no longer now he slays the lamb

that looks him in the face and horribly devours his mangled flesh

[kepttopythagorus]

usa★☮︎Ⓥ / run by a loony lefty animal liberationist philosophy student

this is a sideblog focused primarily on the history of animal rights, veganism, and vegetarianism (back when that was still an excusable offense). my main is @gazesinvain.

always feel free to reach out & i hope ya learn something or other!

[tsarina-anadyomene]

People are very uncomfortable with vegetarianism and veganism because it suggests that there's something deeply wrong with everyday life and their complicity in it. Which I think is a normal reaction. But I think if your internet persona is serious unrepentant communist it's a general species of reaction you might be obligated to get under control if you want to be a coherent and unified agent.

[oatsmilk]

i dont like vegans because [cognitive dissonance] and [completely false statement]

20k notes

[animalrightsarchive]

Clippings of graphics from Underground, 1994-1999.

[animalrightsarchive]

Farm Sanctuary President and Co-founder Gene Baur driving a calf rescued from an abuse case on a veal farm, c. 1980s.

[acti-veg]

Screenshotting as OP’s confidence in defending their own ideas was such that they pre-blocked me as soon as someone tagged me to respond, but I really want to hold this post up as just an incredible example of confirmation bias and groupthink. Can you imagine a take like this getting over 48,000 notes if the victim were literally any other group? Someone who stands on the power end of a clearly unbalanced relationship with a group who is unquestionably being exploited, a person profiting from their bodies and production, declaring ‘actually this is mutually beneficial’ while dismissing collective boycott of an incredibly destructive industry as ‘virtue signalling’ and it being widely shared and applauded? On Tumblr.com? This is the extent of the vested interest we all have in maintaining our illusions about our consumption habits. We are presented with the horors of modern farming, we recognise instinctively that this is wrong according to our own values, and what we essentially have are two choices: 1) We can change our behaviour to match our values. 2) We can attempt to argue that our behaviour already does match our values. One option requires self-reflection, acknowledging our own wrongdoing and vowing to do better by making real, tangible sacrifices in our own lives, while the other offers a reassuring pat on the back that we actually don’t need to change a thing about our own behaviours and our own consumption habits, and that some vague far-away problem is the actual issue, like capitalism, or industrialisation, or something else that requires nothing of you personally. Almost all of us, all the time, are choosing option 2. Posts like these are always so incredibly popular despite the juvenile attempts at justifications, the zero sources, the no-nuance analysis precisely because they offer us semi-coherent reasoning to continue engaging in our current behaviours while maintaining the facade of caring about animals and our planet. This is why we have post after post telling us ‘it’s not us it’s capitalism,’ or ‘actually being bred in unhealthy bodies for profit, exploited then having their throat slit at a fraction of their life expectancy is ‘a sweet gig’ or that ‘what we buy doesn’t matter since supply and demand isn’t real.’ This is the diffusion of our responsibility and has been the favoured public response to just about any atrocity anyone has ever been complicit in. I ask all of you to rise above which ‘side’ you think you’re on, and to look through transparently self-interesed takes that tell you exactly what you want to hear. Be suspicious of anyone letting you off the hook for your own responsibility to make moral choices and passing the blame off to someone else, somewhere else, something you can do nothing about. Look at what animal agriculture is, look at what you pay for and what you support by spreading rhetoric like this. Look what this industry does to animals, to human workers and communities, to eco-systems, to our environment, and most of all, look what it does to you and your ability to live your own values. Most of us absolutely do have the ability to make different, more humane choices, if we just take the time to examine our biases and really consider why we find reassuring but uncritical rhetoric like this quite so appealing.

[acti-veg]

I saw an anti vegan post going around that admitted that there are "some valid reasons" why a person might not eat meat (health, religion etc) that pointedly did not include simply caring about animals. I know I should be used to seeing that kind of thing by now but it's astounding how thoroughly some people have lost the plot that simply not wanting to eat a sentient living creature for that creature's own sake is seen as inherently suspect and problematic

Elaborating on my previous ask; I think what really got me about that was that I'm used to seeing the "not eating meat for moral reasons is bad when you push it on others" argument, but going "not eating meat for non religious moral reasons is, in and of itself Bad" is an entirely different level insane, like I swear to god some people have convinced themselves that simply eating meat is actually a righteous moral stance it's crazy

I've encountered this kind of statement quite a few times, and I think it comes from the fact that people find it far less challenging to their own values when someone is eating plant-based for reasons other than ethics. If they're religious you can just say "Oh ok, well I'm not a Jain so I'm not vegan." If its health you can say "I don't need to do that to be healthy so no worries."

