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Today the world is celebrating International Women’s Day (IWD). It’s being celebrated by women every year for over a century now. What for?
Is the Feminism movement going in any direction?
IWD was started to end the discrimination against the fairer sex – women, to strengthen gender equality in our society. Patriarchal society has always been discriminative against the weaker and minority section. Helpless, powerless and vulnerable are often dominated, harassed and exploited by stronger section. This is the basic principle in the formation of patriarchal mindset against women, children and animals.
But Is Women The Only Female Who Is Discriminated & Exploited In This World?
When we name this day as “Women’s” day, it doesn’t encompass feminism as a whole. The term women doesn’t represent all females. Further, “feminism” itself as it is understood today, isn’t at all an inclusive movement. Aside women, men & trans-gender people too can be a feminist.
Going by the logic, Animal Rights is also an feminist issue. Feminism is a movement that fights against the way patriarchy dominates on the vulnerable and weaker section to meet their own selfish desires & interests. All farmed animals too belong to this section. Billions of farm animals are bred every year violating the reproductive system of female animals and then snatching away their offspring from them. Motherhood is ashamed every second on this planet.
Women & Animals Are Both Objectified
Women are looked down upon as sex objects and are exploited to meet the sexual desires of men. They are treated and kept merely as some object of desire and are valued on the basis of their bodies. Same goes with all farmed animals. World's most harassed, tortured, raped and murdered beings are female farmed animals. They are sexually abused on a regular basis to hatch or breed more and more offspring. They are captivated, raised, beaten, harassed, raped and slaughtered to serve the interest of humans. All their life is one big constant suffering and then finally meet an untimely and horrendous death. All their lives they are treated as some inanimate objects. Are they any better or worse than women?
Women & Animals Are Both Rape Victims
Just as women are treated as sex objects and often raping is normalized by using clichés like “boys will be boys”; animals too are made victims of forced breeding. In fact, factory farming has institutionalize the raping of female non-human beings. Forced sex and a life of repeated rape and perpetual pregnancies is a norm in animal agriculture today. The industry is so insensitive and shameless that they have actually termed the device used for restraining animals for artificial insemination as “Rape Racks”. This is how they have normalized the word rape itself.
Women & Animals Are Both Vulnerable
Just as women find themselves insecure and helpless when attacked or harassed by men, animals too are incapable of defending themselves. They both silently suffer all their life. In fact, animals can’t even express themselves or raise their voice for their rights as women can do. So they are more vulnerable and need more support & protection from the people who victimize them.
Motherhood Is Important To Both Women & Animals
Motherhood is undervalued as only working professionals and people who earn money are respected in our society. House wives are taken for granted. Performing household tasks and motherhood ain’t even considered any “work”. But do you know any other bond stronger than motherhood?
Female animals exhibit a strong bonding with their children. But eggs and chicks are taken away in 24-48 hours from their mothers. Calves are taken away in a few days from their mother, so that all her milk could be stolen for humans. But all mothers feel and exhibit the pain of separation. Alas, they are helpless creatures and can do nothing about it! Who will seek the justice for innocent beings?
Sexism vs. Speciesism
Segmented Views Of Women & Animals Are Promoted
By this, I mean how we objectify both women and animals on similar grounds. We don’t even treat them as an individual. We use women as sex objects and often advertisements projecting them focus on some part of them like their breasts, her legs, cleavage, lips, inner thighs etc. without revealing any facial identity. Similarly, animal body parts are presented to you in a packing in the shelves of departmental stores or on your meal plate as meat. Your brain can’t connect with the meat in that moment in a way that it was part of a living sentient animal just before being turned into a meat.
Just as “sexism” is stereotyping or discriminating against a sex, “speciesism” is a discrimination on the basis of species. The idea that animals exist for our consumption is similar to women exist for male-pleasure.
There Can’t Be A Non-Vegan Feminist
If you are a feminist, you ought to go vegan for the sake of feminism. Discrimination is discrimination whether it’s against a gender, a species, a race, caste or colour. The one who discriminate women on the basis of sex and the one who discriminate animals on the basis of their species has got the same oppressive mindset. All discrimination is based on the same belief system, “they are different from us, so why should we care for them?”
