[Image: pattrice jones, lauren Ornelas, and A. Breeze Harper sit at a table. pattrice is gesturing and speaking while lauren and Breeze look on.]
Today’s post on Medium, “Vegan activism: Confronting connections between human and animal oppression“, contains photos and thoughts on a talk I attended last Friday by pattrice jones, lauren Ornelas, and A. Breeze Harper.
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[Image: Pax at their “Vegan Information Station” at the Free Farm Stand, August 2014.]
Today’s post on Medium, “My adventures in animal rights activism“, is about my experiences participating in vegan and animal rights activism, including DxE (which I left in 2015).
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[Image: Hope Bohanec introduces Karen Davis, president and founder of United Poultry Concerns.]
Today’s post on Medium, “Vegan ruminations“, contains photos and thoughts about the subjects raised at the 2018 Conscious Eating Conference. This story is unlocked, so everyone can read it; please share if you like it.
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[Image: Armed police officers wearing riot helmets stand ready on the UC Berkeley campus.]
Today’s post on Medium, “Dare to disarm“, expresses my thoughts on gun control, and my desire to eliminate all firearms from the Earth. This story is for Medium members only, but non-members get three free stories a month, and my Patreon supporters get access to exclusive drafts.
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[Image: Pax with Hari, a young steer at PreetiRang Sanctuary, February 2016. Photo by Ziggy.]
Today’s post on Medium, “Animals are not ‘meats’“, expresses some of my frustrations about the humane farming myth and about animals being treated as products for human consumption. This story is unlocked, so everyone can read it; please share if you like it.
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[Image: Harvey, a calf at Preetirang Sanctuary.]
Today’s post on Medium, “Dairy: White Lies“, is an updated version of an article I wrote criticizing the promotion of cow’s milk to people of color, most of whom are lactose intolerant – or as the Food Empowerment Project correctly puts it, “lactose normal”. This story is unlocked, so everyone can read it; please share if it resonates with you.
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[Image: Saryta and Pax pet Brahma, a bull at Preetirang Sanctuary. Photo by Ziggy.]
Today’s post on Medium, “So you’re going vegan for New Year’s“, addresses those who are making New Year’s resolutions to go vegan. (Even if you’re already vegan or have no intention of going vegan, it’s worth a read.) This story is unlocked, so everyone can read it; please share if you like it.
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[Image: Headshot of Pax (by Ziggy Tomcich) with the words “San Francisco Bay Area Inclusivity Conference – Prioritizing Harm Free(dom) For Our Future”.]
Update, October 15: This conference has been postponed; see explanation on Facebook.
Next weekend, I will be presenting at the Inclusivity Conference, hosted by Vegan Leadership in Oakland, California. In my presentation, I will discuss gender diversity, giving basic education on transgender, non-binary, and intersex terminology, and suggestions on how cisgender people can demonstrate allyship with the community.
I’ll also show photos I’ve taken at events in the San Francisco Bay Area, highlighting the role of queer and trans people of color in social justice movements, and discussing how vegan ethics have informed my activism and political outlook.
The conference is on October 21 and 22, 2017, and will be catered by S+M Vegan. Other featured speakers include A. Breeze Harper of the Sistah Vegan Project and lauren Ornelas of the Food Empowerment Project. My talk is scheduled for October 22 at 1:30 p.m. You can get tickets to the event (sliding scale), or donate to help with expenses, at the conference web site.
[Image: Pax pets Shiva, a steer at PreetiRang Sanctuary. Photo by Ziggy.]
This week, Mercy for Animals featured me in their article, 13 LGBTQ Vegans You Need to Follow. I had already found and shared the article to my Facebook page before MFA posted it on Facebook themselves. Very shortly afterward, the negative comments came flooding in.
We had your garden-variety bigotry:
[Image: Screenshot of a comment reading “Animal rights have nothing to do with the filth and immorality that is homosexuality, this ends my association with you.”]
[Image: Screenshot of a comment reading “Vegans not have connection with sick people (LGBTQ etc.)”]
[Image: Screenshot of a comment reading “Leftists glorify promiscuity, abortion, radical feminism, and welfare. Pair-bonded monogamy became edgy when leftists normalised degeneracy.”]
[Image: Screenshot of a comment reading “I am totally for mercy for animals! But against the gay pride!”]
And we had your bigotry using religion as a rationale :
[Image: Screenshot of a comment reading “Ummm No I will decide who I follow- not this- agenda- very disappointed – I run a biblical page and share your info- will NOT share this- you need to propagate your species – the first positive command, be fruitful and multiply !”]
[Image: Screenshot of a comment reading “No thank you. I follow Jesus Christ!”]
And we had the predictable questioning why marginalized humans should get any attention on a page devoted to animal rights:
[Image: Screenshot of a comment reading “You know, it’s really a shame when animal groups get political. The only ones that suffer are the animals. Because of this, I am now unfriending your face book page. This message has nothing to do with animals. Also, I don’t agree with the gay agenda.”]
