Food Justice: Revisiting HEALTH

HEALTH is an organizational paradigm for Food Justice

Introduction: 
HEALTH has now been up and running for 5 years. Yay!
 
Okay, now that I've gotten the obligatory anniversary announcement out of the way, I want to draw attention back to a topic deserving of its own post:

What is "health"? What work does the acronym HEALTH perform?

In this post, I will elaborate a little bit on how I understand HEALTH after many additional years of life experience as an educator and activist, and why this understanding is preferable to the accepted definition and practice of "health." First, I will discuss the evolution of HEALTH from an organization to a blog to an experimental paradigm for coalition building. Second, I will juxtapose the self-centered normativity of "health" to the socialist politics of HEALTH. Third, I will break down HEALTH into several prerequisites and organizing points. I will conclude with acknowledging the difficulties of navigating this comprehensive vision of HEALTH and invite y'all to chime in with comments as to whether advocating HEALTH is as useful and un-problematic as I suggest.

1. The Evolution of a Vision (2005-2008)
Way back in 2005 I founded an organization on my college campus dedicated to addressing the intersections of oppressions. The club existed, on the one hand, to operate as an independent project for a course on Sustainable Buildings, and, on the other hand, to provide a much needed outlet for animal advocacy on campus. According to the original constitution submitted on April 5, 2005:

H.E.A.L.T.H. is dedicated to ecological sustainability and conservation, the adoption of compassionate and ecologically responsible lifestyles, and global awareness through activism and education. The club will work to develop an environmental taskforce for Beloit College, create and enforce environmentally sound policies, and educate the campus and community about ways to live more harmoniously with the Earth, nonhuman animals, and humans in developing countries. H.E.A.L.T.H. will be involved with nonviolent, grassroots environmental and animal activism 

HEALTH was founded upon ecofeminist philosophy, which I had begun studying independently a year before. Ecofeminism, in a nutshell, is a body of work that purports that the domination of nature (at least in the Western tradition) are entangled with the domination of women (as well as poc, working class, queers, and animals) historically, materially, conceptually, and mythologically. Ecofeminists valuably demonstrate, like other radical theories, that the oppression of humans and nonhuman beings mutually reinforce one another, and that liberation is only possible when all are free of injustices. HEALTH was conceived of this intersectional analysis.

Originally designed to address the unhealthy relationships between humans, animals, and the Earth, HEALTH would take on new meaning as an acronym during research for my interdisciplinary capstone project when I discovered the work of agrarian writer Wendell Berry and ecofeminist Chris Cuomo.

Wendell Berry's essays exemplified what thinkers like Fritjof Capra and David Orr called systems thinking. Systems thinking took into account the process, relationship, dynamism, wholeness, and complexity of "problems" (in contrast to mechanistic thinking which addressed problems by dissecting them into static, discreet parts with simple, predictable, linear cause and effect relationships. The problem with mechanistic thinking (in modern, industrial science, economics, politics, and technology) is that it often creates new problems and so it doesn't "solve for pattern."

In "Health is Membership," Berry wishes we return to the etymological root of  "health" as the whole-ness of belonging:

The word "health," in fact, comes from the same Indo-European root as ‘heal,’ ‘whole,’ and ‘holy.’ To be healthy is literally to be whole; to heal to make whole... our sense of wholeness is not just a sense of completeness in ourselves but also in a sense of belonging to others and to our place; it is an unconscious awareness of community, of having in common. (144)

[The contemporary] view of health that is severely reductive. It is, to begin with, almost frantically individualistic... One may presumably be healthy in a disintegrated family or community or in a destroyed or poisoned ecosystem.” (146)

In another essay, "Solving for Pattern," Berry discusses more concretely the destructive logic of providing health care for one group of a system at the expense of others who belong to that community in agriculture:

Our dilemma in agriculture now is that the industrial methods that have so spectacularly solved some of the problem of food production have been accompanied by ‘side effects’... the irony of agricultural models that destroy, first, the health of the soil and, finally, the health of human communities. (267)

The real problem of food production occurs within a complex, mutually influential relationship of soil, plant, animals, and people. A real solution to that problem will therefore be ecologically, agriculturally, and culturally healthful... [I]t is impossible to sacrifice the health of the soil to improve the health of the plants, or to sacrifice the health of plants to improve the health of animals, or to sacrifice the health of animals to improve the health of people. (269, 274)

Chris Cuomo provided more depth to Berry's arguments, in part by coming out of an ecofeminist tradition critical of the pastoral romanticization of the heteronormative family and settler colonialism. Cuomo offered an alternative route to addressing ecological ethics that wasn't based in mechanistic utilitarian, individualistic deontological, and apolitical care ethics. Cuomo proposed an eudaimonian ethic, based on the ancient Greek concept of flourishing, but applied to community as a social and ecological construct.

