Vegetarianism; Animal Rights, Feminism, and Post-Racial Identity : Examining Debates over Ethical Foodways in the United States and Presenting New Perspectives

What to eat is often an ethical problem in the United States of America these days. Since studies on the moral status of nonhuman animals began in the 1970s, people have been actively exploring and advocating the rights of animals. This tendency has had an impact on quite a few fields and people from many disciplines have criticized debates over animal rights, which has fostered some new theoretical perspectives. I will focus on one of the newest viewpoints: feminist vegetarianism and reveal what it means and what it provided us new problems. Feminist vegetarianism has been playing an important role in criticizing the ﾒdominant maleﾓ tendency among animal rights activists. However, feminist vegetarianism has been criticized as monoculturalism, because they stress that vegetarianism is common among people living in white elite circumstances. The criticism suggests the necessity for a conceptual construction of vegetarianism from the perspective of multiculturalism. I will examine the criticism of feminist vegetarianism and present another conceptual meaning and role for vegetarianism from a non-western cultural perspective