Perhaps there is a much darker reason behind the persistent opposition to animal-free products Some are made uncomfortable by the mere mention of animal rights. Discomfort does not always indicate disagreement, but at the very least it expresses some pause, some concern. …

Better to locate your identity elsewhere There is considerable disagreement, if not sheer confusion, about the signification of the ism of veganism. What does it signify? Or better said, what can it, or perhaps should it, signify? …

The following text and slides were presented at “Abuse in Yoga and Beyond: Cultural Logics and Pathways for the Future,” a digital conference held by Loyola Marymount University on June 13th, 2020. In the academic world I research South Asian religious traditions, but also contribute to the field known as…

Now more than ever practitioners have to stop fueling the engine of mass violence that is industrial animal agriculture. Strolling by a shallow pond you notice a child drowning. Quickly you realize that saving them would ruin your new yoga clothes: Should you wade in and save them? …

Presented at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion (Yoga in Theory and Practice Unit) — Without having repeatedly passed and reflected on this scene from last year’s Denver conference, I may not be presenting here today. …

How the Aidan Cook/Kamala Harris incident exhibits the complexites of human and nonhuman allyships I wrote almost everthing but the opening paragraph of this essay nearly two weeks ago, shortly after activist Aidan Cook disrupted Kamala Harris at the MoveOn event in San Francisco. By the time I had finished…

Not long ago I interviewed four senior yoga teachers to see if any shared one of my recurring observations. As hoped and expected, the respondents tackled topics both directly related to, and orbiting, this admittedly unsurprising phenomenon, which is: While left-leaning America moves towards vegetarianism, veganism (see here, here), and…

problems with taste-based advocacy It is not just the practice of inequality that contributes to environmental and transspecies violence; it is the construction and persistence of ideas that maintain these inequalities. David Naguib Pellow, Total Liberation “Pragmatic” vegan advocacy can entrench the assumptions of the audience, confirming the very ideas…

Animal justice advocates can’t rely on veganism to communicate animal oppression as a social justice issue. In 2009, Direct Action Everywhere co-founder Wayne Hsiung disseminated “Boycott veganism,” a provocative essay claiming that the prioritization of veganism in animal justice advocacy is harmful to the animal justice movement. The piece confronts…