We can't even talk in this community dedicated to vegans without someone coming along and meatsplaining.
We can't even talk in this community dedicated to vegans without someone coming along and meatsplaining.
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Dated a vegan, wonderful person, one of the finest women I've ever known. But all she could converse about was running, veganism, minimalism, veganism and veganism. And occasionally, vegan stuff.
We talked a good deal about the vegan life. I wanted to know more since I'd never known a vegan. My god. NOTHING but a strict diet was good enough.
Cutting down on meat consumption? LOL, what a paltry contribution. Vegetarians? You mean animal exploiters? What about simple organisms with a pinhead for a central nervous system? Oysters and shrimp and bugs and such. "They're still animals." I wanted to raise chickens for eggs. Exploitation! Honeybees? Slaves.
One night over dinner I suggested that solving energy issues was more important in the grand scheme. We could cut or halt global warming, which is surely causing animals a great deal of pain, not to mention extinction. If energy were near free, we could afford to explore options like lab-grown meat. Hard no from her.
She was very patient and kind, but still.
I knew it wouldn't work when she was talking to her daughter one night about this wonderful man she was dating and all the fun stuff we had done that she had never experienced.
"Um, he's not vegan?"
"No, but..."
"Mom, he's not vegan?"
Her daughter was trying to gently point out the red flag. I caught the clue.
Veganism is (mostly) binary for a reason. You either kill and exploit non-human animals for your pleasure (taste, comfort, affordability, i.e. a want) or you don't (exceptions exist, but mostly represent needs and not wants, e.g. conditions, intial acclimatisation etc.)
Veganism and Vegetarianism are not two steps of the same ladder. I'm not an expert on vegetarianism, but AFAIK vegetarianism aims to avoid meat-eating. Veganism aims to minimise suffering from the killing and exploitation of (non-human) animals by abstaining from consuming products directly made from (non-human) animals.
Veganism isn't inherently utilitarian. I don't agree with them, but there are vegans who are climate change (impact) denialists. I don't agree that giving up on veganism (which has huge climate action potential) for some vague 'free energy' is a viable climate action path that doesn't follow RCP8.5. Nevertheless, I consider those either-or, dichotomy debates as delayist discourse or simply put fossil fuel arguments. Food AND Energy need to cut emissions completely.