#white vegans

[superhoeva]

white vegans kill me man. if you’re gonna talk about the horrors of the meat industry—which is completely valid—you also gotta talk about the very present exploitation throughout the process of fruits, vegetables, and other vegan options ending up in our stores/shopping carts/on our plates. (for example: the guatemalan genocide can be directly traced back to the ufco wanting to keep land from indigenous guatemalans so that the company could continue to grow fucking bananas.) we also have to talk about the inaccessibility of vegan options when it comes to poor communities, food desserts, incarcerated people, people with severe allergies (hey there!!!), dietary needs/restrictions and more. we also have to talk about the ancient, passed down practices of indigenous populations. we also have to talk about how many are quick to post videos of animals facing violence (which is, again, valid) but have stayed quiet/mute on the ongoing genocides around the world… ones that have also affected animals they care about.

just because there’s a “cruelty-free” label doesn’t mean there wasn’t suffering involved.

[lierdumoa]

I found this podcast while I was looking up information about Etsy's decision to ban all fur sales on their platform by the end of this year:

The Outdoor Life Podcast - The Animal-Rights Movement Is Getting Weirder

Listen to The Outdoor Life Podcast - The Animal-Rights Movement Is Getting Weirder by Outdoor Life on Podcast Addict. There is some really s

Fascinating deconstruction of the modern radical vegan animal rights movement.

The guest speaker does an excellent job of explaining how a lot of the more extremist views on animal "rights" are fundamentally anti-nature. The political leaders of the movement are proselytizing about a sci-fi future (in a similarly fanatical tone to the way radical ai evangelists talk about Roko's Basilisk) in which animal predation will not exist, where even predators like wolves and bears and sharks will have new rules imposed upon their behavior and/or genetics by human technology to prevent them from causing or experiencing suffering.

The speaker also does a beautiful job of explaining just how much the modern urban lifestyle of the average radical vegan animal rights activist is dependent on the animal control practices they want to ban. It is objectively impossible for a big city to function without pest and vermin control. They also ignore the logistical practicality that if fur trappers can no longer trap the animals on their land to survive, they will have no choice but to convert their land into farmland to survive, thereby destroying the ecosystem of the animals whose fur they used to trap.

TL&DR if these people actually cared in any practical sense about ecology and sustainability they'd be trying to pass laws targeting Big Oil/Plastic, not trying to pass laws targeting destitute rural trappers. They'd be pressuring online marketplaces to ban dropshippers, not vintage fur sellers.

I do think it would be sort of morbidly funny if this ban started a new counterfeiting boom.

Imagine if charlatans started trying to pass off real fur as fake fur, instead of the reverse.

[creature-wizard]

I really wish white vegans could just admit to being milquetoast liberals that identify with ecofascist ideology.

Yeah, that's a pretty big problem among a lot of white vegans. Like you aren't wrong for being vegan but you're dragging a lot of nasty cultural baggage into it.

[lacewise]

The reason people have strong feelings about pleather was because there was a huge stretch of the internet where random vegans would harass you (and I mean send graphic death threats) for having the audacity to post a picture of secondhand leather shoes or even work boots. Even now, if you check fiber arts posts or blogs, they often won’t be very clear over whether they’re using real leather or not. (The vegan reasoning was plastic leather meant you could save a cow.)

Once it became common knowledge that pleather is plastic (which means it sheds microplastics every time it gets wet) vegans started a misinformation campaign I still see today: “leather” cows and “meat” cows are separate cows (they cannot tell you where these mysterious “leather” cows live if asked). Therefore, buying leather wasn’t actually sustainable and using up the whole cow at all. For the record: they are not separate cows. Buying leather is using up the whole cow, as it always has been, and because of this misinformation the leather from “meat” cows is being thrown into the landfills, since no one is buying it.

Plus, let’s not forget the recent vegan harassment campaign of museum goers and chicken restaurant enjoyers…

Anyway, not a huge fan of Gen Z trying to rewrite history about ecoterrorists and blame companies for the rise of plastic clothing. There was a gassroots misinformation campaign designed to shame anyone wearing anything animal-derived (including wool). In places with any non-tropical weather at all, the only replacement for animal-derived clothing is… plastic.

(Personal note: in the last three years, when I informed someone of this, I had a vegan tell me that everyone in cold climates should drop dead. Unironically. And then people in the same comment thread were telling me vegans never harass non-vegans.)

The current vegan misinformation campaign is (and I’m sure once this becomes common knowledge they’ll blame it on “bad marketing” and not themselves again) there is ANY form of vegan leather that isn’t plastic. Every vegan leather (cactus, pineapple, other fruit, mushroom) is more than 50% plastic because otherwise the material would collapse in on itself. So its plants encased in polyester, basically.

Also, anyone supporting vegan reputation laundering: you should really check what they say about Indigenous hunting practices, especially Inuit seal hunts and coats. They are not worth defending, because every accusation against them is true.

[vegandude74]

White Veganism and Its Impact on Indigenous Communities — The Indigenous Foundation

Impact of White Veganism on Indigenous Farmers Around the world, Indigenous farms and farmers are now being  exploited  for foods

Around the world, Indigenous farms and farmers are now being exploited for foods that they originally produced and consumed in moderation, in accordance with their sacred connections with their lands. Plants including chickpeas, quinoa, avocado, cashews, and coconuts are suddenly being grown at massive amounts to fulfill the demands of corporate supermarkets offering items like hummus, cashew butter, and coconut milk to modern-day northern hemisphere consumers. This has a negative impact on the pricing of these plants, as well as the wellbeing of the farmers and residents of the area, as well as the land itself.

[acti-veg]

Adding the word ‘white’ before the same old no-nuance takes on veganism that we’ve been dealing with for a decade is not as slick as you guys seem to think it is. Doing this doesn’t automatically silence any challenge to your lazy criticisms, nor is it successful in helping you exclude vegans of colour, poor or disabled vegans from the conversation.

It seems pretty clear that this is less about criticising a specific, narrow subset of problematic vegans than it is about you wanting to be able to say ‘well I’m not talking about you’ everytime someone presents you with an inconvenient counter-argument.

[circumpolarvampire]

White vegans have so much energy and yet they dedicate most of it yelling at Indigenous people for hunting.

[marigoldwitch]

PSA

Hey white vegans, leave indigenous people alone. Stfu and mind your business.

And STOP using black peoples as an excuse to harass indigenous people!!!! Omg!!! Stop doing this shit! It’s weird af that you’d drag black people into a conversation about being vegan when your racism is called out.

Stop doing this weird ass shit!