroyed. This is the relationship of dead animals with oppressor. A life, so much more active than a tree's, has been ended. It is wrong for feminists and environmentalists to eat animals because to do so is to participate in the oppression, and destruction, of the environment. The environment is not just trees.

What is a Rape Rack?: Why Feminism Applies to Cows

What a Rape Rack is

Rape rack is the industry term, or nickname for, the device used to artificially inseminate female cows so that they become pregnant and can eventually produce milk for human consumption. Rape racks are also used on other animals such as monkeys to breed them for scientific experiments.

Why do I have to use the term rape rack? It describes reality.

Rape rack is a term that makes no apologies. Rape rack is graphic, horrifying, and violent. Rape rack calls to mind the life mutilating experience of being raped. All of these definitions are true and I will always use the word rape rack because I want to imply these meanings and others of similar gut wrenching quality.

As Carol J. Adams' wrote in The Sexual Politics of Meat, we must not use words that mask the reality of how non-human animals are treated. We must liberate our language. Saying a cow is artificially inseminated provides no anecdote or explanation of exactly what happened; artificial insemination could be anything from a little needle to a human hand inserted into the vagina. A rape rack implies that an object was used, the device was violently inserted into the vagina, and that the animal was violated.

This is not co-opting a term that only applies to humans. Rape happened. This makes us uncomfortable. It makes people squirm in their seats or call you a hysteric. It should make us squirm; it's absolutely disgusting that anyone would impregnate any animal against their will and the rape rack specifically violates right of personhood and autonomy. That is rape.

How Milk is Produced

I want to pause for a moment and return to my original definition of rape rack as "the device used to artificially inseminate female cows so that they become pregnant and can eventually produce milk for human consumption". I worded that very carefully because I want to stress how milk is produced, which surprisingly few people know. My parents, over 50 years old each, had no clue. I didn't know about it until after I went vegan. This is the birds and the bees and people flat out just don't know. It's nothing to be ashamed of; we are not taught about how milk is made on purpose because it's basically awful and I'd like to now give the space to have that discussion.

Humans are the only mammals (and thus animals) that can produce milk for their whole lives after only being pregnant once. If you keep taking the milk, humans will keep making it. I'm sure there are exceptions and maybe this isn't as natural as I'm led to believe, but it does explain our basic ignorance of how other animals work because the rest of them don't work like this. Non-human animals only produce enough milk for the baby or babies they just had. Female cows produce milk for one year after being impregnated.

Want cow milk? This is how you do it:
Step 1) Impregnate female cow with rape rack, human hand, or male cow (in descending order of likeliness, as I understand it).
Step 2) Female cow gives birth and you take the baby cow away in 24 hours to 7 days. Some farms wait longer, but who gives a damn? You are taking the baby away. That's not humane or acceptable. If the baby is male he will usually become a veal cow (yes even love to convince you they are awesome, organic, and humane farms do this, I've asked them when I still thought you could use animals nicely) and be shipped to another farm. Girl babies became dairy cows like mom.
Step 3) Milk cow for 1 year.
Step 4) Return to step 1 and repeat because she has now stopped producing milk. Repeat again and again until female cow stops producing optimum milk, usually at 3-4 years old. Then kill her. Put her in a hamburger, as if the rest wasn't insult to injury already.

Tadah you have milk! And the reason why vegetarianism doesn't help cows. And a really messed up situation that makes me want to scream every time someone brings a milk carton into lecture.

Why Cows and This Whole Thing Matters to Feminism

The simplest reason why this matters is because you can take almost any feminist theory and apply it to cows and you can convince yourself why drinking milk is really oppressive. Let's practice with rape myths! I'll throw a few out for you. If you aren't familiar with rape myths they are basically myths a society uses to not take rape seriously and blame the victim. They also blame the victim when it comes to cows. Here they are, and trigger warning because these are unpleasant.

Rape Myths for Humans and Non-Humans:
- They like it (aren't there pictures of happy cows everywhere?).
- They are naturally like this.
- They don't deserve any better.
- They are just animals.
- They asked for it.
- They should have protected themselves better.
- It's not really that bad.
- They're lying, it never happened (which you might be saying about me right now).

Another way to look at it is just because we are oppressed, does not mean we have no power. We oppress others and we have the power to stop. Many feminists don't care about going vegan because there are more important issues to worry about. No, this is all part of the same issue. Violence is violence. I am against using and abusing humans and non-humans. They are not so very different, just extend your circle of care. If you don't, you end up sounding as ridiculous as a feminist professor of mine who told me she's not vegan because her brother is a butcher. So if your brother was a rapist, would you not be feminist either?

The line between humans and non-humans is arbitrary. They feel pain and they suffer just as we do. Want to get postmodern? Challenge the category of the human just like feminists challenged sex and gender. This is all constructed to keep some group in power and it's disturbing to realize we have the power in this case and we are the ones with privilege.

Openly saying rape rack when I talk about cows is one of the most vegan feminist acts I can participate in; I look across an arbitrary boundary and I refuse the suffering of my sisters. Even if they are not your sisters, know that they were violated. Refuse to let anyone think anything less.

