Shabe Yalda, or why I paid $12 for Nancy Pelosi to read about women’s rights

  San Francisco, Shabe Yalda, Dec. 2023 

It’s that time of the year again. Shabe Yalda is the Persian celebration for winter solstice, when families gather and stay up through the longest night of the year eating fruit and reading poetry. In its Zoroastrian roots, Shabe Yalda is about celebrating the return of the light, the victory of light over darkness. Like many Iranians, I only grew up celebrating the spring equinox (Norooz or Persian New Year), but Shabe Yalda has been somewhat rediscovered recently. I, too, have been putting together small celebrations or rituals to mark the return of the light for some years now. 

A couple years ago, I was given the opportunity for a perfect ritual and real-world action. In November 2021, I received an email from Women’s Declaration International USA (WDI USA) titled Deck the Halls of Congress with Feminism. They aimed to raise enough money to mail a copy of the book, The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls, to each US Senator and Representative. They asked that people sponsor their respective representatives with a twelve-dollar gift that covered the purchase, packing and postage of one book. From their email:

‘Dear U.S. Signatories, As the winter solstice approaches, many cultures celebrate the return of the light after the darkest season. For feminists, the last several years have felt bleak indeed, as most of the media has pursued a blackout policy on covering our objections to “gender identity” in law and society. As a result, many legislators remain entirely unaware of the depth, breadth, and strength of our commitment to the rights of women and girls as a sex class. WHRC USA thinks it’s time to shed some light!

This winter, we will deck the halls of Congress with a feminist critique of “gender identity.” Our volunteers will send one copy of Board President Kara Dansky’s important new book, The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls, to each United States Senator and Representative, along with a personalized cover letter quoting their constituents and other supporters who understand that recognition and protection of biological sex in law is crucial.’

I liked that they linked their campaign to the winter solstice and to the idea of bringing light into darkness, because the majority of Americans have been completely in the dark as to what’s going on. Even those who are staunch supporters of “trans rights” – maybe especially those who are staunch supporters – very often have no idea of what they’re supporting. So I donated, and I threw in an extra $24 to get copies to Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla as well. To Pelosi, Feinstein and Padilla, I wrote:

“By replacing sex with gender identity in law and policy, California is stripping away the human rights of its most vulnerable women, like those who are homeless or in prison. In San Francisco, our public library hosted an exposition calling for violence against feminists and lesbians, the tech companies we host are censuring feminists worldwide, and I can no longer enjoy an evening out and expect that my local restaurants will have a female-only bathroom I can use. As a woman, California native and San Francisco resident, it greatly saddens me to see the erosion of women’s rights and the increased normalization of misogyny and lesbophobia in a city that was once a global leader in progressive causes. It is time for California political leaders to put women’s rights above woke points.”

WDI USA reached their funding goal, and most of the donations came from first-time donors. Women are sick of the erosion of our rights, the sidelining and censorship of our voices, the vilification of anyone who states basic facts and wants to protect the rights that were won these past decades. People in power have made it clear that they don’t care about women, but it helps to show that some of the public does care and is watching.

We certainly haven’t won yet. Notably of course, in the past two years Roe v. Wade was overturned (which, in my opinion, was not the sole doing of the right). But feminists have been pushing forward. Our concerns and our arguments are making their way into public consciousness. We don’t have a fraction of the funding of the astroturfed gender identity movement, but we are showing that grassroots activism is still possible, that in the face of heavy propaganda, censorship and deeply ingrained bias, speaking the truth can still make a difference.

While I am not personally very active, my inbox is full of calls to action, meet-ups, and local and global news of campaigns, lawsuits and even some wins (I did participate in an action for incarcerated women – and against Scott Wiener’s SB 132 – that I wrote about here). Since my little ritual in 2021, Kara Dansky has written a new book, and WDI USA has held two annual conventions: Reigniting the Women’s Liberation Movement and Accelerating the Women’s Liberation Movement, the latter in San Francisco.

San Francisco has been coasting on its gay-friendly reputation, but the only gays to which it is friendly now are of the male variety. A few years ago, a group of actual lesbians (i.e., of the female and exclusively same-sex attracted variety) was gay-bashed at the San Francisco Dyke March by other marchers. At some point in the 2010s, SF stopped being the city it is reputed to be. 

But activism is still in our DNA, and to bring a convention aimed at reviving the women’s liberation movement to a city once progressive and now so captured, is powerful. I couldn’t attend, but it seems to have gone… very well? As expected, the convention drew protests from the anti-feminist pink and blue crew (one delightful protester calling for mass femicide). But unlike other venues reserved by feminists in the past, the hotel did not bow to pressure to cancel the event, and it seems that more than anything, the protesters helped bring visibility to the true nature of our conflict with them (watch Kara Dansky’s account). The women concluded the weekend in front of San Francisco City Hall with a non-violent action for lesbian rights. The same crew arrived to hurl insults at them. We keep ending up back at square 1, having to fight the same fights, but women will simply show up as long as necessary.

