I'm a strong believer that it's a mistake to appropriate the experience or struggle of any oppressed group or individual to further our own cause, especially if our advocacy is not designed specifically to address their exploitation. As such, I believe it is inappropriate when we use how other groups are the targets of oppression to describe being vegan or to use their struggles against oppression as a metaphor for the vegan movement. I say this for the simple reason that vegans as a group are not ourselves the targets of oppression. (Read more...)
veganism
Political Correctness, Political Expediency, and Veganism
The following is was written for and originally published on the Living Opposed to Violence and Exploitation (L.O.V.E.) blog.
While L.O.V.E. takes an anti-oppression approach based on the vegan ideal of nonexploitation, there are many nonhuman animal activists who fear that as long as veganism takes into account the oppression of human animals, it will take away from opposing cruelty to nonhuman animals. The argument goes as follows: if we advocate against oppression as it targets human animals whilst advocating against oppression as it targets nonhuman animals, then people – having a finite amount of resources – will refuse to oppose the exploitation of nonhuman animals since it would include the "baggage" of being "packaged" with also opposing the exploitation of human animals, something, it is assumed, potential nonhuman animal activists are likely to be disinterested in. (Read more...)
The Absurdity of 'Triage' and the Need for Social Change
In response to a recent blog post by Steve of L.O.V.E. on "Holistic veganism," Elaine Vigneault responded that she works within a "triage" framework. I understand the "triage" concept as Elaine and others use it in relation to nonhuman animals, but I also think it's a flawed and problematic metaphor.
Triage is where a degree of urgency is assigned to those with wounds or illnesses in order to most effectively treat the patients or casualties. By definition then, triage takes place after the harm has already happened, and is therefore incapable of dealing with the cause of that harm. As Steve says, it's about handling the consequences of exploitation without actually addressing the exploitation as the cause. So I think Steve hits on exactly why is "triage" is failing, and is doomed to always fail. Read more...
Taking the Exploitation of Bees into Consideration
Congratulations to Noah Lewis for successfully raising the funds he needs to update the "Why Honey is not Vegan" site!
In the first official update to the site, Noah talks about being biased toward a vegan world. I think he make a great argument about how veganism is about creating a world based on nonexploitation, which of course means starting from a bias favoring the nonexploitation of other animals.
I've noticed this is contrary to some who attempt to take a "nonjudgmental" position by making concessions for some forms of exploitation, such as the exploitation of honey bees. Read more...
Real Food Comes from Plants
The sight of slabs of flesh should horrify and disgust any sensitive person if they exercised their inborn compassion. Habit has dimmed their native kindliness. Their palates have become abnormally corrupted and conditioned by taste for dead food, its flavoring and odors. People who eat slaughtered creatures everyday find it hard to imagine what to substitute for meat, not realizing that meat is the substitute for vegetables. – Helen Nearing, Simple Food for the Good Life
October 1st is World Vegetarian Day, and one thing I think would bring about a great deal of positive change is for us to do away with the obsolete idea that plant-based foods are somehow a "replacement" or "substitute" for animal-derived pseudo-foods. I cringe nearly every time I read these terms in cookbooks and other dietary literature written from a vegetarian perspective.
The idea that the products of other animals' bodies can be food for us is a sham perpetuated by dietary speciesism. We misguidedly perpetuate this oppressive framework when we promote plant foods as "substitutes" or "replacements" for other animals' flesh, eggs or milk. This falsely frames plants as an artificial food source while furthering the pretense that products derived from other animals' bodies are somehow a genuine source of food. Read more...
A Conversation on 'Why Honey is Not Vegan'
The "Why Honey is Not Vegan" site is the most popular and authoritative online resource for veganism and honey bees. The site is the first result on Google when searching for "vegan" and "honey," and has been sited in multiple books, including the American Dietetics Associations' book on sports nutrition. With the help of Kickstarter, a new fundraising website, a project has been started to save the "Why Honey is Not Vegan" site and give it a complete overhaul.
I first learned about the website in Spring 1999 when my new girlfriend at the time brought printouts of the site – printed out at her office on honey colored paper – to a weekly activist meeting. I later first contacted the author of the site in 2004 when I was doing research for an article that asked, "Is Honey Vegan?" – my first official assignment as the newly hired staff writer for a national nonprofit corporation. Two year later I meet the author, Noah Lewis, when he came to work for the same nonprofit. We have worked closely ever since – including leaving the nonprofit we worked for with in hours of each other because we had views regarding the role and importance of anti-racism that were not shared by management. We've since gone on to work together and separately on a number of projects on a range of social justice issues. To say that the "Why Honey is Not Vegan" site has had an influence on the last ten years of my life would be an understatement.
I sat down last night with Noah to discuss the site and what can be done to help keep it alive.
Read more...
The Garden: A Model for Change
I highly recommend watching Scott Hamilton Kennedy's documentary The Garden. This film brilliantly illustrates the following concrete realities as they are experienced by oppressed communities within the United States:
- It shows how the existing power structure is poorly suited to serving the interests of oppressed peoples.
- It shows how the existing power structure works extremely well at serving the interests of the owning-class.
- It shows how the existing power structure is bolstered throughout by White supremacy.
Get Help or Get Lost
Yesterday, Breeze Harper posted on the Sistah Vegan blog about her frustration with White self-identified vegans who think race and racism isn't an issue. Breeze says:
I'm at the point that if I have friends who are not willing to engage in anti-racist activism and aren't questioning "whiteness as a pathology"( because it truly is part of the fabric of the USA foundational beliefs), I am going to start kicking them to the curb. Seriously, if you haven't noticed, your friend Breeze here is B-L-A-C-K! If my real lived experiences of racism STILL don't convince you that it's a problem in the USA ... I can no longer be your friend until you seek therapy for your pathology.
Luckily, there are several self-help resources available to assist those of us who are White in managing our individual, cultural and institutional racism. Read more...
The Renewed Vegan Ideal
I first started The Vegan Ideal as a personal blog, but this new website is best understood as the manifestation of over a decade and a half of writing, thinking and organizing around veganism as a social justice movement.
One of the first thing worth noting about this site is that I use the words "vegan" and "veganism" differently than they are widely (mis)understood – specifically, the superficial definition given in the dictionary, which says a "vegan" is "a person who does not eat or use animal products."
Here I use the broadest and most basic interpretation of veganism, as articulated from the movement's early beginnings. (Read more...)
An Equitable World for All: Veganism and Radical Simplicity
Veganism is based on an enlightened sense of the responsibility to other humans and animals ... who share this planet with us, as well as progressive outlook encouraging a healthy, fertile soil and plant kingdom, and a sensible and equitable use of the earth's materials.
Because there is a mutual relationship between inequity and exploitation, the vegan ideal of nonexploitation is only possible in an equitable world. The inequitable control of resources provides the means to exploit others. Thus equity works to prevent exploitation.