1. First, could you please tell us a bit about yourself: what kind of activist work do you currently do?
My name is Panda Eriksson, I’m a non-binary trans 31-year-old intersectional feminist, nurse, and sexologist. I am also a Finn-Swede, meaning that I belong to the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. I have a varied educational background that involves both a BSc in cell biology and a soon-to-be-completed MA in gender studies, as well as a BAA in cultural management. I think I was around 20 when I became a vegan. I’d been lacto-ovo-vegetarian before that, but everything changed overnight when a friend of mine recommended I watch the documentary Earthlings. I remember it was freely available on YouTube, and I watched it and my heart sank. I left my biology studies after finishing my bachelor’s degree because I couldn’t deal with working on test animals. Professionally, I’ve always been interested in the same things I am interested in now: human rights, health, equality, science, minority rights and wellbeing, but I never quite found the way to combine them in a way that served my community until I decided to leave academia and pursue a career in nursing with a focus on sexology. I carry with me my love for science wherever I go.
I’m a people person and an animal person. I love all animals, and I’m the most extroverted extrovert I know in the sense that I get terribly blue if I don’t have human contact nearly daily. At the same time, my moral compass is far too developed for my own good, and I have no trouble closing doors if I feel like my boundaries aren’t being respected. I don’t enjoy conflict at all, but I feel morally obligated to stand my ground when it comes to human and animal rights.
Currently, I’m mostly involved in human rights and I tend to focus on LGBTIQ+ issues, especially trans issues as well as equality within the health care system. I am a board member the student association of Tehy, which is a Finnish labour union for workers in the health care business. A friend of mine once told me he thinks it’s impossible for me to do something without
2. Would you like to tell us about your growth or transformation as an activist? What have been the most important insights you have had through your activism?
I was never an activist child, and as a teen, I was interested but not very engaged in NGO or advocacy work. My parents were not politically active, nor was anyone in my extended family as far as I know. I think I did learn a general sense of justice very early on in my life, but I didn’t know how to apply it. I think my first activism was some general form of leftist idea that we should all have equal opportunities to live and thrive, but I didn’t start cultivating these ideas before I moved out at 15 years old. Becoming a vegan meant opening my eyes to compassion, and I started reading activist literature online.
I think education was key for me—the values were there, but without the material, information, science, and experience to back it up, there was nothing for me to do. My veganism started in animal compassion and anti-speciesism, but very quickly evolved as I started reading about deforestation, climate issues, ecology, and the human rights issues that were involved in factory farming and the exploitation of the Global South. This, together with my coming out as trans, was probably one of the main reasons I got into feminist theory as well. For me, it was imperative to see the connections between human and animal suffering.
I realised what I’d seen as human rights issues here in Scandinavia1 was very naive. I don’t consider White feminism to be feminism at all anymore—what good is feminism if it’s not intersectional? At the same time, I did run into questions of, for instance, indigenous food politics, or food privilege. One of the most important insights I’ve had through my activism here is probably that my perspective will never be applicable on a global scale. I don’t have to hunt for food. I don’t come from a tradition where animal sacrifice is a ritual, and my refusing animal products does not come with much of a cultural burden or risk of malnutrition. I still don’t think animal suffering is ever justified, but I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut when the discussion goes places where I have nothing to say, no knowledge, or no experience. I still struggle with this all the time, because wouldn’t it be great if things were black and white, right and wrong? White veganism as a phenomenon is probably one of the most current issues us White vegans have to start taking into consideration. Preaching
Since waking up to veganism, I’ve grown immensely in other contexts. Trans activism has become part of my daily life, of who I am. It has taught me so much in terms of professional skills, from delivering speeches in front of the UN or some minister or the other to leadership to conflict management to intersectionality. Just as I don’t want to do animal rights activism in a way that throws questions of class or racism under the bus, I don’t want my trans activism to be racist or abusive of animals. Learning how to be “one of the good ones” in more than one way is probably a life-long adventure, and it is natural to keep screwing up. I try to take into consideration as many intersections as I possibly can in all of my activisms.
