Journal of Animal Ethics

INTRODUCTION

Veganism is the practice of choosing not to consume animal products. While some choose a plant-based diet for health or environmental reasons, others adopt it “for the animals.” In this context, it can be understood as a sociopolitical act of resistance against factory-farming practices and part of a larger collective effort to dismantle the social, philosophical, and economic structures that rely on animal suffering. Yet, despite some progress, there seems to be no end to animal exploitation, especially for those who are confined to factory farms. Billions will endure unimaginable misery prior to their being slaughtered not because we need to consume them or their by-products but because we can. Humans have made their fragile existence a living hell by choice. Most everyone, however, appears to have come to terms with this reality. Moral strife is rarely associated with ordering a hamburger at the drive-thru. I cannot come to terms with it. Instead, I am dismayed at the lethargic pace of societal moral progress and feel disconnected and out of touch with the world. There is now a part of me that wants to turn inward—no more public protests and no more failed expectations about dismantling industrial animal agribusiness. But thinking about this personal retreat plagues me with certain philosophical questions: What would this withdrawal look like and is there any value in it? Can this retreat still count as a form of meaningful and legitimate resistance against animal oppression? [End Page 184]

In this article, I attempt to answer these questions. By expanding on David Cooper’s (2018) argument in Animals and Misanthropy and applying Tamara Fakhoury’s (2021) quiet resistance model, I will argue that ethical veganism can be understood as a form of quietism, as a quiet retreat from a world burdened by human moral failings and animal suffering. I will also show how this retreat, although quiet in nature, is both a legitimate and valuable form of genuine resistance to animal oppression. Positing ethical veganism as a form of sociopolitical resistance to animal exploitation is not new, but thinking of it as a quietist retreat and a legitimate and valuable form of quiet resistance is a different matter.

MISANTHROPY AND THE QUIET RETREAT

In his book, David Cooper (2018) argues that when we reflect on our relationship to animals, when we take an honest look at the ways in which we treat them, we may have good reasons to adopt a misanthropic verdict. For him, we are justified in believing that animal suffering rests, in part, on ubiquitous and entrenched moral failings or vices.² We can no longer ignore the central role human attitudes and moral character play in the matter. The world is a dangerous place for animals because we fail to live up to the better angels of our nature.

Although these vices factor in multiple industries, including scientific research, entertainment, hunting, and sport, this article will focus on animal agribusiness or confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) given the ethical vegan scope. Cooper (2018) organizes these moral failings into categories or “clusters.” One category involves “insensitivity” to animal suffering and the tendency to avoid “seeing things as they are.” (Cooper, 2018, pp. 50–51). The slaughter of 90,000 pigs each day in the United States is reduced to obnoxious bacon jokes. The efforts of the world’s largest animal rights organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, are belittled with snarky bumper sticker quips that read “People Eating Tasty Animals.” Some will even deny what they see on undercover videos and insist, without evidence, that some farming practices (e.g., thumping of piglets) must be industrial anomalies. Animals suffer because we exhibit various forms of bad faith, including willful ignorance. Cooper (2018) asks us to think about “the ignorance of a public content to put out of mind the impact of their supermarket purchases on the lives of the animals they eat” (p. 90). Indeed, I have argued elsewhere that the lack of widespread public debate about the morality of factory farming and its corollary meat eating is due, in part, to willed or affected ignorance (Williams, 2008). Another category highlights the ways in which animals are made to endure unimaginable suffering and needless slaughter because human vanity and narcissism demands it. In Texas, it is hard to ignore the seemingly endless flow of interstate billboards enticing drivers to the ultimate challenge of eating a 72-ounce steak and thus having the honor of being indoctrinated in the Big Texan Hall of Fame (Big Texan Steak Ranch, 2023). The public boasting of meat as a symbol of wealth and/or robust masculinity serve as additional examples. Finally, Cooper (2018) cites unrestrained desire for cheap meat, [End Page 185] which only factory farms can provide, at every meal. Given that consuming meat and other animal products are not necessary for nutritional health (generally speaking), one cannot help but think that the yearly slaughter of more than 70 billion innocent sentient beings worldwide is due, at least in part, to greed or gluttony. These (and other) moral failings make the world inhospitable to goodness and an eternal Treblinka for animals (Patterson, 2002).

