Misrepresenting the Abolitionist Approach, Part II: On Hugs and Merit Badges

On Calling Not Changing the Subject "Changing the Subject"

In his post offering up the reasons he had changed his mind about participating in a podcast discussion with Gary Francione, James McWilliams had stated that "it [would] accomplish nothing except intensify the polarization that [McWilliams was] trying to minimize". Rather than take the opportunity to substantiate claims made during his recent public criticism of abolitionist advocates, he'd written that his intention was to instead continue developing his own arguments on his blog. The message received, based on his followers' reactions in the comments (reactions to which he did not respond and which he did not correct) was that debating the differences between abolitionist animal rights and welfarism is a waste of time and that he was no longer going to waste his own time doing it. I figured he'd meant that. So I was disappointed to amble over to his site the other day to find that he'd chosen to re-post an article by Melanie Joy in which she dredges up the welfare-abolition debate and takes a few passive-aggressive swipes at abolitionists.


A Reluctant Finger-Wagger

Joy starts off echoing McWilliams' message about how debating the fundamental differences between welfarism and abolitionist animal rights is a waste of time that she's always avoided, but that the apparently horribly traumatic and negative effects of those differences' having recently been aired forced her make an exception and to give up some of her time to weigh in. She starts off assuring us that there's nothing left to be said in the welfare vs. abolition debate -- she says it's "gridlocked". She implies that focusing on it at all is a soul-sucking time-sink. So? She offers up a fix -- a "reframe", she calls it, to make all of our lives "more peaceful" and our activism "more effective".

Critical Discourse and Debate Are "Non-Vegan"?

Joy suggests that we step away from what she calls the "content" of the issue (i.e. the facts and ethical arguments) and focus instead on "the way we communicate" -- the "process". She sets up a false dichotomy, suggesting that advocates can do one of two things. We can be "argumentative" so that

[o]ur consciousness and process can mirror the speciesist [...] culture we are working to transform, thus reinforcing, for instance, ideological rigidity, black-and-white thinking, defensiveness, bullying, self-righteousness, and hostility.

Otherwise, we can be "cooperative" and let our, um, consciousness

reflect the core principles of veganism – principles such as compassion, reciprocity, justice, and humility – the essence of a “liberatory” consciousness (and process), a way of being (and relating) that is fundamentally liberating and that I believe can significantly empower the important strategic conversations we need to continue to engage in.

She goes on to use the term "non-liberatory" to describe the former, which is also what she writes she's observed is brought to the table when differences in goals, strategy and tactics are discussed.

Conflating Diversity Within One with the Differences Between Two

Joy brings up that old familiar notion of the strengthening effect of diversity and extrapolates from it that we should somehow recognize that there is similar strength in our "differences" as advocates. She suggests that we should see the fundamental differences between what I've already mentioned in my previous post have realistically become two altogether different animal advocacy movements -- one welfarist focusing on how other animals are used and the other abolitionist and focusing on whether other animals are ours to use at all -- and that we should see liken these differences to mere diversity within one movement and as "opportunities" to strengthen what Joy calls "our movement". The thing is that likening diversity to those differences goes beyond comparing apples to oranges and makes as much sense as comparing a bowl of nooch gravy to a piece of granite. To insist otherwise merely undermines the seriousness of those differences.

Things get a whole lot more skewed in the article as Joy continues to weave into her text as a given that we're all apparently focused on the same goal -- i.e. that we're one movement with our collective eye on the same prize. She mentions "differences in terms of how effective various strategies are for ending animal exploitation" and that although some of those strategies may be "counterproductive" that "we" (i.e. members of an apparently comprehensive movement bent on ending animal use) need to discuss our different strategies "openly" and without "argu[ing] with each other"... but what exactly does she mean by "arguing"?

Debating = Evil

Surely, you would think that she's dismissing "arguing" in its common sense, when emotions are heated, tables are flipped and fists are shaken in the air? But no, according to Joy, merely having a rational critical discussion where you're expected to defend claims you make is tantamount to falling into this supposed non-vegan and "non-liberatory" mindset. Joy, in effect, decides to attack the entire idea and usefulness of debating, in and of itself. This form of critical engagement -- this rational exchange of information and arguments to clarify and substantiate claims and positions -- is purportedly rigid and extremist, according to Joy. It's just a contest and is all about winning. In fact, not only is it all about winning, but it's about labeling the person with whom you're engaging in critical dialogue a "loser". It apparently leaves the observer or listener to said debate limited to accepting one of two positions (obviously not the so-called loser's) and leaves the observer or listener completely in the dark about possible nuances to whatever topic is being debated. Presumably, this is because Joy thinks that people are incapable of listening and then reflecting upon and processing what they hear?

She contrasts debate with "dialogue" as if they're two completely altogether different things. Dialogue alone, it seems, allows for the sharing and exchange of information. Dialogue alone fosters an awareness of "multiple perspectives". Dialogue alone leads us to contemplations and thoughtfulness upon hearing different perspectives. Debate? It just leaves us pumping the air all "non-liberatory"-like, itching to see a victor and a vanquished. She writes: 

Achieving our objective of animal liberation depends on developing a comprehensive, complex, sophisticated, and flexible strategic approach to targeting a comprehensive, complex, sophisticated, and ever-changing form of institutionalized oppression. It is unlikely that the reductive, black-and-white rhetoric of debate can ever produce such nuance and analytical richness.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I smell straw. It's possible that she comes by it honestly and that Joy's own experience with debates has left her unnerved -- that a bad experience has left her with a limited and one-sided idea of their purpose or process. There's a certain irony in that something that's such an ordinary part of what I should hope most thinkers or academics view as critical dialogue ends up made a straw man by Joy and that her contrast between this straw man and her notion of "dialogue" is in and of itself as narrow and "black and white" as the outcome she purports results from engaging in debate. Debate, she claims, is "problematic" and is in fact "an obstacle". It's "non-liberatory" and thus (gasp!) non-vegan.

I'm a Pepper, He's a Pepper
She's a Pepper, We're a Pepper

Having established that debates are a Big Bad, Joy branches off from this to get to what I think is the true purpose of her essay, which is explain why it's just plain silly that some who call themselves abolitionists would want to engage in debate with others they call welfarists. According to Joy, advocates are just plain old confused. They've mistaken strategy for ideology (with the latter presented as "morally loaded", as if it's somehow horrible to attribute rightness or wrongness to something and to take a stance accordingly). Her concern, it seems, is that self-described abolitionists who busy themselves educating others about not using animals and who see other advocates focusing on how animals are used (and not engaging in vegan education) are making a big mistake in assessing those actions as reflecting the other advocates' ideology. According to Joy, those differences are just strategic and we're apparently all, in fact, seeking the abolition of animal use. She writes that it's only "when we untangle ideology from strategy [that] we can redirect the conversation to how best to bring about this end without getting sidetracked by moral argumentation. (Because who on earth would want to lose their way advocating for the rights of others by getting distracted actually discussing silly things like "rights" or other "morally loaded" junk?) 