[Image: Screenshot of a comment reading “Lost focus! This page should not raise politics, religion …! One should only comment on such a scandal if it involves animal welfare! This way there will be disagreements! The focus here are the animals! Try to use love and respect for animals to raise other flags is wrong it’s just the animals that will lose!”]
[Image: Screenshot of a comment reading “Why does sexual preference always get mixed into everything these days? Doesn’t this takes away from the sole purpose of this facebook cause and mission? Im fine with what ever a person’s preference is but let’s put the focus back where it needs to be. Please, let’s work together to save the ones without a voice.”]
[Image: Screenshot of a comment reading “Being gay or straight is irrelevant to having an interest in animal welfare.”]
[Image: Screenshot of a comment reading “By this post you’ve just ruined the main purpose of the group, why so many people were following you. You better be fair now and rename the group to something like “LGBT VEGANS”, so all can understand what exactly they deal with.”]
[Image: Screenshot of a comment reading “Wtf does this have to do with mercy for animals???”]
Note that roughly half of the comments above were made within 45 minutes of the article’s posting, overwhelming any positive feedback. The moderators later removed the worst of them.
This kind of pushback is sadly familiar to those of us who are working against human oppression in the animal rights community. I’ve already addressed many of the common excuses for this behavior, including the expected replies that the above commenters aren’t “real” vegans or aren’t typical of all animal rights activists or of activists from a particular organization. This bigotry and oppression exists, period, and it’s one reason I’ve significantly decreased my involvement in animal rights and vegan activism lately. Activists who would shame me, or others, for taking care of myself need to read this response as well.
My friend Aph Ko has faced similar backlash for her work to promote black vegans, which she talks about in her new book, Aphro-ism. Helping Aph out with Black Vegans Rock is about the extent of my vegan/AR work currently. I’ve prioritized transgender advocacy and documenting the resistance to the Trump administration. Speciesism is still very bothersome to me, but fighting it is not my primary focus right now.
Allies can help by amplifying the voices of vegans in the LGBT+ community; there are many more besides those in the MFA post. Note that I have not shared my interview that was linked in that post because of concerns that some others featured on that “Queer Vegans” site are not actually vegan. I’m not splitting hairs here; the researcher intentionally included ex-vegans and ex-vegetarians in her interviews, but the title and intro do not state this explicitly. (Update, June 19: The researcher, Leah Kirts, has edited her Queer Vegans site in response to my feedback.)
Regardless, people in the LGBT+ community need help whether they’re vegan or not. Pride month should be a time to recognize and celebrate sexual and gender diversity, not just with rainbow icons and profile frames on Facebook (which are fine), but with specific acts of allyship, and financial contributions for those who have the means. Many queer writers (including me) have links to PayPal accounts, Patreon pages, or other ways you can do more than just show appreciation, but actually help us survive. Helping marginalized humans does not take away from the animals; it helps make more allies for them in the fight against all oppression.
[Image: lauren Ornelas, Pax, and Aph Ko at the Food Empowerment Project 10th anniversary party, April 2017. Photo by Deborah Svoboda.]
Yesterday my friend lauren Ornelas, founder and executive director of the Food Empowerment Project (a vegan food justice organization), posted a blog entry about a simple but important act of allyship; please read her post before continuing. I want to express my gratitude and explain the significance of this action, especially in an era of trans-antagonistic “bathroom bills”.
As a transgender person of color who attended the Food Empowerment Project 10th anniversary celebration, I wanted to highlight the importance of labeling the restrooms as gender-neutral. I last visited the Mission Cultural Center in April 2014, when I was performing there with the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco. At that time I had only been on hormone therapy for a short time, and was very frequently misgendered as female. (While I identify as agender, I have transitioned from female to male for legal and medical purposes.) This caused me a great deal of stress whenever I needed to use a restroom.
Once I began my hormonal transition, I decided to use mens restrooms exclusively in places where no gender-neutral facilities were available, such as the Mission Cultural Center. So I stood outside the mens room there, literally shaking with nervousness, waiting until no one was coming in or out before entering. I stood there for a good ten minutes before finally working up the nerve to enter that restroom. I finished my business without incident, fortunately.
To this day, three years later, I am still nervous when using a gendered restroom, especially in an unfamiliar place, even in San Francisco, where people are legally entitled to use restrooms matching their gender identities. (As of March 2017, California law mandates that all single-occupancy restrooms be gender-neutral, but this venue had only multiple-stall restrooms available to the public.) So I was delighted when I attended the F.E.P. party to see the gender-neutral signs on both restrooms. I still used the one that was ordinarily designated for men, but I felt safer knowing that whichever one I chose, I belonged there.
Ally is a verb, as lauren and her staff at F.E.P. demonstrated at this event. I am grateful for their act of allyship.