So, in light of this negative appraisal, how does one find solace? How might we respond to a world burdened by these entrenched moral failings? There are three options, according to Cooper (2018). First, we might ease the sting by adopting an optimistic outlook. We could remind ourselves about the moral progress made in recent years. Consider, for instance, the new laws in the European Union and California that eliminate battery cages, gestation, and veal crates. We could also point to the development of cell-based meats where people can satisfy their meat cravings with real flesh without animal cruelty and suffering. While these are notable changes, it is difficult to remain hopeful given that as highly populated countries become wealthier, such as India (Rowland, 2017) and China (Low, 2020), meat consumption increases. Certain markets look promising, but globally speaking, animal suffering is on the rise. Another response could involve the pursuit to radically transform the social, economic, and ideological structures that contribute to the harming of animals. We could push for the complete abolition of factory farms or the elimination of animal products in certain large-scale sectors like school cafeterias. If we just devoted more time, energy, and educational resources, activists could inspire substantial institutional change and a public reset of our attitudes toward animals. However, Cooper (2018) is skeptical of such grand gestures because our collective hubris, our rigid social and governmental structures, and the ingrained anthropocentrism that fuels our moral failings all stand as major barriers for any real, long-lasting, positive change for animals. There is little evidence to realistically think that “anything approaching a universal change in our practices and attitudes to animals” is coming soon (Cooper, 2018, p. 118).

According to Cooper (2018), the best we can do is turn away from radical hope and false optimism and toward a more private accommodation to animals—a kind of quietist retreat. Although “quietism” has a long history of being associated with religious mysticism, pacificism, nihilism, reclusiveness, self-annihilation, intellectual and metaphysical skepticism, and perhaps all out social escapism, for Cooper (2018) it involves removing oneself from the “attitudes and practices characteristic of contemporary human life” that contribute to animal exploitation (p. 122). Quietists, to the best of their ability, enact a way of living that retreats from status quo thinking about our relationship with animals. This form of quietism is not asking us to live a life of a hermit or to seek solitary refuge in an abandoned school bus in a remote part of the Alaskan wilderness. It is not about social reclusiveness or ethical paralysis. Quietism, Cooper (2018) writes,

is not shoulder-shrugging indifference or abandonment of action. It is precisely because they are disturbed and depressed by the truth of the misanthropic verdict that quietists seek to shape their lives in ways that respond to this verdict. Nor does quietism entail [End Page 186] the abandonment of action—of, for example, action that alleviates the suffering of some creatures. But it does mean maintaining a focus on what one can sensibly hope to achieve oneself, rather than on the prospects of big “causes” and social movements.

(p. 118)

Thus, the distance we speak of here is one of ethical intention for “the quietist wants . . . to become as free from failings and vices as he or she can reasonably and realistically aspire to be” (Cooper, 2018, p. 119). For Cooper (2018), this form of detachment, “must express itself in ways of acting and living, ways out of tune with the prevailing attitudes . . . [and not simply an] operation that takes place in the confines of the soul, but is enacted in a person’s relationship to other people, to him-herself, and to animals and nature” (p. 121; my emphasis). The quietist will seek out specific ways of acting and living that resist prevailing moral failings. “Slow food, yoga, urban gardening, meditation, retreats, ‘greening’” are some of the ways people can practice their quiet revolutions (Cooper, 2018, p. 122). Living a “green” life pushes back against promoted and mindless consumption and, in this way, represents a quietist response to the capitalistic perils of modern life.