It’s going to take a while for the liberals and leftists who are self-righteously entrenched in gender ideology to recognize that theirs is a regressive position, and many will never take personal responsibility. But most of the public – even those who go along with pronouns and mixed-sex bathrooms without a complaint – is not entrenched at all. If we continue to speak up on the harms of gender ideology, and continue to show that there is a resistance, including one that is not rooted in conservatism, and we continue to provide opportunities to transactivists to bring public awareness to their politics and misogyny, we will get through.  

Feminists are fighting back in SF: Our protest against SB 132, the bill that allows male inmates to “self identify” into women’s prisons

I am one of the women who protested against SB 132 at the Golden Gate Bridge in early February.

My time got monopolized by two idiotic and antagonistic men.

I’m not going to make a list of every non-sequitur, strawman and ignorant take, but I’ll note a few things:

– These guys wanted to talk AT us. They had no interest in listening to our responses, even when they asked us questions.

– One of them has a TIF (trans-identified female, or “transman”) daughter, yet he thinks that there is no problem with men in women’s spaces, and that TIFs should be in men’s spaces. It is scary how little men acknowledge male violence against women. (Of course, if the notion of male violence is ridiculous pearl-clutching, why are they clutching their pearls about violence against TIMs, or transwomen? From what are TIMs escaping by using female prisons, bathrooms and other spaces?)

– To that point, the other dude said that he owns a homeless shelter in SF(!!!). And yet he compared us – women defending what tiny amount of protection and dignity female inmates have – to people 50 years ago “fighting against people dancing” and said that the world “would advance regardless”. I feel terrible for the homeless women who end up in his shelter. Homeless women are horribly vulnerable and have a dire need for their own spaces.

Of course, the world doesn’t just “advance”, all linear and effortless. I wish it did. The reason that women stood out in the cold that day, some of them risking their incomes, to re-demand the sex-based rights and protections that were fought for by feminists before us, is because progress and liberation, especially women’s, are usually met with a conservative backlash. Scott Wiener, California senator and author of SB 132, is that backlash.

These men at Golden Gate Bridge, ranting and sneering at women speaking up for the women being assaulted and raped in prison, shouting at an elderly woman that she has no compassion, telling me that I am the reason trans youth are killing themselves…. are no different than the men who intimidated, mocked and called manhaters the previous generations of protesting feminists. Because while those women made incredible strides, not enough awareness was raised and maintained in broader society about the extent of the sexism we face every day. Likewise, little has changed in the attitudes of men towards women. And so, as I’ve said before, we are back at square 1, having to argue for our rights all over again. It’s sad, it’s scary, it’s depressing.

– In discussing the hypothetical situation of a transwoman being housed in a female prison, the father of the TIF twice used the pronoun “he”. I had to remind him that he should be using the pronoun “she” if he believes that this person is a woman. One of them also commented that it “wasn’t fair” to punish all transwomen for the doings of a few, in the sense that if a few of them raped female inmates after being transferred, the others should not be “punished” by being excluded from female prisons. The assumption is that, by default, men have a right to women’s spaces. That only the proven rapist can, perhaps, justifiably be excluded. In other words, the assumption is that women do not have an inherent right to our own spaces. A space in which we don’t have to shower, sleep, or use the toilet in front of any man. If I am forced to shower in front of a man, nothing more needs to happen for it to be a violation.

My exchanges with these white knights highlighted what has been made obvious these past years: This was always about men’s rights–or rather, men’s privileges. They can say “transwomen are women” until they’re blue, but there is not a single category of woman for whom they agitate this much and in this way.

In the past three years, every time that I have read about a woman in prison being raped, assaulted or harassed by a male inmate, and every time that I have read about a convicted rapist or other violent male being housed in a woman’s prison, I have thought about Hope, the editor who dropped me from her book at the request of her publisher because of my gender critical writing. Hope didn’t care about female inmates and others harmed by gender ideology; she only cared about doing what was convenient for her.

When Hope questioned me about my views, she scoffed and laughed, acted incredulous and as though I were ridiculously uninformed. This was in 2020. I had been following the “gender wars” for about 4 years, but Hope was convinced that she knew more than I did, and she would not give me even the benefit of doubt. Hope is a California resident who did not believe that Self ID (which is the basis of SB 132, introduced a year earlier, and a number of local policies) is real. She was “sure” that there were “protocols” to determine who is trans. Feminists have spent years writing and talking about Self ID, yet most people still believe that “transwomen” are all men who have had surgery and take hormones. Our claims can be verified with minimal research, but instead we get dismissed as crackpots.

Hope and I were both active in the animal rights movement, and long before our conversation on gender identity, I had mused that she had the sort of overconfidence and entitlement that, in the US, is associated with white men. And now, attending my very first feminist protest, I ended up the captive audience of two such men.

To be a woman in the world is to suffer fools, to be a female activist is to suffer them doubly.