3. What does intersectionality mean to you in the context of your activism?
Intersectionality means that there are multiple axes of difference in any given issue. We aren’t just trans people, or cis people, or straight or bi or pan or gay or asexual, omnivores or vegans, academics or undereducated, poor or rich or able-bodied or “crippled”2 or White or Brown or Black. Human identity is a huge mix of factors that together form a rich meshwork of identity—not to mention that there is a conscious part of it as well, where we can choose whether or not to identify as something or other. I call myself a vegan, although my chronic illness demands that I take medication daily that contains trace amounts of lactose, i.e., milk sugar. I usually say I’m a vegan, not a martyr. Intersectionality is the practice where we try to be aware of these intersections, such as in my case the intertwining of food politics/eating and ability. I also mentioned that my perspective as a White person, who lives in a warm house with a very minimal risk of being evicted, is different from people whose “factors” intersect in other places. My sincere belief is that we should be aware of our own privileges and positions in our activism, since it tells us where we should demand that our voices be heard, and where we should make room for others and their experiences.
I kind of replied to this in the second question. I read about animal-inclusive feminism long before my own train of thought made it to that station. I don’t actually buy into the idea that there is a general “female-specific solidarity” that is connected to female animals being raped for milk production, maybe because I, as a trans person and modern-day intersectional feminist, don’t see feminism as a women’s issue anymore. I don’t really see the human concept of gender as applicable to nonhuman animals either. I have two rescue cats and people are always asking whether they’re boys or girls—I tend to ask how I’m supposed to know. They haven’t told me, at least not in a way that I would understand. They’re cats, I’m pretty sure they don’t care about gender identity. As far as genitals go—why on Earth would you care about my cats’ genitals?
For me, the intersection is somewhere else, maybe in solidarity, in justice, in minimising suffering, in not using and abusing living, sentient creatures. I don’t really care if pigs have the intelligence of a human three-year-old, or if pigeons can learn how to use tools—I mean, it’s cool and all, if that’s what they like to do, but I don’t think intelligence (the way humans might define it) should be a criterion for deserving to live life to the fullest. It also annoys me when people analyse homosexuality as “natural” because you can observe “homosexual behaviour” in penguins. Homosexuality is a human construct. I don’t think penguins have any interest in flying the rainbow flag. Not that I can be sure, of course. “Humanness”, proximity to human behaviour and so forth shouldn’t be a core value if you ask me.
5. You organised Turku Pride, a human rights event for LGBTQ+ communities and their allies, in the South-Western Finnish city of Turku in 2016 and 2017. After this, you initiated and organised TransTurku, an alternative event designed to centre human rights work for trans people, as it did not seem to fit well enough under the “general rainbow”3 issues. You have also taken into account nonhuman animals in these organising efforts, for example by making sure that most of the food available was vegan. Could you please tell us more about these efforts? I [Kuura Irni] remember that during the Turku Pride some of the gay men commented on both the food and trans visibility. How would you analyse these events now?
The decision was to contact food vendors for the events, and we decided to contact vegetarian vendors. We also asked that they all carry vegan alternatives. There was, obviously, no mandatory buying of food—you could easily bring your own picnic and all the salami in the world if you wanted to, or bring your own meat and then buy some veggie food if you wanted a hot dish in addition. We even set up a meeting point for food delivery, so that people could order their meat dishes via a delivery service.
However, the response some apparently aggravated omnivores provided online was really silly. I was called a grumpy old lesbian hippie, which felt funny to me, considering I wasn’t a woman, nor a lesbian, nor a hippie, nor very old. I didn’t feel like I was restricting anyone’s freedom of choice by making animal-friendly alternatives accessible, but clearly I hit a sore spot especially with middle-aged gay cis men. I can’t say for sure that this is an issue of gender, but it occurred to me that this mirrors the example I’ll talk about in the next paragraph. When these cis gay men received equal rights before the law, did they think the job was done and that no one else deserved any more rights?