Humans cannot flourish without other humans, ecosystems, and species, and nothing in a biotic community can flourish on its own. Likewise, communities (both social and ecological) depend on the existence of other communities. Ethical objects therefore flourish as both social and ecological entities. To be extracted from community, human or otherwise, is to lack relationships and contexts that provide the meaning, substance and material for various sorts of lives.[*]

My ambition to build a coalition between clubs on campus and develop a sustainability taskforce, however, did not materialize. Several years organizing campus events and actions brought me to appreciation of how difficult it was to put this holistic perspective into practice. Such a comprehensive message and focus was naturally complex to deliver and we HEALTH spread itself thin attempting to address issues such as animal liberation and indigenous sovereignty (which I had come to appreciate after studying in Australia). Under the lack of general interest in and availability for advocacy on campus, HEALTH could not sustain itself after I graduated.

2. The Evolution of a Vision (2008-2013)
 

South Central Farm (1994 - 2006) was the largest urban farm and CSA in the USA.

When I returned home from a summer working as an educator at an animal sanctuary, I was inspired to keep my holistic vision and advocacy alive by creating a blog. Having learned from the past of how difficult it was to manage an organization that had potentially infinite possibilities, I narrowed the focus of HEALTH to a food justice blog that would encompass not only food sovereignty (which I learned the importance of through a sustainability project in my community), but also ecological sustainability, and animal liberation. The devotion of HEALTH to food justice seemed a natural fit since food is a site at which so many discourses of health (e.g., bodily, animal, ecological, communal, national) collide.

The original mission statement for HEALTH was posted on September 8, 2008:

HEALTH advocates ecological and social justice through campaigns in which the intersection of multiple oppressions in the production, distribution, and consumption of “food" can be addressed simultaneously... Health in its fullest sense cannot be achieved alone.

Over the next year, I would compile an array of resources, spanning form introductory web sites, documentary videos, peer-reviewed articles, academic journals, non-profit organizations, blogs, and books covering animal, agricultural, ecological, and social justice. Although I attempted to avoid doing so, the blog has admittedly leaned harder on the animal justice side of things. In the first two years, however, I did address matters of gender, race, class, and sexuality injustices in food production, consumption, and distribution.

One post I'm particularly fond of is "Skinny Bitch and Bulimic Vegetarians" published in April of 2009. Of all my posts, this one most directly addressed the limits of advocating personal "health" (or at least the superficial performance of health). After diagnosing the fat-shaming elements of vegan outreach (particularly the aesthetic appeal of Skinny Bitch and the PETA's campaign media), I shared my perspective on "health":

HEALTH cannot be achieved by individuals alone; true health is the consequence of an entire community flourishing mutually together. Modern reductionist approaches to health define "health" as something that can be achieved independent of Others and often at the expense of them (e.g., (over)fishing to consume more fish oil, enslaving people to pick tomatoes, wiping out wildlife to grow organic leafy greens, "curing" diseases by giving them first to millions of "animals"). Within this outlook, veg*n outreach that promotes veg*nism as good for "one's health" is playing into the liberal, antagonistic discourse of self-interest.

Since HEALTH must be achieved together it ought not, as much as possible, come at the expense of the health of Others. In this sense, appropriating mainstream means of advertising (i.e. using the promise of becoming a conventionally sexy and beautiful women) so as to exploit common insecurities over body-image (o)pressed into the minds of young women is not healthy. Exploiting, and thus perpetuating, oppression as a means to a "good" end can never be healthy, even if it promotes "health," because it ultimately subordinates the health of Others.