White guy #1, father of the TIF, kept snickering, walking away, and coming back when he thought he had a good “gotcha”. He said he was an “expert” in “sexual orientation”. I asked him what sexual orientation had to do with it, since trans identity is about gender identity, and trans people can be of any orientation. He didn’t answer. He asked us with a smirk ‘so you think that a transman in a men’s prison would be in “mortal danger?”’ Silly women, thinking men are dangerous! But somehow it’s not silly to pass a bill based on that very premise (Scott Wiener has repeatedly framed it as protecting transwomen from rape) if the bill is about protecting males from male violence. (Of course, the same hypothetical male inmate who would rape transwomen can now also identify his way into a female prison…)

The vast majority of the public does not want this. If women were not systematically ignored, silenced and dismissed, we would not be where we are today.

Women’s concerns about male violence have long been dismissed as hysteria, bigotry, or prudishness, and proponents of Self ID laws and policies followed the playbook from day 1. SB 132 grants inmates the right to be recognized as the “gender” that they identify as at that point in time (indeed, they can identify differently later), which entails being referred to with the pronouns of their choice and being searched by a prison guard of their “same gender” (the rights of female prison guards are of course completely overlooked, and they can now be forced to perform these procedures on male inmates). In regards to where they are to be housed, trans-identified inmates can choose men’s or women’s facilities based on where they feel “safest”.

After SB 132 was passed in the California Senate in May 2019, the co-sponsors “converted it to a two-year bill so that the co-sponsors and Senator Wiener could meaningfully integrate feedback collected from a survey of the ~1,200 trans, gender-nonconforming and intersex people currently in CDCR custody.”

Not only did Wiener not consult with incarcerated women, WOLF reported that during a virtual town hall, “in his four-and-half minute response on SB 132, Wiener did not once address the concerns of these women. Instead, the state senator resorted to smearing the women bravely speaking up on this issue.” He handwaved women’s concerns with vague and lazy misrepresentations: “Unfortunately there’s been a right-wing backlash against this law and we have right-wing publications that are publishing a lot of just inaccurate information, frankly fake news, about this law and trying to demonize and scapegoat trans people including, unfortunately, there’s a term called ‘TERF,’ trans-exclusive radical feminist people who believe that trans women are not actually women and advocate in that way.” “These are the same arguments we heard in North Carolina restroom law, that trans women are just trying to scam their way into a women’s restroom to victimize cisgender women.”

In other words, and I am going to use words to which we can all agree, when a person who was born with a penis says that they are in danger, they are to be believed, no questions asked, and they are to decide which facilities they will live in, no questions asked. But when a person who was born with a vagina says that they are in danger, they are to be dismissed as bigots, liars and connivers.

Amie Ichikawa, ED of Woman II Woman, said “The terror, abuse, and cruelty incarcerated women are experiencing because of Scott Wiener’s bill is not ‘fake news.’ I speak to these women every single day. They are devastated. They don’t understand how their elected officials, especially those who claim to care about justice reform and protecting women of color, could turn a blind eye to what is happening here.” Amie and others also point out, in this discussion about a trans-identified female inmate who was retaliated against for speaking out against sexual harrassment committed by a male inmate, that those behind SB 132 have zero concern for trans-identified females; their efforts are solely for the benefit of trans-identified males.

This is basic, age-old sexism. And it’s infuriating.

But– Amie sent photos of our protest to incarcerated women who were “shocked” and “very moved that anyone would do this for them”. They asked, “Who are these women? Why would they stand up for us?” And Amie replied, “They are women who give a shit and are doing something about it.”

So, the action was very much worth it, but we need to find ways to reach larger audiences with more effective messaging. We should try to ask questions of those who think they are on the other side: Let the Socratic method reveal to them how little they know and how illogical and sexist their thought process is. In our communications overall, it’s important to undo the notion that removing women’s spaces is in any way a progressive development. Women’s human rights are being violated. It is not more complicated than that. We, as women and as advocates, have been harmed by the narrative pushed by both transactivists and the traditional conservatives (I explained here how these are simply two flavors of conservative) that the only people opposing this are conservatives. They both benefit from this framing and from distorting or making invisible the work and arguments of feminists.

It is noteworthy that most of the people who expressed support for us that day were women, but they didn’t engage much, and the very first people to approach us were an enthusiastic family visiting from the UK – or “Terf Island” as they said. These actions build community and give people comfort and strength in knowing they are not alone. There need to be more.

It’s ironic that white guy #2 compared us to the stuffy adults in Footloose, because I am partly from a country that imprisons people for dancing–now, in 2023. It is precisely this fact, and the killing of women who refuse to cover their hair, and the killing of youth who protest the tyranny, that strengthens my resolve to face my minor discomforts and put myself out there. Defending the human rights of female prisoners in California is part of the struggle for women everywhere. Here like in Iran, women are oppressed on the basis of being born in a female body. The woke love to masquerade as allies to “women of color”, but by denying the reality of sex-based oppression, and by systematically opposing women’s efforts to have a social movement focused on the dismantlement of that oppression, they support societal and institutional sexism everywhere.