I won't go into detail about how Joy rambles on about how there is absolutely no evidence that promoting welfare reform will or won't bring about the abolition of animal use, except to suggest to she should put down her Cooney and pick up a copy of Gary L. Francione's Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement or (better yet) The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation? and that she perhaps consider taking a quick look at some of the (dare I say it?) nuanced writings on his website about why one should opt to focus on educating others to go vegan rather than waste time on attempts at welfare reform (attempts which often end up reinforcing the idea to non-vegans that other animals are indeed ours to use). Joy writes that "our investment in being right can prevent us from being effective" which misses the point altogether that for abolitionists, our investment is not in being "right", but in convincing others to go vegan. For me, hearing that someone's connected the dots and has rejected animal use is what's effective. Joy's investment in thinking that I'm participating in a contest or sporting event is preventing her from seeing that I'm fighting a holocaust.

To Joy, though, we're all on the same side, albeit some of us are trying to play soccer and to force other advocates into forming an opposing team so that we can just whup their arses for the sake of whupping arses. Debating, according to Joy, is just the "othering" of fellow advocates for the sake of arse-whupping. In fact, she points out, the whole "welfare-abolition debate" is a perfect example of this. It's a "myth", she tells us. It's just a construct slapped together by those who call themselves abolitionists. Why? Supposedly to force into a make-believe opposing camp other vegans who don't self-identify as having any sort of specific political or ethical stance when it comes to the question of the morality of animal use per se. If their actions reflect a political or ethical stance (e.g. through participating in or promoting regulationist campaigns)? Joy says that using a descriptor to identify them is antagonistic and irrelevant if they, themselves, don't self-identify with that same descriptor. (An aside: I wonder if Joy would take this one step further, then, and assert that if someone doesn't self-identify as, say, a sexist, that this person cannot rightfully be called a sexist?) Plus, throwing that descriptor out there is tantamount to actively foiling the hard work that other advocate is doing, whatever that "work" may be.

Identification with a position has largely been the province of a small group of vegans who have constructed an identity around their strategic-ideological approach and who have constructed labels for both themselves and the other “side.” In our soccer analogy, it’s as if there is only one team trying to win the game; the rest of the individuals don’t even think of themselves as a team and are simply moving across the field, only kicking the ball when it gets in their way.

Even when she admits for a second that maybe there is indeed something to abolitionists contrasting themselves with advocates whose focus is not on use, but on treatment, Joy insists that the difference between welfarists and abolitionists is still somehow make-believe -- a "myth":

To be fair, just because only a minority of vegans have a “team” identity, this does not mean that the majority play no role in constructing the debate. It is entirely possible that the small, vocal minority have developed a cohesive group identity because they have felt that their valid and pressing concerns have not been taken seriously by the broader vegan culture. Both “sides” must work to defuse the Myth of the Great Debate.

So in the end, there is no such thing as a welfarist or an abolitionist according to Melanie Joy -- all vegans are ultimately abolitionists (Joy's obviously never heard of Wayne Pacelle, Paul Shapiro or of Erik Marcus). Oh, and for heaven's sake -- don't try to debate her on this, because you'll just be kicking a soccer ball in her path and blocking the effective advocacy in which she is currently engaged by trying to blur distinctions between two altogether different movements. Joy's intention seems to be to shame and to silence the one movement that is unequivocal about its focus on animal rights while fighting to end animal exploitation. She seems to want to co-opt the descriptor "abolitionist" as it is understood now in animal advocacy circles, and to stretch it out to include anyone and everyone who wants to self-identify with it, regardless of their ethical stances or of their actions and complicity in the reinforcement of speciesist attitudes. I'm guessing that explaining to her that terms come with context and with definitions would just lead to an accusation that I was being confrontational and "non-liberatory".

Descriptors Aren't Merit Badges

Isn't it funny? This whole business of calling those who are actually abolitionists and who reject animal use things like "extremist", "divisive", "bullies", et al. while wanting to co-opt the term for people who aren't actually abolitionist but who still involve themselves in perpetuating animal use by focusing on treatment, it's really no different than animal-using vegetarians calling vegans extremist, divisive, bullies, et al. and then vegetarians wanting to co-opt the term "vegan" to self-identify as some "degree" of vegan as they continue to deliberately engage in avoidable animal use. Vegans get scolded and shamed into accepting vegetarianism (i.e. animal use) as somehow being no more than a wee moral sidestep (lest they be deemed holier-than-thou, judgmental, the vegan police, elitist, et al.). Now abolitionists are being scolded and shamed into embracing welfarism and into allowing those who focus on animal treatment to co-opt the term "abolitionist" for themselves -- regardless of their political or ethical stances or of the nature of their hands-on advocacy. If you try to point out that they're different, according to Joy, you're obviously a bitter trouble-makers who's gobbling up the time of those who could otherwise be doing their tabling or starting Care2 petitions to stop Safeway from selling brown ducks on Tuesday mornings. I mean, how dare you?

Welfarists and abolitionists aren't just grumpy siblings sniping at each other in the back seat of a car while on summer vacation. There is no rift in one unified movement; we are two separate movements. Our differences goes far beyond being mere "diversity", but it seems that hammering that out by engaging in critical debates that would make this evident is "non-liberatory" and not in keeping with vegan principles. Joy claims that we need to be truth-seekers, but seems to want us to do so blindfolded. And if in their own truth-seeking, advocates around us do more harm than good to other animals, we should nonetheless "value" them for their truth-seeking-ness; instead of tapping them on the shoulder and suggesting that they're doing it wrong, we should give up on our own fixation on doing it "right".

According to Joy, judging another's actions is always "shaming" and shaming is non-liberatory (and thus goes against vegan principles). According to Joy, judging always involves bullying. (Critical thinking means less time for hugs?) Joy's investment in keeping us from stepping on each other's toes is preventing her from acknowledging that for each misstep one of my fellow advocates takes, there may be additional lives lost. It's not about us; it's about them. If I point out to you that spending all of your time trying to get non-vegans to sign a petition to convince a fast-food burger chain to only use eggs from chickens who have an extra three inches of room in the cages in which they spend their entire miserable short lives, I'm not doing it to hurt your feelings: I'm doing it because I'm thinking about those chickens and that the chickens in those cages would rather not be in those cages at all. It's not about us; it's about them.

What Now?


She's right that we have "much work to do". Some animal advocates educate the general public about veganism; other advocates choose to educate the public about not not buying shoes made of kangaroo leather from one specific company while not addressing that no leather from any animal should be purchased and that all animal exploitation is problematic. As an abolitionist and an ethical vegan who truly wants to see an end to speciesism and to the horrific cycle into which billions of other sentient beings are enslaved and slaughtered every single year, part of my work involves sometimes tapping the kangaroo shoe petitioner on the shoulder and suggesting that more could and should be done. If someone like Joy wants to insist that that my doing so somehow goes against vegan principles -- that it's "divisive", so be it. At the end of the day I'd still offer Joy a big ol' hug. Then I'd ask her to substantiate her claims and to give me an opportunity to refute them, because this is where real learning and understanding come from -- not from smiling and nodding and turning a blind eye to others' fumbling around us.