Applying Feminism to Veganism: Why Should Feminists be Vegan?

Putting it very simply, a feminist should be vegan to avoid being speciesist (and a hypocrite). That's the extremely simple, too long didn't read, version of this post. Before I directly apply feminism to veganism, there are a few concepts I'll briefly touch on that will hopefully explain why it is even relevant to consider applying feminism to non-humans.

Speciesism

Speciesism is very similar to sexism, racism, ableism, ageism, heterosexism, and all of the other nasty -isms rampant in society today. The only difference (between speciesism and all of the other -isms, as well as between all of the other -isms themselves) is who happens to be the favoured subject and who happens to be the discriminated against other. None of these discriminations are acceptable. They are all based on arbitrary characteristics that are highlighted and used as excuses to give one type of person less consideration.

To better illustrate speciesism I will provide you with a short summary of speciesism from a website about Dr. Richard Ryder, the professor who coined the word. This is from the website http://wwww.richardryder.co.uk.

"Speciesism is a term coined by Richard Ryder in 1970. The word refers to the widely held belief that the human species is inherently superior to other species and so has rights or privileges that are denied to other sentient animals. ‘Speciesism’ can also be used to describe the oppressive behaviour, cruelty, prejudice and discrimination that are associated with such a belief. In a more restricted sense, speciesism can refer to such beliefs and behaviours if they are based upon the species-difference alone, as if such a difference is, in itself, a justification."

"Ryder used the term as a deliberate ‘wake-up call’ to challenge the morality of current practices where nonhuman animals are being exploited in research, in farming, domestically and in the wild, and he consciously drew the parallel with the terms racism and sexism. Ryder pointed out that all such prejudices are based upon physical differences that are morally irrelevant. He suggested that the moral implication of Darwinism is that all sentient animals, including humans, should have a similar moral status."

I must also point out that when referencing speciesism, I am suggesting that non-human animals require equity rather than equality. We are not asking, as typical anti-animal rights jokes suggest, that dogs and cats be given the right to vote. We are asking that they be treated with similar, but different, consideration. That means that they would have some of our rights, and if necessary, might even have rights that we don't (because they don't apply to humans). The animal rights movement is specifically asking all animals be given the right to not be considered property. Humans are the only species that currently has this legal right.

The basis of all animal rights arguments usually implies that non-human animals should be considered people. As speciesism suggests, the characteristics that make non-human animals not people are arbitrary. I emphasize the world people because it will be very important when we directly apply feminism to non-humans. Everything that is happening, is happening to a living, breathing, sentient, person that is stuck in that body, often with no ability to understand what is going on.

Applying feminism to non-human animals

Since non-human animals are (or should be considered to be) people, we can apply many feminist quotes to them and read them as if the subject is a nongendered, male, or female, cow, cat, pig, chicken, or any sort of animal, rather than just a human woman.

Here is one example. It is probably not the best example, but it came up in the book I'm reading this week and it's really that simple. You can do this with nearly all feminist texts. This except is from The Newly Born Woman on page 70. Read it as if the subjects Cixous is talking about are non-human animals eaten and used by humans.

“So I am three or four years old and the first thing I see in the street is that the world is divided in half, organized hierarchically, and that it maintains this distribution through violence. I see that there are those who beg, who die of hunger, misery, and despair, and that there are offenders who die of wealth and pride, who stuff themselves, who crush and humiliate. Who kill. And who walk around in a stolen country as if they had had the eyes of their souls put out. Without seeing that the others are alive.”

The violence inflicted on Algerians by the French, that she is referring to in this passage, is historically, symbolically, and physically very similar to the violence that humans inflict on non-human animals. It is not, obviously, the exact same thing. The motives are different. The results were different. The major difference, however, is none of those things that cause us to typically object to linking non-human to human suffering. The major difference is that, in the case of non-human animals, we are all culpable. We are the oppressors, the violators, the guilty. We have done and do this on a daily basis, and I find myself asking... how can any feminist accept this?

All feminists can unite under the idea that there is some form of oppression that we need to get rid of. Many of us have been, and still are, oppressed for being born who we are and for choosing who we want to be. Because of this we often reject the our own ability to be oppressors, but if anything our victimization should lead us to understand how it feels to be oppressed. We should know better. We should know how much it hurts and reject our place in it. We know that (human) privilege comes at a cost and that others are paying for it. We devalue those others for the sole purpose of allowing ourselves to pretend we still have morals when we use them, because if we did not devalue them, if we saw cows as people, we could never do this to them.

Finally, feminists have heard nearly all of the excuses used to justify non-human animal oppression used before to justify other kinds of oppression.

• They aren't intelligent (ableists and sexists)
• We need them for our society to function (racists)
• They're only good for what we use them for (racists)
• This is natural (sexists and heterosexists)
• They should defend themselves (ageists and ableists)
• They don't have interests or reason (ableists and sexists)
• We need to protect them and to do that we have to own them (racists)

We didn't tolerate it then; we shouldn't now. In the inspirational words of Gary Francione:

"If you are not vegan, please go vegan. It is easy and better for your health and for the environment and, most important, it’s the morally right thing to do."