Read more »

Re-Assessing Animal Rights: Resources

I've been thinking about the state of the animal defense movement* quite a lot after attending four conferences on organizing this summer. Perhaps for the better, the Animal Rights 2013 conference was not one of them. The conferences I attended were either organized by and for grassroots activist or were nearly silent on the status of animal others. Never have I learned so much and been inspired more. There I was exposed to alternative interpretations of the history and politics of the US and the modern world, and there I realized how white and superficial the analyses and strategies of mainstream animal activists often are.

This post is dedicated to providing resources to those open to re-assessing the history, politics, organization, tactics, theories, and language of the animal defense movement. I intend to write more about the presentations and drama I witnessed at these conferences, but for now I want to share some essays and presentations that have really challenged and inspired me to re-think my assumptions and history of abstract theorizing that is valued in academic settings, especially in philosophy.

Re-Assessing Animal Defense

 

The History and Politics of the Animal Defense Movement

With the rise of the vegan movements, the politics of animal defense have become increasing personal that many activists have forgotten that vegan-consumption is just one strategy, and not even the most important. On the other hand, large nonprofits have taken to reforms that do not challenge the source of animal oppression: their status as commodities. Yet still, animal defense is often interpreted from the perspective of those who have made careers at nonprofits and universities--what of the history of the grassroots?

• Animal Rights: Moral Crusade or Political Movement (Kim Stallwood 2013)
• The State of the US Animal Rights Movement (Interview w/ Gary Francione 2002)
• Animal Rights History, Welfarism, and 'Star Wars' (Interview w/ Josh Harper 2011)
• History of the Anti-Vivisection Movement (Josh Harper 2013)

The Limits of Vegetarian Outreach

Vegetarian outreach has been a staple of the nonprofit animal defense movement since the 1990's when activists realized that over 95% of animals were killed and exploited by agribusiness. While there is much debate over how to best "sell" vegetarianism, critiques of the sufficiency of veganism as a "baseline" has been less frequent. Is vegan education our most effective tactic? Is "veganism" sufficient for animal liberation?

• The Science of Animal Advocacy (Nick Cooney 2013)
• Science of Science-y -- A Critique of Vegan Outreach Studies (DXE 2013)
• Skinny Bitch and Bulimic Vegetarians (Adam Weitzenfeld 2009)
• Boycott Veganism: Animal rights only begins with your diet (Anonymous 2007)
• A Critique of Consumption-Centered Veganism (Adam Weitzenfeld 2011)
• Abolition, Liberation, Veganism (Ida Hammer 2011)

The Problem with Analogies to Human Oppression

Some animal activists draw logical analogies between the institutional violence against nonhuman animals and oppressed humans. The presumption is that the public will have a logical breakthrough that violence against nonhuman animals is unjust like violence against oppressed humans. Have the articulation and performances of these analogies bore the breakthroughs as activists hoped, or only further alienated them from their cause?

• Animal Whites: PETA and the Politics of Putting things in Perspective (Tim Wise 2005)
• On Analogies as Advocacy Tools: Some Thoughts on Appropriation (BWM 2013)
• Performance Politics: Abstract Animals and Suffering Humans (Dylan Powell 2013)
• Why "Putting Non-Humans First"... Doesn't Work (Corey Wrenn 2013)
 

Critiques of Non-Profit Campaigns & Conferences
The hegemony of corporate non-profits have "hijacked" the strategy, language, and tactics of animal liberation. Non-profits generate funds and publicity for animals, however, they have also been notoriously conservative on matters of class, race, and gender in their organizations and campaigns. Their collusion with State power, capital, and white supremacy has built a large funding base, but are they building a movement upon the marginalization and oppression of humans?

• Smoke and Mirrors -- A Critique of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (Ida Hammer 2009)
• Invasion of the Movement Snatchers  (James LaVeck 2006)
• The Need to Address Classism at Conferences, Seminars, and Festivals (Ida Hammer 2008)
• Recalling the Animal Rights Conference 2013 (Anastasia Yarbrough 2013)
• Sexualization (of Women in the Animal Rights Movement) (Vegan Feminist Network 2013)
• Colonialism (in the Animal Rights Movement) (Vegans of Color 2008)
• Veganism and Prison Abolition (Ida Hammer 2009) 

The Intersections of Human and White Privilege in the ADM

The animal defense movement has continued to be the whitest social justice movements in the US for decades, despite that people of color are no less compassionate and no less likely to be vegetarian. We've already looked at colonial campaigns, analogies that alienate, under-representation in leadership, and complicity in racist law enforcement. What analytic tools, strategies, and language can whites adopt and support to build coalitions across racialized experiences?