When someone is vegan for moral reasons though, the act of doing that puts out a lot of uncomfortable messages, such as:

It is wrong to exploit, kill and eat animals

It is possible to be happy and healthy without eating animals

I am demonstrating my ethics/love of animals by going vegan

If you are not vegan, any one of those may sit uncomfortably, because as soon as someone else is vegan, suddenly you're not just two people who both eat food. Now there is a vegan and a meat eater, it makes it clear that what you're doing is a choice that you have made.

It is also just very difficult to argue against the moral claims of veganism, which is why nobody ever bothers to do it. That's why they dance around the houses with these posts about pleather, or quinoa, or whatever else they're coming up with these days. The central claim, that we should not exploit or harm animals when we don't need, is very hard to attack without turning into essentially a moral nihilist.

We make people feel uncomfortable and threatened simply by existing, because by choosing a moral position we emphasise the fact that they have not done so. That's why people who don't eat animals for literally any other reason get a free pass, but vegans are blamed for just about every problem that is even remotely connected to veganism.

[oediex]

It's because ethical normativity inherently makes a claim towards universality. Ethics isn't something you believe just applies to yourself, like religion (though obviously those who proselyte do think their religion should be universal) or claims around health. Those can easily be ignored, as Acti says.

Ethics says something is right or wrong for everyone in the same circumstances. Hence why it's seen as threatening. Those who are not vegan can recognise that claim towards universality and realise that they fall short. Instead of reflecting on that, something that is basically the call of their own conscience, they push against those who exemplify those ethical values instead.

Of course you can still debate ethics, but the case for veganism is pretty convincing.

[wooblecomics-deactivated2026052]

It's so frustrating when people say veganism is a white thing. As if we're not the least likely group per capita to go vegan. As if Christianity isn't the most speciesist religion. As if Descartes didn't dissect live dogs, then convince Europe that animals were automatons for the next 300+ years. As if western biologists didn't spend 200 years bending over backwards to avoid saying the obvious truth that animals have feelings, and are only now beginning to acknowledge. As if white Americans didn't normalize eating meat with every single meal and then invent factory farming to keep up. As if 3/4 of all the ads I see aren't for American fast food companies selling torture meat.

If veganism is "incompatible" with any culture, it's European culture. White, 20th century philosophers, as much as I like some of them, did not invent animal rights. Hundreds of other cultures came up animal personhood thousands of years prior. I wish we were at where the median Jain was at in 500 BC.

Yes, as a vegan I think the majority of cultures are speciesist and need to change. All cultures have bigotry. If you think there are cultures free from that, you haven't ever talked to minorities within that culture. But stop pretending white vegans are pulling every other culture towards veganism against their will. We are playing catch up. The most push back I get when doing outreach is from white people. The passersby who shout at me are white men, without fail. The only person to ever be physically violent towards me during a protest was a white man. Meanwhile, I've literally never had a hostile conversation about veganism with a POC. I'm not screaming at Indigenous people to go vegan or else. There are Indigenous vegans to have thoughtful conversations about animal rights in their own cultures. I'm too focused on all the white people screaming at me for suggesting they boycott american companies performing animal atrocities.

[closetchaosstuff]

Also something to add, most cultures *are* speciesist. Denying this and then claiming that moral accountability from that culture is "racist" is also racist. Any culture with significant access to knowledge the way we have today is beholden to change and progress. To deny this is also racist.

I've said in one of my previous posts, my culture used to normalise widow burning, like literally burning a woman on the funeral pyre of their husband. This is just one example, but I say this because that is a practice that has been outlawed now and removed from practice because it is barbaric. Because guess what? All cultures grow with time and the spread of knowledge. We now see how our food and lifestyle choices have affected creatures that have just as much right on this planet as we do, does it not make sense that our food practices are considered barbaric and should change too?

A lot of times I really do feel like the way people claim veganism as a white people thing also comes from a place of superiority, because to them it makes no sense that a non white culture would make this leap. In a way their respect for cultures foreign to them is only when they stay stagnant.

