Friday, July 15, 2016

The Best Vegans Aren't Vegan and Other Absurdities...



From within the vegan movement, I have always observed a tendency toward painting one another as either hard-line ideologues or compromising doormats and the tinderbox that is online communication has only made things more fractious. This is also nothing new. What is new, though, is the attitude that I’ve seen pushed with more and more frequency and more and more certainty by mainstream vegan “thought leaders” that by making concessions on our vegan practices to accommodate those who are inconvenienced, confused or threatened by them, we are making strategic advances for the animals. In recent months, I’ve even seen some make the wholly Orwellian claim that by eating animal products on occasion, we are actually helping the animals overall by appearing to be less extreme, more approachable, just generally nicer. It seems that by eating animal products on advantageous occasions, we can help to assure their eventual liberation, or at least the liberation of their future generations. This line of reasoning only works, though, if you have bought into the false dichotomy that it is more beneficial to be helpful and pragmatic than to be judgmental and dogmatic.

In the world I live in, though, there are many ways to live as a vegan within the brackets of these polarities that do not rely on an obvious straw man caricature as the boogeyman. According to this convenient duality I’ve seen pushed with an increasing confidence, vegans can only choose between being supportive, smart pragmatists or angry, irrational ideologues. While I will wholeheartedly agree that all of us need to communicate better, I also believe that it is entirely possible to not behave like shrieking militants while still maintaining our commitment to veganism. If we bend over backwards to accommodate what we think people are threatened by, if suddenly eating something with “a little egg” or “a little butter” is the difference between someone thinking we’re reasonable and that same person thinking we’re puritanical, where do we draw the line? What if someone who I really want to appeal to thinks it’s dogmatic that I won’t eat bacon? What then? Do I eat the bacon? Why end there? A little beef? I am to understand from our new pragmatic leaders that we should eat cows over chickens. Why not just make it a regular part of my life to consume some beef and dairy to be more accommodating and model for the world that eating cows is preferable to eating chickens? Why not? Maybe I will become the ultimate vegan by not being vegan anymore. This may sound absurd and rightfully so but it is the obvious outcome of the Orwellian claptrap I’ve seen championed by thought leaders in the vegan movement for the past year or so: The best vegans are the ones who are not even vegan at all.

I came home tonight pretty upset and heartbroken after hearing yet another vegan speaker promoting this view of the helpful pragmatist and the out-of-touch idealist, an out-of-touch idealist who is so very extreme that he or she won’t even intentionally consume animal products. As my husband said when I came home and told him about it, here we are, closer than ever to gaining legitimacy and beginning to make real inroads for creating change and the real challenge to our progress is coming not from well-funded industries or powerful special interests but from within the vegan movement. By making the term “vegan” so nebulous and shape-shifting it for what we see as strategic gains, we are cutting the ethical basis out of our social justice movement. Those are our own hands doing the cutting. It’s not industry. It’s not special interests. We are on the precipice of powerfully positive change and here we are voluntarily holding the scissors. Snip, snip, snip. Cut that pesky meaning from the word. Let’s make everything all nice and neat and non-threatening.

All of this is to say that I will not knowingly consume animal products because if someone’s convictions about living with compassion and justice are so tenuous and flimsy that I need to eat yogurt-covered pretzels in order to convince them that I am a reasonable person, this is not someone I am going to focus on influencing. I will move on. I will continue to show that it is entirely possible to be a vegan who maintains her standards while remaining friendly, welcoming, engaging, accessible and helpful. Just as I wouldn’t expect domestic violence activists to engage in “a little battery” to convince the public that, hey, they’re not so high and mighty with their whole anti-violence thing, we should not be expected to compromise our values to be effective. We can be effective without it.

