The Internet Loves These “Gay Sheep.” The Real Story Is Much Darker.

Garnering support for farmed animals is
difficult and expensive, particularly if one wants to do something more than
just convince people to abstain from ordering lamb. As evidenced by the work of scholars like Elan
Abrell, sanctuary farms—those that save animals from grim fates in farming and
let them live out their lives as naturally as possible—take land, money, and
hard work and have almost no conceivable way of turning a profit. In this sense,
Rainbow Wool, in selling wool from the rescued animals so they pay their
way—and, yes, helping support queer charities in Germany—is a way of
commodifying animals as gently as possibly while saving them from the butcher’s
blade. And selling products means advertising, like having high-visibility
runway shows of gay fashions knitted from the wool of gay rams.

Anthropomorphizing animals as “gay” may be a
worthwhile first step in getting people to recognize the sexual exploitation that nearly all farmed animals endure. And in its own limited way, Rainbow
Wool does this. Buying some fancy wool is hardly enough to address the harms of
animal farming, but that doesn’t mean it’s worthless. When it comes to the
politics of meat, people often pit individual action against transformative
“systemic” change. In our forthcoming book,
we argue that it’s wrong to treat individual and collective actions as
either/or; we need both. Sometimes small incremental changes by individuals can
help create new norms that lead to policy changes and eventual structural
transformation.

Schmidt may indeed be doing some good, but
it’s not nearly good enough. In fact, the farm on which Rainbow Wool’s
gay rams are housed is also a commercial sheep farm,
where other sheep are sent to slaughter. “It is a great capitalist story
framed about being about gayness,” Carol Adams explained to us over email, of the Grindr fashion show. But “it doesn’t challenge animal agriculture in terms
of assumptions about the requirement that animals be productive; nor about
making females pregnant, nor about wearing wool.” Neither Rainbow Wool nor
Grindr responded by publication time to a request for comment for this piece.