It’s about the animals, not about labels
Labels can make things easier but things are easier without labels
Yesterday, I shared a few comments I recently read about the pointless statement “It’s not vegan”, here.
I had a few comments from rigid absolutists who told me how it’s entirely my fault and my problem if I don’t like the sentence “it’s not vegan” and that, basically, I suck because I’m not just like them.
I also had a few comments from folks who apparently didn’t appreciate any criticism of veganism and I was accused of “Vegan Bashing”.
Finally, I also had some more interesting comments and I’ll share them here, followed by my replies.
“Vincent I understand that vegans can be judgemental and opinionated. That’s annoying and I think it comes from the frustration of watching people (vegetarians or sloppy vegans) close to not eating animals casually eating them sometimes”
Yes, and these vegans should work on this and ideally change the way they look at it. Learn to see allies rather than enemies. Understand that they’re not perfect themselves and that they don’t know what other animal friendly choices someone may make. Appreciate that a discussion can be about the actual issue, NOT whether it fits one’s idea of a label or if it doesn’t.
“We also feel that it is the high road. The morally right road not to eat animals and I feel that’s inarguable myself and that comes off as holier than thou and no one likes that. While I’m not holy, it is in fact a holier way to live not taking life than taking it. Even if the animals are pampered which is a big fat lie anyway because they all end up with their throats cut young.”
I think that sometimes veganism can be a hindrance when it comes to helping animals effectively. I don’t care about veganism, I care about helping sentient animals.
When vegans exclude others because they make difference choices even though these choices are equally animal friendly, it is detrimental. When vegans refuse to even talk about something or hear someone out because it appears to them that it is “not vegan”, veganism is detrimental.
When vegans demand a black and white vision, a 100% or 0%, in or out perspective, they are effectively putting a lot of people off. It’s basic psychology.
“It’s also not very grown up to eat animals because you (not you personally ) are put off by someone. And what’s equally animal friendly ? You eat them, or you don’t. Explain this middle way to me. It doesn’t matter to me why anyone stops eating and using animals - only that they do. What is this matter of “doing one’s best”? Is someone holding them down and making them drink milk or eat a pork chop?”
In some cases, yes, pretty much. There are people who are dependent on who provides them food. There are folks living with their parents and who may have a lot of difficulties with a proper vegan diet, lifestyle, philosophy, whatever. There are people living in places where it’s hard to eat a balanced and varied vegan diet. There are people who live in places where it’s very expensive to do so.
There are many non-vegans (near-vegans, vegetarians, reducetarians) who do a lot more for the animals than vegans who spend much time talking others down whilst not being politically active.
It can be a matter of choices. Sometimes the vegan food item can involve having more sentient animals killed than an item seen as not vegan. For example, eating oysters and mussels means no sentient animals killed or harmed whilst cereals involves dead rodents. Of course this is a false analogy as eating oysters and mussels does not mean not eating cereals. I am using it for the sake of providing an example here. Local, small scale honey kills fewer animals than some vegan honey alternatives such as cane sugar where plenty of small animals are killed to harvest the cane.
What I’m saying is that it’s not black and white. Grey is OK.
Because in the meantime, animals are being slaughtered.
I would like to end this piece by plugging three initiatives I think are worth getting behind:
> One Step for the Animals - http://onestepforanimals.weebly.com/
> IndieBio - http://www.indiebio.co/
Indie.Bio is a startup accelerator which focuses on entrepreneurs building technologies in or around the field of Biotech. It offers seed funding, lab space as well as mentorship to help take an idea to a product.
> Animals Australia - http://animalsaustralia.org/
