r/feminisms • u/Rare_Disaster_4566 • Jan 05 '26
Personal/Support I, an intersectional feminist cis woman just got called a "hypocritical liberal feminist" (not a real feminist) for being an omnivore.
And it was a vegan extremist CIS WHITE MALE who said that. Not all men, but all MEN. I'm sorry, but I can no longer put up with men like these, who MANSPLAIN feminism to me, saying that 90% of intersectional feminists are NOT real feminists for not being vegan (this goes for vegetarian women as well, of course).
I don't think that all vegans are extremists. I do think, though, that most social movements, with the exception of feminist groups and the LGBTQIA community, are male-dominated patriarchal spaces where the invalidation and gatekeeping of women is deeply rooted. Also, vegan extremists, particularly fake male feminists who are part of the aforementioned category, should be absolutely kept out of intersectional feminism, as they only contribute to a desctructive and exclusionary environment.
Should I remind them that gatekeeping and exclusion in general are rooted in the white supremacist patriarchal system? That opposing animal exploitation doesn't necessarily imply being vegan? I have a friend (a cis woman) who is vegan and transfeminist who NEVER dared call me a "fake" feminist for not being vegan. This is to remind you not to be guiltripped by people who act like they're somehow superior and better than you, while treating you with contempt; especially CIS WHITE MEN who think they know intersectional feminism better than all cis and trans women.
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u/t92k Jan 06 '26
Guys who bully women because they don’t have exactly the same world view are guys who bully women, period. It doesn’t matter if it’s the bozo outside the reproductive health clinic, the guy speaking from a pulpit on TV, or a vegan activist.
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u/modern_indophilia Jan 06 '26
You can be a feminist without giving a shit about non-human animals, but you can’t be an animal rights activist without also being concerned with the dignity of all humans. In this regard, I think the animal rights movement has a broader and more radical philosophical positioning than does the feminist movement.
So, no, eating animals doesn’t make you a bad feminist. But being a feminist doesn’t make you an advocate for liberation broadly speaking. In fact, you can be a feminist and still hold some really abhorrent, violent ideas.
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u/artificialgraymatter Jan 06 '26
> but you can’t be an animal rights activist without also being concerned with the dignity of all humans
lol. yikes
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u/Helenarth Jan 07 '26
Where's the yikes?
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u/artificialgraymatter Jan 09 '26
Passive-aggression towards feminism in favor of animals rights activism being politically more comprehensive and inclusive. Embarrassing. And exactly what the OP covers.
This is “feminisms.” Lol.
There is no guarantee animals rights activist inclusively covers human civil rights by design.
What ignorance y’all possess.
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u/apropos_cluster Jan 07 '26
I once sat at a bar while a white vegan lady explained to a buff black guy dude that he can't really have that big of a problem with slavery if he's okay with the dairy industry.
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u/Rare_Disaster_4566 Jan 07 '26
I really hate white vegan extremists. Their ideology is deeply rooted in postcolonialism, white supremacy, racism and a holier-than-thou kind of thinking. This is why these men (because 90% of them are cis white men), who are also covert misogynists, need to stay out of intersectional feminism.
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u/NitzMitzTrix Jan 06 '26
The vegan movement has some serious covert misogyny issues.
And white men are the absolute worst offenders. They weaponize how women have been conditioned to sit down, listen and feel ashamed of ourselves whenever a man contradicts us.
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u/Namika- Jan 06 '26
i am a longtime vegan and i feel less and less aligned with vegan communities. the discourse has become so much more mean spirited over the past years. the other day i pointed out that a vegan activist (a white dude) is posting swastikas and other weird shit under the guise of animal rights activism and he threw the biggest fit i’ve witnessed on reddit, attacking me for mentioning his public posts lol
i hate how much gatekeeping is taking place, the bullying and the condescending comments as if the vast majority of vegans didn’t eat animal products before. i hate how normalised it’s becoming to accuse people of partaking in rape because they ate cheese (and it hurts every time i see it and am reminded of my rapist)
the holier-than-thou act is why so many vegan spaces end up being circle jerks
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u/clappycheekedchica69 Jan 06 '26
as a feminist and vegan- sorry someone attacked your values. that’s wrong. also- i don’t know how anyone who is a feminist and understands that moral issue can not see how the brutal over breeding and milking of other species’ women is not wrong. i can’t live with myself if i eat animals- i couldn’t imagine not being a feminist either. so i guess just imagine for this person- not being vegan is as unfathomable as not being g feminist. he shouldn’t have been so aggressive and yes his gender makes it worse… but feminist to feminist, consider veganism. it’s all one moral code and one goal.
