“Vegan Feminist” Professor Asks Women to Stop Getting Naked to Support Veganism

The Vegan Feminist Network, which says its mission is to “eradicate oppression from the Nonhuman Animal rights movement and improve inclusiveness through dialogue and educational resources,” has warned women to stop stripping off their clothes in favor of veganism.

The article, titled Dear New Vegan, was written by Corey Lee Wrenn, who teaches Sociology at Colorado State University. In the piece, Ms. Wrenn explains to women what they might experience now that they’ve decided to stop eating meat or animal products.

“You may start to realize that being vegan is one thing, but being vegan and female-identified is another one altogether,” she writes. It continues later, emphasis hers, “If you decide that simply being vegan isn’t enough and that you want to get involved with activism, you are going to come up against more male violence.”

Ms. Wrenn

If you become an activist, Ms. Wrenn details, you have to be careful of male vegans, as they “control” the movement. And let’s face it, the article says, “You might start to think that getting naked for the cause is “liberating.””

But you need to be careful. Wrenn warns, “It may not be men directly telling you to get naked (women are in on it, too), but the patriarchal norms of the movement have created an environment where women are simply expected to become sex objects “for the animals.””

If you start wanting to take off your clothes, “woah, stop.” You need to “think again,” Ms. Wrenn writes. She continues (emphasis hers), “Consider also that only thin, white, cis women are allowed to “empower” themselves for other animals, and that turning men on sexually is not the same as turning men on to veganism. Empirical research shows that facilitating the oppression of women does not challenge the oppression of other animals.”

At the end of the piece, Wrenn adds, “P.S. If you are a woman of color, that’s a whole extra set of challenges. As a white woman myself, I can’t speak to the depth of these challenges, but I can tell you that the vegan movement can be a really nasty “color blind” place at times.”

The Social Memo was the first site to report on Ms. Wrenn’s article.