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On Animals, Gender, Race, and Optics
Is stage-crashing ever effective animal rights activism?
An animal liberation group I was formerly involved with, Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), is making headlines this week, for all the wrong reasons (as usual). One of their activists, Aidan Cook, stormed the stage and grabbed the microphone from Senator Kamala Harris while she was discussing the gender pay gap at a San Francisco forum. Cook barely got any words in before the mic was cut off, they were blocked by the moderator and removed from the stage.
This action has been condemned from both inside and outside of animal rights communities. The optics of a white male-presenting person literally taking the mic from a black woman, at a forum moderated by another black woman, do nothing to dispel the notion that animal rights movements are dominated by privileged people who care more about non-human animals than oppressed humans.
While I in no way wish to defend this particular action or activist, there are some nuances that have gone missing or under-reported in the understandable outrage at this stunt.
For one thing, Cook is non-binary, not a man, and goes by they/them pronouns. As a non-binary person myself, I am quite familiar with being misgendered, so it’s important to me to honor the authentic identities and…
