I originally wrote this commentary as part of my latest intersectionality link roundup, but the stupid is so painful that it quickly morphed into a full-blown post. Head on over to Salon and skim through Roger Thomas’s interview of Julie Powell (yes, she of Julie & Julia fame) for the backstory, as I haven’t included any excerpts here. It’s pretty clear to which statements I’m responding, anyhow.

Also, while Powell refers only to vegetarians and “meat” consumption in the interview, I’ve taken the liberty of extending her slurs to vegans as well. Clearly, you and I know that the two are not interchangeable, but seeing as the mainstream media usually treats them as such, *shrug*.

Salon: Becoming a piece of meat; Julie Powell’s racy follow-up to “Julie and Julia” — and why she’s fine turning into the new poster child for S/M

Dear Roger Thomas and/or Julie Powell:

1) BDSM and “rough sex” are not even remotely comparable to the exploitation and butchery of nonhuman animals. The former are consensual acts; the latter, not.

A better comparison is that of rape to “meat” production (and consumption): in each case, the oppressor dehumanizes and objectifies his (or her; women don’t typically rape other humans, but they do engage in, support and defend the exploitation of nonhuman animals) victim, treating her as a “thing” to be (ab)used and discarded at will, rather than the sentient individual that she is. To rape a woman is to treat her like “a piece of meat” – and nonhuman animals are no more and no less “meat”-like than human animals.

Of course, nonhuman animals are also literally raped as a matter of course in most (if not all) animal exploitation industries, especially animal agriculture. Usually this rape serves a “practical” purpose, i.e., in order to forcible impregnate female animals (or to obtain the sperm of males); other times, sexual violence is used as a means of control or punishment. Whatever its purpose, these violations are no less violating when visited upon the bodies of cows, pigs and chickens.

[For just several examples of "purposeless" sexual violations, see: PETA's Iowa Sow Farm/Hormel Supplier Investigation, 2008; PETA's Butterball Investigation, 2006; and PETA's Belcross Farms Investigation, North Carolina, 1998-1999.

While undercover investigations of factory farms and slaughterhouses are easy to come by, Googling for specific examples of rape and sexual assault is a depressing and difficult task: the rape and sexual assault of nonhuman animals is rarely referred to as rape and sexual assault. In general, this can be attributed to the attitude (quite pervasive among non-veg/an feminists, in my experience) that nonhuman animals, being the "unthinking," "unfeeling" "brutes" that they are, cannot be sexually violated; that is, they don't know enough to perceive sexual violations as such, and thus are not traumatized by rape and sexual abuse. Additionally, many forms of sexual violence are fundamental to the system; without the forced impregnation (and resulting birth) of sows, hens, ewes, nannies, heifers, mares, bitches, etc., our systems of animal exploitation would crumble. Here, the routineness of the violations renders them invisible and unnamed.

Consequently, a search for "factory farm" + "rape" or "factory farm" + "sexual assault" returns few relevant results. Instead, I found myself searching for "factory farm" + "vagina" + "shoved", "factory farm" + "anal" + "penetration", and other equally graphic and triggering phrases, and sifting through investigators' logs to find instances of sexual violations directed at farmed animals - which, had they been perpetrated against human animals, might have been treated with the seriousness and outrage they demand. (I say "might" because, hello!, we live in a rape culture, people.)

A rape by any other name is still as violating.]

2) You describe vegetarians as smug and self-satisfied, concluding your anti-vegetarian rant with a quote from The Big Lebowski: “You’re not wrong, you’re just an asshole.”

To summarize: you believe that vegetarians are “right” – that it is unethical (not to mention unhealthy and ecologically destructive) to consume nonhuman animals (and their secretions) when doing so is unnecessary for our survival. Yet you continue to defend, glorify and participate in a system that enslaves, exploits, tortures and kills 10 billion land animals per year. But I’m an asshole?

3) Zooey Deschanel is an asshole like me, so I very much doubt she’d want to portray your kyriarchal, animal-dismembering self on screen. Just sayin’.

Toodles!

- Just another smug, self-satisfied (but morally consistent) asshole.

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare intersectionality intersections animals and women rape bdsm rough sex sex sexual assault sexual abuse factory farms factory farming farmed animals cows pigs chickens parallel oppressions Zooey Deschanel vegan veganism vegetarian vegetarianism salon Roger Thomas Julie Powell Julie & Julia cleaving meat flickr photos

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Animals & Women, Animals as..., Intersections, food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.