The Politics of Meat & Disability: Intersections of Feminism, Vegetarianism, and Disability Studies

Abstract
Postmodern theorists such as Donna Haraway, Val Plumwood, and Cary Wolfe attend to the intersections between speciesism and sexism by critically examining the social definition of a human person. Plumwood notes that the characteristics which are thought of as being essential to the conceptualization of the person are often those that are also associated with hegemonic masculinities, such as the trait of logical thought (Plumwood 1994). Disability theorist, Wollbring (2008) notes the role which ableism plays in the defining of the person by emphasizing the importance of certain abilities over others (Wollbring, 2008), such as the capacity to act "rationally," as opposed to "emotionally." Those who are thought of as not possessing these abilities, such as women, disabled persons, and animals, are viewed as existing in a diminished state of being (Wollbring, 2008). By using the above framework, and by including nonhuman beings in her analysis of the oppression of women with disabilities, Mary Fantaske's master's thesis hypothesizes that a parallel can be drawn between the dehumanization of women with disabilities and the experiences of nonhuman beings in particular in the ways in which disabled women's bodily autonomy rights are compromised.