No Emily, Veganism Isn't Just About You or Me

A self-described vegan called Emily Weingarten wrote a fairly negative review of Bob and Jenna Torres' Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World for the AnnArbour.com website yesterday ("We're vegans, not freaks"). I admit (with a small amount of embarrassment) that I have not yet read the book. It's been on my "must read" list since I first stumbled across their Vegan Freak Radio podcast a few years back. The podcast was where I first learned about abolitionist animal rights and Bob and Jenna were the first two vegans I'd ever heard discussing veganism as anything other than a "personal choice". I had spent years wandering about in various online vegetarian communities where vegans were often labeled "extremists" and where vegans having the audacity to talk about veganism were often chided for hurting others' feelings by suggesting (or even rudely asserting) that consuming dairy or eggs or using any other animal product was wrong. Hearing Bob and Jenna's podcast was a relief; Bob and Jenna's were the first two voices I'd ever heard presenting veganism as the absolute least we can do if we're serious about the rights and interests of nonhuman animals, and they did so in this matter-of-fact way that made veganism sound normal and the consumption and use of nonhuman animals sound extremist.

Their podcast also led me to the serious and earnest study of Prof. Gary Francione's writings and of his abolitionist approach to animal rights, which has the sort of clarity that left me sorry I hadn't had it pointed out to me sooner, so that I wouldn't have wasted years fooling myself into thinking I was doing enough for animals. (It's kind of funny and completely coincidental, actually, that with the exception of a brief mention of my interest in Prof. Francione's work a few months beforehand, my first actual post discussing it in any way was almost exactly two years ago.)

So why am I writing about a review of a book by a couple whose advocacy literally changed my life, when I haven't in fact read it? It's not so much what Weingarten said about the book itself that I want to address, as much as what she makes obvious feeds into what she's said. Before she dives into that, Weingarten says of the Torres' book that

Vegan Freak is a sort of vegan manifesto in which the authors [...] attempt to instill vigor and commitment into already-vegans and inspire non-vegans to take on the lifestyle. There isn’t anything wrong with this. Sometimes the only way for vegans to get respect is to be able to eloquently state their reasons for being vegan and to be consistent in their diet and lifestyle.

After what to many might sound a fair and reasonable statement, Weingarten continues, throwing in the "however" which is the raison d'être for her entire piece: "Inspiring others to be vegan is OK, so long as it doesn’t go too far." What could she mean by "too far"? She provides one example of it in pretty explicit detail when she states that it's not her intention to focus on that particular example of it:

I don’t want to write a blog entry criticizing Vegan Freak because the authors spend so much time criticizing anyone who is not vegan and using a variety of other negative tones such as cursing profusely and making bad sexual jokes.

Now, I don't want to write a blog post criticizing Weingarten for criticizing Vegan Freak's authors for engaging in what she views as their unacceptable behaviour or delivery, partially because she cites no specific examples of it (and I haven't read the book). Most importantly, though, since I haven't read the book and since humour and tone are such subjective things I could get lost in trying to deconstruct what she means by "criticizing anyone who is not vegan" and discussing the thousands of increments between words like "tasteful" and "prudish" that would come up in discussing language use and sexual references. Instead, I want to focus on the remainder of Weingarten's review, which isn't so much a review of the book, as it is a lecture on appropriate behaviour for vegans--her own "manifesto" of sorts.

Weingarten writes, first, that "[a]ny reasons for being vegan are great, so long as they are motivated by a desire to create some sort of positive change." I sort of agree with that. I mean, environmental and health factors are certainly valid motivators to go vegan, for a variety of complex reasons. She writes this, however, as if wanting to criticize the Torres' focus on what is ultimately the most important reason anyone should have to stop using nonhuman animals--the basic immorality of using them at all. It's a tiny shaming, really, that could be overlooked if not for the fact that it becomes a recurring theme in her piece. She goes on to emphasize the "green" factor further in a second point by making the mistake of creating a false dichotomy, asserting that "[e]nvironmental vegans are just as valuable as ethical vegans". As seen in a recent essay on the Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach website, it's not an either/or situation ("Veganism: Morality, Health, and the Environment"). For further reading on veganism, animal rights and environmentalism, do check out Vincent Guihan's essay from last August on his We Other Animals blog ("I would throw 1000 ancient redwoods out of the lifeboat to save one kitten! It's not because I'm bad; it's because plants aren't sentient").