Misrepresenting the Abolitionist Approach, Part I: Some Context

First There Was the Finger Pointing About Finger Pointing

Several weeks ago, James McWilliams wrote an article ("Vegan Feud") for the mainstream news and pop culture site Slate that created a slight bit of a stir in online animal advocacy social networking circles. In it, McWilliams criticizes the abolitionist animal rights dismissal of animal welfare regulationism as ineffective, and he uses this to frame what was essentially a high-fiving defense of the past and current work of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). Rather than recognize the intrinsic and considerable differences between abolitionist animal rights and welfarism as reflecting two altogether different movements, McWilliams appears to make the same error that all too many welfarists make when responding to abolitionist criticism by lumping both in together under one heading, deeming them two "in-fighting" factions of "the [same] cause". In the face of their quite fundamentally different philosophical stances and advocacy practices, he chooses to finger abolitionists for refusing to compromise on their own most basic underlying rejection of animal use and of their promotion of veganism as the moral baseline -- as the starting point for any serious animal advocacy.

Abolitionists Are Right?

It's not that McWilliams doesn't get that the process involved by groups like HSUS to regulate animal use does in fact differ from what abolitionist animal rights activists endorse and promote. He even seems to acknowledge that it falls short. He writes in his piece:

Nevertheless, as the abolitionists correctly point out, there’s nothing especially revolutionary about HSUS’s approach to improving the lives of farm animals. HSUS works closely with Big Agriculture, never calls for animal liberation, and never explicitly endorses the habit that most efficiently prevents animals from being killed: veganism. 

Confusingly, even while lumping a group like HSUS in with abolitionists as somehow being a part of the same "cause", McWilliams does acknowledge that what abolitionists point out in their critique of HSUS isn't incorrect. The facts are what they are and HSUS has made it clear again and again that it's not in the business of seeking to bring about an end to animal use.  So what's the problem?


Abolitionists Are Wrong?

McWilliams at one point sums up what are fundamental differences in advocacy as a mere "rift" that needs to be healed -- notwithstanding that HSUS rejects each of the six principles of the abolitionist approach to animal rights -- by having abolitionists 'fess up that HSUS "is doing something right" and to also admit that focusing on educating people about going vegan and about why it is that they shouldn't treat other animals as things just isn't going to work. He writes:

Francione’s logic is hard-hitting, but his extreme message is unlikely to resonate widely in a population that’s only 1.4 percent vegan. According to social psychologist and longtime vegan Melanie Joy, the abolitionist approach could attract a lot more supporters if it acknowledged, as HSUS does, that most people are going to embrace veganism on their own—you can’t strong-arm them into it. 

McWilliams continues by paraphrasing Joy's assertion that going vegan requires a "profound shift in consciousness" and that people are just going to do it when they're ready to do it. As for me, I smell straw.

On How Not Talking to People About Veganism Is the Best Way to Promote Veganism

There are two essentially wrongheaded things to address in the previous quote. The first is that loose thing called an argument that animal advocates (too often ones like Jonathan Safran Foer who are themselves non-vegan) use to defend promoting vegetarianism -- i.e. the consumption of some, but not all types, of animal products -- as somehow being ethically meaningful. They insist that veganism is extreme -- a final step in a long journey where every little bit counts and should be applauded. They insist that the general public isn't ready to hear about why it is that it's wrong to torture and slaughter other sentient beings. They insist that "only 1.4% of Americans are vegan" and that this is somehow indicative of how few people could possibly "get it". Not only does this downplay that (if one trusts Google's citing US population as being 311, 591, 917 as of July 2011) over 4 million Americans are vegan, but it's also insulting to those who aren't, simply infantilizing them and suggesting that they're either too stupid or rigid to be offered -- and to understand -- a clear unequivocal message.

Furthermore, according to Joy (or McWilliams' take on Joy), it seems that merely offering up to anyone that clear and unequivocal message that other animals aren't ours to use is tantamount to "strong-arm[ing]" them. McWilliams writes that abolitionists should just follow Joy's lead -- and apparently HSUS' -- and accept and endorse the notion that people are just going to "embrace veganism on their own". Considering Joy's focus in her work on meat-eating's being more morally problematic than other animal use, and given the lengths to which HSUS has gone to assert that it is not a vegan organization and has no wish to bring an end to animal use, doesn't it sound -- if you'll pardon the academic vernacular -- downright kooky to suggest that abolitionists should adopt Joy and HSUS' attitudes towards the (non) promotion of veganism? And that this will be more effective in bringing people 'round to veganism?

As someone who was an on-again, off-again vegetarian of different stripes for years before hearing my first Vegan Freak Radio podcast in which Gary L. Francione's abolitionist approach theory was explained, all I can say is that I'm grateful that someone didn't balk at expressing quite clearly that not using them is the very least we owe other animals. I only wish that someone had talked to me about it sooner. It surely wasn't going to be Melanie Joy or HSUS, since ever after years of my not going vegan, they would likely have thought that I'd somehow maybe figure it out on my own -- possibly after enjoying warm fuzzies following the purchase of one of Joy's books and mailing off a quick donation to HSUS. The truth is that it took that plain old honest and earnest message for me to "get it". I'm still grateful to the Torres' for the advocacy work they once-upon-a-time did -- their voices are missed in more ways than one -- and for their promotion of Francione's abolitionist approach to animal rights.

If the message wasn't too overwhelming for me, someone who'd been raised in a small town and in a working class "meat and potatoes" home, surrounded by animal agriculture and hunters, why should it be for someone else? And if Melanie Joy and HSUS (and James McWilliams) won't talk to others about going vegan, then who will? And why on earth would anyone purporting to take the rights of other animals seriously suggest to abolitionists that we shouldn't? There are billions of other animals killed for human consumption each and every year. Are we really expected to sit around and hope that someone decides to go vegan without ever having had someone tell them why they should go vegan, y'know, lest they be overwhelmed by it or feel "strong-armed" into it?

Podcast, Yes? Podcast, No.

As a follow-up to this article, Francione extended an invitation to McWilliams -- in good faith -- to participate in a podcast discussion with him to go over issues raised by McWilliams in the Slate article. Presumably, the invitation was also extended to clarify some of the misrepresentations of abolitionist approach advocacy the article contained. McWilliams first accepted and then declined, more or less stating that he didn't want to participate because debating the issues — i.e. defending his public promotion of welfarism and critique (and seeming dismissal) of abolitionism — would purportedly be destructive to “the cause of animal advocacy”. It seems that McWilliams himself must have felt, in choosing to write his original article in Slate, that this discussion is indeed an important one to be had. Otherwise, why would he have brought it up publicly on such a widely-read and mainstream site (whose readers, incidentally, mostly don’t give a bean about the difference between either the regulation or the abolition of animal use)?

In his blog piece explaining his choosing to decline to do the podcast, McWilliams insisted that his arguments’ substance wasn't a concern, but that he saw participating in the podcast as nothing but engaging in a sparring contest where sparring skills might trump substance. He went on to more or less compare an intellectual debate in which he would be given the opportunity to elucidate and to substantiate his attack on the abolitionist approach (and where Francione would be given an equal opportunity to correct and clarify and to defend his work and that of those who subscribe to the abolitionist approach) as ending up as nothing more than the bumping together of two egos.