For women who aren’t incarcerated, who aren’t homeless, who aren’t lesbian, who aren’t hedging our careers on a female-only scholarship, it’s easy to ignore the whole thing (while secretly trusting that other women will – as always – do the thankless work of defending the rights you enjoy) so that you can keep your good standing. If solidarity is too much to ask for, at least know that at some point, it will cost you too.

It’s time for more courage, and a lot more protests.

 

Learn more about the impacts of SB 132 on women:

 

 

 

Dispatch from the feminist animal rights closet

Woke culture has overtaken the vegan and animal rights movements and the effects have been as harmful as elsewhere. I’ve spoken before about how, ironically, this has gone hand in hand with the sidelining of vegan radicals and the trend towards corporatization and pro-neoliberal discourse and activism. Indeed, “intersectional veganism” and the pro-corporate vegan movement are two sides of the same coin.(1)

What I’ve not yet spoken about is the specific issue of sexism and anti-feminism in the AR movement–a topic that would have already been worthy of discussion before the adoption of gender ideology by much of the movement. I don’t know if animal rights/vegan circles and organizations are particularly bad for women in relation to other social movements (it’s not like non-vegan leftist men have a good track record either, and veganism also holds appeal for those who lean right) but I do know that in absolute terms, it’s pretty bad. Now it has gotten even worse. Woke culture has veered the AR movement in an anti-feminist direction, and in some ways this movement is more susceptible than others to the unquestioning acquiescence to the edicts of SJW thought leaders.

With gender ideology, we’ve gotten to a place in the AR movement where women are branded as TERFs; driven out of their organizations; denied platforms and funding due to their feminism; in my case have their work plagiarized (so that I don’t get credit and visibility from it); blacklisted and excluded from events; and the women who avoid these consequences do so at the cost of never publicly voicing their feminist views. Either that, or they just leave the movement.

I wanted to share a dispatch from the closet that many feminist animal rights activists have been shoved into. It’s an email that was sent to me by a female acquaintance after I wrote my post last year on being dropped as an author from an animal rights anthology. I’m sharing it with her permission and I edited it very slightly to keep it anonymous.

Hi Nassim,

Ugh, I don’t know where to begin…

Your early FB posts on this, and Mary Kate’s writings prompted me to pay closer attention.(2) And then I heard that MK got *fired* from her job because of something she’d written -wtf?

A lot of the verbiage had been troubling me but it wasn’t until I read of Meghan Murphy’s talk (in a Canadian library) being hounded and shut down that, with horror and disbelief, I started reading about what had been developing in the past several years, especially in the UK. 

I wanted to write to you, especially when you posted your last piece on FB re being dismissed from the book, but, coward that I am, was ashamed to be another of the many women who tell you of their admiration and support, but will not also speak up.

I’ve been following a number of sources and barely have the emotional strength to read about it let alone act.

Not only am I struggling to make a living, but the wildly dystopian and incomprehensible nature of what has manifested out of the whole shift from what I thought was settled years ago— that “gender” is a set of artificial “norms“ imposed, especially on women, not a fixed set of behaviors that one can escape or adopt by “identifying” or surgically altering one’s body—is deeply troubling and frightening…

When I was last with a group of friends, one said, 

“Well, I don’t think I’d go as far as to agree with Mary Kate, but…”

What?, but hers is just basic feminism…

I’ve tried writing about it but the fury leaves me unable to focus on anything else. 

The lock-step anti-“TERF“ comments I see on FB, by people who consider themselves deep-thinking progressives … is dumbfounding.

At the Conscious Eating Conference at the end of Feb, just before the lockdown, Pax, acting as conference host and moderator, stood at the podium to introduce Carol J. Adams, and found it relevant to loudly assert that “Trans women *ARE* women”.. and the room erupted in wild applause. (3)

Enough for now…

Notes:

(1) While I have long opposed “intersectionality” as understood in the animal rights/vegan movements, this does not at all reflect an opposition actual intersectionality, as formulated by Kimberlé Crenshaw.

(2) She is referring to Mary Kate Fain, who was kicked out of an animal rights organization she had founded (not only kicked out, but accosted by AR activists who hurled abuse at her on the street). After losing her job she went on to found the feminist website 4W, that in a short amount of time has become one of the most important resources for the feminist movement and that hosts the writings of dozens of women from around the world (and pays them too!); she co-created Spinster, an alternative platform to Twitter which has the habit of booting off uppity women; she is a prolific writer who also recently started a podcast, and on top of that got a job with a radical feminist organization. Basically Mary Kate is some sort of Wonder Woman who could have put her talents towards animal liberation, but the movement preferred to hound her out.
(Read Mary Kate’s story of losing her job in her article Fired For Feminism.)