• Working With(in) Whiteness (pattrice Jones 2013)
• The Color of Animal Rights (Dr. Harper, L. Ornelas 2013)
• Intersectionality in Theory and Practice (pattrice Jones 2013)
• What’s Wrong with ‘Rights’ (pattrice jones 2013)
• Beyond Veganism: Food Justice (Lauren Ornelas 2012)
• Decolonizing our Taste Buds and Self-Care (Claudia Serrato 2013)

How to Disrupt Oppression

Once equipped with more sophisticated theory and more supportive of people of color and queer leadership and projects, animal activists are on their way to building a movement that reaches beyond the single-issue identity politics of "animal rights." This is, of course, easier than it sounds. Because nearly all of us in the US have been colonised by white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy, it will take some effort on our behalf to challenge its "common sense" built into our brains-and-flesh. How can we resist these old habits?

• Don't be that Dude: Handy Tips for the Male Academic (Acclimatrix 2013)
• The Problem when Sexism Sounds so Darn Friendly (Melanie Tannenbaum 2013)
• Feminist Killjoys (and Other Willful  Subjects) (Sara Ahmed 2010)
• How to Tell Someone they Sound Racist (Jay Smooth 2008)
• The Revolution Will Not be Polite (Rachael 2012)
• Getting Called Out: how to Apologize (Chesaleigh 2013)

Critiques of Ally, Intersectionality, and Privilege

Over the last ten years as the internet has made it easier to "call-out" animal activists for their complicity with racism and other oppressive systems, some mainstream organizations and many white activists have adopted the language of anti-oppression. Have white activists' identification as allies, acknowledgement of their privileges, and references to "intersectionality" transformed their activism or obscured privilege and power?

• No More "Allies" (Mia Mckenzie 2013)
• Defining and Critiquing 'Intersectionality' (S.E. Smith 2010)
• Tim Wise & the Failure of Privilege Discourse (Robtheidealist 2013)
• The Problem with Privilege (Andrea Smith 2013)
• How Vegan Oppression Cannot Exist (Ida Hammer 2010)
• A Class Struggle Anarchist Analysis of Privilege Theory -- From the Women's Caucus

Are there any essays, talks, and books that have changed your advocacy for animals? Please share in the comments. I may add them to the list!

Read more »

A Critique of Consumption-Centered Veganism

INTRODUCTION: The mainstream discourse and practice of veganism as an individual’s (abstention from the) consumption of animal products, I believe, is problematic in three interrelated ways: practically as an economic boycott, socially as a privileged consumerism, and philosophically as an equivocation with a vegetarian lifestyle. I propose a new understanding of veganism as a social modality with and in regard to animal others which can be distinguished from and exist independently of vegetarian consumption. However, this distinction does not so much as invalidate vegetarian consumption so much as place it in a dialectic relationship with veganism, in which it can be regarded as a valuable means, but not an end.


PRACTICALLY, positioning veganism as an economic boycott is a very limited tactic given the prevalence of global capitalism. Mainstream veganism only addresses the content (i.e. animal products) and not the form/structure (i.e. capitalism) of the global market that facilitates the exploitation of animals as commodities and obstructs people from transforming society. This is evident in several ways.

First, many mainstream vegans tend to regard the very culprits of animal exploitation as the remedy. Veganism is now sold to people in the form of products (sometimes explicitly labeled “vegan”) by the very corporations (i.e. Kraft, Dean, Con-Agra, Burger King, etc.) that exist and profit off the exploitation of animals. While the availability and convenience of these products is celebrated as “victories,” their support only sediments the control these corporations have over the market and government. These agri-businesses that own, produce, and distribute most of our food supply have tremendous political power winning government subsidies and combating policy changes that would abolish animal exploitation practices..