The quietist retreat, Cooper (2018) explains, “is a movement not only of detachment, but at the same time of convergence. Urban gardeners, for instance, seek distance from the entanglements of modern life, but through cultivating intimacy with natural, living things” they can also converge with nature (p. 122). So, while our quiet response to Cooper’s misanthropic verdict involves a kind of distance from certain prevailing attitudes about animals, it also means we converge with them. How do we do that? Convergence with animals means we become attuned to them, that we listen properly and remain mindful of the animals themselves. “The person attuned to animals,” Cooper (2018) explains, “is by definition, attentive to their nature and needs, listening to their being” (p. 134). His description is similar to the works by care ethicists Josephine Donovan (2006) and Lori Gruen (2015) who argue that to care for animals means we should be attentive to their needs and capacities. Like Cooper, they ask that we transcend our own personal frame of reference in order to cross over to the other by way of reflective empathy. When reflecting upon our relationship with other animals—fellow mortals with whom we share a way of being in the world—we must exercise our capacity to engage our moral imagination. When pregnant sows are forced to live in gestation crates where they cannot turn around for months at a time, attentiveness requires us to ask, “What are you going through?” The quietist retreat, therefore, is not entirely passive because it involves convergence with and attunement to animals. Adopting dogs and cats, cultivating a garden for birds and insects, practicing animal photography, volunteering at animal rescues, and reading about and watching animals on television programs are, for Cooper (2018), some of the ways we might cultivate attunement to them.

To recap, Cooper (2018) argues that animal suffering is due, in part, to human moral failings. Because mindlessness, willed ignorance, human vanity, and greed are so deeply entrenched in modern living practices, he believes that positive change for animals is remote. So, the best we can do is retreat from these anthropocentric attitudes and adopt a quietist accommodation toward animals. By way of convergence with and attunement to animals, the quietist, in her own individual, humble way, resists dominant ways of [End Page 187] thinking about animals and as such redefines her relationship with them. However, the “quietist has no illusions about changing how the rest of the world lives” (Cooper, 2018, p. 119). She knows that her way of life will not bring about the complete dismantling of global systems and attitudes that perpetuate animal cruelty and neglect. She knows the chaos will go on and, in this way, she inhabits a quiet repose.

THE QUIET ETHICAL VEGAN

Cooper (2018) does not mention ethical veganism as a possible response to his misanthropic verdict, but what better way to demonstrate our convergence with and attunement to animals than leaving them off our plates. This omission is surprising because Cooper himself identifies willed ignorance regarding the impact of our food choices on the lives of animals as an instance of bad faith (Cooper, 2018, p. 90). Furthermore, when we consider the sheer scale of animal suffering under the capitalistic gaze of multinational agribusiness practices, Cooper’s practical suggestions for how we might resist (e.g., adopting dogs and cats, cultivating a garden for birds and insects, practicing animal photography, or volunteering at animal sanctuaries) seem too light. Consider, for instance, how many who profess their love for animals, including those who rescue dogs and cats, also consume meat. If we are serious about what we can do in response to the misanthropic verdict and pervasive moral failings, ethical veganism is the most obvious way to resist.

Ethical veganism means that one chooses not to purchase or consume animal products because such actions condone and perpetuate animal suffering.³ It is a moral and ontological point of view that understands and experiences animals as sentient beings with moral worth. It also relates to Cooper’s (2018) quietist retreat because the intention here is “to become as free from failings and vices [that contribute to animal suffering] as he or she can reasonably and realistically aspire to be” (p. 119). Like his quietist, the ethical vegan distances her beliefs and practices from prevailing attitudes and customs. She resists the alimentary norm of what (or who) counts as food, and she may reject the dominant narrative that animal lives (especially farmed animals) are not grievable. We can also imagine the ethical vegan converging with animals and becoming attuned to them when her daily practices are informed by the philosophy that cows, chickens, pigs, ducks, rabbits, goats, and sheep are subjects-of-a-life, sentient beings whose lives matter to them (Regan, 1983).

Ethical veganism is not about moral purity or perfection. Given the systematic and institutional nature of animal exploitation, it is impossible for any of us not to be implicated to some degree. However, ethical veganism, at bare minimum, entails the full ethical intention to seek out ways to live that are out of step with status quo thinking about our relationship with animals. Because it involves the personal effort to converge with animals while at the same time distancing oneself from prevailing (speciesist) attitudes and practices, ethical veganism seems to coincide nicely with Cooper’s (2018) quietist response. But make no mistake about it, one’s ethical veganism will not end all animal suffering, and the quiet vegan will never convince the majority of her students to adopt [End Page 188] a plant-based diet despite their familiarity with Cooper’s (2018) argument. While there are signs of social change, no immediate social revolution is on its way. This is the quiet-ist lens from which the ethical vegan understands the context and effect of her private actions.

