Vegan studies and gender studies

Abstract

This chapter explores intersectional dialogues between veganism, vegan studies, and broader questions of gender, in order to foster those links in future research and practices (e.g., creative, literary, artistic, pragmatic, journalistic). The chapter aims to expand our readings of “gender” and “animals” to raise questions of how genders are constructed, and, specifically, how vegan masculinities are constructed and practiced, and what questions this may bring to our previous understandings of men, “meat”, and animals. The chapter illuminates current understandings of the interplay of motivations for how humans currently relate to nonhumans species differently according to gender (related to factors of health, environment, social group influence, and animal rights), exploring the central ethical animal rights orientation at the heart of vegan praxis, and suggesting ways to study these factors as gender impacts attitudes and behaviors toward other species. The different psychological and practical categories through which differing gendered constructions identify their relationships toward nonhuman animals provide an overview of the clusters into which people are grouped in terms of their varied relationships to the nonhuman, especially but not limited to their food practices. Written by a cis-gendered white European male, this chapter recognizes the privilege of that authorial viewpoint while hoping to entice more men to engage in both Vegan Studies and Gender Studies and their crossovers, arguing that “men” as constructed within dominant gendered practices are very much the “meat”-eating, hunting, killing, slaughtering, BBQ-ing problem that both Vegan Studies and Gender Studies must grapple with to achieve progress for animal justice and emancipation.