Vegetarians who say this shit say they enjoy getting encouragement from vegans, but they actually just want a pat on the back and brownie points from susceptible vegans, not actual encouragement.
This is the greatest encouragement I can give them, but because it's in an "aggressive" tone, they love to say "You're the reason why people shy away from going vegan!"
Sorry to tell ya, but if some harsh words promoting the very ideological foundation of veganism are enough to discourage you, then you clearly don't have a plan to "transition" to veganism to begin with.
Imagine telling someone "You really need to stop being fucking racist." and then they say "Ugh! I'm working on it! You being so pushy makes me want to be more racist actually!"
The cheese rots into their brains apparently.
On some level, it is "legitimate," but the optics that many baby-steps vegetarians have around it are insane. They express animosity towards convicted vegans encouraging them to examine their animal product consumption more seriously, and they also seem hypocritical because they claim to espouse awareness that consuming animal products is wrong, but make lousy excuses like "Cheese is just so damn good!" in the process of justifying it.
I've literally had a vegetarian telling me they're taking a gradual approach to veganism because they believe their life would be "miserable" without ice cream and shredded cheese on their tacos. Ultimately, I've learned that giving too much good faith to the baby steppers is usually a bad move.
Phoenix
I try to research destinations and understand what my grocery and restaurant options will be, and idk what part of phoenix you travel to, but my vegan former roommate moved there after college and when I visited there was no shortage of vegan restaurants, an incredible number of restaurants that had multiple vegan options on the menu and the grocery stores seemed more than adequate. Bulk prices at Sprouts (I think?) for lentils were on par with if not slightly cheaper than where I shop in REDACTED. I'm almost entirely unable to imagine having to consume dairy on a trip there without some truly insane contrivances that involve dairy industry goons threatening my or my partner's life if I resist.
Not gonna knock someone for not getting rid of old belongings, but why eat dairy? The old leather is just old leather now, but why continue to (even very infrequently) consume milk knowing all the awfulness that goes into its production?
My secret to eating vegan in places without vegan restaurants
But yeah to be fair I don't have a lot of experience eating out at restaurants in towns with a sub-5k population. I imagine if you find yourself travelling to bumfuck, nowhere and for whatever reason find it impossible to prepare your own food, it would be hard to find cooked meals that are vegan. When I travel I do need to plan a little more, and sometimes pack food if I'm going through somewhere particularly desolate. Not always having a restaurant I can go to is one of those many little inconveniences all vegans have to deal with every now and then.
ive never encountered a vegan restaurant or seen a vegan restaurant or heard of a vegan restaurant anywhere i could travel to. ive been to shitty tiny towns in the middle of nowhere. i go to the grocery store and buy some fruits and peanut butter or, if ive got the tools to cook, some beans as you said
I'm not saying there's absolutely no place in America I could find myself transported to and feel obligated to eat an animal product, but that place certainly isn't anywhere that there are restaurants serving animal products
"I will allow the consumption of an animal product."
So not vegan. I understand you said "very infrequent", but asserting that there's some caveat in your life where you can be like "Well, dairy is fine in this particular instance." isn't vegan no matter how you slice it.
You gotta admit that "I'm a vegan except when I eat animal products" is a bit of a head-turner.
I have a moral opinion considered extreme by the vast majority of society, so I put it aside when it gets inconvenient.
Eating plants while traveling isn't some new enigma that vegans have yet to figure out.
There's something concerning about the notion that you'll have to cut your family out of your life just because you want to bring your own vegan food on a trip. Is everything fine with you? Are you not convicted enough to just tell them that you'd rather eat your own vegan food? Will they be really rude or harsh to you if you say you want to do that? I'm genuinely curious about all of these dynamics and why that has to be the straw that gets you to say "I'll allow animal products on this rare occasion". Is there genuinely no work around for that whatsoever?
Like 90% of carnists are pathetic babies who need the gentlest of kiddie gloves to not get scared away from doing the right thing, and will take any excuse to immediately slam the door on you and keep their murder treats.
If someone is trying to "transition" to veganism though: they already know right from wrong and are making excuses for why they are doing something they know is wrong. They can probably be bullied into being better. Worked on me - sickos in this very comm repeatedly pointed out how my actions did not match my principles.
