Luna Takes on The Vegan(ist)s
Let's be honest, I was going to pop up on one side of this at some point. You might be surprised to learn that Luna the Ranter is actually fairly neutral when it comes to the vegan/non-vegan argument; I don't have any strong opinions on whether or not one should or should not consume animal products. There are fair points on both sides. Back in the day, my mum used to say she'd never met a healthy vegan – but back in the 80s, the kind of nutritious alternatives we have now didn't exist and vegans pretty much had lettuce. On the other hand, animal products provide important sources of vitamins and minerals which we, as omnivorous predators, need to survive and it is somewhat ingrained into our nature. Give a lion a salad, I dare you.
What I do have strong opinions about, however, is the aggressive, we're-right-and-you're-immoral vegan uprising that's been steadily heading over the past year or so. To kick off, let me state outright the problems with this approach:
1. It's aggressive. Aggression is not positive, it is not fair, it is not necessary, and it does not work. It's more likely to force people to agree with you externally and then go somewhere else and do the polar opposite of what you've told them to do. And yes, it's not asking. It's telling. Guilt-tripping, yelling, forcing disturbing images in people's faces – these things are not only going to make people walk away, but also cast a shadow on any positivity in your movement. It is totally counter-productive and in the meantime you just make other people feel like shit.
2. It's obsessive. It nitpicks. It delves into the darkest, dankest corners and generalises its findings. It hunts through lists of ingredients to find a vitamin which may be derived from an animal product's second cousin twice removed. It demonises people who use animal products. Do you like being called an evil, immoral, heartless demon with no humanity on your way to feed homeless orphans because there's eggs on the menu? No. Does it even make sense? No.
3. It is immoral in itself to try to force another person to think the way you do, to believe the same things you do. That is called indoctrination, and that constitutes harm. By forcing your opinions on somebody else, you are harming them. This is part of my own moral code and belief system, so feel free to draw your own conclusions on this point.*
4. It is unrealistic. I am not a vegan. I am not ever going to be a vegan. I had a dream where I got water on my vintage suede trousers and I woke up in cold sweats so the idea of me getting rid of them is ludicrous. There are thousands of people like me who are not and will not be vegan, no matter how many statistics you yell at them. Trying to straight-up convert people who do not want to be converted is a fool's game. More on this later.
*Secondly, I feel I have to make a statement about morality before I continue; when addressing such a topic, it is important to note that we are born with humanity (that is, the ability to love, to care, to nurture etc (with the exclusion of sociopaths)) but morality is not inate. Morality is something we build for ourselves. It doesn't come from some mystical far-off cloud land, and nobody's moral code is exactly the same (if yours matches somebody else's without discrepancy, I'm afraid you've been indoctrinated; refer to point 3 above). It's based on our experiences, opinions, ideas, and formation of the way we individually understand the world. We are not born moral beings. If we were, history and society would look very, very different.
But enough of the support act, let's get the headliner on stage. I'm obviously aware that this does not apply to ALL vegans (the same way it's not ALL men and not ALL white people; that's not the point we're addressing here) and I am specifically addressing the aggressive, obsessive, narrow-minded veganist (can we call it veganist? I like veganist) movement that's been spreading of late. The video which was the final straw in my shall-I-shan't-I internal debate on whether to post something was shared by a good friend of mine who is a vegetarian and animal rights activist, and who agreed with... the meat-eating man. Because she, like myself, does not like to see people aggressively ramming their opinions down somebody else's throat.
In this video, they quote a conversion statistic which cannot be verified. This is one of my bug-bares with these people. Are they calculating based on people who said they would convert on the day? More than likely. Did they conduct 6 to 12 month follow up interviews to find out whether those people actually made those changes? I highly doubt it. Therefore, the statistic is completely null. I see this time and time again with this type of movement. They take the most extreme, raw statistic and blast it out there like it's the word of a deity. Why do I know that this happens? Because I've done it. For my dissertation, I went to WHO and quoted the raw suicide rate instead of the age standardised rate. Why? Because it's higher. Because I want to make people think “oh my god, that's horrible!” (I then went back and corrected the statistic because that’s not ethical practice).
I'm going to rest my case on stats and facts right here and let you mull it over while we have a paragraph break.
Silly, silly veganists (I'm using this term now). Did you really think that screaming “You're a bad person!” in my face as I walk down the street was going to change my mind? No. You've just ruined my day. So what I'm going to do is sit in front of your protest and eat this steak, because I no longer believe that your opinions are valid. You've successfully invalidated your own movement. Applause. Spamming social networks with disturbing pictures of mutilated animals is only going to get you blocked. This approach not only doesn't work, it can be dangerous. You could cause somebody serious mental harm by doing this. I've seen clearly anxious people forced to engage in arguments by these people. I've seen people crying because they're being spammed with traumatic images. This is nothing short of pure aggression. The desire to upset people. Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of people jump on the bandwagon purely because they want to hurt others in this way, and not because they genuinely support the cause. It's extraordinary the lengths people will go to. It's unethical, it's unfair, and it's totally unnecessary.