I also want to highlight how the quietist retreat can be valuable for those who heed Cooper’s (2018) call to be more empathetic toward animals. When we converge with and become attuned to animals, we can also feel overwhelmed by grief, despair, guilt, shame, anger, and powerlessness. For every farmed animal saved from slaughter and allowed to live their natural life on a sanctuary, hundreds of thousands will perish. When I think about the plight of farmed animals, I tell myself that bearing witness and extending empathy is the least I can do for them. Yet, to do so is to risk my well-being. Lori Gruen (2015) has written extensively on entangled empathy—a form of caring perception focused on the well-being and flourishing of others. If we want to care for and better understand our moral relationship with animals, we need to take their unique perspectives into consideration. That being said, she also acknowledges the occasional need to modulate our empathy in order to avoid becoming overwhelmed. She writes:

Wellbeing is enhanced by situationally disengaging one’s empathetic responses. In certain cases of extreme and unremitting suffering—not unlike those that animal activists, triage doctors and sanctuary workers experience—continued empathetic engagement must be modulated. Entangled empathy requires attention to the self as well as to the other in relationship, so self-care is particularly important.

(Gruen, 2015, p. 92)

Modifying empathy, however, does not mean total abonnement of action. Ethical paralysis in the face of grief is not what we are advocating. Like Cooper, Gruen (2015) insists that if we care about animals, we should not walk away from them:

In a culture in which empathy is discouraged; in which greed and self-promotion are encouraged; and in which the suffering, humiliation, and the distress of others are increasingly becoming a source of entertainment and even pride, such disengagement should be interrogated. Distance mustn’t be an excuse for not taking any responsibility.

(p. 92)

In other words, we need to structure our empathic perception to attend to both animals and ourselves. I understand the quiet retreat as that structure—as a way to manage one’s response to a deeply broken world. It can insulate the ethical vegan from constant despair and false optimism. In a world haunted by animal suffering, the quiet retreat can be a sanctuary for healing and grace.

ETHICAL VEGANISM AS QUIET RESISTANCE

Thus far, I have argued that ethical veganism can be understood as a form of quietism, as a quiet retreat from a world burdened by moral failings and animal suffering. I have also highlighted how this retreat can be valuable for those who empathize with animals. In this section, I address the worry that when we posit ethical veganism as a form of [End Page 189] quietism—a retreat from public proclamations and protests—it no longer represents a meaningful act of resistance. This is important because, for many, the meaningfulness of ethical veganism is that it acts as a way to resist against animal suffering. Being vegan is one way we can be their advocate. So, how do I reconcile ethical veganism as both a quiet retreat and a legitimate and meaningful form of genuine resistance? Can quiet acts be considered a form of resistance?

We need to first lay out a set of necessary conditions as to when acts in general count as resistance in order determine if the actions of our quiet ethical vegan are legitimate forms of resistance. I turn to Tamara Fakhoury’s (2021) quiet resistance model. On her view, for an act to count as genuine resistance, it must satisfy three necessary conditions:

First, one must be acting against an oppressive norm. Second, one’s motivation for acting against this norm must be informed by the fact that one’s actions are socially condemned or go against a social norm. In other words, acting against the oppressive norm is not an accident or done completely out of ignorance. Third, one must satisfy what I call the Risk Condition: in acting against an oppressive norm, one thereby risks receiving oppression-related backlash (i.e., harassment, socially condemned or discrimination, hostility).

(Fakhoury, 2021, p. 409)

Fakhoury (2021) does not discuss ethical veganism or animal ethics, but I will show that the actions of our quiet ethical vegan can satisfy all three conditions. First, when the ethical vegan chooses not to purchase or consume animal products, they are acting against an oppressive norm; namely, factory farming and, its corollary, meat eating. I borrow from Iris Young’s (2004) well-known work “Five Faces of Oppression” to demonstrate the oppressive nature of this social and industrial norm. The horrible treatment of animals on factory farms has been well documented (see Eisnitz, 1997; Foer, 2010; Imhoff, 2010; Singer, 2001), so what follows is a brief description.

