Dear vegans who think that my activism is
stupid,
Hi there, I'm
Katelyn. I've been vegan for about three years, and before that I was a
vegetarian for around thirteen years. But that doesn't matter. All
that matters is that we both no longer partake in animal exploitation, as much
as humanly possible. Lately there has been a lot of contention in the
vegan community (at least in my local one) about certain forms of activism pushing
people away or alienating potential vegans. Their methods might make
you a little bit uncomfortable. Good
news is, that’s the entire point. Groups
like Direct Action Everywhere, rely on that discomfort to propel social
change. On the DxE website, they quote
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham
Jail, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster
such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is
forced to confront the issue. It seeks
to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”
Maybe that’s where the
differences between you and me began. I’m
sick of being ignored. I’m sick of people
saying that they love what I do but they just can’t be vegan. I’m sick of people saying, “Oh that’s just so
sad, but I just could never be vegan.” I’m
sick of people who would rather walk by a Cube of Truth, covering their eyes
and running into things, crying, but they insist that they just CAN’T ever go
vegan. I’m sick of people feeling good
about buying grass-fed beef and cage-free eggs.
I’m sick of tiptoeing around the hell that humans inflict on animals for
no good reason.
Don’t you want to make people
see? Don’t you want to make them open
their eyes? I love vegan options in restaurants,
but that’s just what they are… options.
There is also an option that involved the murder of a sentient being who
was bred for the sole purpose of human consumption. I know what you’re going to say: Every little bit helps. That is true, a decrease in consumption of
animal products is usually overwhelmingly positive for the health of a person,
but is Meatless Monday really all we can ask of people when animal agriculture
is decimating our environment, poisoning our bodies, and perpetuating the myth
that human beings NEED to use and abuse animals to survive?
While we can encourage a
decrease in consumption and an increase in options, we can also encourage total
abstinence from animal products. I asked
a few of the vegans that I know what made them make the switch. Christina said, “I saw the hideous truth of
how my ‘food’ ended up on my plate on Facebook.
I couldn’t cringe and try to ignore it any longer. I had always felt bad when I thought about where
my ‘food’ came from and who it once had been and I couldn’t ignore it any
longer because I love all animals and I didn’t want to be the reason any of
them suffer.” If you notice, she put “food”
in quotation marks, because to many (dare I say, most) vegans, animals are not
food. That means that it is not okay for
people to cheat and eat an animal product, because they aren’t eating food,
they’re eating something that was once a part of a thinking, breathing, and
feeling being. Lauding people for
skipping the bacon on their cheeseburger and telling people to take baby steps operates
under the assumption that animals only stop being food once you, the human, decide
to stop eating them.
Of course, I once was
not vegan, so I know that it’s hard to discard everything that you have been
conditioned by society to accept. I know
that for some it’s a process and for others it’s instantaneous. The only problem with there being a process
is that while someone decides to give Meatless Mondays a try, calves are being
ripped away from their mothers, baby chicks are being thrown into a grinder
alive, and pigs are being burned from the inside out in CO2 chambers. That is why activists disrupt grocery stores,
share graphic footage, and scream “Meat is Murder.” People need to be reminded that there is a
victim to their “personal choice.” You
say that forcing our views on people will do nothing. We can’t force people to do anything except look
at a video showing the processes that they pay for. Even then, we can’t force them to open their
eyes. We can’t make anyone think a
certain way and we know that. All we can
do is SHOW people what we think is important and hope that it sparks a
conversation or plants a seed in their mind.
We are reminding people in a society that has become so removed from the
source of their food, clothing, etc. that they are literally paying someone
else to kill or abuse animals.
I have seen people
remark that “It makes us all look crazy.”
The first time I heard that, it hurt my feelings a little bit. Why would a fellow vegan say that I’m crazy
just for speaking out for the animals?
Don’t we all desire a vegan world?
Even if we disagree on the best way to achieve that, surely it does more
harm than good to discredit and insult other vegans. People think you’re crazy anyways for not
eating cheese, how is this any different?
Another statement I’ve seen is: “You
make me feel like I’m not doing enough.”
To that I have to quote Eleanor Roosevelt, “No one can make you feel
inferior without your consent.” If you
feel like you aren’t doing enough, maybe deep down, you think you aren’t. There are many ways to engage in activism
that don’t involve direct action. You
can share social media posts promoting veganism (or you could even create an entire
profile for that purpose, an example here), you can volunteer for a
vegan community event, you can sign up to be a Challenge22 mentor, you can wear
vegan shirts and hope that gets people talking, or you can even donate to a
group that does something you like, but you just don’t want to physically take
part in.
I love sharing vegan
recipes and talking to people about all the great things you can do with
plants, but is veganism not first and foremost about the animals? Many people went vegan for health and stayed
vegan for the animals. But in my
opinion, when you approach veganism as a food-only or health-only issue, there
is much more room for relapse because if someone caves and gets queso with
their vegan tacos, in their mind, they are only hurting themselves and that’s just
not true. When you pay for animal
products, you are paying for animal cruelty, and it is frustrating to see other
vegans speak ill of activists simply for reminding people of that fact. Someone has said to me that we are making
people eat more meat out of spite. I
honestly have no idea if that is true or not, but I think that if someone would
go to the lengths to do that, their defensiveness is indicative of an inner
conflict that they are having.
You know it’s not hard
to be vegan, we do it every day. I do it
not because vegan food is delicious, or because it somehow makes me superior to
other people, but because I do not want to be the cause of another being’s
suffering and I don’t want to pay for that suffering. I used to be a “cool vegan” and would go out
of my way to not make anyone feel judged or feel bad about their decisions, but
that did not line up with how I was feeling and it felt inauthentic to continue
that way. It might feel inauthentic for
you to do what I’m doing, and that is fine!
Please do what you think is right, and I will do the same. But the next time that you want to put down
other activists, ask yourself some questions, “Is what they are showing true?” “Is
what they are doing making me personally feel uncomfortable and is that why I
feel the need to say something?” “Would it help the animals in any way to say
something negative right now?” If we all
keep our focus where it belongs, on the animals, then we can accomplish
anything.
Sincerely,
Katelyn
Katelyn