(3) The Conscious Eating conference is organized by Hope Bohanec, the editor who dropped me from her book because of my feminism. From my interactions with her, it became clear that she has little experience with and interest in human-related issues but strives to tick the requisite boxes of diversity so as to avoid criticism. Being of relative privilege and disconnected from much of the oppression that women experience in this world, she thinks that “transwomen are the most oppressed of women”. This conference took place shortly after Hope dropped me from her book. The focus that year was “to explore overlapping oppressions”; a panel on the history of the animal rights movement with prominent female activists was titled Animal Rights Herstory Panel.
By Pax she is referring to Pax Ahimsa, a trans-identified female who started “educating” the AR movement on gender ideology, “inclusivity” etc etc years ago. Pax’s blog reveals a person who has no grasp of basic feminist analysis and whose ideas are in complete opposition to it.
Carol J. Adams is a renowned vegan second wave feminist who, interestingly, has been attacked by trans activists for various reasons in the past, but is now seemingly on board with gender ideology and has become mealy-mouthed on sex and gender, presumably to gain the approval of the “intersectional vegan” crowd. Maybe this is the sad result of having built an audience composed more of vegans than of feminists.

Milk, Dietary Racism and the Corporate Capture of the United Nations

When the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced last October that it planned to build closer ties with CropLife International, the trade body of the pesticide industry, civil society and environmental organizations jumped into action. Eleven international organizations sponsored a letter to the Director General of the FAO that opposed the announced partnership. It was signed by 352 civil society and indigenous organizations from 63 countries, and was accompanied by a letter of support from nearly 300 academics and scientists. Seed the Commons, the organization that I co-founded and that opposes the corporate takeover of food systems, signed on.

Then the United Nations convened the UN Food Systems Summit for September 2021, and it became evident that despite last year’s outcry, the UN’s alliances with the private sector were deepening and that they would be putting forth corporate false solutions rather than the People’s solutions we urgently need. Around the world, activists decided to boycott the summit (read Here is why we are boycotting the UN Food Systems Summit by two peasant leaders). The pre-summit that took place last July was met with mass mobilizations, both online and in person. Again, Seed the Commons threw our hat into the ring.

We decided to opt out of the UN Food Systems Summit’s mechanism for input from civil society and instead to join others in organizing around our opposition and building more legitimate platforms to discuss the transformation of our food systems. In response to the UN Food Systems Pre-Summit that took place in July, we participated in the Global Virtual Rally Against the Corporate Capture of Food Systems, a day of political and artistic interventions that kicked off a week of global mobilizations. The pushback is already bearing fruit; we are seeing the crumbling of the legitimacy of the UN Food Systems Summit. The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems has notably withdrawn from the summit, stating “The world urgently needed a food systems summit, but not this Summit”.

I am happy for the small part I played in this, but the true extent of industry ties of the UN is still not sufficiently appreciated and challenged. Last year’s announced partnership between the FAO and Croplife made waves, but it was not the first time the FAO has prioritized industry ties over the health of people. The United Nations, through the FAO and other agencies, has a long history of propping up the dairy industry. Unlike with pesticides, the innocuous – haloed even – reputation of milk has meant that this has largely gone unchallenged.

The ties between the United Nations and the dairy industry go almost as far back as the founding of the United Nations itself; more specifically, to the founding of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Today UNICEF is known as the UN agency that oversees child-related programs and advocacy, but at its start, its mandate was much narrower. Originally named the United Nations Children’s Emergency Relief Fund, UNICEF was created at the first United Nations General Assembly to provide emergency relief (specifically milk, vitamins and cod-liver oil) to children in war-torn Europe. Milk distribution was so synonymous with the work of UNICEF that its first logo was a child drinking milk over the map of the world, and at the time it was nicknamed a “giant organizational udder”. Another common nickname was “milkman of the world”, and UNICEF not only distributed milk but helped rebuild – and sometimes simply build – the infrastructure that allowed local communities to have access to milk. While its initial focus was on Europe, this quickly expanded to the rest of the world, starting in Asia. Milk consumption is not traditional to most of the places targeted by this expansion, so it was no longer a question of rebuilding what had been lost through war but of bringing in something entirely new, which tied into the developmental focus that the United Nations would start to adopt.

Food assistance programs hold the appeal of wholesome, altruistic giving, but their reality is usually more complex. These programs are often donor-based, i.e., organized around the benefit of donors rather than recipients. The first way that food aid benefits donors is by creating an outlet for their products. This short-term benefit can then become long-term, as the effective dumping of foodstuffs can help dismantle local food systems and shift dietary habits, creating new markets for donors and helping to integrate local food systems into the global food regime. The case of milk is no different. Distributing milk to school children provides a direct outlet for milk producers and others involved in milk distribution. In the days of the “giant organizational udder”, skim milk purchased by UNICEF was sourced from American farmers, who were provided an immediate outlet for their surplus stock. From the standpoint of industry growth, children are the ideal recipients of food assistance programs. They are the easiest leverage point over a society’s food culture, as their tastes and habits are still to be formed. And in effect, food cultures have shifted drastically since the early days of the UN and the targeting of children has been a key strategy in making this happen.

