The Social Consequences of Being Vegan: The Loss of Community
There’s no sense of community even amongst vegans themselves
Note: This is my subjective experience with the Indian vegan community and does not intend to portray the entire community in the same light. I know some people who’ve had the exact opposite experience to mine and some have even found their soulmates by taking part in various community initiatives.
Introduction
For all the passion and drive they share towards the cause of animal rights, you’d be forgiven for believing that vegans are a treehugging, earth loving, community loving bunch who’d go to any lengths to envelop their fellow community members in warmth, love, and affection. But forget love and affection, vegans have an entire world of differences to sort between themselves before they can even get to accepting each other into their close friend circles.
More often than not, there’s no sense of “community” in the vegan community. It’s just a label at the end of the day signalling to the rest of the world that you believe in a particular cause with a particular set of people whom, like the world, want absolutely nothing to do with you personally.
How can one claim to be part of a community but not be capable of looking out for each other at the same time?
Reality Kicks In
You are initially welcomed into the vegan community like a newborn baby in the house and are the apple of everyone’s eyes. Nothing gives animal rights activists a bigger mental boner than a dyed in the wool non-vegan making the choice to transition to veganism.
You’re provided all the support you need to transition, the handholding when things aren’t going great, and all the resources and information you need to maintain the lifestyle. But once you are done with transitioning and are full blown vegan capable of handling yourself everywhere (and continuing with the puppy analogy), you are abandoned like a pet dog out in the cold. The reality kicks in.
I’ve been treated to cold hard dead stares at a diverse set of vegan events inluding, but not limited to, animal rights outreach programs, animal rights marches on the streets, potlucks, flea markets, and board game events. I’ve felt that unsympathetic cold wave emanating from people attending these events drench the entire space in an aura of superciliousness each person tangibly visible at the event but mentally checked out lost in a world of their own. Each treaded the line so politically correctly as if they might slip and fall into a burning volcano if they accidentally revealed too much about themselves.
In the end I finally figured that everyone in the vegan “community” is operating from their own selfish perspective and that a vegan event is just one among the dozens of other plug-n-play aspects of their lives. They have no interest in bringing their personal lives here. They’re not here to make friends or make others feel like they’re part of some in-group. They’re here for the event and what it has to personally offer to them. It’s like going to a non-vegan flea market and expecting everyone to bond and become lifelong buddies with you just because y’all share an obsession for grilled chicken.
I thought veganism was a social justice movement and not just a food preference. I was wrong. As far as human relationships are concerned, its just a food preference at the end of the day and nothing else. Don’t get me wrong. It is a social justice movement. But that is an event in itself, and has nothing to do with being a tight-knit community, or anything like that. It is something that is mutually exclusive of the human social experience. Its like attending an auto expo. You’re not there to make friends with other car enthusiasts (That may happen as a side effect, but you aren’t specifically there for that, are you?) You’re there to check out the 4-wheeled beauties and then go home.
Check me on this alright? Hundreds of vegans can turn up for an animal rights march and then go back home without even making a single connection, like they never even left the comfort of their drawing rooms in the first place. Yes, this actually happened. No kidding!
Just like meat eaters, vegans attend vegan events to achieve objectives specific to those events and then go back to their own private lives. Do they have tons and tons of friends in their lives who look out for them? I have no idea. And if they don’t, why aren’t they seeking out deeper relationships out in the vegan community or are accepting towards advances from community members? We keep hearing and reading about how difficult it becomes to deal with friends and relatives once one goes vegan, how many of them get alienated, and that the only people vegans can really connect with are other vegans themselves. But here, the reactions to my advances were the complete opposite. Every vegan I met built a solid brick wall in front of themselves whenever I tried to get to know them better or to become part of their lives. And no, I wasn’t “coming on too strong” or anything like that.
So what gives? Where’s the discrepancy here?
Are all Indian vegans secretly friending each other on a platform that I’m unaware of? Or is it just my friends who’ve abandoned me and don’t call me out anymore since my turning vegan?
