TW: Mentions misogyny, childhood abuse, r*pe culture
I’m always thinking that survivors of childhood abuse are predestined to be vegan. They know what it’s like to be objectified and betrayed by those who should have protected them in their total vulnerability. They know what it’s like when those who have power over their life decide that their needs have no importance whatsoever. They know what it’s like to be voiceless.
But as with many other people who are experiencing oppression, the indoctrination of speciesism is just too fundamental to make it easy for them to see how much they could relate to non-human animals.
For some reason it never was difficult for me, even though the carnism and isolation of my narcissist family never allowed me to grow further than being vegetarian while I lived with them. Sadly I had to find that even after going no contact with them, the oppression didn’t end.
OSDD (Other Specified Dissociative Disorder) and DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) are the “official” terms of what used to be called a multiple or split personality. As the mental health system is horribly ableist, so of course are the additions of “disorder” to the names. It’s all about “What’s wrong with you” (and what drug can we sell to you for it) and not “What happened to you?”.
Nowadays I mostly call both DI, but I think if there’s anything to add, it should be DIA, which stands for Dissociative Identity Achievement. Because the achievement of a survivor’s survival should be acknowledged. Not insulted.
To dissociate means to disconnect from your emotions and sensations. As a result, you also disconnect from your surroundings. It’s a natural survival technique and part of the freeze reaction – other techniques are fight, flight, and please. Small children are especially prone to the freeze reaction, including dissociation, because they cannot fight or flee. Especially not when the attacker is their parents or another family member. Ongoing trauma which starts in early infancy leads to DIA, because the different personality parts (or emotional states) don’t grow together to form a stable personality, as it would for a child in safe conditions. Therefore the term “split” is misleading, because the personality never was whole in the first place. No one is born with an integrated, stable personality.
Mainstream media like to portray people with DIA as freaks and murderers whose relatively unknown condition makes the perfect ingredient for a horror story. They turn the result of childhood abuse into a sensationalist form of entertainment. This alone is awfully dehumanising, which just replicates the survivor’s history of being treated like an object (for sadist entertainment too, very often).
As these portrayals show, society harms people with DIA through its ignorance about the condition. Trauma-awareness in general is foreign to most people, which not only keeps millions of children who are displaying perfectly obvious signs of trauma stuck in abusive families, but also makes it incredibly unsafe for adult survivors to ask for support and accommodation of their needs. This is the typical experience for people with an invisible disability.
Being extremely traumatised, I am more than familiar with being invisible. My family ignored me to death with their emotional neglect. But when they were present I had to stay invisible to avoid being attacked and humiliated. Those were the only two treatments that I knew and grew up with – being ignored or hated. And the horrible truth is that, speaking from a point of view of attachment, being alone is the worse option, because children know instinctively that being abandoned by their caregiver means annihilation. So their brains find a way to adapt and attach to those who abuse them.
Sadly the ignorance of society is another replication of my childhood neglect. I constantly feel the need to explain why I can’t do what is routinely expected of me – making phone calls, having a job, applying for benefits, going to the doctor. My trauma effectively makes it impossible for me to function among other people. Especially in settings in which I was abused in the past. By authorities who should have helped me.
This leaves me in the place of being too traumatised to be helped. With no job and no benefits, what keeps me alive? Nothing but the humiliating breadcrumbs of my abusers, which aren’t enough to live on, but keep me alive enough to continue to starve. Does the government or the health system care about this situation? You can guess it. They are as responsive to human misery as my parents.
As a vegan feminist, my experience within society resembles that of my childhood abuse remarkably. I recognise all the different methods of psychological warfare that my narcissist family used against me – for example, women never know when misogyny is going to take place. Casual misogyny is everywhere, it’s impossible to escape it. We are systematically being objectified, ridiculed, undermined, belittled, and humiliated. It might be an ad or a product that screams rape culture, it might be a comment from a co-worker. You don’t know when, but it is inevitable to happen. All of the time. And when we speak up, we are treated as annoying, overreacting, or crazy. This is what you call gaslighting in an abusive relationship. Make the victim doubt their own experience to distract from the abuse.
As mentioned in the beginning, the objectification and voicelessness of animals is something I recognise from my own life. But the treatment of vegans in society is also familiar. Within a dysfunctional family, there tend to be fixed roles into which the children get cast. One of these is that of the Scapegoat (coincidentally this is an extremely speciesist term and concept), who exists to be blamed for the issues of the family. The one that everyone loves to hate, because no one likes what they have to say (which is the truth no one wants to hear). Does this sound familiar? Vegans are the Scapegoats of society, and so are angry black women or angry disabled queer women. They become a meme.
Some parts of my personality were the Scapegoat of the family, while others were the Invisible Child (another role of dysfunctional families). Traditionally within patriarchy, women are expected to be Invisible Children. To stay inside the house, to be unassuming, to be quiet when men speak, to not have an opinion, to never speak up, to be passive. And when they do speak up, well, then there’s a narcissist tantrum of those whose privilege is threatened.
The more I learn about my own experience of abuse and my trauma, the more I learn about intersectional oppression. There’s only really one form of oppression, which targets many different groups of people (this includes non-human animals). Of course everyone’s experience of oppression is different and different intersections mean different treatment. But the tools and tactics of the oppressors are remarkably predictable and within a specific spectrum.
One of these tools is “divide and conquer”. The division and enmity between oppressed groups serves no one but the kyriarchy (the status quo of everyone who is in power, including the patriarchy). That is why intersectionality is essential to any activism. That is why it’s so important that we listen to every single voice that speaks of their own experience of oppression and that we speak for those whose voices are not listened to. If we don’t stand for all, we stand for no one.
Links:
A Disorder 4 Everyone and Emotions Are Not Illnesses challenge the pathologising mentality of the current mental health system (UK and world-wide)
Jreidtherapy – US therapist who specialises in treating clients that have been the Scapegoat in narcissistic families
Dysfunctional family roles overview by Tom Moon
Black Vegans Rock – Blog by Aph Ko with short posts about individual black vegans and their story
Criphumanimal – Blog by Trudi Bruges about the intersection of veganism and disabilities
The Vegan Rainbow Project – Blog about intersectional feminist veganism, with a special focus on LGBTQ+ vegans