Feminism is about equality, justice and fundamental rights. Feminism is about respecting the existence of even vulnerable and weak. Feminism is against the violent systems of oppression.
I can't understand, how a feminist can be an accomplice in harassing, oppressing, raping and murdering an animal to serve her palate pleasure? How can a feminist be so insensitive for the rights of other vulnerable beings?
Unless and until, feminism become an inclusive movement, discrimination and violence can never end. So this is a call to ALL FEMINIST TO GO VEGAN!
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Go back to Ancient Egypt and you'll find evidence of a very matriarchal place where it was men who were exploited by the pharoahs who were more often women at certain times.
I promise you we are not helpless or vulnerable and we are only as powerless as our self esteem allows. Men can be physically stronger than women but this strength has no play in determining the distribution of power among people. Who in this day and age came to power with their bare hands? The argument of strength is therefore invalid. It gives you no power over women as a sex.
The one weakness a person can have is ignorance to their necessity to be fierce and willing to defend his or herself. Any person man or woman who believes peace and love can always protect you is making themselves vulnerable, and this is something women are often wrongly taught, while men are trained to "protect" them.
What logic? There is no logic there whatsoever. Animal rights is in fact NOT a feminist issue and women as PEOPLE are not comparable to ANIMALS, we are comparable to MAN.
This is a disgusting way to dehumanise women on international womens day. Feminism is the radical notion that WOMEN ARE PEOPLE. We are just as superior to animals as MAN (if at all). And so this has NOTHING to do with animals.
I understand that your petition is for animal rights, but don't bring women into your campaign by comparing them to farm animals. They are incomparable and you wouldn't dare compare the helplessness and powerlessness of men during matriarchal times to these cruelties.
If you are so concerned with the cruelty of sex abuse among animals then why don't you ask God why he made it so that a feline has her insides ripped by a male after conception? These are not man-made cruelties. And we don't farm them because we consider them weak. It is because we are not VEGAN, we live as the omnivores that God made us and that is YOUR CHOICE to be one. Babies are taken from their mothers all the time in the wild. I do see the cruelty in the excessiveness that humans do it, but your petition will fail if you try to bring human beings such as WOMEN down to the level of an animal instead of bringing animals up to the level we share with you............you scumbag.
hello @beanz i'm with u united in the feminist struggle! its great you know about ancient egypt and the matriarchy, i think you might like my post about ancient Egypt and cow worship...... i hope you have the time to check it out! https://steemit.com/spirituality/@celestialcow/cow-s-are-not-commodities-the-ancient-history-of-heavenly-divine-cow
I agree with most of what you said, but what you said about pharaohs being more often women at certain times is incorrect. There were a couple of female pharaohs or powerful queens with considerable influence on their male partners, but those were unique circumstances, and women were hardly treated as equal to men at any point in Ancient Egyptian history. (I was an Ancient Near Eastern historian and I taught Egyptian history at a university, and I've always been drawn to feminist topics in my studies, so I've spent some time looking through this exact issue.)
"According to logic ?". Boss there is nothing logical in comparing the rights of a woman to that of an animal. Feminism is A social theory or political movement which argues that legal and social restrictions on women must be removed in order to bring about equality of the sexes in all aspects of public and private life. the women in that definition does not include a female animal and the equality of sexes is between a man and a woman not animal. It seems you are trying to use bunch of words to fit a square peg into a round hole because I don't see any rationale that will prompt your comparing human's(women) right with animal's right.
Then I can also say all animal's right activist should also champion the cause of gender equality between men and women else they are not to be regarded as such because according to logic there are two types of livingthings ;" plant and animals(dog, goat, man and woman)"😟. you are speaking for animal's right I understand that but do so on a neutral ground and not trying to sip it into an already established movement (feminism) and if you are asking feminists to lend their voices in the animal struggle that is a different case entire .
@eddyson lets get married and have a million babies right meow!!! Lololol jk
How did you know I was thinking of asking for your hand in marriage 😨😂.