In “I Lost Friends When I Became a Vegan — Now I’m a Lot Happier”, Mitchell Jordan perfectly puts my point in perspective with this anecdote:
“Later, they sent emails saying that I looked ill and unhealthily pale; that vegans needed to see a doctor. There was eye-rolling when I mentioned joining an activist collective, irascible shrieks when we went to a vegan café. Soon enough, they also disappeared. Others became distant or kept the conversation so general we might have been strangers seated next to one another on a plane.”
I could relate to those last three lines the most because it was the exact experience I’d had over the past decade with fellow vegans in my city. I would definitely rate all the socialization and conversations I’ve had with them over all these years as “strangers seated next to one another on a plane”. I’m not saying I’ve never made any friends in the vegan community ever! But the friendships are never skin deep like most other friendships are, such as the ones made at college or at work. They are brief and transitory.
Every single vegan I approached seemed closeted and their deeper personalities neatly fenced in from the outside world. I’ve always felt that putrid pungent “I’m here just for the event” vibe whilst hanging around them. Never a communal “arm around the shoulder cause we’re in the same cause together” vibe. Okay, maybe I got that from one or two people at the most. But even those connections faded away after they stopped attending events and/or moved home base to settle down in life.
“Every single vegan I approached seemed closeted and their deeper personalities neatly fenced in from the outside world. I’ve always felt that putrid pungent “I’m here just for the event” vibe whilst hanging around them. Never a communal “arm around the shoulder cause we’re in the same cause together” vibe.”
No one was actively interested in getting to know the other better or form deeper thicker relationships in the so-called “Indian vegan community”. Also, I became acutely aware of the ephemeral and dynamic nature of this “community” by the sheer virtue of how many left the scene every single year. I would make friends, attend a handful of vegan events with them over the next 3–4 months, and then never see them again….. for the rest of my life?
I’m well aware that dynamism is one of the top reasons for loneliness in many cosmopolitan cities and that its fallouts aren’t limited to vegans alone. Each year, lakhs of Indians migrate to the West for better work opportunities, to enjoy a first world standard of living, to start a family and settle down, or for various other personal reasons. That includes everyone, not just vegans.
But why hold off from mingling and forming relationships while you’re still here? Is everyone secretly holding back because they know they’ll ultimately leave the city at some point and don’t want to give the illusion of settling down and disappointing their local friends? Are they holding off because they don’t align with other aspects of one’s personality with veganism being the only common factor. I know food is just a teeny tiny aspect of a persons life, and just because we share the same food preferences, it doesn’t mean we’re compatible for friendships or relationships. Or is it for some other unknown reason altogether that only people migrating out of the country are privy to?
Let me be straight. I’m not blaming anyone here. You too aren’t going to decline a job offer in a country with a better standard of life just because you have vegan friends in your home country. This is definitely a cosmopolitan problem, but one which veganism slathers on an extra layer of difficulty to.
There’s enough barriers to adulthood friendships as it is. Age, ethnicity, occupation, common interests, political views, hobbies, and now….food preferences too?
Remember that when one is vegan the limit to the range and scope of activities isn’t solely restricted to food. One cannot visit aquariums, ride horses or any other animals, visit seaworld, dolphin or crocodile shows, or even visit zoos. Besides, one cannot attend any plays or shows that use animals or use animal products in their production, no matter how traditional or cultural they might be. Further, one cannot be a spectator to bull taming, horse racing, horse polo, or any other sports that use animals. Even further, one cannot enroll themselves in a cheese making workshop, a wine tasting session, a chocolate making course, or an alcohol fermentation workshop. And there are a dozen more where those came from.
So now you can not only not eat any of the foods that your friends might be interested in trying, you can’t attend any of the activities they might be interested in too?
“Clare Mann, vegan psychologist and author of Vystopia: The Anguish of Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World, notes that while it is definitely possible for vegans and non-vegans to be friends, deep friendships are based on core values.
“One of the saddest things for vegans is that they lose a lot of people they used to have something in common with and, suddenly, the friendship just doesn’t work anymore,” she says.
Mann explains how the simple act of catching up for coffee and cake, or going clothes shopping, can suddenly make a vegan uncomfortable depending on what the other person is consuming.”
