imprison humans, forcibly inseminate them, keep them in tight closed quarters and fatten them up until they can’t walk, steal their children, painfully milk them against their will, and/or kill them for meat.
———
Taking “no animal suffering” as literal and absolute paints a false equivalence between factory farming and the conditions of migrant farm workers, for example. Those bad human conditions should also be addressed, not used in a gotcha to say that veganism is wrong, aktually
I usually see leftists vegans go "vegansim also includes wellbeing of humans, so if you're racist/homophobic/whatever you're not vegan" in dual attempt to paint vegansim as inherently anti-whatever-bigotry ideology and to gatekeep bigots from the movement. Hell, it might be smart messaging, but I feel like the whole thing falls apart under sufficiently scrutiny...
Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.
If you include humans the philosophy part turns in to just utilitarian philosophy. There's nothing necessarily wrong with utilitarianism, but diluting vegansim, a philosophy opposing oppression of nonhuman animals by human animals into "being against bad things" seems a bit weird to me. Like if someone insisted that anti-racism is about opposing harm done to a person of any race. Sure, it's bad when white people harm marginalized white people, but it's not what anti-racism is about...
I dunno, I have a bunch of those little reasons why it doesn't sit with me and seems shortsighted.
[CW animal cruelty] It is also wrong to
imprison humans, forcibly inseminate them, keep them in tight closed quarters and fatten them up until they can’t walk, steal their children, painfully milk them against their will, and/or kill them for meat.
———
Taking “no animal suffering” as literal and absolute paints a false equivalence between factory farming and the conditions of migrant farm workers, for example. Those bad human conditions should also be addressed, not used in a gotcha to say that veganism is wrong, aktually
I usually see leftists vegans go "vegansim also includes wellbeing of humans, so if you're racist/homophobic/whatever you're not vegan" in dual attempt to paint vegansim as inherently anti-whatever-bigotry ideology and to gatekeep bigots from the movement. Hell, it might be smart messaging, but I feel like the whole thing falls apart under sufficiently scrutiny...
How so?
If you include humans the philosophy part turns in to just utilitarian philosophy. There's nothing necessarily wrong with utilitarianism, but diluting vegansim, a philosophy opposing oppression of nonhuman animals by human animals into "being against bad things" seems a bit weird to me. Like if someone insisted that anti-racism is about opposing harm done to a person of any race. Sure, it's bad when white people harm marginalized white people, but it's not what anti-racism is about...
I dunno, I have a bunch of those little reasons why it doesn't sit with me and seems shortsighted.
I don't use the lib modern vegan society's definition, I use the original definition.
Veganism is the principle of the emancipation of non-human animals from human animals; animal liberation