#emivegan

[emiello]

Killing others is indefensible.

Forcibly impregnating others is inexcusable.

Profiting from unpaid labour is unacceptable.

If this is true, why do we excuse these crimes if they're committed against non-human animals? Why do we pay for someone to slit throats as their day-job? Why do we allow so many to suffer and die for our own personal gain? The animals you eat feel pain and emotion, and deserve as much protection from these crimes as we fight for humans to have. They are all 'someone', and should be free from oppression.

Fight against speciesism, or don't claim to fight oppression at all, because animal liberation is a social justice issue. You do not fight for the rights of everyone unless you fight for them as well. They are the victims and you are the oppressor. They are not yours to own, use, or kill. Stop.

[emiello]

If you're "vegan" and think it's okay to eat eggs from chickens you look after yourself, you are wrong, and you're not vegan.

[emiello]

Hello. I know you said you used to know a vegan who would eat the eggs of her own chickens, but I'm wondering why that would be bad? Since they were her own hens (assuming she didn't mistreat them and the eggs were unfertilized), she knew that they weren't being mistreated or anything, so what's wrong with taking the eggs? I don't think it distresses chickens to take their eggs, only their chicks.

I know this is something people struggle with in regards to veganism, so I'll try to be as helpful as possible.

Vegans don't eat animal products. It doesn't matter if you eat beef from a farm that cuddles their cows for 3 hours a day, gives them their favourite food, and kills them by lethal injection. Doing so automatically disqualifies you from the very simple set of characteristics that all vegans must have. In the same way, no matter where those eggs are from, the fact that you eat them means you are not vegan. It's like calling yourself vegetarian when you eat gelatine, or fish, or chicken. It's simply incorrect.

The egg industry is inherently oppressive and exploitative. Hens lay eggs in an attempt to make a nest and hatch their young. Whether the eggs are fertilised or not, a hen will lay them, and often once she accumulates more than one egg she will become 'broody'. This means she will sit on her eggs almost 24 hours a day, leaving briefly to eat and drink, as she tries to keep her eggs warm. She will not lay any more eggs if she is satisfied with the size of her nest. This behaviour ends when the chicks would normally hatch (21 days), as she realises her eggs were infertile and she has no babies to look after. Still, she will not lay eggs until her chicks would have been old enough to fend for themselves, which is around 5 weeks.

Laying eggs daily or every other day causes great strain on a hen's body. She is not meant to lay eggs every day for her whole life, and doing so greatly depletes her calcium levels especially, but also other nutrients that go into the yolk for her child to feed on. By removing eggs from a hen's nest, you force her to keep laying in order to build up enough eggs to brood on, and this is not good for her.

If you wish to remove eggs (like to prevent them rotting and harming the hens), it is essential that you feed them back to the girls, shell and all. This way they can regain some of the nutrients lost in creating the egg. In my opinion, this is the only way to care for your hens without exploiting them.

Bear in mind I am only speaking about people who have free-living hens in their gardens. I am not talking about free-range, battery, or other industrial egg-production means. The scenario in those cases is completely different.

[emiello]

you seriously make me want to go vegan but i havent a clue where to start :[

That's great! I'll see if I can give you a hand with that!

Food-wise, it's not too hard. Here's what I did, and I've been vegan two years now, so it seems to have worked okay.

Replace cow's milk with soya/almond/coconut/hazelnut/oat/rice/other milk. I use soy because it's cheap and readily available, but almond is my favourite. Tesco has soya milk for 59p a litre, whereas other plant milks can be £1.60 a litre, generally.

Buy a few vegan staples. Rice, red lentils, pasta, assorted varieties of beans, chickpeas, and oatmeal. Buying bulk dried (or tinned) stuff is way cheaper.

If you can afford to buy nutritional yeast, do so. (it's great) Some brands are fortified with b12, so buy this if you can, and if you don't have a source of b12 through fortified foods you should get on that.

It's also a great idea to buy fruits and veg you enjoy and can afford. Green leafy veg is a must, like spinach and kale and cabbage. Other than that, aim for a range of colours.

I would consider seitan, tofu, and processed faux meats and cheeses to be luxuries, and I don't buy them, but if you find good prices there's no reason to avoid them. Sometimes I get nice yoghurts or custard or Linda McCartney sausage rolls and they're amazing.

Find a few recipes you really like that are simple and not very time consuming, and spend a day making them in bulk to last you a week or so. That way you'll always have something to eat and won't be tempted to break vegan for convenience.

Some people throw out or donate non-vegan clothes (wool, fur, leather, silk, etc) to charity, but the main rule is to not buy any more of these items.

Commercial toiletries, cosmetics, and other products, can be tested on animals. PETA has a list of companies that don't test, and this is another good website I use. Alternatively you can DIY your hygiene and cleaning products, which can often be cheaper as well. I've made my own toothpaste, deodorant, and face-masks.

If you have a smartphone, animalfree is a super helpful app that helped me learn and check for less obvious animal ingredients in foods and cosmetics. Barnivore is a website that's also useful if you drink.

I don't think I've forgotten anything, and I really hope this helps. Send me a message if you've any other queries, and good luck!

[emiello]

Your mental and physical health is the most important thing - don't let other people tell you otherwise.

You're a pretty rad person, and there's no reason why you shouldn't do things that make you feel rad when they're only affecting you. Do all the things that make you happy and feel good about yourself, and cut ties with people who try to make you ashamed for those personal choices, because shame isn't good for you and it won't make you happy.

[emiello]

The lack of understanding about demisexuality seems to be a massive problem, and it’s really shitty that people don’t understand what it means as a word. I mean, if youre a part of the queer community especially, surely you would want to learn about it rather than decide from the outset that it’s made up and useless.

I dunno. The queer community can be really bigoted and exclusionary and that shit needs cut out.

[emiello]

As vegans (especially if you are white) we should not be singling out some cultural or religious practices as more cruel/barbaric/pressing, than practices that are normalised in our own community.

In the same vein, we should not give certain cultures or religions special permission to go on being oppressive, when we do not give that same level of freedom to others in our own community.

Don't be a racist, but don't be a hypocrite either. All suffering matters.

[emiello]

Here's the thing

As vegans we have been forever talking about how welfare means nothing in terms of animal rights. A completely painless, stress-free, and instant way to kill someone would still not make it less of an issue than the way we currently kill chickens, cows, pigs, and other 'live stock'. What matters is that someone is being killed, and that is unacceptable.

The reason behind the killing doesn't matter. Their treatment before death doesn't matter. The numbers slaughtered doesn't matter. The specifics of the killer don't matter.

And as vegans, were not here just to fight what we see happening around us. We're not here to educate the people in our immediate vicinity who look, speak, and live, exactly like we do. We're here to liberate non-human animals who have been oppressed and murdered en mass for thousands of years.

So I don't give a fuck how long someone's family has been oppressing non-human animals and for what reason. I don't care more about a religious sacrifice of a non-human animal than I do about industrial large-scale slaughter.

Every death matters and we need to fight for everyone. If you don't fight for them all, then I don't think we hold the same ideology.