Good Faith/Bad Faith

McWilliams seemed to present himself as wanting to do the humble and noble thing and to focus on advancing “the cause” without taking this opportunity to provide those (who may or may not read Slate) who are actually interested in animal advocacy a well-thought out rational explanation for how it is that he thinks wefarism is in any way benefiting other animals and that the abolitionist approach fails to do so. That seemed like such a passive-aggressive dodge to me and it left me more disappointed in McWilliams as an advocate than I was when he wrote that wrongheaded Slate article in the first place. His refusal seemed quite disingenuous and sympathy-seeking and I would have expected more from a passionate and earnest advocate, and most certainly from a tenured academic. One would think that, having deemed discussing his critique of abolitionist advocacy with Francione as potentially harmful to the movement and with his concern over supposed "in-fighting" that McWilliams might have chosen to indeed step away from the issue to focus on other things. Part II of this lengthy blog commentary will examine how, sadly but unsurprisingly, this wasn't the case.

Stay tuned for more!

Heartwood Revisited

Heartwood on Quinpool Rd

It was just this time last year that I ended up visiting Halifax, Nova Scotia's little vegan-friendly gem, Heartwood. After a decade of providing Haligonians with buffet-style eats, the place finally coughed up an ordinary menu from which its diners could pick and choose from a variety of delicious options. With the exception of a small handful of dishes using cheese -- which could so easily be substituted with either in-house made or commercial substitutes -- the menu is vegan-friendly. The ingredients used are mostly organic and many of the dishes are gluten-free or have gluten-free options.

When my host and I dropped by last Saturday, I had been anticipating diving into the wonderful vegan pizza I'd had there last year. A rich 9" inch affair piled with ingredients and too much for one person to handle, I knew that I wouldn't be having it when I returned by myself during the week while exploring Halifax, since carrying leftovers around wouldn't be an option. I was disappointed to discover that we were limited to the brunch menu on early Saturday afternoon, but only because I had been so very much anticipating pizza and knew that  this would be my only chance to have it without letting some of it go to waste. Heartwood's brunch menu, to be honest, still left me needing time to decide once the server swung by with our delicious organic coffee (with complimentary soy milk -- screw you, Starbucks). 

So many beverages from which to choose!

Would I have the TLT? The Portobello Mushroom Burger? The Tofu Scramble? How about the organic Spelt-Kamut Waffles with Blueberry Sauce and Fruit Salad? Curious, I asked what the deal was with the Wild Card Salad on the menu. I was told that it could be one of two things: I could either have a salad plate of whatever the cook had handy to toss together in the kitchen, or could have a combination of this salad and a sampler of some of the brunch items. I quickly opted for the latter while my friend Mike had the soup of the day (spicy bean, I think) with a side of gluten-free bread (which he said was almost as good as their regular absolutely perfect sourdough).

Heartwood's Wild Card "Salad"

The plate brought out to me had a salad of mixed greens and cherry tomatoes topped with a subtle dressing and sesame seeds. It was served with herbed roasted potatoes that had just the right bit of zing added to them. I was also given a portion of their tofu scramble which had a bit of a curry taste and included shredded zucchini and carrot (and maybe turnip?) and bits of broccoli and was bordered by a line of 4-5 whole thumb-sized oven-roasted beets. A few wedges of Heartwood's delicious sourdough toast were thrown in, as well. It was one of the best meals I'd had in a long time and thanks to our having indulged in delicious blueberry macaroons from Fruition and then decadent whoopie pies and an assortment of cookies from The Kind Cookie (all vegan and gluten-free) at the wonderful Seaport Farmer's Market earlier, we skipped dessert.

The place had been hopping and things were a bit more low-key when I visited again early on Monday afternoon. I was craving greens, but didn't want just greens or to order them on the side with something and to end up with too much food (or to end up spending too much money).  The Organic Bean and Veggie Burger came with steamed greens, as did the Organic Cajun Tofu. Both those dishes, however, were described as being topped with tomato sauce and I just didn't feel like having anything smothered in tomato sauce, so I opted for the Coconut Curry Heartwood Bowl. According to the menu, it came with steamed greens, roasted vegetables, tofu, sprouts and toasted seeds on brown rice. The greens were kale and red chard and the roasted (or otherwise) vegetables included red cabbage, carrot matchsticks, broccoli and bits of sweet potato. The tofu was crisp and would have been a little tasteless if not for the coconut curry sauce. The sprouts and seeds helped pretty up what was already an esthetically appealing dish (albeit served in a not so esthetically appealing chipped bowl). The rice was perfectly cooked and had onion mixed throughout it. It was a nice amount and a good variety of food, but for $14 or $15 it was a bit underwhelming since I sat there regretting not having ordered the ridiculously yummy pizza anyway (which would have cost the same), even if I'd had to leave some of it behind. The bowl was good, but was unfortunately eaten while I had that pizza on the brain.

The Coconut Curry Heartwood Bowl

Maybe it was just that I've always been wowed at Heartwood. Maybe it was just that I had really, really wanted that pizza and nothing else would have satisfied that craving. Hell, I'm even willing to admit that my experience was probably tainted by having gotten off at the wrong bus-stop on the way into the city and having had to walk for two hours after wandering in an industrial park. The dish was gorgeous and healthy and tasty and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who likes the idea of having a one-dish meal. I'm not sure that I'd get it again myself if I was just dropping into the city to visit and found myself with no more than one or two occasions to eat there. I think that if or when I do return to Halifax that Heartwood's vegan pizza will be a must and that I'll explore their soup and sandwich combo. Maybe, just maybe I'll get the greens on the side next time. I'll definitely have their coffee again. The bottom line is that the food is great, the service has almost always been absolutely stellar and the music and atmosphere are quite wonderful. If you're ever in the city, do stop by; if you have their vegan pizza, please send me a snapshot to tuck into my wallet and carry with me wherever I go until I get to have it again.

Bits and Blurbs in the Media

I've fallen out of the habit of commenting on articles of less significance --albeit still of interest to some vegans -- that pop up in mainstream media from time to time. I'll try to be a bit more vigilant and throw out the occasional find. Today's, for instance:


An article in Maine's The Portland Press Herald today contained a lot of information about vegan and vegan-friendly eateries in Portland and elsewhere in Maine. I was surprised to see them leave out Belfast's vegetarian/organic and vegan-friendly Chase's Daily, as well as the deli at the Belfast Food Co-op. Although I never got around to blogging about them, I visited both (the Co-op repeatedly so) while vacationing in the Belfast and Searsport area along the Maine coast a few years ago and really enjoyed both places.

Although it seems to be put forth more and more often as a given in mainstream media, it's still unfortunate that the article equates "becoming vegan" with eating "a totally plant-based diet" and adopting a new "dietary style". Veganism is, of course, much more than a diet.