It is common knowledge that food systems and cultures have undergone westernization and globalization over the past century, but an oft overlooked part of this has been the globalization of milk consumption. We don’t tend to think of this in the same way that we do the wholesale adoption of pizza, burgers and processed foods, but for many populations it constitutes no less an adoption of Western norms. And more so than fast-food and processed foods, dairy has benefitted from government support and subsidies. The regular marketing of dairy has been compounded by its de facto imposition in children’s daily lives.

A key driver of the globalization of milk consumption has been the creation of school milk programs, which are typically based on some sort of public-private partnership. Parties involved usually include schools, governments and producers, and often also international development agencies, NGOs and multinationals such as Nestlé, Danone and Tetra Laval. Predictably, school milk programs are beneficial to their suppliers. Today in the United States, milk must be served with school lunches for these to be eligible for reimbursement by the USDA, which forces the public school system into a primary outlet for the American dairy industry.

The beneficiaries of these programs are not only dairy farmers but all of those along the supply chain–especially the multinationals that have vertically integrated the supply chains. One of the main players in the global school milk industry is Tetra Pak, which produces packaging for milk cartons. Tetra Pak’s website proudly features the school milk programs they help start in the Global South; they get to sell their products and look like good Samaritans too.

So the short term benefits for the dairy industry are obvious, but the long term impacts are perhaps more important, especially in emerging markets. The food preferences and habits of children have yet to be formed; feeding them milk every day serves to create consumers for the future. The explosion of school milk programs of recent decades has largely taken place in countries and populations with very little prior milk consumption. Serving milk in school normalizes milk consumption, instills the notion that it is a default or even necessary part of a healthy diet, and in effect, can change a food culture in one generation.

Since its foray into milk distribution in its early days, the UN has continued to be a broker for the dairy industry. In more recent years, the FAO has played a key role in supporting what has become a veritable global school milk industry. The logistical support and legitimacy that it provides has increased the access of the dairy industry to a captive consumer base: children.

In 2000, the FAO founded World School Milk Day, which takes place every last Wednesday of September. For one day, with little cost to the dairy industry, schools around the world sing the praises of milk to children. It is celebrated in a growing number of countries every year and is basically a global public relations day. Activities vary but they all highlight the purported benefits of milk, aim to build enthusiasm among children and legitimize the notion of serving milk through schools. In sum, the FAO created a whole “World Day of” to celebrate an institution the purpose of which is to instill habits in children that line the pockets of the dairy industry. Other ways that the FAO has supported the expansion of school milk programs have included helping to organize the International School Milk Conferences and the facilitation of communication among school milk stakeholders.

The perception of milk as children’s food par excellence is becoming universal, but milk was not in fact part of the dietary habits of much of humanity until very recently. The spread of this Western dietary norm has been aided by the marketing of milk as something that is not merely healthy, but necessary to children’s growth and development. The notion of necessity carries with it the belief that a diet without milk – even if varied and calorically sufficient – can only be considered lacking. The association between milk consumption and Western, American or white people is further encouragement to feed children milk, so that their groups can grow to be as strong, tall, successful or developed as those of traditional milk drinkers.

Unlike other Western foods that have gone global, milk is uniquely perceived as key to proper development. This is why it can attract subsidies through food assistance programs rather than depending solely on regular private marketing channels. But the notion that milk is necessary for the development of healthy children should raise the question: how were children from non-milk drinking cultures managing to grow up before?

The sense of necessity that has been ascribed to milk both stems from and propagates Eurocentrism. And by instilling the notion that a diet without milk is nutritionally incomplete, children and their parents are being taught to forget and devalue the diversity of foods from the food cultures they come from–at the same time that these are being lost under the expansion of a globalized corporate food regime. If a diet without milk as lacking, then many traditional non-Western diets are inherently deficient. This is a message that is repeatedly conveyed in the marketing of milk to children.

Eurocentrism recasts not only how we read human cultures but also human bodies. People who are from non-milk drinking cultures are majority lactose intolerant, meaning that they cannot easily digest milk or most dairy products. While this is not a pathology, it is often perceived as such. Indeed, lactose intolerance is the default condition of most humans and mammals. As mammals, we produce the enzyme lactase to aid in the digestion of lactose that we get from our mother’s milk. Lactase production drops after weaning for those who are lactose intolerant, but among humans, some populations developed dairying and in those groups lactose tolerance became an important trait to pass on. Over time, these populations became majority lactose tolerant (or lactase persistent, as they continued to produce lactase past the age of weaning), but they remain the deviation from the norm at the level of our species. Lactose intolerance is normal and healthy, but it has been pathologized due to a Eurocentric view that is now being exported.

