Opinion That Easily Divides People In The Vegan Community
There’s enough and more to pit vegans against each other
Introduction
With our population exploding over the past few years and the simultaneous rise in the number of global issues stemming from that unsustainable growth, there’s a wide spectrum of causes one can choose to be a part of today. Veganism is one of them.
However, just like all other self-proclaimed groups on the planet the vegan community isn’t immune to subjects of division from within, most often on political and personal lines. Over the years it has become painfully clear on multiple occassions that humans harbour a diversity of thoughts and opinions, and just because two people happen to be in the very same cause together, doesn’t mean they’re going to see eye to eye on 99 other subjects or matters of concern.
There’s nothing more than someone’s opinion on certain topics that can easily split a room full of vegans into two, or a dozen more.
Here they are:
Those for and against Vegan perfectionism
The vegan police are everywhere. Whether you’re on tour with a vegan group, attending a potluck, a board game event, or a vegan flea, there’s at least one cop conspicuously found at every kind of vegan event.
If you’ve been vegan for at least a couple years, you’ve already developed your own internal vegan police detector that can instantly detect them from a mile away. They’re there to tell you the Rava Idli you ate last night wasn’t vegan. Or that the tomato soup you gullibly slurped with your dinner date last weekend wasn’t vegan. Or that certain breads at Subway aren’t vegan.
The vegan police are the perfectionist vegans. While dining out you’ve got to ask the waiter a million questions before you can even place your order. Like which brand of tomato powder they use for their tomato soup. Or whether they top their curries with cream, or use butter in their Indian bread. Or if you’re at a cafe, which brand of whipped cream they use on their cold beverages. As a perfectionist vegan, one also cannot dine at non-vegan restaurants or alongside other meat eaters as this would go against the perfectionist ethos.
(pssssst: never tell a perfectionist vegan you slept or made out with a meat eater) 🤫
At the other end of the spectrum there’s the extremely liberal vegans who don’t mind sharing an Indian vegetarian curry by pushing the cream or paneer to the side. They’re okay with eating something containing ‘milk solids’ if its the only food available to them at the time. They don’t make a fuss about it if there’s no vegan meal available on the plane or at an outdoor event. They know that the world is an inherently non-vegan place, so they always carry their own food to an event, or fill their tummies sufficiently well before heading outside.
They don’t create a furore if the chef uses the same utensils to make non-vegan food or forgets to veganize their food by mistake. They also don’t mind dining right next to meat eaters.
Those for and against abortion
There’s the “eat pussy not animals” brigade, who believe that people can and must have as much uninhibited sex as they want, and that reproductive rights are a personal matter.
Then there’s the pro-life brigade. They assert that they joined the vegan movement as they respect the right to life, and that supporting the pro-choice vegans would cause them to depart from their original values which led them go vegan in the first place, which is a reverence for all life. They claim that since they wouldn’t harm an animal for food, they wouldn’t do it in the case of an unborn child as well.
Pro-choice vegans on the other hand, claim that for the very same reason they’re vegan — because all living beings deserve freedom, love, and respect — so should humans be deserving of the very same freedoms too. They should be able to choose what they do with their bodies and that they must be the sole decision makers when it comes to unwanted and unintentional pregnancies.
Those for and against processed food
These are those vegans for whom health and fitness were their primary reasons for going vegan. They make their existence ostentatiously known by openly shunning all kinds of processed foods at potlucks and will not hesitate in telling everyone why.
They believe (and know) that processed vegan food cannot truly be vegan as they are most often manufactured on the same equipment as animal products. Also most processed food contains sugar which could potentially be sugar that was filtered using bone char, so that too is unacceptable to them. Lastly, they know that manufacturing plants for processed food will require further deforestation of wild tracts which have already been deforested for agriculture. This would further displace wildlife that has already been killed/displaced for human settlements and agriculture, and because of this one cannot be vegan by consuming the products of such a plant even if the product itself happens to be vegan.
Hence, they keep off processed food altogether.
Then there are those in the opposite camp who believe in eating and driking anything under the sun as long as it is vegan for the most part. They believe that it directly harms the cause of animal rights when one openly detests processed food in front of meat eaters, and that this portrays a very negative extreme version of veganism that is neither realistic, nor practical. They eat everything that’s vegan and don’t enquire about anything beyond the main ingredients of the product.
They’re not interested in taking a magnifying glass to the ingredient list and looking up each and every single ingredient online every time they go shopping. They believe in depicting a positive image of veganism; one that is feasible and has no hindrances and obstacles, and that one can eat processed food and still be vegan without checking if its manufactured on the same plant as animal products, or whether it uses sugar filtered with bone char. They believe that people will turn over a new leaf only on the path of least resistance and that asking people to categorically give up processed foods and subsist only on a Whole Food Plant-Based diet is the least effective form of activism in getting them to go vegan.
