Ridiculous Things AR Activists Say All The Time
Eat Pussy Not Animals. Seriously?
(Banner image is only to depict an Animal Rights march and isn’t representative of any of the points in the article)
Introduction
When they’re not pouring fake blood all over themselves, storming supermarkets to discard gallons of milk on the floor, and entering slaughterhouses to chain themselves to animal stalls, AR activits are also involved in sane civilized forms of activism. This includes going on peaceful street marches holding placards and chanting slogans, indulging in outreach programs where they hand over flyers to the public while educating them on the workings of the abhorrent and disgusting meat industry.
They also work tirelessly inside offices to create animal rights content to show the world what happens behind closed doors. This includes creating infographics, documentaries, and movies documenting the plight of animals suffering in abbatoirs worldwide. They also publish studies based on their research on the ill effects of animal farming that is felt most vividly by the animals themselves, but which flows down to the planet, the people, and the rest of its inhabitants as well.
Animal use is abhorrent, vile, cruel, and frankly one hundred percent outdated. We have absolutely no need for animal use in this day and age where there’s vegan replacements for 99% of the animal products out there. Whether it is using them for food, clothing, shelter, and entertainment, or forcing them to provide certain services to humans, it is one hundred percent barbaric and cruel.
With all that being said, there are many methods and ways of activism to make people aware of the insanity of animal based industries and to get them to turn over a new leaf and go vegan. But a certain section of the Animal Rights movement has decided to renounce all logic and common sense in their methods of dealing with the issue, resorting to absurdities and making unsubstantiated claims in the hope that these might inspire people to go vegan.
None of these statements have any basis in logic or reality, and it becomes awfully apparent the moment you start to break them down.
Here they are:
Eat Pussy Not Animals
The most ridiculous placard I’ve seen carried by AR activists doing an animal rights march on the streets is “Eat Pussy Not Animals”. Pray tell me, what has sex got anything to do with meat eating and animal rights?
Where does sex and pleasure remotely come into this picture?
If I wasn’t vegan already, just taking one look at an AR activist carrying this particular placard would disgust me and turn me off veganism. The only guess I can hazard, as to why the use of such terminology is because, for these people, the clitoris and vagina represent a piece of meat (??).
But here’s the thing right. Not all of us are into the promiscuity thing. Even amongst those of us who are allosexuals, “pussy” isn’t going to be a substitute for our favourite meat based dishes.
Secondly, some of us are asexuals. Some of us have been raped or molested in childhood. Some of us face sexual harassment even as adults which has changed the nature of sex in our minds from something that is pleasing and satisfying to something that’s painful and distressing. If bodily pleasure, lust, and wantonness are your reasons for renouncing animal usage, are you doing it for the animals or for your own masochistic desires?
Besides, there are millions of people for whom non-marital sex is just out of the question as their culture, religion, and tradition forbids them from doing so.
Are you going to ask an unmarried Jewish or Muslim man to “eat pussy not animals” ? Seriously?
Dear AR activists, you have got to stop selling sex as a replacement for meat eating. Lets try to be inclusive towards people from all faiths and backgrounds regardless of sexuality while spreading the message of peace and love towards our earthling animal friends.
I sleep better knowing my food didn’t die screaming
The second most ridiculous claim made by AR activists which has no basis in logic and reality is the claim that vegans sleep better knowing their food didn’t die screaming.
So here’s what. I’m an ethical vegan. I went vegan 10 years ago after watching the Youtube documentary “Meet your Meat” and Gary Yourofskys “Best speech you will ever hear” video. I’m standing right here. And I will tell you for a fact, that I’ve slept just as well as I did when I wasn’t vegan for the preceding majority of my life. No change. Zero……..Zilch……nada!
What AR activists fail to understand that there are only two kinds of people in this world.
- Those who care and will make a change because the prospect of not caring is too unbearable for them (and will not let them sleep in the night). They will sleep just as fine as they did when they were carnists.
- Those who don’t care. These are the people who continue eating meat after seeing a vegan outreach on the streets, watching a documentary on the web, or reading a book about it. They too will sleep just as well as they did on any other given day. You know why? Because they don’t care!
What AR activists are trying to imply with this specific point is that there is a third person in between these two who chooses a middle ground: I care about the animals but not enough to make significant lifestyle changes. Hence, I ruminate all night restlessly like an insomniac about the way animals are treated in the meat industry and end up not sleeping all night.
Sorry AR activists. There isn’t. If someone cares about the plight of the animals languishing in abbatoirs and brutalized in slaughterhouses, they will do each and every single thing to stop it, or at least stop contributing to it themselves. Which is why many people turn into Animal Rights activists. The very people you are referring to are right beside you. Maybe it does give them sleepless nights like you said, and it was something they were able to get off their conscience once they went vegan, or started indulging in activism.
But to claim that tons of vegans sleep better at night knowing their food didn’t suffer and die screaming is baseless and illogical. You’re also very subtly implying that meat eaters know where their food comes from. They don’t. Most people don’t know where their food comes from. They aren’t aware of the vicious cruelty and suffering that is so inherent to the meat industry. That’s why they sleep just fine.
There’s so much variety on the vegan diet
No there isn’t! Stop spreading misinformation.
Okay, let me roll back a bit. There is variety on the vegan diet. There’s a ton of variety in it. I’m not gonna lie. But if a whopping majority of that variety isn’t available outside — when you’re on the move and desperate to get to some place in a jiffy — then that totally negates the point doesn’t it? The only place you’ll realistically have access to all that “variety” that AR activists so enthusiastically rave about is your very own house! So while on the surface the vegan diet looks colourful and interesting, down below, the only foods you realistically have access to are garden salads and fruit bowls. There’s nothing wrong with those two obviously. But it wouldn’t be something I would go for in the middle of a hectic work week.
