“Women’s alliance with vegetarianism in history and literary texts has been distorted. The result is the failure to sketch an inspiriting network of feminist vegetarians. Past women vegetarians who were feminist theorists have had a part of their feminist theory silenced. What we have is a double hidden history: the hidden history of women, and the illusive history of animal activism and women’s vegetarianism.”
Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory
For this reason, we would like to present women and lesbians who have also included other animals in their liberation actions or currently doing so. The women do not always fulfill our image of animal liberators in today’s sense. However, this does not diminish their activism. Many of them recognized early on the connection between mechanisms of oppression and worked on several levels toward a more just society.
At the same time, we are aware that due to our perspective as white German women, more women and lesbians from Western countries are portrayed here, and we are trying to work against this. Therefore, we are happy to receive recommendations of Women for Animals from non western countries that enhance our perspective.
We would also like to point out that some of the portrayed women represent (have represented) problematic attitudes from our point of view. Of some we know, of others we do not. Therefore, we would like to underline that we do not agree with all positions. Our intention with the project is not to glorify these women, but to make them visible in the historical narrative. However, we are not trained historians, so we welcome constructive suggestions for corrections.
Women for Animals
Daniela Zysk and Tamara Kühn