According to Young (2004), any member of a group that suffers from exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence can be considered oppressed. Although she does not consider animals as a group, it is easy to expand her analysis to include them. Exploitation, according to Young (2004), is when one group, the oppressor, extracts the labors and efforts of another group to benefit themselves at the expense and suffering of the other. She posits this feature of oppression within the context of human laborers and a Marxist critique, but we can also see how agribusiness extracts the labor of billions of animals to satisfy our cultivated tastes. For egg production, hens are forced to live 2 years in cramped battery cages where they never have the ability to spread their wings. They produce so many eggs that many suffer from osteoporosis by the time they are sent to slaughter for low-grade meat products like chicken pot pies. Dairy cows are milked by machines so often that they can suffer from the inflammation of the mammary glands or mastitis. They also suffer from the mental agony of calf separation every year for about 5 years on average just so we can enjoy a milkshake. Sows are forced to reproduce every 6 months and give birth in a 7-foot-long by 2-feet-wide gestation crate where they literally have no room to turn around. All this agony and unnecessary exploitation so we can have bacon with our eggs. [End Page 190]

Young’s (2004) second category, marginalization, is the type of oppression where the dominant group marginalizes or separates themselves from what is perceived as the dependent group. When we render others to the margin, this can result in their “material deprivation and even extermination” (Young, 2004, p. 50) On factory farms, animals are deprived of the most basic of material needs. They lack proper spacing, socialization, and veterinarian care, and they are routinely and systematically deprived of typical behaviors for their species. Of course, all farmed animals face never-ending extermination. Powerlessness is the third feature of what it means to be oppressed, and I think it goes without saying that animal lives on CAFOs and nonintensive farms are reduced to mere commodities and production units and rendered absolutely powerless. Cultural imperialism, or “the universalization of a dominant group’s experience and culture, and its establishment as the norm,” speaks to the industrial confinement, slaughter, and global consumption of billions of animals as a matter of tradition and cultural identity (Young, 2004, p. 54). Finally, to be oppressed means to be subject to systematic violence. Young (2004) writes,

What makes violence a face of oppression is less the particular acts themselves, though these are often utterly horrible, than the social context surrounding them, which makes them possible and even acceptable. What makes violence a phenomenon of social injustice, and not merely an individual moral wrong, is its systematic character, its existence as a social practice”

(pp. 61–62).

Slaughter, an act of horrific and needless violence, is a case in point. No other industry inflicts this level of systematic violence onto other sentient beings as a matter of normal operating procedure. Animals, like so many human groups who suffer from these myriad forms of oppression, “can be considered oppressed” (Gruen, 2009, p. 161). With Young’s (2004) framework, it is clear that the ethical vegan is acting against an oppressive norm.

I would also argue that the private act of bearing witness to animal suffering is another way we can resist this oppressive norm because it objects to the dominant narrative that animal lives are unremarkable and do not matter (Gillespie, 2016). Their subjectivity is largely invisible in public consciousness, but the ethical vegan resists this moral blind spot with every meal. Whether one stands before a desolate, foul-smelling 26,000-head feedlot in Amarillo, Texas, or the pristine packaged meat aisle in the grocery store, to grieve the ungrievable is a rebellious act against an oppressive norm (Butler, 2004).

When one’s actions are motivated by the fact that they go against social norms, we satisfy the second condition. Fakhoury (2021) cites, for example, the shame or stigma associated with women who ride motorcycles in Cairo. Because they are aware that their actions violate social norms, their behavior counts as genuine resistance. Meat eating is a social norm and rarely debated as a moral issue in the public sector. To consume animals in the United States is assumed to be natural, necessary, and normal (Joy, 2010). I think it goes without saying that adopting a plant-based diet can be motivated by the awareness that it goes against social (and oppressive) norms.