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The Evansville Courier Press featured an article in which a local chef was asked how he would handle catering a large party with vegan appetizers. It's a mostly positive article but for a guy who stresses the need to "think outside the box", it seems that many of the appetizers are just traditionally animal product based ones for which he uses commercial processed substitutes -- vegan mayo or sour cream, for instance. It's true, though, that there are tons of readily-available, easy to use and tasty substitutes that can be had for most animal products these days and that most of them can be shuffled in to whip up snacks quickly. However, he makes it evident that he's not yet experimented the most recent and popular cheese substitutes like Daiya or Follow Your Heart when he mistakenly asserts that "vegan cheese does not melt". Still, it's always nice to see a positive article stressing that preparing delicious food without animal-based ingredients isn't difficult.

Hacking at Branches: On Petitioning Whole Foods

James McWilliams recently posted a petition on Change.org to persuade the Whole Foods supermarket chain to stop selling meat. More specifically, the petition is (was?) to convince the chain to shut down its meat counters. In his petition, McWilliams does offer up some sort of quasi-broader contextualization for its focus:

Forget (for the moment) dairy and eggs and all the animal-based products dependent on systematic suffering that you believe are integral to a robust stock price. We can deal with these items later.

This contextualization does little to change the fact that for a non-vegan supermarket chain that prides itself on its offering its customers so-called "happy" animal consumption options, singling out animal flesh as significant would just send a confusing message. Whole Foods' "articulated values" (as appealed to by McWilliams) are all about providing its customers with these purportedly "kinder" options. It's not -- and never really has been -- about offering consumers an alternative to using other sentient beings. Instead, Whole Foods profits off of its lulling consumers into thinking that there is such a thing as ethical animal exploitation: This is part of its raison d'être.

Nonetheless, McWilliams suggest the elimination of its meat sales to Whole Foods as a first step it should take. He cushions it by temporarily excusing the sales of other animal products until "later" and then throws this weird bit of flattery in:

As a loyal patron, vegan advocate, and historian of agriculture, I’m asking you to do what you have done so well since the 1980s: lead.

That left me earnestly baffled. I'll 'fess up and admit that I've been reading many of McWilliams' blog posts off and on over the past several months whenever I've had time to sit back and catch up on advocacy-related reading. At one point months ago, I would actually get excited reading some of his posts since they seemed to reflect the thoughts of someone who "got it" and who was bent on forwarding an unequivocal message that other animals deserve nothing short of our going vegan. How on earth would he come to see a company such as Whole Foods as "leading"?

The thing is, though, that even if McWilliams' petition had called on Whole Foods to stop selling all of the animal products it stocks on its shelves, whether meat, dairy, eggs, honey and the other ingredients that manifest themselves in the processed foods and non-edibles it carries, the petition would have been -- however possibly well-intentioned -- really wrongheaded and pointless. As Whole Foods' co-founder and co-CEO James Mackey pointed out in his official response to McWilliams:

Whole Foods Market has no plans to stop selling meat and poultry…or seafood, eggs and dairy items for that matter.

[...]

Our first stakeholder is our customer and the most of them purchase and eat meat.

[...]

At the most, about 10 percent of our customers are strict vegetarians and probably around three percent are strict vegans. To not offer a full array of food options is basically suggesting that we voluntarily commit business suicide.

None of this should come as any surprise, yet many animal advocates have reacted to Mackey's response with outrage. You would think that he had suddenly revealed something quite shocking that should leave him worthy of being deemed evil incarnate. The bottom line, however, is that Mackey is a businessman and that perpetuating the myth that some animal use can be more ethical than other types of animal use has been and is essential to Whole Foods' operations. Asking them to cut out selling a particular animal product when Whole Foods has been insisting to its customers that all of the products it sells come from animals who've been raised "happy" goes completely against how Whole Foods justifies including itself in the cycle of animal exploitation.

Focusing on the middle-man really makes no sense where animal advocacy is concerned. If Whole Foods stopped selling meat, its customers would just go elsewhere to purchase it. Why wouldn't they? Mackey knows this and it baffles me that McWilliams wouldn't see this, as well. Mackey was right in saying that McWilliams was ultimately asking Whole Foods to engage in "business suicide".

More so than this Whole Foods affair (which is just perplexing), McWilliams' recent promotion of Melanie Joy has left me a little saddened. Joy's work emphasizes the ethics and psychology of meat eating, highlighting so-called "carnism" as she calls it instead of acknowledging the actual issue of speciesism as a whole. She chooses to publicly pooh-pooh the delivering of a vegan message as being too extreme, insisting that talking about veganism is somehow counter-productive when trying to get people to take other animals seriously. McWilliams' endorsement of her work was a sad surprise. I had come to really enjoy his writing style and his writings themselves had seemed to indicate that he did indeed understand that teaching people to not use others animals was the first step in making a difference for those other animals.

In his more recent article for Slate ("Vegan Feud"), McWilliams actually takes issue quite explicitly with the those who present veganism as a moral baseline for animal rights advocacy. McWilliams touts it as extremist. Instead, he champions HSUS, whose bread and butter (yep) is also wrapped around lulling consumers into thinking that there is indeed such a thing as a kinder, gentler and more ethical way to treat other animals as things. In his piece for Slate, McWilliams champions HSUS and then specifically singles out abolitionists and the work of Prof. Gary Francione as too, too demanding with their focus on teaching the public to take the rights and interests of other animals seriously by choosing not to participate in the use and exploitation of these other animals.

I won't weigh in on the Slate article at this time, since Francione has already done so and even extended an invitation to McWilliams to discuss all of this in a podcast via his Abolitionist Approach website. McWilliams has agreed to participate in the podcast and it should be falling into place sometime in October. I really do hope that the discussion they have brings McWilliams around to realizing that singling out those who provide consumers with what they want or asking them to stop providing in no way convinces those same consumers that they should stop viewing other sentient beings as things. The only way to fight speciesism is to get those who provide the demand that perpetuates the cycle of animal exploitation to understand that animals aren't ours to use. Limiting their options in terms of where they can obtain animal products certainly won't accomplish that.

Francione gets that. I get that. A lot of you get that and even Whole Foods' Mackey gets that. Hopefully, come October, James McWilliams will get it, too.

Veganism Is Not a Sacrifice

(Taken from Gary L. Francione: The Abolitionist Approach to Animal Rights on Facebook. A photo of a sign noticed in Greenwich Village, NYC by one of Prof. Francione's students.)

What This Vegan Eats

Eats with which I've been stuffing myself over the last month or so:


Gardein & a bit of cheddar Daiya on flat bread. Steamed collards tossed with pickled hot banana peppers. Steamed asparagus.


Romaine tossed with red onion, dried cranberries, sweet onion/lime vinaigrette, sesame and ground chia seeds. The end of a baked sweet potato.


Romaine, bok choy greens, green and red bells, cucumber, zucchini and red onion with balsamic fig dressing. Whole grain pasta tossed with olive oil and garlic, steamed broccoli, sauteed zucchini and onions, organic sundried tomatoes and kalamata olives, parsley and red pepper flakes.


Collards steamed with baby carrots & yellow/green beans. Romaine tossed with red onion, dried cranberries, chia seeds and sweet onion/lime vinaigrette. Maple baked beans.


