melodramatic journey to the kitchen

Vegan alternatives are not inherently better for animals or the planet. Pleather and faux fur—staples of vegan fashion—are petroleum-based products. The environmental devastation caused by petroleum—climate change, oil spills, toxic water, acid rain, genetic mutations—are well known and vast. While many vegans will tout the environmental values of hybrid cars, bicycling, reusable shopping bags and eliminating demand for factory farms, the analysis rarely curbs the demand for couture. Sure, cows were not slaughtered for our beloved shoes, coats and belts. However, plenty of other animals were destroyed when their habitats were ransacked, covered in oil, poisoned and abandoned.

Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference—those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older—know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change