According to today’s Guardian, which is picking up from the New Zealand newspaper the Press, vegansexuals are people who
do not eat any meat or animal products, and choose not to be sexually intimate with non-vegan partners. “When people eat a meaty diet,” notes Christchurch vegan Nichola Kriek, their bodies “are kind of a graveyard for animals”.
“An image that makes celibacy suddenly seem quite appealing,” sniffs The Guardian.
The Grumpy Vegan has always been interested in the history of the social movement for animals and vegetarianism. And has often thought about wanting to write its history but never had the opportunity to do so — until now! There’s a critical history and assessment in the works!
Until its publication, we’re fortunate to have Diane Beers’ excellent For the Prevention of Cruelty, which is about the U.S. animal rights movement up to 1975. But we now also have Norm Phelps’ The Longest Struggle.
Norm, whose two previous books I’ve recommended, is an insightful writer who has thoughtfully distilled the history of animal advocacy into one volume.
Salom Receives the Head of Saint John The Baptist by Caravaggio presently on display on Soho's Brewer Street.The Grumpy Vegan and his mother in law had an enjoyable morning today walking the National Gallery’s Grand Tour.
Forty-four masterpieces from the National Gallery’s collection are reproduced, framed and hung publicly on the street in London’s Covent Garden and Soho. It is, of course, preferable to see the originals in the gallery but there is something really quite exciting about seeing Caravaggio’s “Salom Receives the Head of Saint John The Baptist” in a Soho passageway with sex shops on either side of it. We couldn’t help but notice the busty blond standing outside her place of work smoking a cigarette. I think Caravaggio would have approved.
Recently a controversial bill — Assembly Bill 1634 — was withdrawn from a committee of the California State Senate by its sponsor, Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, a Democrat from Van Nuys. The bill would have required the mandatory spaying or neutering of all cats and dogs, applying statewide the kind of regulations that have already been enacted in some cities across the country.
In its various drafts, Mr. Levine softened the basic provisions of the bill, changing the mandatory age of compliance from 4 months old to 6 months, allowing even later compliance if it was recommended by a veterinarian, and adding an amendment that would let local agencies issue “one litter” permits for the family pet. The bill would also have required breeders to obtain an “intact animal permit.”
None of these changes satisfied the bill’s main opponent, the American Kennel Club. The A.K.C. argues that this bill threatens “the right to own and breed dogs responsibly.” In fact, what the bill attacks is the habit of breeding dogs and cats irresponsibly.
In California last year, 450,000 cats and dogs were euthanized. The real thrust of the A.K.C.’s argument is economic. Dog fanciers have been reluctant to bring their animals to dog shows in municipalities with mandatory spaying and neutering laws. The trump card politically? Loss of local and state revenue.
There may be better ways than a statewide law to reduce the number of unwanted pets. But the opponents of mandatory neutering make it sound as though the problem can be solved mainly by teaching owners to spay or neuter their pets voluntarily. That might be true, if we thought more rationally about our pets. But keeping pets isn’t about rationality. When it comes to them, Americans are lost in a seemingly endless act of transference.
This weekend in London I attended the second meeting of the British Animal Studies Network, which is funded by a grant from the Arts & Humanities Research Council.
The focus of the meeting was on “Humans, Animals and Posthumanism” and the speakers were Ron Broglio, Lynda Birke, Neil Badmington, and discussant, Martha Fleming.
All of the presentations were stimulating as well as the discussions they provoked. For example, I wasn’t familiar with posthumanism as a concept and like, postmodernism, shies away from definitive definitions.
But, from an animal rights perspective, you would think that posthumanism would recognize the animal issue to some extent. Except for some noted scholars like Donna Haraway, it would appear it doesn’t. Posthumanism goes toward the direction of beyond human in the sense of cyborgs and humans transformed by technology (think of the Terminator).
During this discussion I raised the question whether posthumanism would have been more enlightened on the animal issue if it had been called posthuman-animalism?
Anyway, I don’t mean to trivialize what was a fascinating discussion. But simple (or relatively simple) questions are often the most difficult to answer. For example, another question posed was, “What is it like to be a bat?” This was prompted by an article by Thomas Nagel.
I find it hard enough to know myself let alone another species or an individual of the species. Another deceptively simple question is, “Is a pet an animal?” Which, if I remember correctly, is posed in Erica Fudge’s Animal. The answer is, of course, yes and no. Yes because a cat or a dog, for example, is another species other human. But no because by their relationship with us they are no longer an animal existing on their own terms. They are as much dependent upon us as we are on them.
Read this book to find out why and how people campaign on behalf of a species that is not their own.My colleague at the Animals and Society Institute, Ken Shapiro, is the editor of an excellent series of books published by the academic press, Brill, called Human-Animal Studies.
Each of the five titles published so far focuses on how we relate to animals and they to us.
For example, Confronting Cruelty is a sociological study of the animal rights movement.
Kim Stallwood is an independent scholar and author on animal rights. His forthcoming book, Animal Dharma, explores what it means to care deeply about animals. Starting in 1976, he has held leadership positions with some of the world’s foremost organisations in the UK and US, including CIWF, BUAV, PETA, The Animals’ Agenda, Animals and Society Institute and Minding Animals International. A vegetarian since 1974 when as a student he worked in a chicken slaughterhouse. A vegan since 1976. His evil twin is the Grumpy Vegan.
New Book!
Kim Stallwood's forthcoming book explores what it means to care deeply about animals and discovers how we can live peacefully with ourselves and others by proposing four key values: truth, compassion, nonviolence and interbeing.
The Grumpy Vegan has always been interested in the history of the social movement for animals and vegetarianism. And has often thought about wanting to write its history but never had the opportunity to do so — until now! There’s a critical history and assessment in the works!
