Tricia Lebkuecher

Thank you for this provocative and inspirational article. It has been difficult for animal rights advocates who were also feminists and/or civil-rights activists and/or environmentalists and/or gay-rights activists, etc. to to get their other communities to take animal rights seriously. Leaders of the other movements have seemed to think that endorsing the idea that other species have a claim on our compassion is to trivialize social justice movements in general. This goes back decades. However, there is no reason to think that social causes are in competition with one another; in fact, quite the opposite is often true – at least when it comes to animal rights donors, who tend to be progressive on many fronts, even if the other fronts are not sympathetic to animals. (The result is that animal causes receive only one penny of each charitable dollar given in the U.S.)
You are familiar with the writings of Carol Adams, who is most famous for THE SEXUAL POLITICS OF MEAT. You may wish to read the works of the late eco-feminist Marti Kheel, who combined animal defense, feminism, and a form of deep ecology in her views and theories.