Why do we still need feminism?

We're in a strange place; you can turn on the television and watch a woman saying we don't need feminism and because of it men are suffering, or somehow on the exact same planet you can go to a university and take a PhD in Women's Studies and devote 10 years of your life to feminism.

So which is it; is feminism dead or alive, and who is it for?

FEMINISM FOR MEN AND WOMEN

Simone de Beauvoir answered these questions 63 years ago in her book The Second Sex. Beauvoir wrote that feminism is necessary for men and women; everyone is oppressed by our current system, just in very different ways.

To be clear, not all feminism can be boiled down to Beauvoir. She is but one of many influential feminists and I'm using her to make my point. Someone else could use Foucalt, Butler, Irigaray, Harraway, and so forth and make the case for feminism in a very different way.

Beauvoir believed that people of the female sex are made into "women" and that this is to our detriment. She explained that young girls are forced to wear dresses they can't move in, not allowed to climb trees, forbidden to fight and learn to defend themselves like their male peers do, encouraged to play with dolls, told that they should be married and be a mother, and taught to cook and clean. The upbringing of a girl makes her into a defenceless home keeper, or even worse a working mom who does the 9-5 job then comes home to cook and clean. This is further emphasized in her adult life when she is encouraged to become a mother and wear clothes that keep her defenceless (try running as successfully in a ball gown and heels as a man in his suit!). Beauvoir argues that boys are raised to be humans that work towards their goals whereas girls are raised to be parasites. We can see this clearly in her quote on page 749:

“Women are “clinging,” they are a dead weight, and they suffer for it; the point is that their situation is like that of a parasite sucking the living strength of another organism. Let them be provided with the living strength of their own, let them have the means to attack the world and wrest from it their own subsistence, and their dependence will be abolished – that of man also. There is no doubt that both men and women will profit greatly from the new situation.”

Ultimately, Beauvoir argues, there is nothing wrong with "women" naturally but the problem lies in how we are raised by our society to be women. If we raise girls to be human beings that can defend themselves and have actual choices then women will be able to be independent and men will be free of the parasite we've been trained to be.

So, according to Beauvoir, all we need to do is raise girls differently and give them choices. This is where it gets tricky. Antifeminists believe women have enough or too many choices. Feminists believe that although women have come a long way, we really don't have many choices. What seems to be choice is, if you look closer, not a choice at all.

WOMEN DON'T HAVE CHOICE

“The girl's choice is usually quite limited; and it could not be really free unless she felt free also not to marry.” Simone de Beauvoir "The Second Sex", p 433

Beauvoir and I would similarly argue that the choice women are said to have is an illusion. In many areas of their life, women are not able to say no. Thus, they are not free and have no choice. While they could physically say no, saying no comes with consequences that can range from stigma to physical assault. When there is any negative consequence that comes from saying no, saying no is not a free choice. I will illustrate this with several examples and personal experiences.

Having Children: Since women can have children, it is often assumed that it is their biological destiny to procreate. Even with obvious problems of overpopulation, women are still expected to become pregnant and have their own children. This is so pervasive that women who don't want children are seen as abnormal. I have known since grade 5 that I would never have human children. I have received a range of responses including: "You'll change your mind.", "You'll regret it if you don't.", "Don't you want to be a grandparent?", "What if your husband wants them?", and "Who will take care of you when you get old?". All of these responses assume that the person talking to me knows more about my body than I do, which is funny, as I've had it for 21 years thank you very much. It also assigns a stigma that would not exist if I had children at the appropriate age with the appropriate person. There is no choice, only societal hell to pay if I want to fight to keep my body child free.

Getting Married: In high school I decided that I'd never meet the right guy and never get married. Even though I have, we're still not getting married because I disagree with the institution of marriage. This results in the stigmatized questions of: "Don't you want to buy a wedding dress?", "But he'll always be your boyfriend.", "Don't you want a big wedding?", "What about a wedding ring?", and "You'll regret it." Once again, this is not a choice. There are clearly values assigned to one side over the other. If it were a choice, no one would have any say or comment on what I did with my future.

Having Sex: There is a remarkably appropriate amount of sex to have, which I think is ridiculous. If someone thinks you have too little, you get responses like I do such as "Your boyfriend will leave you" and "I feel sorry for your boyfriend" (both of these came from people very very close to me). If you have too much, you're a slut. The reason this occurs is because women are expected to have a certain amount of sex. Too little and we're not fulfilling our "biological role" as women. Too much and we're spoiled goods, which is ridiculous considering women are not property! The idea of the slut is a herald back to a time when women were property and men didn't want to share. We're no longer property under the law, but we still are when it comes to sex. When we can specify any amount of partners we want without any shame, then it will be a choice we make as free individuals.

Shaving: Like your grass lawn, women are expected to be shaved. There are a lot of good reasons not to shave. Some of them include: not looking like a prepubescent girl and because it grows back so it's a waste of your very important time (read a book instead!). I shave every once in a while because of the awful stigma that comes from not shaving. Clementine Cannibal, an amazing person I was lucky enough to have a class with, tells a story on her blog about being beaten up at a show because she didn't shave her armpits. We have no choice in this matter, it's shave or get ready to defend yourself. That is not the choice of a free individual.

