Month: April 2020

I successfully went a week with going vegan as far as eating vegan food. However, there are a lot of products everywhere that people use daily and do not even know that they are made with animal products. Though I was not fully successful I still feel like I made a difference and I am proud of myself. Bridget commented on my original post and I did take her advice. All week I did eat any foods that contained animal products and I also used vegan cosmetics. ELF is a completely cruelty free and vegan cosmetic brand. I am not a person who wears a lot of makeup, but I do wear primer, foundation and mascara. I already had the primer and I went out to the store to buy mascara and foundation by ELF. The part that was the most challenging was planning what I was going to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as snacks every day. Since I was very new at this I kept it very simple. I went online and looked up vegan recipes and then I wrote down all the ingredients I would need to buy for the week. I made sure that I got everything in one trip because during this pandemic I did not want to go to the grocery store more then necessary. I am not a huge breakfast fan so every day for breakfast I had blueberry Belvita bars. For lunch I would either have a salad or leftovers from a vegan meal I made the night before. I had veggie burgers for dinner a few nights and I also found a few really good vegan recipes online. My two favorite meals were veggie pasta and spinach lasagna. I really like fruit so if I wanted a snack I would have some type of fruit.

Though I was not completely vegan all week I think my plan was successful. I am going to try and continue to eat vegan meals and snacks for a while and hope that I can stick to it. I have always wanted to go vegan, and this could be the beginning for me. Going vegan is definitely difficult and it is going to be a challenge to completely convert to it, but my hope is that I will slowly transition. As far as personal activism goes I believe that this was very successful. How I felt all week made me want to continue to do this. I also think it raised some awareness. For example, one day when I came back from my lunch break at work my manager asked me what I had for lunch. I told him it was spinach lasagna that I made, and he replied saying that sounds interesting. That was a perfect opportunity for me to tell him I was trying to go vegan for a week. Even though I am only one person that is one more person that is advocating for the animals.

I have always cared a lot about animals and when I say that I do not just mean cat and dogs I mean all animals. For the most part cats and dogs and the other typical animals that people have as pets are “respected.” However, there are so many other animals that are abused and killed every day and it is all for food. There are dogs and cats and other pets that get abused by their owners but the number for farm animals is so much higher. Ecofeminism is the connection between women and nature and it is the idea that women and the environment are not only connected but they are viewed in similar ways by men. Then one week we talked a lot about animals and vegetarianism and that section was shocking to me. Factory farming is a high demand business and the animals get treated so poorly. Both animals raised for meat and animals raised for milk and eggs are all raised in terrible conditions. I have thought about being a vegan for a long time and I really hope one day I am so for my action plan for the week is to go vegan. I hope that everything I eat for the entire week contains no animal products.

To successfully eat vegan for a week I have to go grocery shopping because no one in my family is vegetarian or vegan. When I am at the grocery store I will have to keep track of the ingredients in the products I am buying to make sure they do not contain any animal products at all. I often eat eggs for breakfast, so my alternative will be cereal with a plant-based milk such as almond milk. I am also going to buy veggie burgers and a lot of fruits and vegetables to assure that I am still getting the nutrients that I need. I also drink a lot of coffee so I will need to either add a dairy free creamer or almond milk to my coffee. This plan is more on a personal level and I will know for myself that I am saving animals lives. However, I could also try to inspire some other people by telling them what I am doing and educate them about the meat or animal industry in general. I believe a lot of people are unaware how bad factory farming really is and if I can educate some people it could really make a difference.

 

It is well known by many that women have been oppressed throughout history in all parts of the world. However, something that a lot of people do not know or do not care about is how the environment and nature have also been oppressed. However, who is more likely to notice that nature is oppressed? Women are because they play so many important roles in taking care of the wildlife and it has been like this for many years. Wangari Maathai is a women rights activist and environmentalist from Kenya. She understands and acts upon issues that threaten women and also threaten the environment because she can see the clear connection between the two.  She starts off by explaining the role that women have in Africa and how important taking care of the land and the crops is to them. Women in Africa know when something is wrong or could be dangerous to themselves or the wildlife. This inspired Maathai to start what is called the Green Belt Movement to help assure that crops and the land could be kept safe. Women in Africa understood what environmental degradation is and wanted to get involved in this movement. However, this was not Maathai’s only concern. She also protested against women’s rights as she could see that they were being oppressed.

Warren explains this relationship between the oppression of women and the oppression of nature by explaining that domination and oppression are very similar ideas. If you think about women being oppressed and nature being dominated, then they can be closely related. Women are deeply connected to land especially indigenous women. When the land that they feel so connected to is destroyed it hurts them physically and emotionally. They feel at ease when they are with the land that they know and when they move away from it or the land is destroyed they feel like they lost something. Oppression of women and oppression of land are connected in many ways. Destruction and violence do not happen to either women or the land it happens to both. If the land is destroyed, then the community becomes angry and it bring out violence amongst a community that was once tight nit. There are many practices that can lead to environmental degradation and when these practices occur it is not only destroying the environment, but it is also destroying the communities who call that land home. Deforestation is a great example to explain these ideas. Men go out into the forest and cut down dozens and dozens of trees to make room to build a house or some other building. Those trees are now dead, and the environment relies on trees to maintains a good balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Now that those trees are gone it is directly hurting the environment and people.

Since there are so many ways of destruction on the environment, activism is very important. Women feel oppressed by men just like the land is oppressed by men or whoever is involved in these destructive practices. Women like Wangari Maathai want to fight for rights of women and the land. Many women have been both feminist and environmental activist to help protect the lives of both.

Warren, Karen J. “Feminist Environmental Philosophy.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 27 Apr. 2015