Casa Diablo Gentlemen’s Club, a Portland strip club, has combined two of the city’s very favorite things: Veganism and vulvas. Mmm mmm good! But there’s a problem for proprietor Johnny Diablo, a wrench thrown into the giant money-making-exploitative-patriarchal-mechanism! Women, man. Dag feminists, always with the talking and the complaining. Can’t a guy munch on a Tofutti Cutie in peace? :

Since he opened the strip club last month, their complaints have been “all over the Internet,” he said. “One of them came in here once. I could tell she had an attitude right when she came in. She was all hostile.”

Mr. Diablo isn’t concerned with the “feminazis,” as he calls them. As a vegan himself, he says he hasn’t worn or eaten animal products in 24 years and is worried about cruelty to animals. “My sole purpose in this universe is to save every possible creature from pain and suffering,” he said.

Mr. Diablo (Jesus, seriously?) is part of a trend attempting to equate sex with veganism and animal rights. For example: The offensively-titled Skinny Bitch cookcook series and PETA’s often racy ads, including the slogan “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” and their new “Ink, Not Mink” campaign featuring various Suicide Girls all nude and unfurry.

The problem is, of course, that many see the struggle to protect animals happening at the expense of exploiting human being - chiefly women.

Isa Chandra Moskowitz, a cookbook author, is among those who believe such images twist the vegan message. “As a feminist, I’m not keen on the idea of using women’s bodies to sell veganism, and I’m not into the idea of using veganism to sell women’s bodies,” she said.

Her thoughts are echoed by Bob Torres, who just happens to be a certain someone’s crush object and has various lickable tattoos. Not to take away from, um. His beautiful mind. Anyway:

The issue of sexism in vegan circles is “extremely polarizing,” said Bob Torres, an author of “Vegan Freak,” a guide to living a vegan lifestyle, which generally means avoiding the use of animals for food, clothing or other purposes. Mr. Torres, like many vegans, disavows the “essential idea at the heart of some animal rights activism that any means justifies the ends,” he said. Certain activists, he added, care only about “animal suffering and ignore the suffering of humans,” a category into which he would put women who are exploited.

Drool.

What? Sorry. We were just trying to… illustrate a very important point! Yeah…

We’ve never been sure how suggestive, or downright blatant, sexually-charged ads do anything for veganism or animal rights simply because these causes are not about sex and, as such, the use of sex as a selling point is not only confusing, it’s downright distracting.

As for the allegations that the “vegan cause” is exploitative of women… Yeah. It is. It’s reducing women to a body and using tits to make a lifestyle and diet choice seem titillating. Now, the question for us has always been, “Can a woman exploit herself? Can she choose to become a sexual object and the subject of her own sexuality?” Besides, who are we to judge another individual’s decisions?

Well, here’s the thing: PETA and other such groups have seen it fit to judge others for electing to eat meat, wear fur and leather and, you know. Not euthanize thousands and thousands of household pets. So you’ll excuse us if we get a little pissed that our actions are being moralized and judged by a group of people who refuse to be held accountable for their own questionable tactics.

We’re usually quick to defend pin-ups, burlesque dancers, nude models, etc. because we don’t see what they do as being inherently at odds with feminism. But using women as peons to promote a cause ? It just doesn’t sit well with us, and it bothers us that we can’t express this in any sort of intellectual way. Basically: If you want to actively decide to sell one aspect of yourself, your body, hey. Fine. But if you want to use your body as a means of selling something else? Eeesh. We don’t know.

So help us out. What do you all think? Is “the vegan movement” (which, in our case, happens after a few too many black bean and soy cheese burritos) empowering, or exploitative? And are we justified in finding PETA super fucking annoying?

The Carrot Some Vegans Deplore [NY Times]