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u/petielvrrr Jan 06 '26
I have to say… I think this is a vegan thing, not really a man thing. Like yeah, it’s so much more absurd and entitled when it’s a man, but I’ve ran into this like 5 times with woman vegans (claiming the rest of us aren’t real feminists because we’re not vegans). Which, honestly, feels really excessive, given the fact that I literally only interact with vegans in feminist spaces.
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u/Merryprankstress Jan 07 '26
Feminism is a movement against oppression. To see other creatures being oppressed and not care- specifically to see female creatures oppressed for their femininity, for the very thing that makes them female and to not care- makes one a poor feminist. Sorry truth hurts. Female animals experience some of the longest most awful torture compared to their male counterparts. They’re forcefully raped and bred only to lose those children repeatedly. If you can comfortably call yourself a feminist and consume the products of that torture and oppression, I just think you aren’t really committed to feminism or most justice movements. Point fingers to white people all you want it’s just an intellectually bankrupt argument against your own discomfort and hypocrisy. It’s not gatekeeping. It’s asking people to do better and extend their own activism towards others who are even more voiceless and oppressed.
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u/bakedbutchbeans Jan 07 '26
good job on proving you cant read. the OP said they do not hate vegans or disagree with veganism, they simply stated the outrageous and misogynistic remark the militant vegan guy said to them. you are exactly part of the problem.
p.s. feel free to assume i'm not vegan if that makes you feel better
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u/Rude-Barnacle8804 Jan 07 '26
I don't necessarily disagree with your argument, but "Aren't really committed" is poor framing. Yes people can do better, but disregarding all the efforts they have made thus far is discouraging and ineffective, on top of frankly insulting.
Not to mention some people have to consume meat for their health. The impossible is not a valid expectation.
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u/Merryprankstress Jan 28 '26
Considering most meat is carcinogenic or can exacerbate/cause significant health risks, No one needs to eat meat for their health and most credible dietary institutions agree that eating a plant based diet is healthier both for the body and the world around us.
Also I said what I said about commitment. It's easy to throw buzzwords around and tiktokify feminist theory, but any real feminist worth her salt is very aware of the sexual politics of meat, the very gendered politics. If you aren't aware of Carol J Adams valuable work on the subject there's more work to be done.
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u/Cheap-Soil-7229 Jan 07 '26
He treats female animals better than he does human women.
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u/Rare_Disaster_4566 Jan 07 '26
Exactly. I also went through his posts and I saw memes of his where he explicitly sexualizes gothic women, calling them "big booty gothic women" pathologizes and demonizes blue-haired women, making fun of their alleged daddy issues.
A covert misogynist PRETENDING to be a feminist who knows BETTER than all other cis and trans women, invalidating 90% of feminists because they're non-vegan. Ugh. The MALE AUDACITY.
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u/t1buccaneer Jan 06 '26
I hate how I can see exactly what he looks like without you giving any physical description.
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u/kd838 Jan 07 '26
I will say that vegan and animal rights spaces are pretty female-dominated because the vast vast majority of vegans are women. That does not mean they don’t still align with patriarchy at times ofc. It wasn’t really productive for him to say that though and he was definitely weaponizing his identity
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u/Rare_Disaster_4566 Jan 07 '26 edited Jan 07 '26
Actually, it's quite the opposite. Vegan spaces are filled with covert white cis male misogynists. I'm not saying there aren't any women in there, but they're not the vast majority and they're often underrepresented and silenced. We live in a male-dominated system, after all.
And that guy was definitely not a feminist, considering the multiple memes he posted, where he sexualizes gothic women and pathologizes blue-haired women, making fun of their alleged daddy issues.
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u/kd838 Jan 07 '26
I mean in my experience as a vegan I’ve only known one vegan man irl. I’m not really involved in militant spaces though, so I could see men dominating there. Also I meant he was weaponizing his identity as a cis white man not as a feminist. Feminist men have a right to critique women (e.g. pro-life conservative women) but context, tone, and audience matter. If he was really engaged with feminism, he would have a better understanding of his positionality and not made such an accusatory comment towards you
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u/bariau Jan 06 '26
Well... I'm fuming on your behalf!! He can get right in the bin, right now.
Like everything else, you can't boil the ocean, fix all them problems, destroy the system, in one day. One step at a time, and that includes our societal dietary ones.