Tomato soup with gemelli pasta and seasoned with smoked paprika, dried orange peel and garlic. Kale chips made with the same seasonings.


Rhubarb, kale, orange, banana smoothie. Salad with red leaf lettuce, cucumber and a drizzle of thinned roasted red pepper hummus. Watermelon for dessert.


Kale with a "cheesy" tahini, nooch and garlic sauce. Organic tofu stir-fried with baby portobellos and corn, seasoned with organic tamari and Massaman curry paste.


Tater tots, Gardein strips and baby peas.



Romaine, red onions and dried cranberries tossed with a sweet onion/lime vinaigrette. Bananas and blueberries.

Parsley, tomatoes, cucumber, hot peppers, ground chia seeds, smoked soy bits drizzled with olive oil/lemon/crushed garlic. Organic carrot juice.


Pinto bean chowder with wheat berries, carrots, broccoli and wax beans, seasoned with Indian chili powder, dill and crushed garlic.

Orange, banana and kale smoothie. Oven-roasted Gardein, radishes and kale stems.

A Question That's Worth Asking

(It's one that I've been asking myself these days while slacking off on updating the blog.)

On Self-Delusion and Seeking Absolution

A friend of mine sent me a link last week to a small blurb on the ever-inconsistent This Dish Is Veg website. The piece, "Can I make a case for eating eggs?", is the sort of thing you'd expect to see left out as bait by a writer to generate hits and comments. For its writer Shana Kurz, however, it seems more an attempt to garner a little bit of sympathy from readers so that she can feel better about her decision to go back to exploiting other animals.

Kurz begins the short blurb stating outright that giving up eggs was easy -- that she didn't eat them and had otherwise found simple substitutes for them where she might have used them while cooking. Regardless of this, though, Kurz proceeds to try to make a case for her going back to using them. She does so in such an illogical manner that one can't really help but wonder if she's serious.

The eggs from her CSA come from "happy" chickens, she insists, "adopted" from organic farms who'd relinquished them as unproductive. These "adopted" chickens are allowed to roam, she tells her readers. Of course, she also adds that when the chickens go from being less productive to being unproductive altogether, they are either passed on to others or "killed" and that she has no idea of just how these chickens are killed, but is speculating that it must somehow be "humanely". (One almost envisions Kurz crossing her fingers, eyes squeezed tightly shut!)

So someone who had already found substitutes for eggs has a CSA that treats chickens as things and whose slaughter practices for those chickens are unknown to her. So? She views this as triggering some sort of "diet related dilemma" but says so while admitting that she's already made the decision to order them on a weekly basis (i.e. so much for any dilemma). One has to wonder about her self-identifying as having "compassion for animals" considering her eagerness to obtain a sort of absolution from her readers as she informs them of that decision. Even more so, one has to wonder why in the little bio following the blurb, This Dish Is Veg describes her as a "Certified Health Coach (and vegan)".

One also has to wonder if Kurz can really be that oblivious to the fact that the chickens on those original organic farms came from breeding operations where male chicks (deemed worthless) are invariably killed, often simply ground alive or suffocated. It's a shame that -- while not even knowing how the chickens meet their deaths when her CSA deems them useless and disposable little feathered machines -- she still clings to this myth that there is such a thing as a humane way to slaughter another. What's bizarre, however, is that she then chooses to assume -- based on nothing but a hunch -- that the chickens whose eggs she is taking must surely be killed in a manner in which that killing somehow seems more ethical to Kurz.

It's unfortunate that this is the sort of sloppy writing that This Dish Is Veg continues to feature on its website, particularly from someone it presents as being a vegan consultant.

Sophie

It's funny how things just fall into place sometimes. My ex and I had been living with two litter-mates who'd just turned six. Tar and Monzo had been with us for five years and seemed to be spending more time lounging than moving. The apartment felt large and so we decided to adopt a cat to keep them company -- to provide someone new with a much-needed home and to maybe to liven up the household a little. My friend Tanya piped up one day that her dear friends Andre and Stacey were fostering a momma cat and her two surviving kittens for one of the local SPCA shelters. We agreed to go meet them. We watched a zany grey and white ball of fluff bouncing off everything around her, darting to and from the more stoic (and somewhat more oval) ball of white and black fluff we were told was her brother. She was weepy-eyed and it was suggested to us at some point that she wouldn't be considered adoptable if returned to the already-overcrowded shelter.


On our walk home, we weren't even a block away before we decided that there was no way we would end up not bringing both home. They spent the next dozen years known as "The Kittens". Zeus decided to shadow Tar and Sophie fell in love with Monzo. Since Tar usually shadowed me, Zeus followed suit; since Monzo pretty much adored my ex, Sophie ended up spending a bit more time with him more so than she did with me. Her first few years, most of our interaction involved my sending wads of paper down the long entrance hallway, watching her gallop full throttle and leap up and off of the walls in chase.

It's hard to write about Sophie without writing about Zeus. Their antics were the stuff of giggles and horror. I still remember the day I'd been in the kitchen preparing dinner and heard a loud crash in the living room. I ran out to find them tiny and immobile in the middle of it, having knocked over the tall and heavy decorative glass bottle I'd assessed as unbreakable. I quietly begged them - as if they understood my words -- to not budge as I gingerly stepped in to scoop them both up out of what seemed to be thousands of tiny shards of glass, ignoring the upstairs neighbour's frantic knock at the door in response to the loud smash. There was no way those little pink toes were going to end up bleeding on my watch.

Sophie's weepy eyes led to her soon developing a much closer relationship with her veterinarian than I would have liked. Surgery for fused tear ducts and then a diagnosis of eosinophilic granuloma complex led us to restrict her diet and to make lifestyle changes to eliminate scented products or any allergens we could possibly think of that might need to be considered. Periodic steroid injections led to the customary and necessary warnings of the side-effects of long-term steroid use. Still, Sophie and I perfected our game of catch, by which I'd lob wads of paper up at her as she perched on a kitty condo, eventually learning to catch them in flight between her paws and training me to throw more accurately in the process! When she wasn't catching wads of paper, she was burrowing beneath the blankets on the bed. We eventually nicknamed her "the lump" since sitting anywhere on the bed that wasn't an obviously completely flat surface invariably risked eliciting a startled "meowch!" from that spot.

When Sophie's favourite human moved on, she and I found ourselves reevaluating our previous relationship as she so obviously mourned an absence. When Monzo -- "her" cat -- died less than a year later, I was left with a sad girl who found herself burrowing beneath the covers more often than not. In no time, though, she seemed to decide that the "pay attention to me" way of proceeding worked for her. Visitors soon became familiar with the "pat-pat-pat" of her paw on their arms, laps, hands, shoulders -- whatever was within reach. If you said 'hello' to Sophie, you were inadvertently acquiescing to providing an evening's worth of scritches, plain and simple. Failure to fulfill your obligations would lead to a stream of chirps and grunts in protest and that gentle "pat-pat-pat" reminder, Sophie sitting beside you (im)patiently.

