TDLR: Be more supportive towards other vegans to reduce burnout in the community.
Rant incoming:
I wish the Direct Vegans would be more supportive of the friendly vegans as all forms of activism are valid and needed. It can be difficult enough being ostracized by your carnist friends and family for doing the right thing only to be met with the same treatment from your fellow vegans only because they’re doing things differently (Not everyone is capable of doing disruptive protests as they take a lot of energy) Burnout is a serious problem in the vegan community, as not being supported is the number 1 reason why people quit being vegan.
Some vegans say just focus on the animals not health or the environmental aspects while ethics is important to bring up we need to focus on the whole picture. Some carnists are more likely to be swayed by health or environmental reasons, so its important to focus on those when discussing the matter with them. Some carnists need to have a baseline of knowledge before they feel ready to make the switch (it would be daunting to change if they didn’t have someone polite walking through the beginning) then once they know we bring in the cold hard facts of how the animals are being treated in animal agriculture and now they have more options in reducing suffering in their minds instead of just “more free range family farms” or “we need to hunt more”
We need vegans doing street outreach, running petitions, writing to their representatives, creating flyers, organizing groups, teaching others how to cook ethically, filming documentaries, writing news articles, requesting vegan options, volunteering at sanctuaries, running fediverse instances.
No one has the right to tell your form of activism for the animals is pointless because it is making a difference.
We should be supportive of one another not dismissive of anyone’s form of activism. We need to save each other’s energy as much as possible because we all get enough flak as is.
If you believe your form of activism is really successful, please use suggestive tone as it more respectful towards everyone’s different situations.
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What is a “direct vegan”?
Someone who is upfront and focuses their activism through the shock factor like breaking into factory farms to rescue the animals, going into grocery stores/restaurants and calling people out for buying animal products and displaying the factory farming footages publicly.
That is a very wide net you’ve cast.
From what I see a lot of the ones that get into liberations and whatnot don’t usually look down on those that don’t because they know the risks behind it.
I think you might be projecting somewhat, or just been really unlucky in meeting awful people.
I’ve met nothing but super nice active people, I’m mostly on the support side when it comes to activism, helping out here and there but not getting into the actual outreach side because I’m not that good at remember specific talking points and facts, but I still find a way to help out.
A phrase that made me roll my eyes, and tipped me over the edge, to block this community. Baaayyyeee
Sensible argument.
In any form of activism there’s a solid case to be made for the good-cop bad-cop approach. Take the environmental movement. Without direct action, many issues would never have made it onto the political agenda. But it takes lobbying by the establishment mass-membership groups to translate that energy into laws. The latter worries that the former is playing with fire, while the former disdains the latter as bourgeois sell-outs. In reality, it’s the combination of both that’s powerful.
As someone who is vegan-adjacent, I do worry about overreach by the “direct” vegans. For quite a lot of normies, veganism is now seen as something of a religious cult, an annoyance. Worse, it’s been politicized onto the left-right spectrum, just like the climate issue was. Yes, that’s all completely unfair, but it’s also a perilous situation. Alienating such a hefty chunk of the population is not the way to achieve the goals of veganism.
So yes, the only way to start rolling this back is with a better effort at tolerance and understanding. Tolerance of different approaches to activism, and also just tolerance in general, including of non-vegans who may not be fully aware of the issues or who may already be taking small steps in the right direction.
I think a big part of the issue is that a lot of people view diet as an individual choice, and want nothing to do with activism.
Sure. That’s certainly my case. But I don’t think choosing “individually” is very common, in general. For most humans food is a part of shared culture: they just eat what the people around them eat. And so it inevitably becomes it becomes a pillar of identity, and to question it is to attack that identity. You know all this already, of course.
PS. Wasn’t me who downvoted your polite and inoffensive comment. I wish whoever did would take their petty resentments elsewhere.
+1 to health/environment reasons first, then animal rights.
I used to be one of those carnists who refused to care and justified my choices in stupid ways. I made the switch to vegetarianism for environmental reasons, and once I did that I had no reason to ignore animal abuse.
I became vegan for animal rights.
I think the argument made that rich people don’t deserve to be rich because it’s an accident of birth should apply to animals. It’s an accident of birth that they’re born into factory farms and know only suffering, our struggles for liberty are bound up with theirs. This world is cruel and we have a lot of privilege we can use to do a whole lot of good.