Finally, for an act to count as genuine resistance, according to Fakhoury (2021), the agent must risk receiving some oppression-related backlash such as harassment, belittlement, bias, or the “hostility that is caused by or enforces the oppressive norm that one [End Page 191] is resisting” (p. 441). The enforcement of meat eating and the hostility directed to male vegans is apparent when only “real” men eat beef (Williams, 2015). Online harassment and belittlement of vegans have also been documented (Potts & Parry, 2010). With respect to social discrimination and bias, studies show that sometimes vegans are considered worse than nonvegans or treated in a biased way by virtue of the assumption that their knowledge of the issues including nutrition and animal treatment is biased, prejudicial, and wrong (Horta, 2018; Varner, 1994). Another study revealed that bias against vegans is more severe than prejudice against vegetarians and that nonvegans had more negative attitudes toward vegetarians who avoid eating meat for animal welfare reasons, compared to those who do so for health or environmental reasons (MacInnis & Hodson, 2017).⁴

It is also important to highlight the risk of social isolation. Surrounded by people who go about eating animals as if there is nothing morally suspect with factory-farming practices, ethical vegans can feel like a stranger in a strange land where mass killing is a “simple” matter of a three-course meal. Similar to members of the LGBTQ community who resist heteronormative norms, ethical vegans can experience a lack of sense of belonging and a fear of losing social relationships. This phenomenon is so prevalent among vegans and vegetarians that a new term has propped up, “social omnivores” (Frances, 2023). It refers to vegans or vegetarians who do not purchase or prepare animal-based meals at home for ethical reasons but who will consume animal products in the company of meat eaters in order to avoid being construed as a picky, judgmental, oversensitive, or self-righteous eater. Because they satisfy all of the necessary conditions laid out by Fakhoury’s (2021) account, the actions of our quiet ethical vegan count as genuine resistance despite their private nature.

But my critic may have one final push. Ann Cudd (2006) raises a concern about the normative value of the quiet protest. On her view, resistance should rest in the agent’s intent to lessen harm. She writes:

I argue that there has to be an intention to lessen oppression, and that the intention to lessen the oppression has to be a part of the cause of the action. A person or group resists only when they act in a way that could result in lessening oppression or sending a message of revolt or outrage to someone. My account does not categorize as resistance cases where the only ones witnessing the action are incapable of receiving a message of revolt and there is no lessening of oppression . . . if such cases count as resistance it is difficult to see resistance as an object of praise.

(Cudd, 2006, pp.191–193)

As a quietist, our ethical vegan does not believe the world will become a kinder place for farmed animals any time soon, not in her lifetime at least. If there is no intent to lessen oppression or no expectation that one’s ethical veganism will decrease animal suffering (Kahn, 2021), what is the value of quiet resistance? If we limit the value of resistance to the intent to reduce harm, I worry that we may lose sight of another positive feature. Although Cudd’s (2006) utilitarian objection is pertinent in many matters of social justice, sometimes resistance can retain its value regardless of public consequence. Fakhoury (2021) offers the example of two lesbians who stay together despite the hostile disapproval of their families and the homophobia that infects their community. They resist hetero-normative [End Page 192] norms and face backlash and harassment by continuing their relationship. Because their resistance is not public and there is no intention to reshape institutional or government policy, it is quiet. There is no attempt to change society or overturn oppressive systems and institutions. Instead, the aim is to live in accordance to one’s moral convictions and to stand by who we love. Acts of quiet resistance are valuable, Fakhoury (2021) argues, because they can contribute to one’s attempt to live as well as possible in a fractured world. This applies to our quiet ethical vegan as well. Her quiet resistance is meaningful because it comes from her love of animals and coincides with her personal values (e.g., inflicting unnecessary killing and suffering is immoral). The import of her actions, therefore, is not restricted to tipping the scales of social justice. Instead, quietly resisting meat-eating norms is valuable because it can contribute to a meaningful life, one built on moral integrity, self-respect, and care for the animals we love.

CONCLUSION

Expanding on Cooper’s (2018) quietism and Fakhoury’s (2021) quiet resistance model, I argued that ethical veganism can be understood as a valuable and legitimate form of quiet resistance. This account of ethical veganism does not suggest that the work of animal activists is not worthwhile. These people and organizations are responsible for saving animal lives and bringing some degree of public awareness to the plight of their suffering. Nonetheless, we can admire their efforts while at the same time acknowledge the personal value and legitimacy of quiet resistance. Postulating ethical veganism as a form of quiet resistance is important because it provides ethical vegans the space to pause their public efforts, if only temporarily, without thinking they have let animals down. Living a quiet life in the midst of a misanthropic verdict and increasing animal suffering does not mean surrendering the fight; it just means we fight differently.