The Happy Cow Myth

Happy - The only emotion cows feel.

Not even scientists or philosophers deny anymore that cows are sentient beings. They can feel pain and they suffer but they also experience joy and happiness.

Not even the dairy and meat industry is denying anymore that cows can suffer, but in fact, so the myth goes, they don't. Instead they are happy, free-range, organic, and many of them even laugh.

There is a whole brand of cheese called 'The Laughing Cow' and the chocolate company 'Milka' is working hard on sustaining the myth of happy cows everywhere. They have even named one kind of chocolate bar 'Milka Happy Cows'. Whilst many advertisers revert to idyllic images of healthy and complete cow families as well as friendly farmers on a pasture, these two dominant players in the dairy industry also use comical anthropomorphised imagery of a cow with human traits.

Part of the Milka Campaign. The photo shoot for
this included a real cow in the studio. 

The combination of those opposable characteristics of human and animal in one persona has three functions:

1. It arouses humour as a cow wearing jewellery and having a good time laughing her ass off, is just funny.

2. A cow displaying human traits,  participating in human activities makes the cow very relatable to our human experience. We identify with her joy because she is shown to express joy in the same way we do (by visiting a massage parlour or by simply smiling in satisfaction and enjoyment)

3. A humanised cow also serves the function of convincing us that her life must be great, because human lives are more enjoyable than animal lives anyway, given the fact that we are sheltered from many risks that wild animals live with every day. So a humanised cow, is in fact a very lucky cow who is cared for and protected by her human community of farmers and consumers.

These images create an individual character for a cow. Whereas in reality all cows or even all animals are massified, that is grouped into one large mass, indistinguishable from one another (as Adams states in Sexual Politics of Meat) the dairy industry creates a characteristic happy cow, who we as the viewers of these adverts get to know. We begin to see her personality with all her quirks. The more we get to know her and the more we are exposed to her carefree lifestyle we want to become part of her happiness and bliss. We buy the product and we can rest assured that the milk in it came from the happy cow that we know, she is our friend and we want to support her.

Obviously not all of these factors play a role in our decision making when buying a product, at least not consciously. But the happy cow narrative is a very good strategies of eradicating any concept of a sad or suffering cow.

Luckily enough there are organisations that resist the invention of  a relatable character to give cows a personality and return dignity as well as intrinsic value to their person. Instead, they fight both the massifying of all cows as well as the construction of an absurd individuality for a specific member of the cow community. They expose the machine that is behind the oppression of cows whilst at the same time showing how diverse their community is and how each and every cow is affected in a different way by the dairy and meat industry's lies, depending on their sex, sexual orientation, age and physical ability.

To find out how you can combat the happy cow myth click here and visit White Lies.

The Sexual Politics of Meat in Action

*****TRIGGER WARNING: mention of sexual and carnist violence.*****

The picture below ahows an advert for a food truck in Cambridge (near the train station), depicting a male chef hugging a sausage in a seemingly flirty way. The sausage is given seductive traits such as long eyelashes and red lips. At first glance the image looks harmless, jokey and perhaps ironic. If we dig a little deeper with our understanding of what carol Adams calls 'the sexual politics of meat', we soon realise the danger of this image.

The animal whose body was butchered to become a sausage has become an absent referent, deprived of their identity and individuality. Further the sexualisation of the reappropriated animal body and her flesh implies femininity through the use of anthropomorphic -and specifically feminised- symbols. The end result portrays femininity as readiness to be consumed by the (hu)man. This depicts perfectly how eating meat is perpetuating masculinity as well as rape culture.

The Beginning of Something Great - Our Women's Group

It's official. After a month of gathering interest online, we had our first Cambridge Women's Anti-Speciesist Reading Group meeting. And it was AMZING.

If you define yourself as a woman and are willing to sign our safer space agreement, you are more than welcome to join this group.

We are meeting every other Thursday. Here are the upcoming dates (location to be confirmed)

30.10. Reading: Chapter 2 of Carol Adams the Sexual Politics of Meat.
13.11.
27.11.
11.12.

It was very interesting for me to realise after the meeting how much groups like these are needed. This is one of the projects that I took up, out of the inspiration and frustration that I brought back home from this years International Animal Rights Conference (IARC). I've climbed quite a steep feminist learning curve last summer. When I heard about IARC I wanted to be part of it. When I saw that there were already three confirmed feminist speakers (out of perhaps 70/80 total), I thought: They will never take me, as there are already people covering the ground for 'us' (as in us feminists/women). After I had sent in my abstract, Heiko, the organiser, responded with the friendliest email explicitly stating that it is urgent to have more feminist speakers present. I was baffled, this has never happened to me before. I was so used to having one token feminist speaker at any gathering and it never occurred to me that I never questioned this before.

Although most participants were women at IARC (in fact the animal liberation movement consists mostly of women), most speakers were men. This is by no means a critique of the organisation, as I know that the organisers value intersectionality and marginalised experiences to a great extent. Rather, is it a fault of the system, a system in which a woman who has a lot to say, thinks that because there is one other woman speaking about women's issues, everything that anyone will want to hear about this will be said for her. So she might not even apply to speak.

Thank fuck that I tried despite thinking I wouldn't be wanted. The experience I took away from meeting people from all walks of life and exchanging ideas and experiences in this almost utopian setting was overwhelming. It is there that the feminist friends I met, suggested to open an all women's group. An idea that would have never occurred to me!

My first question was: How will I explain the purpose of this group to anybody? The answer I got to this was that I don't have to explain anything. I don't owe anybody any justification. If they join, they will see why the group is valuable.

And despite the fact that up until the first meeting I only got good feedback, lots of support and a shitload of gratitude (even though I hadn't done anything except said: hey girls, let's meet up) I kept having imaginary conversations in my head with someone, anyone, no one really, in which I would justify the crap out of my group and keep explaining my frustration with patriarchy as well as animal rights, as part of this culture.

So the moment came. I was sitting in the room. Nervous and anxious about whether anybody would actually turn up. The clock hit five to six. The first person came in and I died inside from happiness and relief. The person left again to take a phone call and didn't return until much later. I was alone in the room with my symmetrically arranged snacks and drinks on the table where I planned to seat about 10 people. At five past six then a group of 5 people flooded into the room and I the euphoria took over me.

After the meeting, when saying our goodbyes for the night, two people subtly acknowledged how nervous I must have been, saying that they have been there, they know exactly how it feels, which again surprised me, because I just thought that in my anxiety I was just being dramatic without even knowing what was causing it.

Another friend, 1000 kilometres away from here, went through exactly the same agony up until yesterday, when she invited women only to regularly meet up. This got me thinking about what a draining (but also exciting) experience it is for a woman to say: I want to have a women's only space in a world where most spaces are dominated by men.

There were points, leading up to our first meeting, during which I questioned the activism of the group. What's so active about a bunch of people getting together and reading a book? What is this going to change in the world? And I realised very quickly, that it will actually change a lot. Our mere collective presence means that we are re-learning how to be, so as not to exist only in response to the dominant culture but to live as ourselves. Yes, it is about not living a live dictated by patriarchy, a demand we share (to a small extent) with the demand of animal liberation, the emancipation of our animal sisters and brothers from the same patriarchy that oppresses us.