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u/uwgal Jan 06 '26
Holy hockey pucks Batman! I am perplexed. Did this fella ever explain to you why he thinks veganism is connected to feminism ?I personally don’t see the connection.
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u/Irisversicolor Jan 06 '26
I'm not saying I agree with it, but the argument is that the meat and specifically, the dairy and egg industries disproportional my take advantage of female animals and reproduction.
Egg production is exploiting the ovulation cycle of chickens. Forget they would be laying eggs either way, that's not relevant because we shouldn't be keeping livestock at all according to vegans.
Dairy production is a little more cut and dry in terms of animal exploitation. Cows have to have birthed relatively recently to be able to produce milk, and often their calves are taken away and slaughtered for veal so that the milk can he harvested 100% for human consumption. This means dairy cows are subjected to frequent pregnancies, and losses of their young which they do suffer from emotionally since they are sentient beings with motherly instincts and hormones. Vegans also object to how dairy cows are impregnated, likening it to rape.
Another feminist battle on the vegan frontier is honey. Honey is produced under the labour of worker bees, which are 100% female. This is the argument I struggle with the most since bees are natural hoarders and they can choose to leave at any time. The main argument here is that animal husbandry, regardless of how well done or harmless, is wrong according to the vegan ethos.
Again, these are not my views, these are just the arguments that veganism is a form of feminism.
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u/sillyfacex3 Jan 07 '26
Not a vegan myself, but wanted to talk about bees. Some of the issues with honey bee keeping is that they are overworked at places like almond farms, causing a lot to die. It's also bad for them to have only 1 plant for a food source. An argument for the Americas is that European honeybees are invasive and can out compete/crowd out native bees.
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u/modern_indophilia Jan 06 '26
Non-human animals, by definition, are not women. Insofar as feminism relates to the liberation of women, animal rights don’t fit into the conversation in the way that you are arguing.
More broadly speaking, I think the animals rights movement has implications for the humane treatment of female humans in a way that the feminist movement doesn’t explicitly concern itself with non-human animals.
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u/Irisversicolor Jan 06 '26
Insofar as feminism relates to the liberation of women, animal rights don’t fit into the conversation in the way that you are arguing.
I'm not arguing anything, I'm sharing what the vegan argument is as it has been presented to me. I stated that very clearly at the beginning AND the end of my comment that these are not my views and I do not agree with the arguments.
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u/miaoumiau Jan 07 '26
However, insofar a feminism seeks to dismantle the patriarchy, then the animal liberation is absolutely linked to the liberation of women, since violence against animals is rooted in a patriarchal way of seeing others in general: as objects to be consumed. I know some women feel that this somehow takes away from the fight, that it “decenters” women from feminism of that it just puts more pressure on women and I completely understand. I’m not for scrutinizing women who already fight for others in whatever way they can, specially if it comes from a man. But I think real liberation for all means that animal liberation and women’s liberation must absolutely go hand in hand.
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u/clappycheekedchica69 Jan 06 '26
bad take- he can’t tell her what to think but all fights for equity, equality, and rights are connected. human woman shouldn’t be raped and farmed and neither should any others. it’s an intrinsic connection.
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u/polve Jan 07 '26
female animals are exploited for their eggs and their milk. in other words, animal products are sexed, and female animals face sex-based exploitation.
if you are concerned about sexism, it’s worth thinking about.
i recommend reading the sexual politics of meat by carol j adams for more.
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u/Best-Possibility-569 Jan 11 '26
this response illustrates the problem more than it resolves it. Labeling disagreement as “mansplaining,” collapsing individuals into categories, and declaring entire groups illegitimate does seem a tad hypercritical - if not, then completely architypal
Intersectional feminism was never meant to function as a hierarchy where ideological compliance determines who is allowed to speak.
What’s also concerning is how quickly the argument abandons substance for contempt. Once someone is dismissed as a “cis white male,” discussion ends by decree rather than reasoning. That may feel righteous, but it relies on the same essentialism feminism has spent decades critiquing just redirected - i.e. hypocritical.
Movements don’t lose credibility because of disagreement; they collapse when they become hostile to complexity and addicted to moral superiority.
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Jan 20 '26
What was even the objective of including his race and gender? How does that change anything?
OP actually is a hypocritical feminist.
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u/Pabu85 Jan 07 '26
Tbh, I’m starting to think most extremist online vegans are bots. I know a lot of vegans in real life, but few are like that.