Veganism and Women
Articles Reflecting a Vegan Lifestyle From All-Creatures.org

Vegan lifestyle articles that discuss ways of living in peace with humans, animals, and the environment.

FROM Giselle Mehta, Vegans Make A Difference
March 2018

Biochemically, one was ingesting and absorbing the secretions of terrorised beings in their death throes. Metaphysically, I understood the dodgy terrain of seeking the best for oneself, while being indifferent or complicit in the violence inflicted on hidden multitudes of all species.... The paradox of inner peace is that equilibrium is static if it echoes purely within one’s personal space.

Giselle Mehta

March 8 is International Women’s Day. To be a woman is to enjoy life’s beauties and privileges—a stronger connection with nature in our physiological rhythms and an access to intuitions and empathy with the hidden heartbeat of a living universe. In Indian mythology the mighty forces of creation were inert in the absence of the driving energies of Shakthi or feminine power. Destructive forces, personalized as demons, were vanquished by avenging Devis, to ensure perpetuation of the creative order. Mythologies were constructed to reflect observed realities.

One can certainly observe the dynamic of feminine energies as awesome and ongoing phenomena. They have long been protectors and nurturers of the weak of their own species. Today the narrative is expanding. There are women who march, women who think, women who do, sometimes all together. I am intimately privy to this in my involvements with veganism as a social justice movement that addresses rape of the planet, the infliction of hideous suffering on animals and links it up with human weal in an aspiration of better health and food security for fellow humans through sound plant-based nutrit ion. To do so, they are taking on the colossal mammoths of corporate might, who dictate what we must eat through their nexus with governments and access to subsidies, who prefer the human in a state of illness rather than the wellness that would dispense with medicated dependence.

Much like the prehistoric “gatherer” ancestress who discovered edibles in the berries, fruits and vegetation around her, she might delve into the secrets of a powerful domain, the kitchen, each imaginative and delectable plant-based masterpiece a triumph to once more establish nature’s benign and bounteous way, bypassing the imposed savagery of flesh and blood, death and destruction. One sees it in the women for whom motherhood has been a defining experience, opening their eyes and hearts to mothers of all species who suffer separation from their young, like the cows who bellow for calves who are denied the milk nature intended for them, fed to humans of all ages in a cruel distortion of nature’s norms. I see it in those who advocate, either in public for a close social setting for a humane and healthier way. I see it in entrepreneurs of products that provide humane alternatives to blood-soaked suffering. I see it in those active in rescuing and rehabilitating the sick and injured of all species.

There are of course women for whom such injustices and the initiatives they engender are non-issues, in the comfort zone of passively accepting the mindset that has determined their consumption choices and general attitudes for millennia. Conversely, there are men swelling the ranks of the thoughtful and compassionate, often in passionate leadership roles. In doing so, they are shedding the testosterone-driven narrative of violence and enslavement for larger intuition and empathy. To use a beautiful concept I encountered in the writings of Will Tuttle, I gauge an awakening to the power of Sophia, Greek goddess of wisdom and justice that crosses genders.

A meritocracy demands a certain gender neutrality to compete. The bigger challenge of the planet’s survival and the ethical issues underlying our treatment of fellow humans, living beings and animate environment, the burning areas of war and inequality, illness and ignorance demand that women and men find fruitful synergies for meaningful and cooperative action.

Some additional thoughts...

The Gentle Battle

Personal peace is the precious state of being that we all crave for.

In my case, the quest took a quantum leap when I made the critical connection between diet and consumption choices, and the equilibrium sought to be achieved for myself and dear ones. Biochemically, one was ingesting and absorbing the secretions of terrorised beings in their death throes. Metaphysically, I understood the dodgy terrain of seeking the best for oneself, while being indifferent or complicit in the violence inflicted on hidden multitudes of all species. Peace has suffused the self since that critical realization dawned, with the attendant practices of ethical veganism. Initial challenges and constraints melted to the tangible force of wellness: holistic healthfulness of mind, body and spirit.

The paradox of inner peace is that equilibrium is static if it echoes purely within one’s personal space. Its beauty is too transcendent to be confined to the enjoyment of those limited individuals gifted with awareness. So the person at peace might pull out of equilibrium to open up possibilities of the peaceful way to others. The pro-active person practicing non- violence towards all species takes up symbolic arms against voiceless suffering, in its idea and its instances. It is not that such an ignited individual is spoiling for a fight, rather that the horrors of animal farming cry out for an end to the colossal bloodshed.

Each individual example of “The Peaceful Warrior” chooses the strategy best suited to deal with opposing forces. Some may pound the pavements to grab the attention of the passer by. Others may reverberate from a public podium or in the hushed ambience of lecture hall. Reversing mindsets of human superiority over other species might variously employ words, music, theater, culinary skill and product innovation to make a difficult point. Veganism’s “ Gentle Battle” demands every creative input and clever thought that the activist can conjure up. The forces of violence and bloodshed may yet be bested with Reason, Beauty and the sundry arts of Peace.


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