Like 90% of carnists are pathetic babies who need the gentlest of kiddie gloves to not get scared away from doing the right thing, and will take any excuse to immediately slam the door on you and keep their murder treats
You're right, but why are you handing them those excuses when you know yourself that it perpetuates more death? Even hardcore carnists can be hugely softened by just not making a big deal out of things. Even people that haven't gone a day in their adult lives without eating flesh and adamantly insist that they don't consider something a real meal unless a creature died or was abused for it can be taught to go a few days a week without killing something if you give them the kiddie gloves. You don't want the kiddie gloves? Fine. Your self righteous zealotry results in the perpetuation of more death.
We live in a fucking insane world. You should be mature enough to understand that it's worth tempering your disgust.
Carnists are actual fucking babies, and here comes the aeroplane. No, it doesn't have meat in it. Why? I think it would ruin it. Yeah, you can have the recipe.
Great, now your meal rotation is slightly less violent, but I'll keep that to myself for now.
I'll take less violence in the world over juvenile self indulgent anger that convinces carnist babies that blood and dairy is what normal personable people eat.
I am the friendly vegan in most of my interactions, because I live in a world full of carnists and don't want to be a social pariah. I try very hard to be patient and not burn bridges where I could be building them. I also learned to cook some pretty dope dinners for my friends that you wouldn't even think to add animals to. 90% of carnists needing kiddie gloves means that if you wanna be an activist, you gotta get used to wearing kiddie gloves. Sorry if I was unclear.
With all that said, is it not okay to vent frustration that this is the way I have to approach the mass slaughter of innocent beings? In a space for fellow vegans?
Again, you're right, I'm just keenly aware that we're being watched here by people who may be considering whether or not something should have died for the last flavorless piece of processed meat they ate. I would like to assure them that in my opinion, any time you choose to eat or use less animal products for ethical reasons, you're doing the right thing, even if you can't manage it for whatever reason all of the time, or even most of the time.
I think those curious eyes seem to have now realized this is a space for vegans.
Even people that haven't gone a day in their adult lives without eating flesh and adamantly insist that they don't consider something a real meal unless a creature died or was abused for it can be taught to go a few days a week without killing something if you give them the kiddie gloves.
This has not been my experience. I'm glad it's been yours, that's neat, but the two committed carnists in my life are absolutely impossible to reason with and if they weren't my (divorced) parents' new partners, I would have long since cut them out of my life. I have never seen either of them eat a vegan meal. Even when there's plenty of delicious vegan food around (and they themselves have made some of it!), the two of them go out of their way to add meat or eggs to whatever normal thing the rest of us are eating. They're both "supportive" of my parents eating vegan, but they themselves absolutely refuse to do so, and all the kindness in the world won't make them budge.
I always just ask these baby step people if they take that approach to any other moral issue. "As long as you commit to lighting 50% fewer homeless people on fire this week, you're doing great sweetie! As long as you're trying your very best to kick puppies only when you really feel like you need to let off some steam, we support you!"
Rule 2 "No omni apologists or carnists" went out the window for this comment section.
In typical !vegan@hexbear.net fashion I guess
Sometimes it feels like a containment comm from the old vegan struggle session days.
I can't take this shit anymore, and I'm honestly over it. The daily harsh exploitation and slaughter of innocent animals en masse is very disgusting to me, and I take solace in being able to have a community where I can feel like that shit isn't the norm. I want to be in a community where I don't have to feel like I'm a weirdo for finding that fucked up, even to the harsh degree that I find it fucked up. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of being sensitive about this issue and just not being able to escape the issue's existence or its promotion anywhere. I can never be comfortable as a vegan anywhere it seems.
Yeah, carnist libs on this site have never respected vegans. I really wish they'd start site-banning the most egregious anti-vegan trolls (this shit is literally against the hexbear code of conduct, "Animal Liberation is essential to any leftist movement, including platforms like Hexbear. Volunteers, comments, and posts, should not be anti-vegan") but last I heard most of the site mods/admins are murder enjoyers too so what can ya do
unless we got some giant purge most of the mods/admins were vegans. that was at least true when code of conduct was written.
a lot seems to have changed since the whole lemmy incorporation thing though, and if it is that different i'm wondering where the fuck everyone went.
Question for all the vegans in here (and you are all vegan, right? It's in the comm rules): How long did it take for you to transition to veganism?
I had a long period of cognitive dissonance where I ate meat while being convinced it was wrong and against my leftist principles, and then went vegan overnight once I fully internalized this and decided to take action. No vegetarian phase, no "let's try cutting out one thing at a time". One day I was a carnist, and then a sad carnist, and then a vegan.
From carnist to plant-based diet? It was instant.
From plant-based diet to wholehearted ethical vegan? It took some months worth of examination into various films, videos, books, resources, and interactions.