Second, even if consumer vegans extend their boycott from the individual product consumed to the company who profits from it, without also challenging the present political-economic order of capitalism in which the interests of corporations persistently trump the interests of the general public, vegans remain complicit in the system that entitles businesses to exploit animal others (and human others as well). Besides, it’s not as if animal agribusiness is an isolated phenomenon; it is sustained by what Barbara Noske calls “the animal industrial complex”—an amalgamation of feed and chemical companies, the pharmaceutical industry, representatives and officers in government, public research and educational institutions etc. that are all mutually dependent upon one another through capital. Animal agribusiness will not be overthrown until these regimes and what gives them power are transformed. Even if consumer vegans were able to make significant dents in the national market, all this will be reversed by the rise of the affluent animal-eating class in the developing world to whom animals raised nationally will be exported, or—in “a race to the bottom”— to where the industry will be exported—displacing farmers and wildlife and externalizing production costs upon their communities.

Third, veganism as an economic boycott does not even universally enable people to practice veganism. Since wholesome food is regarded as a commodity rather than a socio-political right, large populations of disadvantaged people have little to no financial and/or geographic access to vegetarian food and goods, and thus are severely disadvantaged from living a secure vegan life. Food will continue to be grown for profits before people’s needs and preferences so long as food remains a commodity. A vegan world will not be brought about by the asocial, amoral market but by people in what Vandana Shiva calls “food democracy”—when food production and access is determined by people, not the imperialism of the market. In sum, mainstream vegan discourse and activism's focus on economic boycott is problematic not because it is ineffective, but because it is insufficient. Without challenging the political, economic, and social structure of society, veganism as a movement will make little progress reducing and abolishing animal exploitation.

Read more »

Social(ist) Animals: Toward Mutual Aid against the Great Butcher

Sue Coe. 2004. "Ox Pull." From "Bully!: master of the Global Merry-go-round" Source: http://www.graphicwitness.org/coe/bullya.htm

"However, even vegetarianism in your hands, would make a capital article...  its connection with modern socialism, atheism, nihilism, anarchy and other political creeds... Brussels sprouts seem to make people bloodthirsty, and those who live on lentils and artichokes are always calling for the gore of the aristocracy and for the severed heads of kings... in the political sphere a diet of green beans seems dangerous." -Oscar Wilde, The Complete Letters, p. 334, from a letter dated Nov. 12, 1887.

Introduction
Ten months ago, Paul D'Amato's article  "Socialism and 'animal rights'" sparked a small controversy that fizzled out within a month of its release. Unfortunately, out of the dozen responses only two or three were more argument than opinion. My aim here is to provide a more rigorous and comprehensive critique of D'Amato's article absent in the responses in order to better reconcile the perceived tension between socialistm and animal rights.

In "Socialism and 'Animal Rights'," D'Amato's reasoning starts off strong, making critical and important insights on the idea of animal liberation; however, it soon strays into weak, dangerous, and unnecessary territory. D'Amato comes to several conclusions (not presented in this order):

1. "There is a clear connection between how a rapacious capitalism mistreats animals... environment... [and] human[s]"
2. "Non-human animals are helpless… incapable of organizing and fighting for their rights"
3. "To compare the condition of animals to that of... [humans] for freedom and equality is to view the latter through a paternalistic lens, rather than a lens of human liberation"
4. "we need to insist on the essential differences between human beings and other animals, and reject the idea of 'animal liberation.'"
5. "seeking more humane treatment of animals is not the same as calling for 'animal rights'"

In the first conclusion, he displays sympathy for nonhuman animals and their human allies. In the second, D'Amato properly points out the obvious but sometimes overlooked fact that no other (with a possible exception of a few) species can and/or is capable of politically organizing to declare their rights. This point leads into the subtitle and thesis of D'Amato's piece: to compare the animal liberation movement to human liberation movements is paternalistic (and reeking of white, middle-class, male privilege).

I'm totally on board with D'Amato's thesis if we are only discussing movements and not also mental, material, and legal outcomes. But he does not enclose his argument to his thesis; he continues on to argue that humans are essentially different from all other animals (despite being careful to say that humans are only "qualitatively" different"), and that the "liberation" and rights of nonhuman animals be rejected in favor of merely "more humane treatment." It is these last two conclusions, I find objectionable and weakly argued.