Wearing a bra: Women have breasts and are thus expected to wear bras, even if they are uncomfortable for some of us. The amount of stares or indecent comments a women can get simply because she is not wearing a bra is surprising. I remember a friend once called my professor a "hippie" and was disgusted that she wasn't wearing a bra. This brilliant woman with her PhD in a field I could never even get through because it would take so much math had suddenly become nothing more important than a woman without a bra. Every accomplishment in her life was reduced to nothing because she failed to put on a bra that day. It is not a choice.

There are countless examples of women not having a choice when society claims that we do. The "choice" we have is really only one option that society values and we must face the wrath of society if we do not pick it. Women should be free to look however we want, sleep with whoever we want, and do whatever we want, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else in the process. Until we can, we still need feminism. Men need it too. We know they are not free either.

CONCLUSION

We still need feminism because both men and women are not free. You cannot save half of society and expect everything to turn out fine. Feminism is a means to liberate us all. There is dissension in feminism about how exactly we should go about gaining our freedom, which results in many different types of feminism, but I am pretty confident in saying that a feminist ethic of some kind is absolutely essential. We need it if we want to get out of this mess.

Gardening as Feminist and Vegan Activism

Gardening, for me, is a creative form of feminist and vegan activism. I'm not currently a dedicated vegan abolitionist, but I am strongly influenced by Gary Francione's ideas about activism as finding non-violent and creative ways to educate people. It's because of his ideas that I get excited every time I think about a creative and peaceful way to do activism. I don't think activism needs to follow a formula; I see it as an attempt that we go into with the best of intentions and are willing and ready to change or abandon if it accidentally becomes oppressive or hateful. Whatever activism looks like is unique to the activist, so I invite you to try gardening as a form of activism if it makes sense to you.

Gardening is a form of peaceful resistance that simultaneously makes us as gardeners more self reliant and allows us to financially support certain industries less. While many of us will never be fully self reliant when it comes to food, we can still make steps in the right direction and take control where we can.

Gardening is a form of feminist and vegan activism because it rejects the oppression both of these groups oppose. Both feminist and vegans oppose humans being taken advantage of. Commercial grocery stores sell plant produce that is either grown in "developing countries" by the local population or in "developed countries" by migrant workers. These workers are rarely paid appropriate wages, can experience physical and verbal abuse on the job, and are forced to keep these jobs and put up with the poor conditions to support their families. Even buying locally is not the solution; in Ontario, where I live, we have a large migrant worker population. Furthermore, nonhuman animals are killed regularly by pesticides and farm equipment. At their best, monocrops displace large native populations of animals. Gardening gives the activist complete control over the conditions that their produce is grown in and they know exactly who is affected and how.

Luckily for us, anyone can garden! Sprouts, most herbs (like basil, thyme, rosemary, mint etc.), wheat grass, and dandelions (for their leaves) can all be grown indoors year round. Tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, strawberries, zucchini, and rhubarb are just a few examples of plants that can grow in pots on your balcony or porch from Spring to early Fall. If you have the space for an in ground garden you can get creative and buy fruit trees (small ones go for $50-100) or grow plants like corn, raspberries, and pumpkins. Your local library or the internet can always provide more specific information about the amount of sun, soil quality, and pot size certain plants will need.

Be wary of information you find when it comes to "pests", most current information in gardening is influenced by an anthropocentric and speciesist train of thought that is ready and willing to trade animal death for the "perfect" looking garden. This is unnatural (as gardens are never perfectly kept and they're just fighting off the inevitable), cruel, and unnecessary. As activists we should be concerned with impacting other sentient creatures as little as possible. Our gardens should be designed to prevent encroaching "pests". Indoor gardens can be started from seed and any insects can be moved outside. If it's too cold out, buy your insect friends a plant (preferably with yellow flowers, aphids are attracted to those) that is just for them, and move them when it gets warmer. Outdoor gardens should avoid monocrops. If you plant 3 meters squared of tomatoes, then yes, you will get insects that eat tomatoes. Mix up your plants and add plants that deter insects (like citronella) or plants that attract predators (like sunflowers). There are usually natural and friendly remedies to get rid of all "pests", but they vary animal to animal and should be looked up individually and with patience. It might take getting to the 10th page of google before you find help that isn't cruel. For larger "pests" use netting, buy a small greenhouse with a see through plastic cover, or go to your local humane society and ask for cat feces (when I used to volunteer at one a fellow came in asking for this, saying it deterred raccoons).

Finally, the soil you buy matters. Read the ingredients in any soil you buy to avoid financially supporting products that kill or use nonhuman animals. It's really just as simple as buying a different bag. Avoid anything that contains blood meal, bone meal, manure, and compost (just to be safe). If you need a perk me up, go for natural fertilizers like used coffee grinds (Starbucks and Whole Foods gives bags of these away for free if you ask for them). If you happen to live near an animal sanctuary, offer a donation in exchange for their manure.

