We all get our protein from plants. Some people get it directly, and some chose to let animals process it for them. I coined the term feminized protein for eggs and dairy products: plant protein produced through the abuse of the reproductive cycle of female animals. Feminized protein is taken from living female animals, whose reproductive capacity is manipulated for human needs. The unique situation of domesticated female animals required its own term: a sexual slavery with chickens in battery cages and dairy cows hooked up to milking machines. Even though the animals are alive, dairy products and eggs are not victimless foods. This is why vegan-feminist rather than vegetarian- feminist.
We are told “You can’t argue with a country’s or a person’s mythology.” Yet that’s what we’re trying to do as vegans, as ecofeminists, and as vegan-feminists. So how do we do it?
The radical truth is that people can be perfectly happy as vegans, but the dominant culture can’t or won’t acknowledge this. We aren’t talking about creating a world in which everyone is deprived. Being vegan is not a diet of deprivation that we are undergoing just to save the planet. Being vegan is an exciting, wonderful culinary experience and we probably don’t even know what’s possible because it’s still so new.
Vegan-feminism is an intervention that critiques and is visionary, that looks at individuals and at social structures, that deconstructs but also offers solutions. Vegan-feminism is always a question of now. Knowing what I know, now what will I do? It comes with an insistence! “Pay attention!” Pay attention, now. The process of objectification/fragmentation/consumption can be interrupted by the process of attention/nowness/compassion.