The pathologization of lactose intolerance, coupled with the marketing of milk as necessary, imply that when someone in Mexico or China or Vietnam or any of the emerging markets for dairy experiences gastrointestinal distress upon consuming milk, the problem is perceived to be the person, not the product they ingested. Painting diets without milk as deficient goes along with seeing bodies that can’t digest milk as defective. And because milk is deemed necessary, the “defect” of lactose intolerance has to be overcome or bypassed in some way–the solution can’t be to simply go without. Lactose intolerant people are commonly told that rather than ditch dairy, they should work around their impediment, for example by attempting solutions like drinking lactose-free milk, eating cheese (which has less lactose than milk), taking lactase pills, drinking smaller but more frequent portions of milk, and otherwise trying to build up their tolerance.

Let’s state some facts. Milk is not a healthy food, much less a necessary one. Its consumption is associated with higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers. There is not a single nutrient in milk that cannot be easily found in other food sources. The dairy industry has been so effective in marketing milk for its calcium content that it is now commonly believed that milk is the only food source of calcium, or that dairy-free diets require supplementation or special planning to avoid being deficient. This could not be further from the truth. The website World’s Healthiest Foods, which has no vegan or anti-dairy agenda (and includes dairy in their lists of healthiest foods), lists tofu first of their top 10 “healthiest foods rich in calcium”. The diverse food cultures of this world are replete with calcium-rich foods, but they are erased or their importance downplayed by the one-size-fits-all approach to child nutrition of the school milk industry. At the same time, the biodiversity of our food systems – and by extension our diets – is being lost as they are integrated into a global corporate food regime.

In an article titled Is the FAO in the pocket of the pesticide industry?, Pesticide Action Network director Keith Tyrell wrote “This new deal would turn FAO into the marketing arm of the pesticide industry.” It is not a stretch to say that the FAO is already the marketing arm of the dairy industry.

All children are harmed by school milk programs, but children who are from majority lactose intolerant populations are harmed the most. Rather than advocate for the nutritional needs of children to be met with foods that are healthy, diverse and culturally appropriate, the FAO is backing up industry at the expense of eaters. That these eaters are amongst the world’s most vulnerable makes this reversal of priorities all the more egregious.

Last year, civil society responded swiftly to the announcement of the partnership between the FAO and CropLife because many of us immediately understand that such a partnership is a problem. The alliances with the dairy industry are more surreptitious and have gone virtually unchallenged because milk is so widely perceived as healthy, necessary and wholesome. But these perceptions are the result of Eurocentrism and industry propaganda, and it’s time they be updated. It’s also time that we demand that the UN stop propping up the dairy industry, starting with the role of the FAO in the expansion of school milk programs.

Readers might be thinking that the comparison between FAO’s involvement in school milk and its partnership with CropLife is unwarranted because in the case of the former, small farmers are being supported. But the main beneficiaries of school milk programs are multinationals, and even if they were small farmers, supporting them should not come at the expense of children’s health.

 In my video intervention at the Global Virtual Rally to Transform Corporate Food Systems last July, I spoke of how corporate capture is aided by a narrative of lack. By painting a scarcity that doesn’t truly exist, or at least not by default, corporate actors sell us false solutions – like GMOs – to the false problems they have created. The marketing of milk follows the same playbook and further entrenches the power of multinationals and aids in the dismantlement of local food systems.

I also spoke of reclaiming sovereignty and building a People’s food system by putting forth our own narrative: one of abundance. They say that we can’t feed the planet unless they save us with their GMOs? We show that there is already more than enough food to feed every human alive and that small farmers are producing most of it. In my work with Seed the Commons, we did the same with milk. The dairy industry has erased the numerous foods that contribute calcium and protein to children’s diets, and convinced us that without their product, kids can’t grow or thrive. Like capitalists always do: they create the problem, whether material or perceived, and then sell us the solution. Part of countering this is to show that the problem is bogus.

On the last Wednesday of September 2017, Seed the Commons held a counter-celebration, probably the only event to have ever been held in opposition to the widely celebrated World School Milk Day. What we celebrated instead were the diverse food cultures of the world and the plant-based, calcium-rich foods that have nourished generations of children, especially those of some of the main populations that make up our city. We also launched our Get Milk Out campaign, which aims to get the SF Board of Education to pass a resolution opposing mandatory school milk, and to inspire and inform similar activism globally.

This year, World School Milk Day will fall on Wednesday September 29, less than a week after the UN Food Systems Summit on September 23. The announcement they sent out last month with the date and registration details was unironically titled “The ‘People’s Summit’ has arrived!”. (1) But the legitimate people’s summit – the Global People’s Summit on Food Systems – is being held separately on September 21-23.

Opposition to the UN Food Systems Summit and to World School Milk Day are pieces of the same pushback against the corporate takeover of food systems. I invite more activists to take a more far-reaching approach to food system change, which for many will require a willingness to rethink the role of foods and industries towards which they might hold a positive bias. It’s time to say no to the top-down imposition of milk on the children and food systems of the world. People are organizing outside of corporate-captured UN channels to put forth legitimate pathways towards abundance and resilience; we can further defend biological and cultural diversity by bringing back and reasserting the importance of the plethora of foods other than milk that have fed generations. Let’s reclaim the abundance that has been erased by corporate narratives, including that of the dairy industry.