Let me exemplify with an analogy or two: I used to eat a lot of meat. I'm talking seven days a week, at least twice a day. My family have always been big meaties. Meat in everything. Meat with a side of meat garnished with meat. It was like meat > water. I didn't notice it for a while, but I was getting sick of eating so much meat. It actually made me quite ill. Don't get me wrong, I've always had a very healthy diet, but I started to meat overload. I needed to cut down. Then I went to Bermondsey Market, where I encountered RAW. The woman was super friendly, answering all my questions about how the vegan cakes were made, what's in everything, what kind of extra nutrients I can get from this food. I loved how varied the ingredients were. I bought some food to try, and I loved it. I now eat consequently vegetarian or vegan meals about 4~6 days a week. It's not even a conscious effort; I was shown an alternative, and I liked it, so I ended up cutting down. A lot.
But wait! There's more! SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) is known for it's... um... alternative? societies and events, so naturally we have a vegan soc. They like to do bakesales. I like it when they do bakesales, because my first ever taste of vegan cake was THE BEST lemon drizzle cake I've EVER had. I bought a few things to try, and I loved all of them. Not one of them was a different consistency than regular cake, not one of them tasted a bit weird. This year, I made myself a vegan birthday cake (mostly because we were having a dinner party, and one of my housemates is vegan, but I had wanted to try vegan baking since the bakesale) and when I discovered how easy it was, I switched to vegan baking. I'm not strict with it, but it's there (plus, if I want my housemate to try my cookies........) Why am I telling you this? I want you to notice how it was achieved. There were no placards or disturbing videos of people taking bites out of live cows. There was no demonising, no guilt-tripping, no force-feeding somebody else's moral code. I was simply offered the opportunity to try an alternative, with the hope that it might result in me making changes. Nobody told me that I'm evil for not being a vegan, immoral for my lifestyle choices. They just said “hey, would you like to try this? It's healthy and sustainable” so I said “yeah, let's give that a go”, and when I liked it, viola! It resulted in change. This just in! Being nice to people makes them want to listen to you more than being shitty and aggressive! Oh, that's not just in? What do you mean, that's been around for centuries?!
Moving on...
I want to talk (briefly, because this is getting tl;dr) about the idealism of the veganist (I've coined the term now, it can't be revoked) movement, because it's not realistic. These people want everyone to stop using animal products overnight. Though I detest to do so, I must inform you that that's not going to happen. First of all, we need to remember that being vegan isn't just about diet – a vegan can't wear, wash in, eat or otherwise use ANYTHING which contains substances derived from animals. That means checking your fabrics, toiletries, appliances (because polymer and some other plastics (rather unecessarily, to be completely honest) use animal fat in the manufacturing process) for vegan friendly status before buying. Expecting everyone to suddenly commit to this change is just ludicrous. What we can ask people to do is to cut down. To reduce. To aim for things which are kinder and more sustainable. In mass production, even the “good” things aren't as great as we want them to be. We can encourage people to switch from supermarket to local marketplace buying as the animal products usually come from local, sustainable, well-structured farms which don't operate on a large scale and therefore rear their animals to a much better standard. We can ask for people to use less. To petition and rally for better farming practices. To be willing to pay a little more for better treatment of farm animals.
In year 9 biology, we watched a video from a battery egg farm. I went home so disturbed that I point blank refused to eat anything other than free-range eggs. My mum said they were too expensive. She spent years saying they're too expensive. I still refused to eat eggs from caged hens. I went without eggs. Now that I'm an adult and I control what I buy, I was picking up free-range eggs every time I went home, because I knew my mum would have caged. One day, my brother ate one of my eggs (I was mad). When he noticed that the quality was much, much better than the ones he's used to eating, guess what? He refused to eat caged hen eggs. So then there were two of us. My brother pestered my mum relentlessly, insisting that free-range was much better. She now buys free-range eggs, and we all agree. It's better. My point is, it took me years to get one person to make this change. Some people will change their lifestyle at the drop of a hat. Others won't. Some will never come completely to your side, but telling them they're bad people isn't going to change their mind. I'm not ever going to be vegan. I can state that outright. But I've made dietary changes: all of the meat I buy is locally and sustainably sourced, I often opt for meat-free options purely of my own free will, I only buy free-range animal products and my milk consumption has dropped from 4 pints a week (hella milk) to 2 pints a fortnight (not so much milk). I know that I'm not willing to commit to a fully vegan lifestyle, (I eat A LOT of eggs and I love my purple suede trousers waaaaaay too much) but I have been encouraged to make changes by people who have approachably and enthusiastically offered me alternatives that I've enjoyed.
My problem is not and never has been with the movement. Your lifestyle choices are yours to make. It's not my place to tell people what they should or should not eat. My problem is with the methods, because aggression is NEVER the answer, and calmly offering an alternative always works much better than trying to force people to agree with you – and if it's not my place to tell you what to eat, it's not your place to do so either.
