Okay I believe you (Not all vegans are the same after all. For example some people call themselves vegan when they're really just eating a plant-based diet, still buy other animal products, or don't have very strong views about animal rights. Not saying that's the case here but when there are fewer vegans in a community, there can be more of that.)
But what confused me is that rather than just answering the question of whether it's speciesist to prefer one animal species over another (even when respecting both of their rights by being vegan), you mostly went on a tangent about rejecting the comparison between racism and speciesism, even though vegans typically stress the fact that both forms of discrimination of individuals are comparable to each other, and it's usually people who are against the vegan movement who try to argue they aren't, and say things like "Considering humans and non-human animals as the same is problematic" (even though that's a strawman since the vegan position acknowledges the differences between species but advocates for moral treatment of all species regardless).
I just don't really understand. Do you for example think that it's wrong to compare immoral treatment of humans to immoral treatment of non-human animals? Because that's the vibe I'm getting.
Sorry I missed this comment.
Treating them all as equally well as possible makes sense, to be clear. That means not exploiting or harming any of them unnecessarily.
But treating them in exactly the same way doesn't, since they have different needs and considerations as you point out. I agree with that.
And I'm not saying we should have all animals as pets, in fact due to the suffering it causes I would be wholly against the domestication of any more animals.
But we don't have to treat animals in the same exact ways in order to respect and love them equally, even remotely or conceptually, even just based on the knowledge of them. It does feel strange to me to say "this species is my favourite species". Is it speciesist? I'm not sure. It's definitely not as bad as exploiting species selectively. But it might have some remnant of the views that led to those practices in the first place, potentially. I'm conflicted about it like another vegan said here whose comment was deleted.