A Feminist Critique of the Dairy Industry

In the last century, women’s rights have become a widely debated issue and various feminist philosophies have developed to argue for the equal opportunity of woman in relation to men. From “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” by Wollstonecraft, to radical feminist arguments posed by Firestone, many ways of thinking about feminist issues have been presented and the importance of discussing gender issues has become apparent and prevalent in our society. However, almost no researchers on the topic think that gendered issues, more specifically feminist needs, have been fully addressed. Currently, females are still not offered the same employment opportunities, nor do they occupy many political positions. However, it seems to me that a more pressing female issue has surfaced, which requires our attention now. Consider this case: a dystopian society in which females are not only oppressed, but used and deprived of all experiences which render a life worth living. Imagine females harnessed as breeding machines for the use of men; producers of milk and offspring, having no use past their ability to produce for the personal ends of other beings. Imagine young females and adults alike, kept in confinement with no room to move, forcibly impregnated almost immediately after the resulting pregnancy, never allowed to spend personal time with the babies, which belong only to men. This is the reality of billions of non-human animals involved in the dairy and egg industries. Many feminists have likened the oppression of women to the oppression of non-human nature, claiming that the ways in which we dominate nature help explain and give insight into the ways in which women are oppressed by men ands patriarchal structures. In this paper, I intend to argue that the oppression of non-human animals in the dairy and egg industries are essentially feminist and human-rights issues since non-human animals are morally relevant to us, and treatment of a morally valued being is ethically impermissible. Thus, I will attempt to argue for the conclusion that the dairy and egg industries ought to be abolished altogether since they are inherently abusive, oppressive, and require the denial of bodily integrity to the beings involved