Older, greener, and wiser: charting the experiences of older women in the American vegan movement

ABSTRACT

Vegan feminist theory argues that women and other marginalized groups frequently experience discrimination in the vegan movement given its failure to apply intersectional praxis. We interviewed a small sample of older vegan women in America, hypothesizing that they would report feeling particularly vulnerable to discrimination given the vegan movement’s patriarchal leanings and its heavy focus on health and vitality. Our results, however, are mixed. Some viewed older age as an asset that strengthened their ability to commit to veganism, while others reported stressed social interactions, underrepresentation in the movement, and lack of support by doctors.

KEYWORDS:

• Age
• agism
• animal Rights
• gender
• identity
• social movements
• veganism
• vegan feminism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. “Older” and “younger” are terms advanced by Applewhite (2016) to emphasize that age is a relative status.

2. The Vegan Society (n.d.) defines the practice as an effort to “exclude – as far as is possible and practicable – all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.”

3. By way of an example, the American vegetarian movement experienced nothing short of a crisis when its famous founder Sylvester Graham died in his 50 s after a lifetime of disability and poor health. Fearful that his demise might undermine the movement’s celebration of vegetarian vitality, movement leaders worked to tarnish Graham with accusations that he had overworked himself and cheated on his regimen (Shprintzen, 2013). From the movement’s inception, vegans and vegetarians have been expected to age both well and productively as representatives of the cause. Plant-based diets were billed as a more efficient intake of nutrients that were uniquely capable of producing hard-working, physically superior specimens. The inevitability of old age could sometimes confound this claimsmaking.

4. This term is capitalized as a measure of respect to denote their status as a distinct demographic identity.

5. This is not to stereotype older vegans as only health-focused since many older vegans also adopt veganism out of concern for Nonhuman Animal welfare as our data demonstrates.

6. Vegan Outreach adopted an explicitly intersectional approach following a change in leadership in 2013.

7. Retrieved March 1, 2018 from https://www.peta.org/category/main-issues/skins/.

8. Data was missing for the remaining 5% of respondents. Due to a methodological flaw, participants were not asked to clarify specific earnings between $20,000 and $100,000.

9. Statistic omits outliers.

10. Vegan feminist theory was established by activist-scholars who have deep connections to the movement. As Adams and Gruen (2014) record, this theory has been shaping the activist imagination since the early 1980s.