:P too bad marriage is a sham based on an old construct and im too old to make the babies with ya. ;) :P
It's a sham because so many have a misperception of what marriage really is before going into it. Yap you are right but not.
Please explain this to literally everyone else in my life. Marriage is a sham , well done.
Yes, they do! You will find many of the participants in Pride Parades to be AR activists.
Did you come across any animal rights activist who is not against gender bias too?
It appears that you are that person. However, there are also some in Pride parades that are very happy with gender binary and men in power.
Still waiting for you to tell us whether you think women are oppressed...
If I understand correctly, you see women as farm animals. No doubt any insistence that we are equals is
a threat to your unquestioned dominancetotally unreasonable, and the correct response is to do anything other than taking a long hard look in your mirror and asking yourself whether you're part of the problem or part of the solution.If we claim to be more evolved than our ancestors who painted on cave walls, perhaps we should stop using their social hierarchies as the basis for our "civilization".
Perhaps you missed the point. I never meant to see women as farmed animals. But I was drawing parallels in the sufferings of female farmed animals and women, with abuse of their reproductive system, deprivation to motherhood and many other things. I'm talking about giving a respect and dignity to a life of all females.
If women can't empathize with sufferings of female farmed animals and keep oppressing them, I don't understand how do they voice against the same sufferings which they too are inflicting to others. So my point is that a true feminist will also empathize with the similar sufferings of other female beings, we inhabit this planet with.
As a feminist who has been on and off veg for the past 12 years and has at times been very involved in animal rights activism, I agree with the central premise that the mistreatment of animals and factory farming in particular are dark symptoms of patriarchal culture, and another form of objectifying bodies. I myself have made the same point many times about the way that advertising portrays women's bodies as “meat.” You can make a very compelling argument about animal rights as a facet of human rights (there are some great books about that exact topic).
However, the way you’ve gone about laying out this point and some of the things you have said in the process communicate that you are not an ally to women’s rights and that you are complaining about patriarchy while at the same time reinforcing it with sexist argumentation because of your (justified, but misplaced) anger about animal abuse. You’re suggesting that women do not need to have a movement or a day to speak out about the way that women are mistreated globally because it is a lesser issue. If this was not your intention, then you should change your title and the first few sentences of your article. Even if that wasn’t your intention, at best, you’re turning this into a game of “whatabout?”-ism. I’m not going to debate whose bodies and lives are worth more, because it’s beside the point. Would you say the same to people who are protesting police brutality? Abuse of incarcerated people? Fighting against one injustice does not negate the other injustices in the world, but complaining about other injustices as a distraction to the topic that means the most to you does harm those movements.
I’m also not going to get into what I would prefer people do with their diets. After many years in animal rights I have learned that the problem with crying hypocrisy is that it’s a double edged sword. If you want to live a perfect life with what you support through consumption, then you’re going to have a very hard time, and it will be easy for your adversaries to point that out. It is great that you are not supporting animal torture and pollution in one of the best ways you’re in control of doing so, but you certainly support many other evils in what you choose to consume. For example, by using whatever electronic device you used to post this article, you supported sweatshop labor and the exploitation of human bodies in East Asia. The clothes you are wearing were likely produced in horrifying factory conditions, and you will add to one of the largest contributors to pollution when you discard those clothes. Those are just a couple of examples of all of the things you have consumed this week that have supported companies that are harming animal bodies (human and non-human) and destroying our planet. And more directly, if you’re saying that animal rights are as important as women’s rights, then you should also be an advocate for women’s rights, but I'm sure that's been pointed out many times already.
Very well stated. <3
It's actually a nice post but I don't get your title. From your title it seems you think Womens days is nonsense.
Thanks!
I just tried to make the title as a bait but perhaps failed abruptly 😊
Yeah... might wanna change that. No amount of clickbait appeal is worth branding yourself as an anti-feminist. You could have easily made the same point in a way that doesn't make you come across as an upstanding member of the patriarchy if you titled it "Why Animal Rights is a Feminist Issue" or something. I would read the hell out of that. And you're definitely not going to get anywhere with feminists and attracting them to the movement by writing an article framed in a way that makes it sound like you think their bodies are equal or lesser to cattle.