In this response, I will critique four positions D'Amato either asserts or  ignores. First, he implicitly argues that one cannot have rights unless one asserts one has them, a contractualist argument that would exclude many humans from possessing rights. Second, he explicitly draws on evolutionary biology to make arguments for an essential difference between humans and other animals that contradict themselves and are analogous to arguments that have been used to rationalize racism. Third, D'Amato misses how worker and animal exploitation are not only  increased by capitalism, but that they are intersecting oppressions that mutually reinforce one another just as socialism and animal rights are ethico-political positions that intersect and mutually reinforce one another. Finally, he is naive to the historical, cultural, and ecological ties between the exploitation and well-being of human and animal.


Read more »

Eating our Way to Global Citizenship

Eating our Way to Global Citizenship:
A Rumination on the Role of International Education in Creating a Sustainable Future of Food and Identity

“The lesson of ecology is that one cannot care for the future of the human race without caring for the future of its context… A land ethic, on this view, is the moral thread that links past, present, and future individuals in a common culture. That culture can be perpetuated only if it respects limits inherent in the land context—for continuity in that land context gives shared meaning to cultures as they unfold through time.” -- Bryan Norton in Toward a Unity Among Environmentalists (1991,219)

“All education is environmental education,” writes environmental educator David Orr. “By what is included or excluded we teach the young that they are part or apart from the natural world.” Likewise could be said about an international education of food. While environmental and international education have grown more prominent in the 21st century, food has been relatively neglected as a subject within both international and ecological contexts in proportion to its role in environmental justice. Food ought to be among the highest priorities of all people concerned with the world’s one billion hungry people, the thousands of children who die daily of malnutrition, and the irreversible disappearance of Earth’s biocultural diversity. In the context of food, addressing sustainability requires a concern for not only economy and society, but culture and individual human life as well. Far from a private, domestic concern, eating fair and sustainable food is one aspect of becoming a global citizen.Read more »

Veganism as Intersectional Social Justice (part 1)

Introduction
Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday...Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?--Derrick Jensen[*]

[Oppressions are ideologies—]“a set of socially shared beliefs that legitmates an existing or desired social order. Prejudice, on the other hand, is an individual predisposition to devalue a group of others… speciesism is also an ideology—that is, a set of widely held, socially inherited beliefs… When the psychological and moral (or immoral) bases of oppression are accentuated, social structural forces are downplayed or overlooked entirely… they tend to stifle any realization of the need for social change.” –David Nibert[*]

The discourse of vegetarian and vegan advocates is saturated with personal choice. Perhaps more persistently than any other social justice movement in America today other than the pro-choice movement, animal defenders emphasize the individual: the individual animal who suffers, the individual person who chooses three times a day to choose compassion over cruelty, the individuality of the movement, etc.

It is the individual who is responsible for the suffering of each individual animal because of some irrational prejudice. If only these people were just more enlightened about animal sentience, about nutrition, they would leave cruelty-free lives. It is also the individual who is responsible for world hunger because they selfishly feed the world’s grain to livestock. If only each individual chose a vegetarian lifestyle, there would be enough food for everyone.

When the individual person is not totally responsible for the suffering of each individual animal, it is because vegetarianism is too inconvenient and the law is too permissive of cruelty. If only restaurants and grocery stores offered more vegetarian foods (especially faux-meats), people would stop eating meat. If only there were stricter penalties for animal cruelty, less people would harm animals and there would be more justice. Thus the irony of the dominant discourse is that animal liberation is possible so long as humans become more rational and less self-interested; but, so long as people are self-interested, we ought to make vegetarianism as convenient and non-threatening as possible and make animal cruelty as inconvenient and punishable as possible.

In this post I will lay-out the myriad of ways the most popular forms of animal advocacy (at least in the USA) privileges a white, middle-class audience at the expense of including people of color and people of low-income. Drawing on the vast, original works over at The Vegan Ideal [TVI], I wish to demonstrate 1) how focusing on punishing, shaming, and dehumanizing individual animal exploiters a) draws attention away from the institutional oppression (i.e. speciesism) in favor of vice (i.e. cruelty) as well as b) how such punishment is often part of ethnocentric and nationalist projects, and finally, c) how such projects merely seek to substitute human cages for animal cages.

