Carol J. Adams: 25 Years, 7 Questions

1. Were you involved in animal law/policy/advocacy in 1995? Yes.
2. What were you doing? Some of us (Catherine Keller, Andrew Linzey, Jay McDaniel, and Paul Waldau) had just done the first presentation on animals at the American Academy of Religion. It was called “Demarginalizing Animals in Theology.” 1995 was the year I began showing “The Sexual Politics of Meat Slide Show” an ever-evolving presentation. That year saw the publication of Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations, which I co-edited. . For that book, I wrote an essay called “Woman-Battering and Harm to Animals”—one of the first articles that attempted to provide a feminist interpretation for why batterers harm animals. I was also working on co-editing Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animal published the following year (and now part of a more recent edition, The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics: A Reader. One of the points of this book was to encourage thinking about developing animal law from a care tradition rather than using a rights approach.
3. What were the major issues in 1995? It depends on who you ask! Of course, there was animal agriculture, factory farming, animals used in entertainment and in animal experimentation. However, by 1991, (The Sexual Politics of Meat had been published the previous year) I was discussing the role of sexism in the animal movement. I remember presenting to a group of animal “leaders” who used to meet bi-annually. My presentation was about what a feminist perspective brings to the movement, and I discussed the culture of sexual exploitation and the failure to promote women in various organizations, as well as other ways a sexual hierarchy was operating in the movement. (I had created survey that many women had answered.) The wonderful and visionary activist Henry Spira came up to me afterwards and asked me was I trying to be a “revolutionary” (!) When I found my notes to my talk last year, I was saddened about how relevant the critique still was.
4. What are the positive developments in last 25 years in animal law, policy or welfare? I am so excited by the growth of animal law and feel that many of the articles written for law reviews are wonderfully insightful, and not just for lawyers. I think of the important writings of Maneesha Deckha of the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria, Jessica Eisen of the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta, Taimie Bryant, professor of Law at UCLA Law School, and Angela Fernandez of the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, among many others from whom I have learned.
5. What are the negatives? In terms of animal activism, I have seen a growth of white male saviourism, an accompanying hero worship that denigrates grassroots activism, and an attempt to massage the vegan message to make it, in a sense, “safe” for white men—by advocating that the issue of veganism is not connected to other social justice issues, and that “plant-based” eating is for “real men” as though we know what kind of person that is and we would want more of them!
6. What did we learn in the last 25 years? I’d like to believe we are learning that the issues feminists, ecofeminists, vegan feminist Chicanx, and Black vegan feminists raised in the 1980s and 1990s about interconnected oppressions, and the need to place our activism within a context that recognizes white supremacy, xenophobia, and misogyny has finally started to register. My only concern is that people think this is a “new” idea, this “intersectional vegan” discussion—when it is, really, the fact that it was because white men had control of the movement for so much of the time and encouraged it to be a “single issue movement” that these ideas that have been around for quite a while seem new.
7. Looking toward the future, what are your predictions for:
   • 5 years (2025): An international agreement is achieved that recognizes the role of animal agriculture and eating animals in recent pandemics and includes commitments to dismantle animal agriculture. Meanwhile, all mainstream newspapers reach an agreement to review only vegan dishes at restaurants and publish only vegan recipes as part of their commitment to trying to stop climate change.
   • 10 years (2030): The 40^th anniversary edition of The Sexual Politics of Meat and the 10^th anniversary edition of The Pornography of Meat: New and Updated are published because retrograde attitudes remain prominent, and culture is slow to abandon oppressive attitudes.
   • 25 years (2045): I turn 94, and my books no longer need to remain in print because society has finally transformed itself, thanks to many, many years of activism of so many.

Congratulations and thanks for all your good work!