Those for and against mock meat
Similar to the folks who call for the promotion of vegan processed foods, proponents of mock meat claim that the only way to get the world to go vegan is by providing them with alternatives to mainstream foods as much as possible. Foods which they’ve already become accustomed to consuming all through their lives.
They put forth that people will spare a thought for the animals and the environment only when they themselves aren’t inconvenienced by making the necessary changes to their diet and lifestyle. They will consider going plant-based only when the transition towards such diets is seamless and convenient.
On the other side of the fence sit those who are against the rise of plant-based meat. They claim that plant-based meat substitutes are high in sodium and contain lots of preservatives and additives. They assert that plant-based meat is as unhealthy as regular meat, if not more, and that one should stay away from it as much as possible for their own health’s sake. Similar to vegan processed foods, plant-based meat requires the setting up of manufacturing plants that are extremely energy and resource intensive and require massive amounts of land to be cleared for setup and operations. Irony much? Instead, why not become a whole food vegan by growing food on the same parcel of land, and live in harmony with nature instead of against it?
“Concern for our health is one of the main reasons we are now buying vegetarian sausages and burgers in such quantities, according to survey data. The catch is that there is not necessarily anything particularly healthy about a vegan hotdog. Many see them as just another set of overly processed industrial foods in a world that is already awash with what food writer Michael Pollan calls “food-like substances”.”
They suggest that the only way to progress with the vegan movement is by getting everyone to adopt a Whole Foods Plant Based diet as all it tackles all three issues— animal rights, human health, and environmental degradation — simultaneously. They say that instead of a reverting to the same old consumerist resource heavy lifestyle with the inclusion of plant-based substitutes being the only differentiating factor, one should aim to live in harmony with the planet in all aspects of life and not just food.
Those for and against intersectional vegan activism
This brand of vegans believe that justice can only be served only on an intersectional platter, which means one cannot advocate for the rights of animals unless they are simultaneously advocating for the rights of women, gays, lesbians, transgenders, tribals, religious and ethnic minorities.
They believe that since all exploitation overlaps with one another at some point, it is useless to fight for only one cause at a time. It is pointless to point out the cruelties and injustices meted out to one species while completely ignoring the transgressions faced by others who may be part of the very same ecosystem. For example, in India it is always lower caste individuals, transgenders, women, tribals, and ethnic religious minorities who are made do all of the dirty work in slaughterhouses and other animal product industries. So one cannot aim to end the exploitation of animals while turning a blind eye to the blatant casteism, sexism, classism, transphobia, and homophobia that forms the backbone of such industries in the first place.
“Intersectional veganism should be what all vegans stand for, as it pays attention to the suffering of all marginalized groups rather than just the suffering of animals.”
“When our veganism is intersectional it pays attention to all marginalized groups, not just animals. When our veganism is intersectional it has greater potential to challenge and change the systems that oppress.”
Those against intersectional veganism claim that veganism will never reach critical mass if we keep putting obstacles to adoption at each and every juncture. They state that if people need to renounce all their other political beliefs in order to become vegan, then we will never achieve the full emancipation and liberation of animals. They say that vegan activists must suppress the urge to squabble amongst each other with regards to who is homophobic, sexist, racist, or classist and must simply collectively focus on the shared common goal that is animal liberation.
The against band here gets further subdivided into another category; those who claim that certain social justice issues are accidentally intersectional anyway.
For example large scale family planning measures powered by the feminist movement, in a roundabout manner, does end up contributing to the cause of animal rights and helps reduce animal suffering by reducing the number of meat eaters on the planet. While they aren’t wrong, attacking the animal rights issue from this angle only keeps the AR movement moving at a snails pace since a reduction in the number of animals being killed for food is only a side effect of feminism and not because people are adopting veganism en masse.
“some non-vegan social justice issues promote animal rights. E.g. feminists promote access to family planning, which means less unwanted pregnancies, which means smaller families, which means fewer meat-eating humans, which means fewer animal rights violations. Like the connection between veganism and human rights (less pollution, climate change,…), this connection between feminism and animal rights is accidental. Instead of implying that vegan activists should participate in anti-racist or feminist campaigns, or vice versa that feminists should join the animal rights community, this kind of intersectionality implies that keeping the movements separate is good as well.”
What are your thoughts on this? Should feminists be vegan? And should vegans be feminists by default?
Final Thoughts
While not all vegans may be opinionated and uncompromising about their ideals, those beliefs definitely act as stumbling blocks to friendships and relationships within the community. Vegans must possess the collective calm and restraint to come together and sit down at the table to peacefully discuss the issue of animal rights, environment, and human health without bringing all the surrounding political aspects of the world into it.
Instead of creating an atmosphere of peace and harmony, bringing politics to the vegan table further antagonizes people causing discord and division amongst members when we are already so low in numbers to begin with.
What do you think? Should vegans carry their political beliefs with them wherever they go? Or should they put their personal and political beliefs aside to gel with fellow vegans and foster community for the greater good of animal liberation and animal rights? Do let me know in the comments bar to the side.
