Vegaphobia: derogatory discourses of veganism and the reproduction of speciesism in UK national newspapers¹

Abstract

This paper critically examines discourses of veganism in UK national newspapers in 2007. In setting parameters for what can and cannot easily be discussed, dominant discourses also help frame understanding. Discourses relating to veganism are therefore presented as contravening commonsense, because they fall outside readily understood meat-eating discourses. Newspapers tend to discredit veganism through ridicule, or as being difficult or impossible to maintain in practice. Vegans are variously stereotyped as ascetics, faddists, sentimentalists, or in some cases, hostile extremists. The overall effect is of a derogatory portrayal of vegans and veganism that we interpret as 'vegaphobia'. We interpret derogatory discourses of veganism in UK national newspapers as evidence of the cultural reproduction of speciesism, through which veganism is dissociated from its connection with debates concerning nonhuman animals' rights or liberation. This is problematic in three, interrelated, respects. First, it empirically misrepresents the experience of veganism, and thereby marginalizes vegans. Second, it perpetuates a moral injury to omnivorous readers who are not presented with the opportunity to understand veganism and the challenge to speciesism that it contains. Third, and most seriously, it obscures and thereby reproduces exploitative and violent relations between human and nonhuman animals.

Celebrity vegans and the lifestyling of ethical consumption

“…Media representations of vegans as ascetic (Cole and Morgan, 2011) are countered by the exhortation: "Start with food you already love.…”

“…Cole and Morgan (2011) found that women are the target of both anti-vegan and sexist discourses through feminisation tactics which present vegans (and women) as over sensitive and irrational (Cole and Morgan, 2011). The gendering of veganism as feminine and emotional is similar to that of vegetarianism, where (eating) meat is equated with heterosexual masculinity (Nath, 2012): a powerful discourse that feminist vegetarian/vegans have critiqued (Adams, 1990;Duvnjak, 2011).…”

“…Yet, whilst research has shown that people become vegan for ethical, health, and to a lesser extent, environmental reasons (Greenebaum, 2012b), it is the ethical basis that is the most historically consistent form of veganism (The Vegan Society, 2014a), enabling a more sustained and longer-term commitment, and a secondary motivation towards environmental concerns (Fox and Ward, 2008). These ethical reasons are routinely denied articulation in mainstream media culture (Cole and Morgan, 2011). In light of these characteristics of vegan philosophy and practice, alongside negative media representations, this article asks the following: how might the cultural intermediary work of celebrity vegans operate to make vegan ethics more accessible and mainstream, firstly, through their status as spectacular signs of veganism, and secondly, by framing veganism through discourses of compassion and kindness?…”

“…In newspaper discourse, the views of vegans are denied and the animal rights/anti-speciesist values of veganism ignored. The act of eating meat is normalized, leading Cole and Morgan (2011) to assert that, "the effort to continually reassert the connection between veganism and nonhuman liberation remains worthwhile, and the temptation to promote veganism under the non-confrontational guise of convenient healthy lifestyle choice may be unwise" (p. 150). The dismissal of animal ethics from discussions of veganism thus creates a double denial: of the rights of animals to live without being meat (Adams, 1990); and the ethical basis for veganism as an identity and practice.…”

“…al., 1999;Larsson et. al., 2003;Cole and Morgan, 2011;Greenebaum, 2012b), particularly for adolescents whose "single most important motive" for becoming vegan is a '"moral concern for the treatment of animals" (Larsson et. al., 2003, p.63).…”