I have gotten dozens and dozens of messages from people over the years who have learned about veganism through positive but honest advocacy and they are deeply grateful for being able to access and unlock this incredibly rich, rewarding and empowering reservoir they never knew was inside of them. Their intelligence, strength and basic goodness was respected. These are people who had never envisioned themselves as vegan but saw the possibilities because their capacity to grow was trusted. Intentionally eating some animals to score perceived tactical points with “normal people” violates the very foundational premise of veganism, which is that we don’t knowingly use other animals for our purposes. This isn’t about purity; it isn’t about judgment. It’s simply about consistency and believing in the foundational principles of veganism. As my husband said when we talked about it, we have worked really hard for this word vegan to mean something and to bring awareness to not only what it means but also why we do it. People who largely eat a vegan diet but advocate eating some animals on some occasions under the pretext of effectiveness need to call themselves something else. This isn’t splitting hairs. They are simply promoting something other than veganism.

Oh, and, hey, look at what just showed up in my Google alerts this very morning. Sample quote: "I think 'seagan' fits a huge need for vegans who want variety and, for health reasons, they now realize they can eat this."

Yup. When animals are eaten by vegans, we are truly in an Orwellian reality of our own doing. My sincere apologies to the animals. The “vegans” have sold you down the river.

16 comments:

  1. Agree with you 100% Marla and I'm sorry to hear this is the way many vegan thinkers are headed. It makes no sense to me and I join you in refusing to compromise my vegan principles. These people should not call themselves vegans.

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    1. tobias is getting money from dairy industry

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  2. vegan 100% here too Marla... sad that it appears some are trying to 'water down' the true meaning of veganism - change is what we need for our animal kin, not acceptance of horror...

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  3. Thank you for this. What a ridiculous trend. I wish lapsed vegans would just accept the fact that they've chosen their palates over their ethics, because that's really what this boils down to. They need to stop trying to publicly justify it by shoehorning these lapses into some new nonsensical definition of veganism.

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  4. Let us de-legitimize and stigmatize meat, not each other! Let us get labels on meat and worry less about labeling each other!

    We have much really urgent work to do! Let's get meat and dairy products out of the school lunch program!

    Watch cowspiracy! When 51% or more of green house gas emissions are coming from the meat and dairy industry, we need to get meat eaters to become part-time vegans! I want them to at least move in that direction! If meat eaters went vegan 6 days a week, and ate meat on the seventh, that would be a huge blow to animal agribusiness! Let us put our focus on reducing GHGs now, please!

    We have to get our climate under control! We, as a species, must get smart and we must do it quickly!

    Let's get active, seek wisdom and compassion, and see if we can keep our planet livable. It is the least we can do for the future! If we fail at this, it won't matter what we called ourselves or each other!

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  5. For goodness sake why do people keep believing that there are only extremes... You don't have to be either a doormat or shrieking asshole. You can be a kind, positive and helpful vegan that also tells things as they are!

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  6. After the "veggans", we now have the "seagans". I guess that the next trend will be meat-eating vegans, or "meagans"... This is like Trump: it would be funny on a comedy show, in real life it's just sad.

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    1. Great advice! Thanks !
      What's a veggan?

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  7. Also, vegan = vegan =/= not vegan. So Orwell made an elementary fallacy.

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  8. You sound very angry at the vegans that are trying hard to stay consistent. You also write about veganism like if it was a religion and there were commandments to follow. I don't like it when fellow vegans publicly attack or criticize each other, making everyone look weaker in front of the meat eaters.

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  9. You know who the strategists really hate? People who say they wouldn't eat meat if some rich sadist were to say, "I'll donate a large sum to help animals if you just eat meat in front of me". The strategists actually refuse to say that people who draw a line at what they would do in that situation are being selfish by setting limits for themselves. I wrote about it: <a href="http://vanillarosetangents.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/do-anything-strategists-get-judgmental.html>http://vanillarosetangents.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/do-anything-strategists-get-judgmental.html</a>.

    They are judgy as **** about people who say they there are things they wouldn't do to appease rich sadists.

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  11. Great post - and why I love Casey Taft's book "Motivational Methods for Vegan Advocacy: A Clinical Psychology Perspective"  http://amzn.to/2knH3ug - He encourages every step without selling out on the ultimate goal.

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