TW: Sexual slur
Stumbling across misogyny and speciesism all of the time is inevitable in this world. These ideologies are so integral to our societies that people reproduce them without conscious awareness. Sadly this also means that a lot of “feminist” and “animal rights” projects spread them, showcasing that cognitive dissonance, which we try so hard to dismantle in others.
Let me start by differentiating between people who identify as feminist and/or vegan, but don’t make any effort to admit and undo their misogynous/speciesist brainwash, on the one hand, and on the other side, activists who are committed to fighting misogyny and/or speciesism, but nevertheless embed misogynous/speciesist ideas within their campaigns.
This is about the latter group and the point here is that, as activists, we carry the responsibility to tackle our own brainwash, because otherwise we might end up doing the opposite of what we aim to do. It’s not that we have to be perfect, which is impossible any way. I don’t think there’s anyone who could truthfully say “I have completely and 100-percently eradicated all traces of misogyny and speciesism from my thinking!”.
Actually being open and honest about struggling with our own awareness and re-learning offers a genuine connection to other people, who might feel overwhelmed or scared of taking on the task themselves. We are good role models if we admit our own fallacy and humanity, demonstrating to people how we deal with these difficulties – how we cope with our own shame, insecurities, and frustrations.
I’d like to point out some examples here, as they are very common and I feel there needs to be more awareness around these things. One of them is the use of the colour pink. It’s strange that it seems like so many people are extremely tired and annoyed of its capitalist-caused status as symbol for the social construct of “femininity”, yet countless feminist projects and campaigns use it in exactly that way.
I guess that the reason is the same as to why so many counsellors speak of the similarly capitalist-caused social construct of “disorders”, when actually they don’t believe that there’s something wrong with people who experience intense emotional distress. It is simply convenient to do so, because everyone else is using it too. Everyone will understand the use of the symbol, because it’s been drilled into our heads since childhood.
And from a psychological point of view, it makes sense that we all want to communicate in a way that is most likely to be understood by others. Especially if we want to reach as many people as possible. Which sort of creates the tragic paradox for these feminist campaigns, that they resign to use the symbolism of the patriarchy, in order to smash the same.
But no matter how understandable it is, perpetuating this symbolism is harmful. How can we teach children that colours are for everyone with this? How can we make them aware that pink is being used as a tool of gender segregation, signalling to girls (and women) that a product is exclusively for them (thereby baiting them with the illusion of privilege), making them less likely to question the product and its subliminal messages? Most of the time there’s a package of symbols that get sold together with pink, all based on the idea that girls need to be cute and pretty.
Furthermore girls can end up believing that products aren’t meant for them if they are not pink, trapping them in a tiny pink cage. Obviously none of this can be successfully brought to awareness and challenged by projects and individuals, who aren’t aware of it and challenge it in themselves, and if they do, they will understandably appear like hypocrites.
A more violent case is that of objectifying female body parts. You’d think anything and anyone feminist wouldn’t do that, but the truth is that it happens quite frequently and probably isn’t noted, precisely because it’s being done by “feminists”.
The goal here is usually that of provocation. This typically runs the danger of being harmful to the wrong people, because it’s driven by anger, and anger caused by trauma (= oppression) is destructive. Which is not to say that the anger isn’t perfectly appropriate, but the action might not be.
A lot of the more provocative feminist campaigns and projects, for example, use slurs in an attempt to create a semantic shift – taking something that is meant as an insult and swear word, and turning it into a proud name identity. This is a tactic often applied by victims of oppression; one example is the use of the word “gay”. However, this shift doesn’t happen for all slurs and it tends to be a highly controversial tactic. Naturally there will be a lot of people who will feel triggered and offended, creating division and conflict within an activist group.
It certainly can’t be part of a trauma-informed approach and is all the more harmful the more violent a slur is perceived as in society. Slurs express hate and disgust, making them very abusive and causing strong reactions. Most slurs about women in the western world are about female body parts, being an expression of our shame-based culture and the patriarchy’s fear of women. Which also causes quite some feminists to provoke with images of female body parts, especially genitals.
The problem here is that – as with pink – a symbolic use from the patriarchy is being reproduced. In this case it’s the objectification of female bodies. We all are so used to this, that we don’t notice that it’s being done. But just think of the difference in meaning, motivation to use, and reaction to a drawing of, say, human hands, feet, or ears, on the one hand, and genitals on the other. Female genitals are the ultimate other in the patriarchy; the natural, anatomical difference between women and men, so of course they have to be declared as the ultimate shameful “thing”.
Creating “cunt art” and portraying female genitals as any sort of object is not challenging this view at all. It is based on this view. You can only provoke if you play their game and use their language. And in doing so, you aren’t shaming the oppressors. You’re joining in with shaming the victims.
Women have been taught all their lives that their bodies are shameful, especially breasts and genitals. Moreover, everyone feels vulnerable about their genitals, but women especially of course, due to oppression. Hence it’s an incredibly vulnerable topic, which requires extreme sensitivity. The provocative use of depictions of these body parts is not going to change that, it only worsens the situation. We aren’t going to reach a place in which genitals are seen as normal and shameless as hands and feet, and where women’s bodies aren’t “othered”, but seen as having inherent dignity, if we use depictions of female genitals to shock and in a way that makes them seem like weird objects. It is humiliating and dehumanising.
For the speciesist side of things, the classic is the use of an animal mascot, not just for vegan products. The company Happy Cow (both the name and the logo) is probably the most famous example. Happy cartoon animals are used by carnism all of the time and even if a product is vegan, the objectification of the depicted animal remains the same. I’ve talked about the disturbing sexualisation of cows in another article, so here it’s just about depicting animals as funny/silly. A lot of sanctuaries and animal rights campaigns use animals in their logos. Which makes sense, but the danger of objectification is huge.
Where do you draw the line? Does a generic use as a symbol always mean objectification? Is the silhouette of an animal objectifying? I can find it hard to decide sometimes. I guess a good guideline can be how realistic the animal is drawn. But even actual photos of animals can be used in a disrespectful way, aiming to portray them as cute and/or funny. They aren’t trying to be cute and/or funny. We aren’t helping people to see them more as autonomous persons in this way. Again, we use the language of the oppressors.
So what can we do? We can talk about the topic in our project and keep it in mind when creating a logo and choosing pictures for our website. We can try to find and use photos of individual animals from sanctuaries (with permission) and share some of their personality and history, or we can simply use stock photos/use our own and caption them with something like “Enslaved individual on a field. Age/personality unknown to me, gender female.” Try to be creative. Wonder if drawn animals actually represent real animals or human characteristics.
There are much more examples, of course, but I think just a few are enough to show just how important a psychologically informed approach is for activism. By psychological I mean both knowledge of how we all are brainwashed by misogynous and speciesist ideology, as well as trauma awareness.
And with all of this, I guess the point is about trying. As mentioned earlier, everyone will fail in some areas, as it’s always much harder to become aware of our own ignorance than that of others. Which is why it’s so important that we are made aware and pass that on to others, continuing to question ourselves (with compassion).
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