Especially as a member of teamgirlpowa which might be rectified soon :( unfortunately.
In case of animals whole society is responsible including female
Agreed.
Here I wanted to bring attention to the fact that most oppressed and harassed creatures in the animal kingdom are female. So their fundamental rights become even more important just like it's for women.
So women can easily understand and have empathy with their own gender as they can relate more to the motherhood, breast-feeding, bonding with baby, rape, perpetual pregnancies, witnessing murder of own baby and the likes.
This is a great post and interesting perspective that I would have never put together. It makes sense and is very well thought out. Thank you for bringing more awareness, to bring forth more equality for all!
Did you miss the part where he compared you to a farm animal? While cunningly keeping himself in the hierarchical position of superior to both animal and woman.
Hi @xyzashu! This is so informative that must be spread all over the web. I want to share this post on Facebook but it seems the FB button doesn`t work at all.
Hey, thanks for your support on this!
If you are using busy.org, FB share button should work.
If not, just copy-paste the link to this post in your FB status or
try clicking this link.
woah! deep stuff.. lets get to the roots man, yeah!
amazing post, I totally agree! But in our speciesist society it will go a long way till comparison of people and animals will work :( Hope for someone reading your post it will!
In case you missed it, he just compared you to a farm animal while intentionally holding his kind (man) above that.
As we say in my culture. A’oo!
This entire blog is a huge No and hw it got over 100 upvotes I have no idea.
Somewhere we need to make a beginning and today is a good day for it.
Thanks for your lovely words!
When evreything is over, hope is what remains. Let's hope for the best.
I forget this day. Thank friend for share women days post
Thanks for reading it!
Okay, so what you are telling me is that animal cruelty is feminists fault??!?! and that feminists are responsible for their own oppression because they are "exclusive"? is that basically what you are telling me?
its feminists that are causing all of these problems??
Not exactly. What I'm trying to convey here is that feminism is a movement against discrimination and oppression of females. And while most women are quick to point out them being victimized or about their vulnerability, but fail to take into account that they themselves are oppressors too.
Non-vegan women discriminate, oppress and victimize innocent and vulnerable non-human females. So when they raise a finger against oppression, their other three fingers are pointing towards themselves. Unless, it's taken care of, this movement won't succeed.
If you read one of my earlier comments here, you may have noticed that I'm talking about intersectional feminism here:
So to put it simply:
If you are not an intersectional feminist, you are not a true feminist and if you are not vegan, you are not a feminist.
You are a man. Work on your own ingrained privilege. Then we can talk about veganism. You need to learn a loooooooot more about feminism before you dictate what is and isnt feminist.
Basically , everything.
These two issues are seperate. Do not asked the oppressed to fix a problem that is mostly created by men.
We are an earthling first and a man or woman later. Why are you suggesting me to work on my own ingrained privileges when I'm talking about coming out of all your ingrained privileges which make you to oppress innocent beings?
If you know better about feminism, why don't you enlighten me on it?
And you got me wrong. I'm asking the oppressor here to fix the problem. So when would you be ready to talk about veganism @limabeing?
If you cant recognize that men are oppressing women and that human rights are just as if not more important than animal rights then you and i cant discuss anything.
You are asking feminists who you claim are the oppressors to solve somethkng that you think is a problem. When it is a way of life for many. You can be upset about it but dragging feminist into this and trashing on us isnt a good way to convert or start a healthy discussion.
Thanks bye
Now this is entirely your interpretation. I didn't say anything to this effect.
Yes, that's correct.
You always bring in the argumentum ad populum. Even if your stand is correct, your fallacious argument makes you sound otherwise. Going by this argument, you won't be able to make a case for your own issue of gender discrimination. Because you always want to follow the established way of life! How ridiculous! Now I agree to you that we can't discuss anything.
Thanks for your input anyway!
You didnt start with a discussion. You started with an attack.
"You always" ? Who is "you"
You started this post belittling feminism and our current work and then you expect me to give you patience and respect?
Answer this:
Do you believe that woman all over the world are oppressed?
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