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Freja H\u00f6gback<\/strong> (\u00c5A) freja.hogback@abo.fi<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nKuura Irni<\/strong> (HY) kuura.irni@helsinki.fi<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTiina Ollila<\/strong> (TY) tiina.m.ollila@gmail.com<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHelin\u00e4 \u00c4\u00e4ri<\/strong> (OY) hekaki@utu.fi<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n\n\n| From human-centered analyses of sexualised dominance to more-than-human care<\/strong><\/p>\n Satu Ven\u00e4l\u00e4inen (University of Helsinki)<\/p>\n Various ecofeminist and critical animal studies perspectives and writings have shown that nonhuman animal exploitation and violence rely on and find justification from similar logics of dominance, idealisation of control and supremacy and naturalised hierarchical distinctions that form the bedrock of various forms of gendered and intersectional violences targeting humans. In my presentation, I will work with these ideas in reading my earlier analyses of affective sexual harassment and violence experiences among young women and nonbinary people through ecofeminist theoretical perspectives on patterns of subjugation, othering and violence that touch both humans and other animals. I will trace patterns that emerge through this diffractive cross-reading and stich them together with a focus on how affect and affective-discursive meaning-making sustain, normalise, invisibilise and legitimise orientations based on positioning human and nonhuman others as existing for the powerful. This reading focused on demonstrating normalised patterns of subjugation is followed in my paper by a discussion on more-than-human care as a collection of practices that subvert normalised affective-discursive positionings on which the maintenance of violent practices targeting humans and other animals relies. I will specifically develop a perspective on mediated more-than-human care based on research materials generated with animal rights activists and other social media users who activity engage with online discussions on animal welfare and veganism.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nTransecofeminist Politics of Care<\/strong><\/p>\nKuura Irni (University of Helsinki)<\/p>\n In dialogue with Finnish scholar and activist Helin\u00e4 \u00c4\u00e4ri’s account of her relationships with rescued roosters, this paper connects transecologies and the feminist care tradition in animal ethics. The field of transecology links trans studies to more-than-human concerns. Transecological works, also referred to as trans* new materialisms, have expanded the scope of trans studies from a focus on trans lives to an approach that views bodies as \u201ctransing\u201d\u2014porous and transformable across species boundaries. This paper argues that transecological scholarship usefully delineates shared vulnerabilities across species boundaries and indicates the complex naturecultures of sex that resist simplified binary accounts. However, transecologies seldom express care for nonhuman animals, and more-than-human relationalities are often depicted as descriptions of ontological entanglements rather than as political calls for systemic change to resist animal exploitation. In contrast, this paper asserts that scholars within the feminist care tradition in animal ethics have aptly critiqued new feminist materialisms for neglecting nonhuman animals as subjects and for apolitically bypassing their suffering in contexts such as food production and scientific research. These scholars offer dialogical and empathetic care ethics to rework animal relations. By connecting transecological insights with the animal politics and dialogical care practices of the ecofeminist tradition, this paper explores a framework called transecofeminist politics of care. This framework understands care as involving context-specific and more-than-human dialogical practices within a complicated and contradictory present, encompassing thinking and learning that challenge binary and reprocentric narratives about nature, sexed bodies, and behaviors<\/p>\n The marginalizing ”fox girls” discourse and its implications for vegans in Finland<\/strong><\/p>\nFreja H\u00f6gback (\u00c5bo Akademi)<\/p>\n In my doctoral dissertation (forthcoming), I have interviewed 15 persons who became vegans between 1995 and 2020 in Finland. In this presentation, I analyze the mentions of the marginalizing discourse regarding \u201dfox girls” by the interviewees. I discuss the impacts the discourse had on the vegans as well as how this specific discourse prevented people from considering animal ethics.<\/p>\n It was mainly the animal rights movement (AR) that introduced veganism in Finnish society in the 1990s. The AR movement consisted of largely women and was part of a broader countercultural movement at the time. In 1995 three young women released foxes at farms in Ostrobothnia, leading to public outcry. As a result, the marginalizing term \u201dfox girls” formed as part of other negative discourses about the animal rights movement.<\/p>\n Using critical discourse analysis with an emphasis on agency and practice, I analyze the memories of the vegans that I interviewed. I discuss which interviewees mention fox girls and in which contexts. I also illuminate what the consequences of the negative discourses were. For my analysis I use transinclusive ecofeminist theory, critical whiteness studies, and theories on respectability.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Trouble with Dairy: Farm, Family, and Futurity in Lactocapitalism<\/strong><\/p>\nSanna Karhu (University of Helsinki)<\/p>\n This article develops the concept of lactocapitalism to examine how the contemporary dairy industry is organised through reproductive futurism and heteronormative sexual politics. Focusing on artificial insemination, bestiality legislation, and the ideology of the family farm, I argue that the dairy industry seeks to sustain its political and cultural legitimacy through ideological appeals to naturalness, innocence, and reproductive necessity. Through a queer-feminist philosophical analysis of dairy reproduction, I interrogate the paradox through which intimate human intervention in animal reproduction is normalised within the dairy industry while comparable forms of interspecies intimacy are framed as deviant and criminalised. Drawing on Lee Edelman\u2019s critique of reproductive futurism, I introduce the \u201cfigure of the Cow\u201d as a symbolic condensation point through which dairy production is rendered natural and morally untroubling. Further, I mobilise it as a gesture of queer irony that exposes the normative hypocrisies structuring dairy production. By bringing queer theory into dialogue with feminist and critical animal studies, the article contributes to debates on human-animal relations, reproduction, sexual norms, biopolitics, and the future-oriented imaginaries of animal capitalism.<\/p>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t |