Bisexual and Lesbian Budgies

I've recently become interested in queer animals, specifically after reading that Canadian Geese in monogamous pairs were assumed to be heterosexual when many were in fact lesbians. This occurred because researchers assumed the two geese were male and female, instead of actually checking. I've started to pay a lot of attention to Mallard Ducks, whose sex is easy to tell unlike Geese, but completely forgot about the queer animals in my own home, until they started "making out" loudly to remind me. Before I begin explaining why they're queer and why this matters, I hope to bring a vegan ethic into my description of the birds I live with and introduce them as subjects of lives instead of subjects (really objects) of observation and scrutiny.

I currently live with three parakeets, or budgies as they are more commonly referred to. To preface my conversation, I will admit that they are all pets of some sort. As much as I might want them to be free agents, I have complete control over their lives. I could kill them, sell them, or breed them. I try to find ways around this problematic relationship, but to pretend it's gone would be silly of me. I am the owner, they the pets. Still, I do my best to disrupt this relationship. My budgies all live in a cage that is always open. They have free access to a room, toys, and food at all times. I often put on music for them, which they enjoy. One of them is adopted, and the other two come from before I was vegan and not critical enough to realize that selling any animal as property is wrong. I am very careful with their diet; I buy a two seed mix (as more complex mixes have D3), give them a lava rock (rather than mineral which contains bone), and give them lots of fresh veggies to supplement those nutrients. That might seem like a lot of useless information to preface queer animals, but how I interact with these animals is very important. I believe they are as sentient as I am, so treating them well is important.

To introduce my bisexual and lesbian budgies, I feel it's best to tell a story about their lives. Most of the story is about one of my budgie's many partners. Snowy was the second budgie I'd ever owned and I felt sad that she didn't like humans much, so I bought Isis to hopefully bond with her. Unfortunately, you can't tell what sex budgies are when they're young (or at least the people at a pet store can't) so female Snowy was put in a cage with, what turned out to be, female Isis. Snowy picked on Isis a little, but they generally ignored each other. In budgies, it's recommended that a pair be male and female to avoid fighting. Snowy eventually died and since Isis had always lived with other budgies, I felt bad for her. As a bit of an aside, I've always felt most drawn to Isis because she is so awkward. She is an eight year old albino budgie who has never been able to fly.

I got Skylar (who luckily turned out to be male) to live with Isis. Isis and Skylar constantly preened each other and clicked their beaks together as if making out, so I considered them to be a couple. As far as I know, they never had sex, which is interesting because that became a pattern with Isis. Skylar died of intense seizures so I got two new budgies to live with Isis.

Jack luckily turned out to be male and Colonel Mustard turned out to be female. At the beginning Jack and Isis would make out and preen each other, just as Isis had done before with Skylar. Isis still never had sex. Colonel Mustard and Jack hung out outside the cage together for most of the day like friends (and never preening one another) and then Jack would come inside to preen Isis (since she refuses to leave the cage) occasionally.

I was later given Junebug, a female budgie, so that she wouldn't go to a humane society. I raised Junebug on her own for a little, but when she heard the other budgies in another room, I introduced her to them. Over time Jack began to groom Junebug and ignore Isis. I caught Jack and Junebug trying (and thankfully failing) to have sex a few times. I then noticed that Isis and Colonel Mustard began to preen one another. Eventually Jack died and Isis and Colonel Mustard have remained a couple. They preen each other and make out just like Isis used to with Jack and Skylar. I think the absence of sex with Colonel Mustard isn't important because Isis never had sex with any of her male partners.

So after all of this it appears that I have a potentially heterosexual female budgie (Junebug), a bisexual or pansexual budgie (Isis), and a potentially lesbian budgie (Colonel Mustard). I feel privileged to have been able to watch Isis' relationships flourish, and I wonder if the Canadian Geese have just as many interesting partners. These anecdotal observations, to me, signify the importance of taking animals and their lives seriously. Just like humans have a variety of sexualities, non-humans seem to as well. Perhaps their relationships are more liberated and honest than ours because they are not burdened by heteronormativity. Maybe we could even learn from them.

The idea of queer non-human animals excites me, because we don't really know exactly how queer or not queer our pets are. Domestic pets are not free to pursue relationships. We neuter or spay them, we force them to interact with humans, or we breed them selectively. My birds are more liberated because they don't have human contact, but I still decide which birds they can have contact with. Would Colonel Mustard choose all female partners if given the option, or would she go back and forth like Isis seems to? There is no ethical way to answer that question though, as their sexualities are their own. The last animal sexuality study I read about was horrific (think human encouraged rape) and any intervention on our part (even if well meaning) is immoral. I am happy just to observe them and make notes.

Talking like/to/as a feminist

Feminism is my television commercials – but my friends don't watch the same channels I do.

