this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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Welcome
Welcome to c/[email protected]. Broadly, this community is a place to discuss veganism. Discussion on intersectional topics related to the animal rights movement are also encouraged.
What is Veganism?
'Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals ...'
— abridged definition from The Vegan Society
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- You Will Never Look at Your Life in the Same Way Again
- Dominion (2018) (CW: gore, animal abuse)
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Thanks for the warm welcome! 😃
Yes, I suppose you're right that veganism would be more like atheism in its absence or rejection of a traditionally dominant belief system & its concomitant behaviors, if someone was simply vegan and didn't do any activism/advocacy/promoting or "evangelizing" or proselytizing, which has a less religious connotation (which, to be fair, is most vegans. You only hear about the activists or vocal vegans because, well, they want to be heard & want to spread the idea of veganism or the often esoteric information & evidence related to it with the masses).
In that sense the kind of veganism which doubles as not just a personal position but also an actively pushed social movement is kind of like a hybrid between atheism & abolitionism/social justice causes I guess? Unless you count anti-religious people who actively oppose & challenge religion in a kind of philosophic activism, also termed New Atheism, but that's not as much of a "social justice" movement as such, though it can be related to a defense of those causes when viewing religion as a threat to them.
I don't personally find it to be too strange or unreasonable for vegans to invent a term or terms to recognise and describe the ideology/ies we're either rejecting or actively opposed to (carnism, speciesism, human supremacy, anthropocentrism, etc - many of which pre-dated veganism & even weren't strictly born out of animal rights discussions but rather human psychology in general). If veganism is the absence of certain beliefs & practices, it makes sense to put a name to those beliefs & practices, no? Otherwise veganism remains a rather nebulous concept without a clear goal or reason, and can often seem like simply an idea or practice in itself rather than the dismantling of such. Doing so also helps to de-otherize veganism in a similar way to how terms like "cisgender" help to de-otherize transgenderism by establishing that the norm is in fact identifiable & describable in itself & does have its own clear set of characteristics. I'm happy to use "non-vegan" (which does contain the otherizing of veganism issue) in case the term carnism brings offence, but I would wager any offence it causes is likely to stem from the challenging nature of what it exposes & addresses, as it's quite literally just holding up a mirror to larger society's choices & attitudes with as much accuracy as possible, without any inherent judgment as a matter-of-fact descriptor (not that judgment can't be placed on it). Terms like this intend to foster honest discussions about the truth of our nature. If people don't like what they see (which to me indicates an acknowledgement of some tangible problem worth addressing that's separate from any word used to capture it), or take issue with the word used, they're free to propose a different term since that's not what's important, but the reality is there isn't another term to accurately describe the phenomenon really. Though it builds on ancient concepts, this kind of discussion itself in this form is rather recent & underdeveloped, and so the language used is, too.
To me the fact that the majority of people (which as we know are non-vegans) don't want to associate with the places in which discourse among vegans occurs, speaks more to people's resistance to the difficult ideas (or even facts) it raises & brings to light, or the contentions it makes, than it does the specific nature of those communities. I think it's inevitable and understandable that people hate vegans & seeing vegans discuss things as veganism poses a threat to their current way of life (a philosophical & moral threat at least, if not a physical one).
That said, there are all different kinds of vegans, and they're just people like anyone. Far from perfect, & flawed in many ways. So there are bound to be toxic vegans, especially on the internet, just as there are in any community or among people in general. I'm not sure that there's a higher prevalence of that phenomenon among vegans or vegan groups, and from my experience vegans are usually (not always) pretty civil with each other. The "drama" comes when talking with non-vegans, usually (not to claim whose fault that is, as it's probably brought about equally by both parties, or just a natural consequence of their fundamental value differences & how those ideas conflict, or rather are not aligned consistently, even if there is significant common ground).
However, I have to be honest that it seems a little wrong to me to suggest that veganism as a philosophy or ethical stance, as independent from any people who adopt or follow it, can be ruined by the actions of one vegan (or even any number of vegans). I'm sorry you feel this way though and I hope you're able to form a more positive impression of it, or rather the vegan community, by whatever means that may be possible. In my experience it's a pretty welcoming community to vegans or those who are ready to make the change to being vegan or are curious about it, but somewhat understandably (but still often regrettably) not so much toward those who argue against the vegan position or tend to defend their choices to "use" animals (for lack of a better way to summarize the behaviors). And, frankly, it seems unreasonable to me to take out your annoyance at what some humans did (vegan or not) on innocent non-human animals. Since your issue is with the vegans and not the deer (or whatever animals), the punishment there is being directed at the wrong individuals, no? Just some food for thought.
Hope I didn't upset you or anything, I was really just trying to be as sincere as I can 😅
No offence taken in any way. Nicely written.
You are right that to be able to have specific, nuanced discussion and move minority positions to equal footing there is often a need for a new lexicon "Carnist" in particular makes it sound to me like there are vegans, and there are people whose entire life is meat. To me, it's a laughable turn of phrase.
With respect to communities and subs, I don't think that it's so cut and dry as "most people aren't vegans, so they necessarily don't like where vegans congregate". That is a little bit reductionist. I suppose you weren't here to see it happen, but this vegan sub basically crapped it's pants because of one power tripping exmod until the technician came and took it over (which may have started with this post actually). As that was happening, the most active users were suggesting jumping to .ml instances and to go to vegantheoryclub which self advertises as anarchy-forward (fine). MAYBE because people like me browse "all" instead of my subs most of the time, being in the main stream leads to too many downvotes to combative--but in group--content for comfort. Even still, maybe we don't have to go hang out with tankies?
As to vegan theory club, I visited several posts to have sane and rational discourse only to have my comments immediately deleted. As I recall, these were not short or offhand dismissive comments but actual attempts to engage. Comments deleted, users banned, and Hamid specifically doing it as the instance admin and leaving "fuck america" footprints. Suffice it to say that it really chapped my ass, and as an American looking down the barrel of another Trump term, I don't like Americans that much either. Between him, beaver, and some other high activity accounts, it is mostly not worth the effort to try to break into these communities.
Considering deer hunting, yes the comments were flippant and I deleted all that yesterday. Still though, where I live hunting is the only population control for deer besides overcrowding and disease. It saves me buying beef, and I assume is a much better way to go than a wasting disease or a high speed encounter with a car.