Let me say it one more time. I’m blaming no one else here but myself for getting into something I knew I shouldn’t have at a very young age where I didn’t know better. I never knew going vegan could be so alienating and would cause a divorce from mainstream society on such a massive scale simply over ideological and philosophical beliefs. May be I should go back to being just plant-based instead of vegan so that at least the scope of activities I can do with a bunch of potential friends gets broadly widened, and food remains to be the only restriction.
There are many others who speak up about this online:
A Massive World Deliberately Minimized
What’s happened now is that by merely choosing veganism as my driving philosophy for life, I’ve willingly taken myself out of a massive pool of prospective friendships and romantic interests, and are now seeking the very same connections in a pool that’s a thousand times smaller. No, wait! Make it a million times smaller. Add your very own preferences, quirks, and eccentricities to the mix and you easily arrive at the crux of the issue.
Making friends as an adult with a food preference that doesn’t align with the majority is freaking hard!
The dating and friendship pool is significantly reduced for anyone over 30 as it is. And for vegans, that gets even more smaller owing to the food/activity preference and other points of compatibility that stem from those food/activity preferences.
These are some aspects that no one tells you about before going vegan. And when you’re young and easily impressionable, you don’t think about them too as all you’re fixated on is watching documentaries on Youtube, saving animals from the slaughterhouse by eating vegan, and doing animal rights marches as much as possible. Also, since you aren’t in the corporate world yet, you don’t feel the necessity to suck up to others and build relationships. Relationships that hinge on the ability to eat anything and everything. And neither are you travelling a lot for work or pleasure. But when you’re in the corporate world, relationships matter more than anything else because they can literally make or break your career.
Should I not make friends with and hang out with my likeminded colleagues at the office just because a lot of their socialization revolves around meat consumption and activities that commodify animals?
OR
Should I give up my likeminded attributes to hang out with people in the vegan community just because our food/ideological preferences line up perfectly?
Dear animal rights activists, I implore you to tell me. Where should I make the compromise?
No activist in an animal rights outreach can give you the answer to these questions. They’re there to sell you veganism. Period. They don’t understand the social consequences of going against the grain, and how isolating and lonely it can be later on in life.
In “No One Told Me That Making Friends as an Adult is This Difficult”, Fleurine Tideman elucidates on the difficulties of making friends as an adult:
“But once you’ve graduated, people begin to disperse. Some move a little further away, and others move a lot further away. Some go into another study, some decide to travel, and others start to work.
Everyone inches away so slowly you don’t even realise. One moment, you’re forcing yourself to plan in alone time to rest, and the next moment you’re looking at an empty schedule.”
I’m literally “looking at an empty schedule” right now because all my non vegan friends have disowned me (or I have disowned them), and all my vegan friends are busy with family obligations or have moved abroad.
Final Thoughts
When meat eaters leave, there’s always a sizable chunk left back behind whom you can mingle with and, with a little bit of effort, make friends with. I can join any of the meetup groups in my city and, even with all the other obstacles to adulthood friendships, make non-vegan friends right now!
But when vegans leave, who do you go to?
The new vegans on the block? They’re too young and they don’t wanna hang out with oldies (30+) like you.
The ones your age? They’ve all either migrated elsewhere and settled down with family and kids, or still reside in the same city but don’t have time for vegan events anymore because of family obligations.
Also, on the off chance that the younger ones accept you and you end up hanging with them, you find their immaturity extremely revolting and you automatically end up leaving anyway. Or, they find you too stuck up and the same thing happens. Either way, it ain’t going to work because you’re both at such dramatically different points in life that you’ll always run into moral dilemmas regarding something or the other.
Look. I know that this is a dynamism, cosmopolitan lifestyle, and adulthood problem, and isn’t a vegan problem per se. But when things are hard enough in the first place, why make them intentionally harder? When there are enough obstacles to adult friendships as it is, why add fuel to the fire by adding food preference as another hurdle to jump over?
It’s hard enough making new likeminded friends as an adult.
When you’re vegan it’s literally impossible.