 

(1) Learn more about what’s wrong with the UN Food Systems Summit and with calling it a “people’s summit” at this excellent site.

 

The participation in the mobilization against the UNFSS was the last project I took on before leaving my role of director of Seed the Commons this summer. This article first appeared on seedthecommons.org/blog.

The same people who supported gay rights 10 years ago are backing an anti-gay movement now

I am heterosexual, and back in the days when gay rights were the cool progressive struggle, I was in favor of them but it was never a primary cause or passion of mine. Given this, it might appear strange that a few years ago I suddenly (1) became very interested and outspoken not only about transactivism, but specifically also about the impact it was having on lesbians.

What I do have a long-standing interest in is the ways that change happens and the ways that it doesn’t. Power masquerading as opposition, or the status quo masquerading as change, is something that has been happening a lot–it even got Obama elected. The cooptation of social movements is a mechanism by which the status quo protects itself. How amazing and distressing, for anyone like me who wants to imagine that we can effectuate change, to see that the same people who were so passionate about championing gay rights a decade ago, who were so proud of their progressive credentials, have done a 180 on the gays because they were chasing those same progressive credentials.

Well, since I published my last post a few days ago where I mentioned the ease with which revolutionary movements get coopted, some interesting things have happened:

  • Matthew Parris, an apparently well-known and respected founder of Stonewall, published an article in The Times criticizing the direction that the organization had taken. 

  • The Mess We’re In had a field day with all of this, and they also had Maya Forstater on their show, so to learn more watch their episode EXTRA MESS #5: Stonefall.
  • In the US, 60 minutes aired a segment on detransitioners. I haven’t watched it, and there is criticism from some of the people interviewed (here, here and here) that the segment was to be more focused on their experiences, including on how detransitioners are treated by the trans movement, but nonetheless just showing something of these stories on a major news channel is a departure from the status quo.
  • Some good news from Spain while we’re at it: An attempt to introduce self ID in Spain’s Congress was defeated thanks to pushback by feminists.
  • In the UK again, the International Trade Secretary defended the free speech of a law student who is facing disciplinary action for saying that a woman is someone with a vagina.

In the discussion about Stonewall, several (including the article in the Daily Mail) have explained that after gay marriage was legalized, Stonewall found itself without a purpose and instead of saying “Mission Accomplished” and the staff going off somewhere else, they needed a new focus to keep their jobs and organization going. This touches upon something that I’ve been thinking about and brought up during STC’s most recent webinar (which was on the mechanisms of social change), and that needs to be highlighted more. My dad used to say about the UN “these people are just creating work for themselves!” and the primacy of funding and careers over stated goals became glaring in my experiences in the animal rights movement. This is what happens when social movements get supplanted and absorbed by the non-profit industrial complex.

In any case, these new developments are fantastic news. Despite the incredible amount of funding backing the trans movement (2), and despite liberals turning their backs on those they so proudly supported just a decade ago, a relatively small number of people (mostly women, and mostly lesbians, i.e. those with the least funding and social capital) are succeeding in pushing back and getting through to the public.

Ultimately, our opinions and focus are inordinately shaped by the wealthy (3) and I don’t think the war is won. In fact, just yesterday was more news of Twitter purging its platform of pro-gay voices (A Stonewall veteran is silenced by Twitter). But as much as Silicon Valley tech bros try to colonize the rest of the world, there is resistance and it is powerful. This is a genuine victory for the underdog, and the result of the work and real sacrifice of so many people, and I think we can savor the moment.

Learn more: What happened to Stonewall UK?

(1) It actually wasn’t all that sudden, as my sense that there was both a lack of logic and a good dose of sexism in the discourse of the trans/queer movement had been building up for years, but it wasn’t my focus and it wasn’t my milieu so for a long time I didn’t investigate further.

(2) Read about the money behind the trans movement:
The Open Society Foundations & The Transgender Movement
Who are the Rich, White Men Funding the Trans Movement
Arcus Foundation Grants
The Billionaires Behind the LGBT Movement
Who Are the Rich, White Men Institutionalizing Transgender Ideology (Yes, it’s in the Federalist. Leftists refuse to publish pieces from gender critical feminists so some choose to use what platform they can get.)

(3) From The Open Society Foundations and the Transgender Movement:

“To sum up, more than a hundred women are murdered each year in the United Kingdom at the hands of males, but no day has been set aside to commemorate their deaths. Transgender murders are exceedingly rare—eight in the past decade (Trans Crime UK 2017; Evening Standard 2018)—and yet they have an institutionalized day of remembrance. Even if we consider the homicide rate rather than the number of homicides, Nicola Williams demonstrates that transgender people are no more likely to become victims than are women (Fairplay for Women 2017).

The prominence of transgender victims, compared to the virtual invisibility of female victims, is partly explained by the amount of resources devoted to compiling evidence and promoting commemoration. Thus funding from large American charities like OSF—along with the Arcus and Tawani Foundations—shapes the political climate in Britain and around the world.”