• veganism isnt an inherently white or colonial idea
  • veganism isnt bad
  • veganism in the west does not represent the practice of veganism overall (im not giving lashings to buddhist monks when i criticize veganism as a movement in the 1st world)
  • it shouldnt be controversial to prioritize human liberation
  • existing socialist states in the past and present did not endorse veganism and were heavily anthropocentric. if you are a westerner, do not touch this topic with any intention of historical revisionism.
  • if youre white but prioritize animal liberation over anti racism and anti colonialism im judging
  • i dont ”draw a line” and dont care if some cultures eat dogs or cats
  • a lot of non white people are turned off by veganism because we get the feeling that white people care about animals more than us
  • ”herbivore” doesnt just mean consumption of plant diet. as a human you dont have a herbivore digestive system or herbivore teeth. you are omnivore even if you choose a plant based diet.
  • humans are omnivores.
  • abstaining from meat can be good for your health in some cases
  • different cultures have different approaches to meat consumption and should be respected

more important notes:

  • THE MEAT INDUSTRY HAS TO CHANGE and thats not a question. it is cruel to animals in many ways.

  • KNOW YOUR PLACE IF YOU ARE WHITE. i still think of an exchange i saw between a western comrade and a vietnamese comrade where the western comrade insisted the latter was a reactionary because they were opposed to veganism. do not do this ever.

  • STOP SUGGESTING VEGANISM AS AN OPTION FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS. it is individualist and individualist measures for environmental damage done by huge corporations do not work period

  • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
    0·
    4 months ago

    People always try to attack vegans by bringing up people in the latter situation, when the attackers are usually in the former and are the ones activists are talking to/about.

    I’m sorry, but this is a pretty unfair and distorting characterization. First, if you are talking to people about it online such as in a place like this, you generally won’t know what group someone belongs to without directly asking them about their situation, which is something they’re probably not going to want to share if the plan is to decide whether to lecture them about privilege based on what it is. Second, the act of reminding people that the world is not confined to those who have lots of options does not become invalidated if it’s done by somebody who does have options. These two things together are important, since we are not exactly talking about going to a rich person’s retreat and promoting veganism. Third, there is nothing inherently “privileged” about stores existing near you that have options on shelves if those options may not be something you can afford. Don’t fall for the capitalist narrative that the existence of options in theory is the same as people necessarily being able to freely go for them. Furthermore, mass production, contrary to how capitalism tends to represent it, is not magic. If demand for something dramatically changes, production has to change to meet it. At the same time, if people find that one option is generally cheaper than another (even if it is objectively worse for them) they may go for the cheaper option because that’s what they can afford.

    For example, it’s not as bad as it used to be in terms of price and rarity, but where I live, stuff that is not normally gluten-free and uses different ingredients to make it gluten-free (such as pasta or bread) is more expensive than the normal form of it. In theory, you could argue, well then get foods that are gluten-free inherently and this is something I try to do for my health because I don’t do well with gluten, but it’s also harder than it sounds. Between cost, convenience, and existing cuisine culture, options can get narrow very fast. Of course I could mea culpa about how this is a minor issue compared to being food insecure, but that’s sort of beside the point. I am not a monk and have to deal with the inertia of the conditions I live in, not the conditions someone else lives in. Dealing with even a single dietary restriction takes time and energy to be looking at ingredient lists and trying to figure out what all you can eat, much less will want to eat without feeling like you’re doing penance. And that’s not even getting into peer pressures of any sort of gathering where you eat together, or the complexities that fast arise in group meals from even one person having a dietary restriction, much less multiple. These are the kind of obstacles so-called “privileged” people can be up against, even when assuming they want to change in the first place.

    If we look at this and shrug and say “well do it anyway, it’s not that hard, others have it worse”, we’re just doing an individualism, not building a society that incentivizes different behavior.

    • Inui [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      I’m sorry, but this is a pretty unfair and distorting characterization. First, if you are talking to people about it online such as in a place like this, you generally won’t know what group someone belongs to without directly asking them about their situation, which is something they’re probably not going to want to share if the plan is to decide whether to lecture them about privilege based on what it is.

      I’ve had this conversation with a lot of people irl that I am more familiar with, not necessarily talking about people online that I don’t know. The general vibe online though is that people are attacking Inuit seal hunters for their choices, and I can tell you that the demographic of Inuit seal hunters either doesn’t exist or is infinitesimally small on places like Reddit and not anything activists actually care about on a practical level. But, connecting to point 2:

      Second, the act of reminding people that the world is not confined to those who have lots of options does not become invalidated if it’s done by somebody who does have options

      The problem I am speaking to is people who do have options using the people who don’t as an excuse to not do something they are capable of doing themselves. By mischaracterizing animal rights activists as specifically targeting people like indigenous communities or people who need to use food banks, they handwave away the substance of arguments to dismiss the idea of doing anything differently outright based on a false perception of a movement attacking minority groups.