As the eosinophilic granuloma cleared up with treatment and management over the years, another immune system and allergy-related issue arose. Sophie developed asthma, requiring further medical intervention. I still remember going to the neighbourhood pharmacy to pick up her first inhalers and to set up her account, the pharmacist promptly informing me while shaking his head in disbelief that she was his first feline customer. He and his assistants came to know me by name as I went in every month or two to refill prescriptions.


Sophie eventually rekindled the kinship she and Zeus shared and they would frequently cuddle up to one another. Eventually, she even came to allow Sammy, who'd tried to befriend her from his first day in our home, to sidle up to her without hissing at him. But the asthma took its toll and after years of her steroid use's having left her a more portly kitty than most, her weight began to decrease -- and to continue decreasing. The complication of a severe and sudden bout of rhinitis and her worsening asthma left her losing more weight and sneezing what seemed constantly. A friend who visited in June ended up on the receiving end of a few streams of mucus, something I'd come to accept as being ordinary when interacting with Sophie, and deemed it gross. At that point, I'd been spending months cleaning "Sophie snot" off of things, including myself. It came with the territory and I loved her with all of my heart regardless.

After an unfortunate mishap as a kitten while held -- and dropped -- by a friend, she was always a little wary of being picked up and held by strangers. Her compromise with those she trusted involved crawling up close against our throats, claws dug firmly into our shoulders. It was pressed into my throat with her claws firmly outstretched that she let me hold her and rock her for hours our last afternoon together. The rhinitis had returned and her asthma has been worsening over the months, regardless of the inhalers and steroids. Her weight had dropped more significantly and rapidly and the vet suspected that blood tests would show the onset of renal failure. So after a long series of bad days where eating seemed optional to her and wheezing was constant, on a day that somehow turned out to be a better one than we'd had in months, I cleaned Sophie's face with a cool damp cloth, combed her carefully-- which she'd always loved -- and held her closely, nestled against my neck and purring, rocking her and talking to her until the time came to take her to the vet's to follow through with the heartbreaking decision I'd been making all week. It's one I still regret now, because how can someone not regret making that decision, even if others assure you that it's the right one?


Two weeks ago my heart broke. I miss my girl, I do.

I'll Keep My Teef, Thanks!

Hindsight and Nostalgia: Animals on the Screen

Both of my parents had been raised on small family farms and my mother's official stance was that other animals belong in the forest or in a barn -- not in a house. The idea of bringing any non-human in to share our home was unacceptable to her. Of course, she didn't count on the fact that she'd end up with the sort of kid -- not terribly unlike most kids -- who would end up fascinated with every single insect she encountered and drawn to every single cat or dog whose path she crossed. Growing up in a small town, those cats and dogs were everywhere and generally allowed to wander. "The Solomon's dog's in the yard again!" "There's that Comeau's cat in the flowers." I'd hear these things and rush outside, wanting to say hello.

Whenever I happened to come across an animal who was a stranger to the neighbourhood and who seemed hungry or frightened, I'd more often than not find a way to entice him home, sneaking him under the back patio and stealthily raiding the fridge for food to share. I remember one day when a childhood friend and I heard the nervous collie who lived on the corner barking furiously, and then the screeches that followed. We ran as fast as we could to go see what was happening. The collie's people were at work and she had attacked a cat who'd strayed into the yard. Knowing that I couldn't take her home, I scooped her up, bleeding and weak, and my friend and I proceeded to knock on the door of a surgeon who lived a few houses down, begging him to help. He refused and offered no assistance to these two blood-stained and crying girls lugging a cat in obvious distress. We knocked on more doors until the mother of another neighbourhood friend took her off our hands and promised she'd do whatever she could. She nursed the cat back to health and kept her for years and to this day I'm grateful and remember her basic decent kindness when so many other adults had sent us -- and the injured cat -- on our way. To me, there'd been no other option but to scoop up that cat and to find help.

Growing up in that small town, I was also fascinated with what trickled in of the outside world through the numerous televisions in our home. Members of my family were, more often than not, glued to one telly or another and it was not out of the ordinary to find 3-4 of us home, each watching something completely different. What almost always drew me in most (no surprise) were the television programs involving animals. Whether it was Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom or Grizzly Adams, I was tuned in and enrapt. Along with whichever nature documentary happened to come across PBS (usually watched alongside my father, a lumberjack who was just as fascinated with other animals), my favourite shows included old Flipper reruns and The Littlest Hobo. I was the first kid in line to see the two first Benji movies at our small local theater and remember the insistence with which I had persuaded my parents to take me to see Disney's The Cat From Outer Space at the local drive-in. Oblivious to whether or not these animals were behaving the way they'd usually behave and even more oblivious to the circumstances -- from possible capture to training and torture -- facilitating their ending up on these shows for my entertainment, I soaked it all in happily. It was a huge part of this animal-loving kid's life and I was "animal obsessed" -- but at what cost?

I remember years ago in some online vegan discussion forum or other, asking whether others who'd grown up exposed to television programs and films in which animals were used felt about it in hindsight. I had asked how they managed to mitigate the nostalgia they may have felt with the knowledge they now had later in life of the exploitation involved. Over the years in one sad tale after another, the awful truth has surfaced of what was really behind some of what seemed to be the most innocuous nature programs. The worst of the brutality inherent in Hollywood animal films revealed itself over and over. Even without the information concerning the most outrageous cases, the truth is that the entertainment industry revolves around profit. It's a business like any other. When other animals are used to entertain humans, they're not valued as beings with interests of their own; they're used as props to push the buttons of the sort of sentimental folks who, as I did, grew up watching other animals before them being used as props. It's exploitation regardless of how those animals are treated. Seven-year-old me certainly didn't get that, but I get it now. It makes me incredibly sad to think about it now.

Part of getting it now means that when friends and I dip into the nostalgic sort of reminiscing we'll often do about childhood pop culture, the warm fuzzies I'd get years ago humming the theme song to The Littlest Hobo just don't happen anymore. Worse is when I'll occasionally forget myself and slip into a sentimental pocket and then end up sort of yanking myself back out of it, feeling guilty and wondering how I let myself slip if even for a second. When I watch friends, family and acquaintances around me attempting to nurture their kids' love of animals by taking them to the latest talking dog film (or to the local petting zoo), I'm reminded of my own childhood. The thing is, though, that this childhood love of animals I had was never what led to my connecting the dots -- certainly not to go vegan, and not even when I decided years ago to become vegetarian. I first became a vegetarian in college for environmental reasons. See, all of these sappy shows I'd watched had left me with this notion that even the animals we raise for food were somehow beloved and well-cared for. After all, we never saw Charles Ingalls chop the head off a chicken or castrate a calf on Little House on the Prairie! For years as an adult, I'd been quite convinced that having watched all of these shows as a child had somehow left me more open to eventually weighing the morality of animal use. I realize now that even more insidiously, all of this exposure to "cute" or "happy" animals on television or in films merely served to further entrench in me the speciesism we're each taught from the ground up. Watching those shows, I was taught to believe that animals were perfectly happy to be used for human entertainment. I was convinced that they had the best possible lives available to them and (nature documentaries aside) I learned to accept this idea that their value increased relatively to the amount of good they could bring to the humans around them (think "animal heroes" and stories revolving around them).

