cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/194038
Tone cops always come out of the woodwork to disparage vegans who ask carnists not to hurt animals, no matter how nicely they ask. But they'd never speak up on behalf of animals, bc they benefit from being the "good vegan" and are beloved by human supremacists for enforcing the status quo. Fighting for animal liberation is incredibly stigmatized, and pick-me's try to escape that stigma by throwing activists under the bus. This is common in all spheres of social justice.
Respectability politics have been criticized for being "used to rationalize racism, sexism, bigotry, hate, and violence." For example, Bill Cosby "never gave voice to issues of racism, sexism, the failed public school system, health and economic disparities, mass incarceration or police brutality. Instead, he spent over a decade disparaging Black folk to the delight of white conservatives." which made him controversial in the Black community.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respectability_politics
Any challenge to the status quo will be deemed "mean" by those who benefit from it. Misogynists paint those who challenge patriarchy as mean man haters, femin*zis, uppity, unreasonable. Same thing for activists who fight against racism. Human supremacists will always paint vegans as mean bullies for asking them to stop supporting the rape and murder of nonhumans. That doesn't make their framing fair or true. They're just protecting their status quo, which causes the torture and death of over a trillion sentient beings every year. Carnists love when pick-me's favor their feelings (about being told to give up their victims' literal corpses) over the feelings of their victims (terror, grief, pain, horror) and the lives of their victims.
But change doesn't happen when you flatter power and enforce the status quo. Animals will not be liberated by throwing the people who speak out for them under the bus while protecting the people that harm them. Leftists know this already, but they like to forget when it comes to animal liberation