Television commercials are a passive form of education. You sit in front of a screen (partly enamored and numbed into submission by the actual presence of a screen) and absorb. You are brought there under the guise that you will be entertaining yourself by watching a television show, and yet inherent to your enjoyment comes the advertisement. Twenty seven percent of your time watching the television will be spent watching someone try and sell you something. The commercials are repetitive to the point that you often find yourself in a daze, staring blindly, waiting for them to end. It must not be mistaken though – you are being acculturated to a way of life and a value system. It may be your own, but it is never of your own design. We do not watch television commercials with a barrier up. To do so would be to outwardly criticize every single one, but that is a tiring act. It becomes a headache to sit and watch things you loathe and hate. So to sit and not comment, is to absorb whatever it is that is on the television screen. You may not buy many (or even any) of the products, but that's not always what's being sold.

So what then is my form of television commercials if I don't own cable or watch tv? As a university student, I would argue that we read course readings in much the same way that we watch television commercials. There is some resistance, some comments, but if you are in a program you love – you largely absorb. I cannot tell you how many times I've argued with someone, only to realize every point I am using came from something I read four months ago. I suppose it is preferable to absorb academic literature rather than television commercials – but is there a downside?

To everything I read – I come with a set of assumptions. I carry an invisible world of literature with me. For example, when reading Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Harraway I loved it – but only because of the previous information I'd absorbed. I could understand the cyborg as a foray – much like the one presented by Cixous and Clément. A foray only makes sense when I understand male privilege and the monosex presented by sexual difference feminists. I am ready to see it as just a foray after accepting the dismantling of the Italian feminist collectives of the 1970s. Furthermore, foray makes sense in reference to the attempts of the hysteric and the sorceress. The hysteric only makes sense after reading Brown's case studies and then Bordo's linking of the hysteric to the anorexic to the agoraphobic. Finally, hysteric and sorceress are linked by Freud – but linked properly when criticized by Clément. If that made sense to you – we are watching the same television channel. If it didn't – your confusion is exactly my point. How can I reference or speak about anything to anyone, when to speak about one thing requires an hour long lecture about how I even got to thinking about it in the first place?

Then there comes the question – are there multiple readings of Harraway I can never comprehend? My understanding of her relies on work she does not reference, but work I bring to the table to myself and link to hers. So to understand feminism would mean to read everything – and I mean everything. What if the excerpts from books I'm reading are skewed and I should be reading the whole book? It is common practice in universities to just read an isolated chapter here and there. The more I read though – the more I feel detached from, and unable to speak to, people who don't read feminist literature. How can feminism move forward if our theories and understanding are inaccessible to people because they must be well read to understand them? This has nothing to do with intelligence, but instead is about how much someone reads and what they have learned. Or better yet, how can I even propose challenging that, because isn't feminism about freedom, and shouldn't we be able to theorize as much as possible so that we can get to the right definition and practice of freedom?

I am left baffled and exhausted. The people watching my television channel is so small – sometimes it even feels as if there is no one at all. It feels as if I'm watching three channels at once and merging them all together in my mind: vegan feminism, sexual difference feminism, and radical feminism. So when I speak I speak from all three places, and create the bind myself. When I move forward I speak from places that do not seem to connect, and connect them in my writing – but to understand why I connect them, you'd probably have had to read about all three before.

So that is the bind.

Who am I even speaking to anymore? And if I change my speech to find the audience, am I still speaking for myself?

Asexuality is a Feminist Issue

I believe I've always been asexual, but I've only self identified as asexual for the past few years. To be clear, I do not believe I can reproduce on my own. Many people have made that mistake when I have told them that I am asexual. The education system teaches us the medical definition of asexuality and never the sexual definition of asexuality, so it's an easy mistake to make. Medical asexuality and sexuality asexuality are two completely different words with very different meanings.

To describe my asexuality I often go over the same statements; it has begun to feel like a routine. It typically goes generally like this: "An asexual is someone who experiences no sexual attraction. That's it. Asexual people can and sometimes do masturbate and have sex, but that differs widely based on the asexual individual. Some asexuals don't care about sex and treat it as if it's not their favourite activity, some find sex scary, and others find it disgusting. Similarly, some asexuals will kiss, others won't, some will hug, others won't. The boundaries of all asexuals are different and it's best to ask them about their boundaries in a respectful way. There is also a second word that often comes after asexual; romantic. An asexual aromantic would be not sexually or romantically attracted to anyone, whereas an asexual homoromantic would be not sexually but romantically attracted to humans of the same sex, and so forth. Some asexuals choose to not be in relationships, some choose to be in relationships only with asexuals, and some are in relationships with sexuals." I think that's a pretty fair explanation, but maybe I'm wrong because even after I explain this some people still look at me as if I told them I'm secretly a unicorn.

Some of the common responses to my asexuality are: maybe you've never been with a good enough man, are you a virgin, do you have a hymen, does everything work down there, have you ever orgasmed before, you'll change your mind in a few years, maybe you haven't found what you like yet, and I used to know someone like that too and then they got over it. All of these responses follow a similar pattern. They assume that the person telling me these things knows more about my sexuality based on what is normal than I do based on living in the same body for twenty years, which I find pretty ridiculous. I have decided to identify in this way because it means something to me. If I follow your advice, I will have to live through any consequences that come from your advice and your life will not be affected in any way. These kind of statements place an unfair burden on the asexual, undermine their life experience, and challenge their autonomy. They're insulting. I'm just saying no, I'm not interested. Perhaps the question should be - why does that bother you so much? These questions might be less hurtful if they didn't reflect real issues. For example, FSD (female sexual dysfunction) is a "medical disorder" where one of the symptoms is lack of desire to have sex. So whereas I think my asexuality is a perfectly acceptable, but not common, type of sexuality, if I were to go to the doctor I could be diagnosed as sick. Hrm, does this ring an oppressive bell to anyone? Haven't we been through this before with the DSM?