Another issue that was brought up was that we decided to fly the Trans flag next to the rainbow flag, which lead the local gay bar, Suxes, one of its owners and its DJ (all cis people, to the best of my knowledge, and I did to that point think I knew them fairly well) to publicly boycott Turku Pride. The argument was that we were creating separatist spaces and thus dividing the “rainbow”
6. Have you continued the attempts to combine animal advocacy efforts with other kinds of activism since then and, if so, how?
My attempt is to keep them both simultaneously going in all activisms that I get involved in. I don’t really tend to preach veganism on a personal level; I’d rather make executive decisions where possible. I don’t think it’s helpful to blabber on to people who aren’t interested—unfortunately some people will keep closing their eyes and let their mouths be sated rather than their senses of justice. The way I see it, I can provide a good example, talk about it whenever asked or urged to, and keep making smart decisions in my work. I would not organise events with omnivore catering—if I organise, I want food that I can eat myself, with a good conscience. People are free to leave it be if they don’t want it. I also try to think about climate issues and animal rights (as well as human labour rights) when making purchases for an organisation, and I also try to organise events in venues that are vegan or vegan-friendly, as well as to support places that make efforts at accessibility (physical, social, and financial). It doesn’t have to be visible or dramatic, and it doesn’t have to come with a statement. I learned the hard way that sometimes it’s easier
7. In your opinion, what are the most urgent feminist and animal advocacy matters at the moment, in Finland or elsewhere? How should they be addressed?
I think one of the main issues is how nonhuman animals in general are considered utilities, commodities, pieces in this game that is capitalism and overconsumption. I’m not sure how to even address that, it’s such a huge question of how we value and respect life in general that I doubt I’d have the key to unlock this question even if I tried. Some of the ways this is visible in Finland is fur farming—I can’t believe fur farming is still a thing, even if new European countries keep coming up with bans all the time. I believe fur farming should be banned immediately, smack the lid on the whole thing, finito, the end—yes, even when it means there are people in the industry who need to get re-educated or find other jobs. I don’t understand how vanity could ever justify an industry of horror and pain. I’m writing this with a ball of fluff in my lap, and looking at Grandma Luna (my cat) I can also conclude that anti-speciesism is kind of hypocritical—I mean, I do feed her meat every day. Appreciation for cats as a species is terribly low in Finland—I’ve been affiliated with the NGO Dewi that works with stray cat populations, and the population problems we see in Finland are awful and ridiculous. People still get “summer cats”, cute pets for the duration of the summer, maybe during their time at a cottage, which is something many Finns do during summer, and then dump them, and I can’t even begin to fathom how one could do such a thing. To abandon a living person—because they are in essence to me individual, nonhuman persons—that you commit to take care of and then leave?
Diet is another big thing—humans eat way too much red meat for their own health, not to mention how twisted factory farming is, or how vastly bad for the climate it is. Finnish politicians keep making an identity-politics issue out of the right to eat meat, and some politicians choose to make this one of their key issues, as could be seen in the municipal elections in 2021. Eating meat is combined with masculinity and the idea of being a good, proper Finnish
Finn-Swedes in particular include Finland as part of Scandinavia.
This term follows crip theory and normalises what would rather problematically be called “vammainen” in Finnish. The term “vammainen” might be considered problematic but Finnish activists are moving to use it so as to remove the negative charge from it, much in the same way that Crip theorists are trying to reclaim “Crip/pled”.
Sateenkaari, the Finnish word for “rainbow”, is used to mean “everybody who is not straight” but in practice can exclude trans and other queer people.
Editorial note: For an explanation of rainbow capitalism and its problems, see e.g., Singh 2019.
References
Puar, Jasbir. 2013. “Rethinking Homonationalism.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 45 (2): 336–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43302999
Singh, Kashish. 2019. “Rainbow Capitalism: What Is It, Why Is It Problematic?” (blog), August 17, 2019. https://medium.com/@kashishsingh2002/rainbow-capitalism-what-is-it-why-is-it-problematic-6b917ce78979(accessed 8 June 2021)