I. Aren’t Vegans so Mean?
Hard cruelty burns my heart and my mind
My eyes are able to see only fire and blood
On Mother Gaia’s creatures
In front of my anger
The tears of my enemies are now only vital lymph for my hateFrom The Dying Sky — “Disciple of Terror” (2000)
We’ve heard the canards before: vegans are all white, obnoxious, self-righteous bleeding hearts who are singularly waging war against the average, meat-eating person. I used to believe this myself, and maybe you do too. Maybe this is true with certain vegans, and maybe you even believe this to be a good reason to not try veganism. I hope it doesn’t take arguing that I fall squarely outside of this category, and I’m much less so an ecoterrorist. But I think that veganism, or at least the vegans that I consider myself to be in community with, is just downstream from Alex Slack and the ALF’s example. Every single time a nonvegan debates a vegan, it is simply that: a debate. Intellectual sparring, regulated and formal, with both sides having some merit behind them.
Debate isn’t the point of veganism. The reason why vegans (including myself) tend to be so vocal and aggressive about veganism is that we don’t care about people “respecting” our beliefs. Veganism is an intensely emotional topic, and I understand why nonvegans may also get emotional whenever the topic is brought up. Again, very few vegans were raised that way; most of us have some experience with feeling defensive or insulted when talking with a vegan. What nonvegans don’t understand is that this whole “debate” is on a perspective that touches every aspect of our lives. There is no world or sector of society where vegans are the majority, where we are smugly enforcing our lifestyles on other people.
And I put a great deal of emphasis on the word lifestyle. Food is obviously the largest part of it, but it extends to how we consume more broadly, from leather accessories (yes, even from a thrift store) to animal-tested skincare products. Even broader, veganism isn’t just about what we buy or consume or wear, it’s a political identity in staunch opposition to the largest corporations in the world and to thousands of years of social conditioning. The entire point of veganism is animal welfare. It is extraordinarily alienating to vegans to notice how seemingly unbothered most people are towards animal exploitation, and this exploitation is quite literally everywhere in organized, industrial human society.
I don’t care if you call it zealotry, but maybe the common threads go deeper still. If you saw the world a certain way and was chastised or mocked for it every day in your life, even by people you would think would be more accepting of your worldview, wouldn’t you be alienated too?
Whenever I talk to my friends who are considering veganism, I always suggest they do research into the ethic and ideology behind it. A quick Google search can put anyone onto decades of documentaries, op-eds and zines. I say this because think it’s frankly unreasonable to be vegan for one’s personal health or the like. Veganism that isn’t rooted in conviction is built on shaky grounds. If people think PETA or other “mean” vegans are a barrier to adopting this lifestyle (not that people who argue this are entertaining the idea, but nonetheless), then they frankly won’t remain vegan against the alienation that comes from being vegan.