Veganism and Women | Giselle Mehta

I am informed that today (March 8, 2018) is International Women’s Day. To be a woman is to enjoy life’s beauties and privileges – a stronger connection with nature in our physiological rhythms and an access to intuitions and empathy with the hidden heartbeat of a living universe. In Indian mythology the mighty forces of creation were inert in the absence of the driving energies of Shakthi or feminine power. Destructive forces, personalized as demons, were vanquished by avenging Devis, to ensure perpetuation of the creative order. Mythologies were constructed to reflect observed realities.

One can certainly observe the dynamic of feminine energies as awesome and ongoing phenomena. They have long been protectors and nurturers of the weak of their own species. Today the narrative is expanding. There are women who march, women who think, women who do, sometimes all together. I am intimately privy to this in my involvements with veganism as a social justice movement that addresses rape of the planet, the infliction of hideous suffering on animals and links it up with human weal in an aspiration of better health and food security for fellow humans through sound plant-based nutrit  ion. To do so, they are taking on the colossal mammoths of corporate might, who dictate what we must eat through their nexus with governments and access to subsidies, who prefer the human in a state of illness rather than the wellness that would dispense with medicated dependence. Much like the prehistoric “gatherer” ancestress who discovered edibles in the berries, fruits and vegetation around her, she might delve into the secrets of a powerful domain, the kitchen, each imaginative and delectable plant-based masterpiece a triumph to once more establish nature’s benign and bounteous way, bypassing the imposed savagery of flesh and blood, death and destruction. One sees it in the women for whom motherhood has been a defining experience, opening their eyes and hearts to mothers of all species who suffer separation from their young, like the cows who bellow for calves who are denied the milk nature intended for them, fed to humans of all ages in a cruel distortion of nature’s norms. I see it in those who advocate, either in public fora or a close social setting for a humane and healthier way. I see it in entrepreneurs of products that provide humane alternatives to blood-soaked suffering. I see it in those active in rescuing and rehabilitating the sick and injured of all species. There are of course women for whom such injustices and the initiatives they engender are non-issues, in the comfort zone of passively accepting the mindset that has determined their consumption choices and general attitudes for millennia. Conversely, there are men swelling the ranks of the thoughtful and compassionate, often in passionate leadership roles. In doing so, they are shedding the testosterone-driven narrative of violence and enslavement for larger intuition and empathy. To use a beautiful concept I encountered in the writings of Will Tuttle, I gauge an awakening to the power of Sophia, Greek goddess of wisdom and justice that crosses genders.

A meritocracy demands a certain gender neutrality to compete. The bigger challenge of the planet’s survival and the ethical issues underlying our treatment of fellow humans, living beings and animate environment, the burning areas of war and inequality, illness and ignorance demand that women and men find fruitful synergies for meaningful and cooperative action.

Some additional thoughts …

THE GENTLE BATTLE 

Personal peace is the precious state of being that we all crave for.

In my case, the quest took a quantum leap when I made the critical connection between diet and consumption choices, and the equilibrium sought to be achieved for myself and dear ones. Biochemically, one was ingesting and absorbing the secretions of terrorised beings in their death throes. Metaphysically, I understood the dodgy terrain of seeking the best for oneself, while being indifferent or complicit in the violence inflicted on hidden multitudes of all species. Peace has suffused the self since that critical realization  dawned, with the attendant practices of ethical veganism. Initial challenges and constraints melted to the tangible force of wellness: holistic healthfulness of mind, body and spirit.