I started eating a plant-based diet for health reasons. However, I knew ethical veganism was an important movement when I first started abstaining from animal products, but I didn't start to truly get how vital it is until a few months into it.
Once I realized how crucial animal liberation is, I realized there was no real reason for me to put "my health" at the forefront of why I abstain from animal products. I believe that tons of carnists reject the premise of ethical veganism because they find it too inconvenient, not necessarily that they believe it to be wrong. It's just that many won't admit that because it would make them self-admitted hypocrites.
Having awareness of this, I said, "I'm already not eating animal products, so it's not like I have to worry about that 'convenience' excuse that carnists use to embrace ethical veganism," so I went ahead and embraced ethical veganism, especially once the adequate knowledge was there, and that's what baby steppers don't have: adequate knowledge. If they did, they'd just go vegan. Signaling that urgency to them isn't an evil, degrading move. It's an effort to bring them to awareness.
Simply put, I never had a "I know I should go vegan, but I'm just gonna continue gradually lessening animal products out of my life to slowly transition" moment in the sense that typical baby steppers have.
Sometimes I'll have very silly thoughts where I'm like "Animal liberation? No no no, I'm not an extremist, I just think we should stop eating them, or farming them, or killing them for their body parts, or exploiting them for labor, and hey so I feel really weird about zoos, and..."
adequate knowledge. If they did, they'd just go vegan
I think my experience can be distilled down to essentially this, though my integration of the knowledge was rather unnecessarily prolonged because I was lying to myself in order to avoid feeling emotions.
Once I had enough information and importantly couldn't lie to myself to ignore it anymore, being vegan became such an easy and freeing thing to do. In the face of the emotional turmoil I was experiencing working through understanding the immorality of my interactions with the animal torture industries, it was an incredible relief to know I was finally doing the right thing.
Before I became a vegan, but after I stopped eating meat to quell my conscience's incessant diatribing on climate change, I was a cheesebreather for about 2 years, during which I had an inkling that veganism was the right thing to do, but I was still eating and buying cheese and ice cream because I am a lazy piece of shit sometimes (I'm working on it). I am tremendously grateful for a dear friend who taught me about what really goes on in the dairy industry and was willing to bully me into accepting the discomfort that came with critically examining the hypocrisy of my practice
I had two cognitive-dissonance-riddled and frankly shameful emotionally fraught shopping trips because I knew buying cheese was wrong but was struggling to overcome casomorphin cravings and pressure from my family. The intensity of the cognitive dissonance had been ramping up for weeks by the second of these. Something from that vegan friend's words on animal liberation mechanically clicked into place in my mind. It was a physically electrifying epiphany before I very suddenly became dizzy and a bit nauseous that I was even considering buying cheese. I realized that my conviction that people have a right to (among other things) food, clean water, and the full product of their labor is in actuality a consequence of a budding belief in the correctness of a much more general form of that principal that applies to any aware being.
Suddenly, it became relatively easy to resist social pressures to consume animal products or use animal slavery except where absolutely unavoidable (the family car probably has tires that aren't vegan and idk where I could get eggless flu/covid/other vaccines). Suddenly, I could simply let go of treats I used to enjoy because now any thoughts about those treats are accompanied by a burning resentment for the animal torture and exploitation industries, those that profit from them, and our meat-brained sociopathic society that cheers them on and deludes so many into disconnecting from their own scruples. For a few weeks I still got casomorphin cravings, but they were paired with such a distinct sense of anger and disgust that resisting was a cinch.
I can't believe I feel compelled to be so explicit here, but when I travel, I do a shitload of bean-based meal prep so I can quickly make my choice of sandwiches with veggies + bean protein (lentil loaf, pea-fortified hummus, or just spiced garbanzos) out of the cooler while carnist relatives make blood and flesh sandwiches. I bring enough nut bars and nut butters that even if I find myself famished and too tired to cook or prep a sandwich in a small town with no vegan options and no real grocery stores, I can get a quick 600+ calories and feel extremely full with minimal effort.
Depending on the length of the trip and my expectations for groceries and restaurants in the destination, and also as a backup in case I run out, or we have a cooler failure, or some other extenuating circumstance occurs, I also pack a good number of dehydrated vegan meals that can be rehydrated with hot water. These aren't hard to prep at home but they require a food dehydrator. I don't know if there's a way to buy packaged dehydrated meals in the style of mountain house without supporting PBC.
I was pescatarian from buying my own food till like 25. Then I was reading about fish and was like "I'm fucking stupid" and changed overnight. Is that a long transition or overnight? who knows.