So no, the vegan diet isn’t varied and bountiful and all those amazing adjectives. Unless you’re living in a large cosmopolitan city, all that variety in vegan food just isn’t available to you, or you’d have to travel ridiculously long distances to access them. Long distances which negate any environmental gains accrued from shunning animal products available locally.
After being 10 years vegan, I can confidently vouch for the fact that you will become situationally handicapped once you go vegan. Everywhere you go, your preference for solely plant-based food will hang like a dark cloud over your head. You lose whatever agency you had and cannot just go with someone to someplace without checking for the availability of vegan options first. Most of the time you’ll have to resort to choosing the most bland and boring option available on the menu. At most restaurants, the by-default plant-based options on the menu are the most boring and uninteresting of foods. So don’t attempt veganism unless you live in an exceptionally vegan friendly city with vegan options available everywhere, or have the kind of agency in your life that allows you to go out of your way for food every single day.
Secondly, why are AR activists always trying to make out that the carnist diet is lacking in variety? There’s a lot of variety on the vegan lifestyle, with all of that “variety” being accessible to non-vegans as well. So what’s your point?
Someone even made a sarcastic meme to emphasize this particular point and posted it to a Facebook page:
To which I replied:
The point is, there’s variety on all diets, even carnist based ones. It’s just that most carnists grow up accustomed to eating 2–3 animals and decide to roll with them for the rest of their lives neglecting all of the other amazing plant foods available out there, which quite frankly, makes the diet look boring and monotonous. A lack of variety on meat-based and vegetarian diets doesn’t automatically translate to more variety on a plant-based diet.
Carnists and vegetarians need to open themselves up to different foods and start eating more plant-based instead of the same 3 animals they’ve been subsisting on their entire lives. Having a couple of plant-based meals a week will not only slow down the growth of the murderous meat industry, but will also add healthy plant nutrition to your diet.
You don’t have to be vegan to enjoy a colourful Acai bowl bursting with plant-based goodness and nutrition. Take it from us.
Vegans taste better
This ties back to the first point on sex and pleasure, which is very subjective and dependent on a persons personal preferences. I’ve been around extremely smelly vegans during my hiking days. I’ve come across wonderfully smelling meat eaters too.
Some people sweat more, and some others less. Similarly, some people taste good, and some others not so great. So, whom exactly do vegans “taste much better” to? Is it to other vegans, to other non-vegans, or to basically everybody? Because there’s no denying the fact that going vegan changes your taste buds and sense of smell towards animal products. Dairy products definitely tend to be very revolting, as do fish and sea creatures once one goes vegan. Heck, sea creatures smell digusting to non-vegans too!
Ever instinctively put a handkerchief over your nose at a fish market?
If you are someone with excessive body odour, changing your diet into a healthier one will do your body wonders and help you taste and smell better, whether that diet is vegan, vegetarian, or meat based. Most often, when such changes are incorporated, the change in a persons taste and smell can usually be narrowed down to the kind of food, the way they’ve cooked them, the amount of salt and spices in them, or how much they over ate a certain subset of foods rather than a complete transition to a plant-only foods diet.
There are a range of factors that contribute to how a person “tastes” or smells such as the weather, smoking, drinking, and drug habits, junk food consumption, the kind of cosmetics, makeup, skincare, and personal care products that he/she uses, and fitness levels.
“Along with saying that eating meat contributes to worse tasting fluids, Sprinkle said smoking, drinking alcohol, and doing drugs contribute a bad taste. Lastly, she mentioned that asparagus makes you taste bad.”
Besides, there’s a whole host of plant foods itself that can make you taste bad! So the question of tasting better is not really a matter of Plant Foods VS Animal products, but rather of the kind of food you eat within those diets.
“In preparation for this article, I searched on PubMed, a government-run research archive, to check if there are any legitimate studies about this. I didn’t find anything! Not even one study!”
So putting out an absolute blanket statement that “vegans taste better” regardless of a whopping cornucopia of other factors such as diet, health, fitness levels, lifestyle, product usage, bodily hygiene, sleep routine, drinking, smoking, and other habits is just asking for trouble on the debate front.
Conclusion
I’m not here to search for the origins of “eat pussy not animals”. I frankly don’t care who started it or what lead them to it.
As an ethical vegan, I also don’t care whether other vegans taste better or not. Someone tasting or smelling better isn’t a red light where animal murder should come to a screeching halt. Imagine someone at a party told you they were vegan and when you asked them the reason for it, they said: “Oh I did it because vegans taste better”. What would be your reaction to that statement and what opinion would you carry of that person? How long do you think they’d last on the diet with such a flimsy reason?
I also don’t care how much variety there is or isn’t on the vegan diet. I’d eat my local greens and seasonal vegetables all day long even if I had to repeat them every single week without having to resort to eating anything flown in from another continent. Luckily, nature provides us with such a bountiful variety without even getting into the domain of processed and imported food, so thank goodness for that!
I don’t care how well you sleep on a plant-based diet either.
All I care about is the fact that animals aren’t shoved to the ground and stomped on, gassed to death, trampled to death by their mates on ships and trailer carriages during transport, debeaked, castrated, tail docked, de-horned, artificially inseminated (raped) by workers without using even basic safety equipment, branded with a hot iron on their skins, ground alive in a mixer to be fed to other animals because they were born male, and boiled and burnt alive in boiling vats of water to remove their skin and hair.
Those are my only reasons for being vegan. All other reasons are fallible and susceptible to discardation at a later point.
