No, I am not a turncoat. What do you people take me for?
Actually, I just found this wonderful little paper on why it is reasonable for a person concerned about the rights of animals to reject veganism. Yes, they actually argue that it would be better for the animals if all us animal activists just said “Fuck it, I am going to go eat a steak”. Well, at least I think that is what they are saying.
I think that, whenever I am bored, I am going to post rebuttals to the arguments here, since some seem to me to reflect some pretty common misunderstandings about ethical veganism and animal rights generally. Others, however, just seem to reflect misunderstandings about what it is for something to be an argument. These points are kind of funny, but really not worth anyone’s time. For example, read “argument” number two. And to think, this person is writing a book!
Also, this article gives us some fodder for the contributors who don’t know what to contribute. Just pick one of the arguments and knock it down.
But, for what its worth, I don’t think anyone will be able to top Seitan’s comments on the Vegan Freaks board.
“what the fuck are you talking about? if im reading (and understanding) this correct, its very insulting, not to me, but to the animals that are getting their fuckin faces kicked in because people are such weak fuckups, to abstain from something that is totally un-necessary in the first place.
fuck me, are you taking the piss?
somebody please tell me im reading this wrong, please…..”
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I haven’t read the whole article (seriously, it’s like a million pages), but from what I’ve seen from reading the VFF posts, the author doesn’t want us to stop being vegan in the sense of abstaining from animal products, he just want us to stop using the word “vegan”. Maybe I misunderstood, but that’s what I was hearing. (I disagree with him either way, I think the word is important.)
grrr, let’s see if this will finally work.
i think he does an amusing job of setting veganism and animal rights in opposition to each other based on a false characterization of both. it’s noteworthy that by rejecting veganism he doesn’t mean “go and have a burger and milkshake”, but rather “reject speciesism and brutality, get in people’s face about it, but don’t focus on dietary choices as the crucial point.”
personally of course, i think we should promote animal rights in all that they entail and require, including the boycott of products whose existence relies on disregard to animals’ basic interests; the rejection of speciesist customs, norms and attitudes; the promotion of an ethical discourse that includes animals as members of the moral community; and so on.
obviously, the consumer choices of veganism in themselves are not the ideological basis for the vegan animal rights movement (as the writer seems to insist) rather it is the guiding moral principle behind them, which should be stated clearly. but the principle of equal consideration is emptied of meaningful content if we downplay the importance of consistently applying it in our daily lives, and this consistent application requires that we be vegan, whether we like the term or not.
i will leave the rebuttal of particular points for later, but i hope that any informed abolitionist can spot the glaring misunderstanding of what animal rights actually mean in his second point, as well as in this excerpt from the fifth:
“Second and more importantly, refusing to condone animal exploitation in ONLY our diets, leaves plenty of room for acquiescence in our other social behaviors. For example, the statement we make by happily eating where animals lie mutilated and dead all around us is far more problematic, from an animal rights perspective, than consuming dairy or eggs in the privacy of our homes. Few will be convinced that each of the poor individuals lying on a dinner plate is a murder victim, when nominal animal rights advocates blithely laugh and dine while the victims’ tortured bodies are being ripped to pieces. Consuming dairy privately at home, in contrast, has virtually no social effect; indeed, even if others are present, most people do not even connect dairy with the death of an animal. Yet veganism perversely condemns the latter act, and says nothing about the former.”
I think what it comes down to is that the author simply misses the point on alot of issues, and doesn’t recognize what abolitionist animal rights work is trying to accomplish – I’m not vegan because I hope that my abstenance from meat products will save several cows each year. Rather, I hope that by working slowly and steadily, through intellectual discourse as well as with my/our choices of consumption, social norms that currently go unquestioned will, more and more, be met with scrutiny, and eventual change, as they clearly ought to be.