Of course, I know now that all of this was terribly wrongheaded. It's sad and weird to look back at it, though, and to see it for what it was. Sentimental creature that I am, it throws a wrench into my own sense of self-awareness and leaves me all the more aware of all we're exposed to our entire lives that ultimately leaves us truly confused about our relationships with other animals. This understanding also leaves me more patient when faced with others who balk upon hearing why I'm vegan. There are so many knots to undo when confronting speciesism; as with most knots, patience and perseverance are more effective than force and frustration. As advocates, we need to keep this in mind when talking to others. We really do.

The Difference Between Steps and Standing Still

Veganism as Something-ism

Just a few days ago, I got into an exchange with an individual who subscribes to the My Face Is on Fire Facebook page. It was triggered by a link I'd posted to an article from The Thinking Vegan ("My interest lies in animal liberation, not making more vegans"). Gary Smith's article is largely a commentary on what's been left in our laps as animal rights advocates now that the term "vegan" has been co-opted and mangled by so many to purportedly mean any variation on using less animal products. Not making "more vegans" in this sense means not turning someone on to the former Freston fast craze or Bittman's "Vegan Before Six" thing and then convincing oneself that some sort of meaningful advocacy has actually been done. Smith writes:

At what point do we start to articulate animal liberation, the ethical argument for veganism? At what point do we start to articulate the animal rights message? [...] The outreach we are currently focused on is disingenuous and misleading, and backfires if it takes longer for people to understand the ethical message of liberation.

I do agree with that wholeheartedly and have been writing around that on My Face Is on Fire for a spell now, so it was bizarre to have someone who'd chosen to like and follow the blog's Facebook page suddenly pipe out to disagree with Smith's message about the need to include the ethical argument when engaging in vegan advocacy. The individual asserted that she feels strongly that if you convince someone of the health benefits of eating a plant-based diet that a conversion to veganism is almost a sure thing. We talked in circles around each other a bit as I attempted to explain to her that it doesn't follow that buying into self-concerned reasons having nothing to do with other animals would lead to a sudden epiphany about the immorality of exploiting other sentient beings.

A Step is a Part of... Stepping

As an abolitionist vegan, I'm not just interested in getting some people to not use this or that part of another animal on this or that day of the week. At least, I'm not interested in getting some people to not use this or that part of another animal on this or that day of the week for its own sake and as its own end. There needs to be movement towards not using other animals -- an actual "going" vegan. When engaging in vegan advocacy, it needs to be made clear that this going vegan is the starting point that needs to be reached for each of us to work towards the real goal -- to bring an end to the exploitation of others animals -- and that anything less falls short of it.

The aforementioned individual on Facebook, however, was convinced that using one argument to get someone to stop eating animals would either get them to connect their own dots somehow, or leave them more open to an ethical argument to cut out other forms of animal consumption and exploitation. Somehow, to this individual, this vegan, actually talking to people about animals having an interest in not being enslaved and slaughtered for human pleasure seemed counterintuitive to getting those people to stop providing the demand that perpetuates the enslavement and slaughter or other animals for human pleasure.

Baby Steps or Bog?

Too often I'll hear a "tsk" and the words "baby steps!" when I point out to advocates that the best way to talk to nonvegans about not using animals is to explain to them in clear terms why other animals aren't ours to use. The call for "baby steps!" is patronizing, honestly, as if nonvegans are somehow unable to grasp simple concepts like sentience or to be able to weigh actual facts rather than be coddled. Even more often, I'll hear the term "stepping-stone" tossed around to excuse advocating for variations on reduced animal use. A clear argument for veganism is what got me to go and stay vegan and the many, many years I teetered between lacto-vegetarianism and strict vegetarianism were no stepping-stone at all: They were a bog in which I was quite contentedly stuck, engaging in communal congratulatory backslapping with others in that same bog. I convinced myself that I was doing "enough" until someone finally told me that I wasn't and explained why in plain language. Many other abolitionist vegans with whom I've had conversations over the years have shared similar stories and sentiments. Why on earth would I advocate anything less than veganism and risk leading others into that same bog?

What the Veganism I Advocate Surely, Surely Ain't

So let's go back to Smith's article on The Thinking Vegan and this so-called vegan advocacy in which those who dodge being clear and consistent in providing it with a clear animal rights context now claim to be engaging . What's it left us with? The Huffington Post has become what a fellow-abolitionist and I half-jokingly call "re-veganism central" over the last few years, with its numerous articles by "former" vegans, wool-wearing or honey-eating "vegans" and as of this week (assuming I haven't missed any previous gems!) even butter and cheese eating "vegans". To her credit, Sasha Turgman does indeed add a "mostly" qualifier in her article's title and otherwise occasionally slips it into her article "On Being a Mostly Vegan". The article focuses on diet only, which is no longer a surprise in mainstream media articles touted as being about veganism. Turgman does refer to herself as a vegan without the qualifier, though, as if somehow being a "mostly" vegan is being a type of vegan.

I decided to become a vegan [...]

When I first became a vegan [...]

In fact, she describes herself quite explicitly at the beginning of the article (albeit again merely focusing on diet) as not eating some animal products:

It never crossed my mind that I would choose to give up all the creamy deliciousness of my favorite food to become a vegan, but here I am, meat, cheese and dairy-product free.

She lumps herself in with vegans again by perpetuating a few stereotypes to clarify to her readers that "we're not all tree-hugging, paint-throwing, fanatical activists" and that what apparently differentiates her from those other awful, awful vegans is her own insight into what acceptable veganism should be like: "It's about listening to my body and being healthy, if I eat butter or cheese one night, who cares?" (It's no wonder that she inserts into the article at some point that being whatever-it-is-she-is-that-clearly-isn't vegan "hasn't been hard at all"!)

Whenever I hear other animal advocates insist that they accomplish something by taking an apparently more kind and gentle poke at the status quo as they fall short of talking to people about plainly and simply not using other animals, there is inevitably another Sasha Turgman who pops up in mainstream media. And these Sasha Turgmans indulge in a weird sort of self-congratulatory happy dance, presenting themselves as some sort of vegan while unapologetically condoning -- even promoting -- not just that any human should continue to use other animals, but that vegans should as well. (Y'know, lest you want to end up branded a "fanatical activist" or something.)

You tell me, though: Baby-step or bog? It seems pretty obvious to me that it's incredibly disingenuous of us as advocates to conveniently omit any mention of the actual ethics of using and exploiting others. In teaching people that there's anything about vegan advocacy -- about veganism -- that shrugs off deliberately choosing to continue to exploit other animals, are we in fact advocating the taking of steps or are we merely advocating standing still? And if those of us who engage in advocacy don't present nonvegans with a clear consistent message about what veganism really is and of how it must factor in the rights and interests of others to not be exploited, who will? Surely not "(mostly) vegans" like Sasha Turgman.

To learn more about abolitionist animal rights and about vegan advocacy, please visit The Abolitionist Approach website.