So perhaps the answer could seem like - well if you experience judgement and are deemed ill if you tell anyone you're asexual, why, just not tell people? There's a concept called "passing" which generally means you can pass or are close enough to the dominant group that you can be mistaken for, and pretend to be, one of them without anyone noticing. One of the problems is that asexuals can pass very well. In fact, I've been in a relationship with a man for four years so I automatically pass by accident. To not pass, and have people stop assuming I'm heterosexual, I actually have to tell them that I'm asexual. I, like probably many other people, don't like to pass. Not telling someone what you are, when you know they don't realize what you are, feels like lying, deceiving, and keeping your mouth shut because you'll get in trouble for the truth. It feels like I'm being dishonest about myself. It makes me feel ashamed, when I really have nothing to be ashamed about. I'm asexual - it's not a problem.

To make this crystal clear; I believe asexuality is obviously a feminist issue because asexuals can experience hardship for living their lives in a way that's true to themselves. Asexuals are treated in negative ways that make their lives more difficult than they would be if these people identified as, or were, heterosexual. I think this is the case because of a variety of different factors, many of which are theorized about in feminism. I think it's time to turn a feminist lens on asexuality.

Finding liberation is not as easy as accepting asexuals; we need to find places and spaces where we know we are supported and safe. There are few and far between feminist publications on asexuals, and I even had a professor once think I meant celibacy when I asked if she knew of any (celibacy is a choice, asexuality is not). There is division within the asexual community. Some live their asexuality in isolation and don't think asexuality is a political issue or something worth explaining to other people and some have restrictive and narrow definitions of who can be an asexual that exclude many currently self-identified asexuals (probably even me). Some asexuals want to find liberation in asexual communities alone because they are not like sexuals, whereas some asexuals turn to LGBT and identify as queer themselves. It can also go the other way, and some LGBT groups may think as non-sexual people that asexuals don't belong there, or they may accidentally privilege sexuals over asexuals within their groups (which seems a lot more likely).

Asexuality is a feminist issue; I just don't know what that would look like if more people took up the challenge at incorporating it into feminism. I'd be excited to find out.

Vegan Feminist Claims

Right now I identify vegan feminist theory mainly with Carol J. Adams. I'm sure that there are plenty of other theorists out there (and that I'll love them all!), but wading through vegan feminist literature and actually understanding it seems to always come back to her for me. One of the first "ah ha!" vf moments I had was when I was reading the Tom Tyler interview of Carol J. Adams for Parallax. You can read the original interview here.

The first time I read the article I stopped and focused on Carol J. Adams' 4 vegan feminist claims, because the idea of trying to simplify a small part of vegan feminism really appealed to me as a person who still didn't really understand vegan feminism. I remember thinking how brilliant the concepts were, but only after I spent 5 minutes thinking about each one and putting them in different words that made more sense to me. Then I thought - well maybe I should put these theories in other words so they make sense the first time I read them. These are those other words. Think of the following as a summary, interpretation of, and homage to Carol J. Adams' original theory.

1. Food choice is a relationship with another animal. Vegans choose a relationship where the other animal is acknowledged and thus not eaten or used. Non vegans (she calls them flesh eaters) choose a relationship where the other animal is ignored, forgotten, dominated, and murdered.

2. Vegans want reproductive freedom for all female animals. The "food" industries requires female animals to be kept constantly pregnant to produce children for their flesh, constantly lactating to produce milk, and constantly ovulating to produce eggs. The names of these animals represents their own physical enslavement and are used as insults to enslave female humans.

3. Eating animals literally stops us from questioning the undisturbed category of "farmed animals". The actual act of using a fork on a piece of flesh erases everything.

4. Humans are "one animal among many". In saying this vegan feminists acknowledge we are like other animals and try to eliminate the idea that animals are other and we are the one. Vegan feminists say that because we are like other animals we don't want to force our relationship with other animals to be based on consumption, where those vertically higher on the hierarchy only interact with other animals through consumption. We would like to have different and more positive relationships with other animals.

In reflecting on these claims many things come to mind. 1 and 4 seem to replicate the same concept with a focus on different details; both acknowledge a relationship of dominance inherent to a relationship of consumption. 3 is so theoretical I think I understood it properly, but I could be completely wrong. If I do understand it, it seems to restate 1. This is important because it shows both the complexity and interwoven nature of vegan feminist theory; it constantly refers to itself before moving on in new directions.

Claim 2 stands out for me because it could be the defining reason for vegan feminism. Recently if someone asks me why I am vegan, a differently worded explanation of claim 2 is the reason I give because it speaks to me as both a feminist and a vegan. I think claim 2 could stand alone as its own manifesto.