[kepttopythagorus]

from the cry of nature; or, an appeal to mercy and to justice on behalf of the persecuted animals by john oswald (1791)

[nemfrog]

Bulls and frogs. A Hundred fables of La Fontaine. 1900. Percy J. Billinghurst, illustrator.

Internet Archive

[animalrightsarchive]

Back cover of Front Line News, Issue 4, Spring 1988. Toronto, Canada.

[animalrightsarchive]

Clippings from Underground 01, Aug 1994

[animalrightsarchive]

Page from Underground 01, Aug 1994.

[kepttopythagorus]

from percy bysshe shelley's notes on his queen mab (1813)

[rivjudephoenix]

“He was a strict vegetarian, a vegan- but it wasn’t about health, it was about not killing… that’s a real important point” — Sky Phoenix

[kepttopythagorus]

from the cry of nature; or, an appeal to mercy and to justice on behalf of the persecuted animals by john oswald (1791)

[monkey-shines-shenanigans-deact]

Veganism is so crazy to me, especially the part of trying to persuade or guilt the entire population into veganism.

Firstly very cult like

Secondly, and arguably most important, you genuinely think that by eating ONLY plants, plants that have to be mass produced for the (and probably more plants that the earth actually can produce at one time), will save the planet?

Or is this strictly about saving animals only?? Animals that if unchecked would over produce potentially? Humans are part of the ecosystem btw. In case anyone missed that.

The problem with eating meat and animal products IS the same problem with eating ONLY plants and plant products: overconsumption and lack of moderation.

[acti-veg]

Just out of interest, do you think that every group of activists who have ever tried to convince the world that a disenfranchised group should have rights were ‘cult-like?’ Or is that only the case when you disagree with the cause in question?

Regardless, it takes far more plants to provide for your average meat-eater than it does to feed someone on a plant-based diet. That is because animals take in far more calories in crops than they will ever give out in meat, and on top of that they need land to be grazed or housed on and water to drink. This makes sense if you stop to think about it; it is fairly intuitively more efficient to grow crops to feed humans directly than to grow crops to feed farmed animals, who will then be fed to us.

To get into a bit more of the detail on that last point, livestock use about 40% of global arable land, and 80% of total agricultural land is devoted to animal agriculture, including feeder crops and grazing land. 1 kg of meat requires 2.8 kg of human-edible feed for ruminants and 3.2kg for monogastrics. If the world adopted a plant-based diet, we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 billion to an estimated 1 billion hectares. That is a conservative figure, but even according to the lowest estimates, there is no scenario in which a global transition away from animal agriculture increases land or water use. In fact, plant-based replacements can produce 20-fold and twofold more nutritionally similar food per cropland than beef and eggs, the most and least resource-intensive animal categories, respectively.

As for this overpopulation thing, out of all the anti-vegan arguments out there, this is the one I struggle to understand how anyone arrives at without dismissing with a chuckle as soon as they’ve thought about it for a couple of minutes and realise how obviously silly it is. In what possible sci-fi fantasy would everyone go vegan overnight and we would just release 100 billion animals to roam free? Think about that for a minute - it is an absurd idea at its foundation.

What we would almost definitely see is a slow transition away from animal agriculture, therefore fewer animals would be bred over time. As demand decreases, so would supply. Those farmed animal species who remain could live out their lives in sanctuaries, as the fortunate few already do. Nobody is stupid enough to just continue to breed animals to produce products that nobody wants to eat anymore, or just release billions of selectively bred, domesticated animals who have no place in our natural ecosystem.

"Moderation" is certainly better than overconsumption, but purchasing and consuming a product that is exploitive, environmentally catastrophic and requires excessive land and resources to produce is still not a good thing. We can’t "moderate" our way out of trillions of animals being killed every year to feed our insatiable appetite for their flesh, milk and eggs. Animal products are just demonstrably worse than a wisely chosen planet-based product by almost any meaningful metric that you want to use for comparison.

By all means, reduce your consumption if that is all you are in a position to do; that is a hugely positive step. Even if you don’t care about animal suffering or the workers traumatised to inflict it on them, we simply cannot sustain current levels of demand for animal products while keeping a liveable planet. The climate science is undeniable on this point. That is why everyone who is able to should be completely boycotting this incredibly harmful industry, not just funding the destruction of our planet and the slaughter of trillions of sentient beings "in moderation."