      Third, there is nothing inherently “privileged” about stores existing near you that have options on shelves if those options may not be something you can afford.

      There is to the degree that it is possible to choose to sacrifice something else to make this decision, if possible. That doesn’t mean everyone can do so or that I am dismissing the fact that these alternatives can cost more money. Anecdotally, oat milk is 2 dollars a gallon where I am at. Someone wanting to switch here is paying essentially the same price as dairy milk, barring issues of availability in their specific stores. That isn’t the case everywhere, but it is a legitimate and effective thing to point out to people living in my area.

      We are very aware of differing material conditions. Some people are minors and can’t choose what they eat. There are medical conditions. Access issues. Everyone has their own hurdles they either can or can’t eliminate if they want to change. I’m not saying “just do it”, I would say “examine the actual reasons why you are not doing it and evaluate if it possible to given your conditions”.

      Veganism isn’t a death cult or a poverty cult, nobody is telling people at food banks to leave the milk behind. I’m saying boomer grill dads who can afford to throw neighborhood barbeques in their backyard have a choice and part of the mission is to convince them to make that choice. Or for my area, wealthy families in general. Someone this well off in another country may not even be able to make that choice because the options literally don’t exist. Plant-based milks are only just now entering the market in some countries, or haven’t yet.

      • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
        0·
        4 months ago

        Veganism isn’t a death cult or a poverty cult, nobody is telling people at food banks to leave the milk behind. I’m saying boomer grill dads who can afford to throw neighborhood barbeques in their backyard have a choice and part of the mission is to convince them to make that choice. Someone this well off in another country may not even be able to make that choice because the options literally don’t exist. Plant-based milks are only just now entering the market in some countries, or haven’t yet.

        But “boomer grill dads” are the least likely to listen to any of this. I’ve seen how those types can talk and you aren’t going to move them by saying that they are privileged or that they have options or whatever. So I don’t understand being told, in effect, “it’s not you, it’s the boomer grill dads” but then the tactics that I tend to see used have nothing to do with how those people actually are. Some of them are straight up reactionary in general and moving them on veganism is the least of social concerns. Some of them are staunchly into meat and the taste of it, and seem to associate it with masculinity, so there’s a lot to unpack there. They are a bit like the rich people in class struggle. They are among the last ones I would expect to voluntary change, even if it’s made convenient to do so.

        We need to make it convenient to do the right thing and that requires political and logistics power. Persuasion without broader social change can only go so far. I don’t mean to sound insulting when I say this, but I’ve yet to see anything from vegans that looks actually effective on a tactics level (granted, I am perhaps not seeing the more effective stuff). The general strategy/hope seems to be that upon reaching a tipping point of amalgamated individual choice, the world will cross over an event horizon into being vegan. But this has never been how broad social change gets enforced in a society.

        • Inui [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          0·
          4 months ago

          Nah, I agree with you. A lot of animal activism is individualist because it is the only thing within some people’s power where they are at. There are a lot of isolated vegans who can do nothing but try to convince others of their ideas because of a lack of community. There are a lot of splintered groups that are only 5 people who still comparatively have little power for broad organizational change. I think what you are seeing though is not for a lack of trying, but for a lack of critical mass. You can’t form a communist vanguard either if it’s just you and 10 friends trying for decades to convince an 11th person that your ideas are worth anything.

          I do think you will find a lot more effectiveness if you look on a local level, typically working within the confines of what society currently allows. PETA does a ton of legal work that nobody who has only seen their shock ads knows about. There are cities in various states passing local ordinances that disallow selling cat and dogs from breeders at pet stores in the state. A beagle testing facility in Wisconsin was just shut down due to activist pressure on local politicians. Activists in Oregon are just shy of the signatures they need to qualify for a state ballot measure banning the sale and slaughter of animals. Of course they don’t expect to win, but it’s much like PSL in that it draws a lot of attention and funding their way for their other projects.

          The same way you can’t really “take down” Google without some sort of significant revolutionary movement happening, you can’t “take down” the meat and dairy industry either. It requires advanced equipment, labs, complex manufacturing and supply chain logistics, etc. So the failures of animal activists to me just echoes the failures of other progressive movements in the United States. I don’t think it’s a unique thing they are lacking.