Rewriting these claims helped me realize how specific and personal they are. These are Carol J. Adams' claims and they illustrate her personal experience of vegan feminism. I'm sure there are dozens of others claims one could write and they wouldn't be more or less right than hers, just different. I think that's one of the most important things I took away from these claims - they are one interpretation and a good place to start, but they are not the end or the only.

What is a Vegan Feminist?

To begin I would like to explain what I mean when I call myself a vegan feminist. At the very least I hope to give a brief temporary definition of the label. In other words, this definition may not suit me in a year and would probably be explained very differently if you asked someone else. The very idea of a definition seems stagnant and restrictive, but I think with that disclaimer it's safe to continue.

Most people understand the words vegan and feminist separately, but they're complex enough that I think it would be beneficial to go over their definitions.

A vegan is a person who does not consume any animal products, sort of. This could be for emotional, ethical, spiritual, religious, disease, health, physical, or a variety of other reasons. Every person comes to veganism for a different reason and lives veganism differently as a result. That makes it very hard to define what veganism really is, because some use more or less animal products than others based on their reasons for being vegan. For example, a person who is vegan because they think animal proteins are a high health risk might buy products made of leather, whereas a person who is vegan for emotional reasons never would. At the very least veganism is a diet where people never consume meat, eggs, or milk. If someone consumes any of those products they are not vegan. If they restrict other products, well that depends on what type of vegan they are and there are dozens of types. Tricky, isn't it?

A feminist is something I have an even harder time defining because within feminism you find different groups that completely disagree with one another. I think I'm safe in saying that all feminists believe patriarchy exists and that sex and gender are not the same thing. Most people believe feminism is about liberating women, but that's only really true of the first and second waves. We are currently in the third wave of feminism, which I understand to be a period of time when feminists look back on their history, critique it, and try to find liberation for all groups of marginalized people that they accidentally ignored before. Some feminists focus on liberating men from culture, some focus on the woman's right to control over her own body, some on what gender we should have, or what pornography should look like, or what jobs we should do, and the list goes on and on. Feminism is an (usually) open space for differing theories of a future society to come together and discuss how we can liberate everyone.

A vegan feminist is a fusion of both of those ideas in a special way that acknowledges the original meaning of both terms. The order of the term is also very important, but I would argue interchangeable in most settings. A feminist vegan is someone who is a vegan, and the type of vegan they are is feminist. To me that means that they eat a vegan diet and use feminist theories like patriarchy, sex, culture, the panopticon prison, power, knowledge, and so forth to explain why they eat a vegan diet. This is where it gets a bit confusing, as technically a feminist vegan could use radical-cultural feminist theory and liberal feminist theory at the same time and still be a feminist vegan (in a super quick probably totally inaccurate but just to make my point summary, the former tells women to be like women to be liberated and the latter tells women to be like men). I guess you could go even further and add a third label to the mix, which would be a type of feminism, but I think feminist vegan is good enough for me.

So let's swap the term around; a vegan feminist is a feminist whose type is vegan. Vegan theory and diet informs their feminism. When I say I am a vegan feminist I really mean I feel like I am living my feminism to the fullest because I am eating a vegan diet. This allows me to live in a way that restricts the suffering and pain I cause to others. This kind of feminism specifically looks at the subject as oppressor and agent in power and questions how we can change this in our daily interaction with the world. Vegan feminists (or at least me) don't get bogged down with questions like: how much do animals really suffer, but don't they kind of look happy, or biologically I am made to eat meat (which is not true). Instead they look at liberation and freedom for all beings that can suffer and say I am an oppressor in this system and I need to stop. There is no justification for the oppression of others.

I mentioned before that vegan feminist and feminist vegan can be used interchangeably, even though I gave them separate definitions. I hope you've noticed that the definitions are different when you explain them theoretically, but I think a vegan feminist and a feminist vegan would experience these labels in a very similar way out in the world. The one I use changes based on who I'm talking to. If I'm talking to vegans I say feminist vegan to point out that feminism is important too, and when talking to feminists I say vegan feminist. Online I am choosing specifically to use the term vegan feminist because, for the most part, more vegans are feminist than feminists are vegan. My order is a political statement and a call for feminists to be self critical and live their theories to the fullest. This is not to say that non-vegan feminists are wrong, but merely that I hope I inspire them to take a second look at their current ideology.

I think what I've explained is a good patchwork quilt definition of a vegan feminist based on experience. In future blogs I hope to get into vegan feminist theory, look closer at many aspects I quickly glossed over, and discuss vegan feminist issues in today's world that just get under my skin and make me want to type and talk. I hope I haven't deceived you into thinking I have explained vegan feminism in just a few paragraphs. Please think of the above as the briefest of introductions into a very complex topic. The short definition of what vegan feminism is? There isn't one, because to pretend there is would be to eliminate a large part of it. Vegan feminism is a lived experience you can theorize about, just like many things. It does not fit neatly into a dictionary and can not be broken down or studied for an exam. My vegan feminism is different than everyone else's, and that's okay because I can learn about it through writing it down and maybe you can learn about yours (if you want it to exist) from reading an interpretation of mine.