Further, I would like to point out 2) how focus on individual action and lifestyle changes often centers around "voting" with one's dollar, which a) privileges the middle-class at the expense of marginalizing low- and no-income classes, b) privileges non-profit dissemination of literature at the expense of real social organizing and mobilization that empowers people and communities, and c) encourages conservative discourse by said non-profits that target "mainstream" audiences with money that can be used to support said kind of campaigns.
Read more »

The Identity Politics of Breasts: Male Lactation and the Political Economy of Wo/Man (part 2)

Is it to men that nature confided domestic cares? Has she given us breasts to feed our children?”
--Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette quoted in "Why Mammals are Called Mammals"[*]

Experience may tell you that producing milk and nursing youngsters is a job for the female mammal, not the male. But your experience is probably limited, and the potential of biology--and medical technology--is vast.
--Jared Diamond "Father's Milk"[*]

"For those who claim male lactation is "unnatural," I would have to ask: how natural is canned formula from Nestle' or pacifiers made from petrolium byproducts? If milk production in men were truly unnatural, it wouldn't exist.”
--Laura Shanley "Milkmen: Fathers who Breastfeed"[*]

3. Male Lactation: An Unnatural Act?
The identity politics of human breasts come to full fruition in the question of male nipples. As male children we are taught that girls have “boobs” and boys have “chests,’ but the question of male nipples cannot be evaded. For thousands of years breasts have been one of the most significant markers of one’s gender, and hence male breasts and their nipples pose an existential dilemma to those who identify as male. This has never been truer than within the present visual culture that fetishizes the (female) breast.

Take for example the reception of the 2006 Nickelodeon film Barnyard. While critics had diverse opinions on the film, nearly all their reviews shared one particular quip: the protagonist of the film, a steer, had utters. As one late reviewer ranted:

Every single review whether by a critic or just your average John Q. Moviefone seems to be possessed by the urge to point out their extensive knowledge of bovine anatomy and remind the reader that male cattle do not, in fact, have udders.[22]

While filmgoers often suspend disbelief during films, especially animated features, the audiences could not suspend “the truth” about male anatomy. And, of course, there is also the double standard. Female pigs (who have ten or more nipples) and chickens (who don’t have any mammary glands) are often represented with a pair of giant breasts in cartoons yet male reviewers say nothing—they probably are not even conscious of these transgressions. The existence of DD breasts on a chicken somehow seem quite natural, but udders on a male, no! (But if male goats can grow udders, why not steers?)[*]Read more »

The Identity Politics of Breasts: Male Lactation and the Political Economy of Wo/Man (part 1)

[M]ale dominated society tends not to think of a woman’s breasts as hers. Woman is a natural territory; her breasts belong to others—her husband, her lover, her baby. It’ hard to imagine a woman’s breasts as her own, from her own point of view, to imagine their value apart from measurement and exchange.
--Iris Marion Young "Breasted Experience"[*]

According to Kristeva, the infant must substitute speech for its mother’s breast. It takes pleasure in the materiality of speech just as it did in the materiality of its mother’s body… this substitution takes place when child realizes that its mother is a separate being who can leave and does not entirely exist for its own gratification... the move from breast to speech is an organic evolution of the psyche through which speech is ‘literally’ substituted for the breast.
--Kelly Oliver "Nourishing the Subject"[*]

Milk is the one bodily fluid that is clearly symbolic of all that is clean, fresh, and wholesome.
--M. Potts, R. V. Short Ever Since Adam and Eve[*]

INTRODUCTION
What is the nature of the human breast?

Far from a dryly medical, if not slightly erotic, inquiry, inquiry into the nature of the human breast holds the potential to disrupt unquestioned dominant discourses in our society. The subject of this post is not the mammary gland; and if it were, such inquiry would be only skin deep into “the nature” of the human breast. Rather, the “nature’ of human breasts is a cultural one, a “nature” with a history no younger and clean than the history of “civilization.”

The human breast is a battleground. It is a cultural site at which pervasive dominant discourses in western societies demarcate “nature” from culture and politics, “woman” from man, “Man” from “animal,” spirituality from sexuality, and altruism from self-interest. Just as breasts (generally) come in pairs, so do their culturally conscripted “natures.” The powerful emotions that may be evoked by the sight or touch of the breast may not be solely aesthetic; they may also signify deeper subconscious anxieties over our very identities as men, women, humans, animals, straights or queers.Read more »