I was vegetarian for 2 years before becoming a vegan. It was always about the ethics from the very beginning with the health aspect just being a nice coincidental bonus.
For me at the time (1998-2000) and virtually for everyone around me, vegetarian was the extreme position already. Dairy was hardly recognized as being an issue even by people receptive and somewhat concerned about animal cruelty and the meat industry. I think a majority of people at least where I was, didn't know what veganism even meant and when explained, were likely to give the response "oh, you mean the McDougall diet?" if anything. That said, it was still 100% an excuse for me not to go "all the way" since I knew what veganism was and how inseparable dairy etc was from the same industry I was trying not to participate in via vegetarianism.
I was increasingly aware that every single argument I would use with family and friends to explain why we should all stop eating meat applied in exactly the same way to why I shouldn't keep eating dairy or accepting other kinds of animal products. There was for sure some cognitive dissonance there (and by that I mean actual discomfort from knowing I was being hypocritical) just like there was back when I still ate meat as a self-professed "animal lover." As a vegetarian, I told myself "I'll go vegan some day, but for now I just have to get used to being a vegetarian. I mean hey, I'm already doing way more than almost everyone else around here."
What did the trick was learning more about and getting more involved in animal rights activism which of course included seeing what truly happened on factory farms regardless of whether the animals in question ended up specifically as meat or not. 'Dominion' obviously wasn't around at that time but 'Meet Your Meat' was. My girlfriend at the time, who I actually met on a vegetarian/vegan IRC channel, and I decided to both go vegan as a new years resolution a few months in advance. So at least in my case, it did help to plan ahead and commit to doing what I knew was the right thing, but at a set point in the near future. It also helped that it was a joint effort with a partner.
In retrospect though, it all would have been so much better, more honest, and really even much easier if I had just gone vegan to begin with and not done all that pointless, ultimately unnecessary hemming and hawing. The "hurdle" was so much smaller than I had made it out to be in my head, which I should have known since I had already given up meat. But because it was a process for me, I am generally forgiving and patient with vegetarians and others who "plan on" or are "trying to" become vegan, so long as it is genuine and that it really is their goal. I'll still tell them they need to recognize that they're just making excuses for themselves though.
How long did it take for you to transition to veganism?
0 seconds. There was no transition period. I realized that it was unacceptable to exploit animals and I put that understanding into practice in my life. It's literally that simple.
2 months. we refused to throw out non-vegan items in the fridge. it was like a switch slowly flipped and we (partner and I) realized we needed to stop immediately.
I sort of tried doing that vegetarian transition thing for like a week once I decided I wanted to go vegan, 5 or 6 years ago at this point. What convinced me that was a stupid idea was actually some omni I knew that was kind of hostile to veganism telling me "you're either vegan or your not".
And it really is that simple.
Stopping eating animals is a lot easier than doing adventurism, with little to no negative consequence for the person doing it.
TBH, I don't understand how you, as a vegan, can simp for baby steppers so hard that you'll say not engaging in risky animal liberation actions makes me equivalent to them
If they have a concrete plan like "I've bought these cook books, I'm doing N meals this week increasing by 1 each week till X when it's over, all convience food or eating out I do is plant based" I'm like, alright but here's some lazy slow cooker stews if you feel pressed for time to learn how to cook?
If they're just "reducing" and not even tracking what they're eating I'm like K, well let me know when it's done but till then you're still just a carnist in my eyes.
Surprisingly nobody I've spoken to has ever had a concrete plan except my little sis after years of vague concern and excuses.
The dogs I care for transitioned faster than any "transitioners" and they had way more gut biome changes and palate changes than a human.
The practical stance is that you need to educate non-vegans with a sense of urgency to be adequately encouraging. You need to emphasize the importance of cutting out animal products. The notion of "transitioning to veganism" is flawed, yes, you get it. If you can acknowledge that, you can acknowledge that if you're interacting with a cheesebreather who says they are "transitioning", they view the matter of animal liberation on an entirely different premise than you do.
Call it "hostility" and what will "push people away", but these cheesbreathers need to hear views that encourage them to be immediate when it comes to going vegan. Hell, even if you phrase it in a "non-hostile" manner, these people don't like anything but a pat on the back.
It doesn't matter if you say "I think it's great that you're trying to transition, but I'd encourage you to do it as immediately as you can. Dairy and eggs are still very harmful, and you're not making much of a practical difference by merely cutting out meat." or if you say "Vegetarianism is bullshit. Cut out the byproducts right fucking NOW!". The truth of the matter is that they don't want any pushback whatsoever, no matter how "nice" you may be about it.