Weingarten really goes downhill from there. Her third point is "Veganism is about you", and in it--never mind the wrongheaded title of the point itself--she makes two errors. The first is that she more or less contradicts a statement made in her first point, where she asserted that one's reasons to go vegan should not be selfish ones--that they should not be "vain". In explaining her third point, she writes about veganism being about making yourself feel better and reassures her readers that "[i]t’s OK to be proud of yourself for making these personal choices". So... it both should and shouldn't be about patting yourself on the back. Her second error involves trying to redefine "veganism" to include the option of deliberately choosing to use animal products; if you have any doubt of how "personal" she feels these "choices" are, note this particularly confusing statement:

Being vegan might also make you consider how the clothes you wear make you feel, and you might stop wearing leather, wool, and silk.

I'd like to think that Weingarten slipped and actually knows that "being vegan" means that you don't wear leather, wool and silk--not just that "you might stop wearing" them. Maybe her slip-up was due to the fact that those words were mostly filler leading up to the bona fide punch of her point (i.e. another otherwise easily overlooked tiny shaming of the Torres' or of other vocal vegans that just adds to the small pile that is her recurring finger-wagging theme) where Weingarten reminds vegans to act with "modesty and humility around non-vegans". (Disapointingly, though, Weingarten does indeed go on to further illustrate her confusion about what is meant by "veganism" a bit later in the piece.)

Weingarten's issues with vocal vegans who choose to educate others about veganism become even more apparent as she goes on to explain that since the "whole world isn't going to stop eating meat" and we "cannot expect our entire society to adopt a vegan lifestyle when meat and dairy are central components of most Americans’ diets", we apparently need to 1) manage our expectations of others' behaviour and (hey, since everybody else is doing it anyway, and we don't want to look like unreasonable extremist "freaks" or anything) 2) change our own behaviour to better adapt to the expectations of others that we be more like them when it comes either consuming or not consuming animal products. Weingarten's opinion of vegan advocacy is summed up when she says:

What we can do is support the people who are interested in learning more about vegan lifestyle and possibly becoming vegan without alienating ourselves by projecting our vegan philosophies on others who may not be interested at all.

Let me translate: Go be vegan in the world and if someone happens to notice and to express curiosity about it, great, but otherwise, shut your pie-hole about it, because telling people that using animals is wrong is preachy and rude. Have any doubts about Weingarten's opinion being that avoiding being rude to your fellow humans trumps the rights and interests of animals? Read on:

Yes, the dairy industry can be just as cruel and unethical as the meat industry, but vegetarians and vegans have many common values, and as vegans, we must respect that in order to be respected.

She admits that although consuming dairy is unethical that to obtain respect, vegans in turn need to "respect" (i.e. turn a blind eye to the fact) that vegetarians continue to engage in this unethical behaviour and opt to exploit animals since we apparently have "common values" (which obviously exclude those values that lead vegans to refrain from continuing to voluntarily and knowingly use animals as things). But according to Weingarten, in yet another little shaming, merely voicing the obvious truth would be disrespectful.

Furthermore, one's so-called "personal choice", as Weingarten so adamantly described it, suddenly becomes a public and political one when faced with whether to leave aside our ethics to instead consume animal products offered to us by others. According to Weingarten, it seems that non-vegans are emotional messes incapable of processing someone's being consistent about his or her ethics; suddenly, the "no, thank you" involving eating animals or their secretions becomes a selfish choice. To illustrate this, Weingarten, the self-described vegan, writes:

It might make me a speciest [sic] to say this, but people are much more important to me than animals. So if on my birthday, someone makes or buys me a non-vegan cake, I’m going to have a slice to avoid offending that person or causing hurt feelings.

So, on top of not talking to non-vegans about veganism, lest you offend them, being a really good vegan also means eating animal parts or secretions, lest you "offend" that non-vegan by refusing to do so. Yet, strangely, at the beginning of her piece, Weingarten herself wrote that

Sometimes the only way for vegans to get respect is to be able to eloquently state their reasons for being vegan and to be consistent in their diet and lifestyle.

Weingarten then wraps up her piece by going back to the book and claiming that it lacks the "compassion, humility, peacefulness that is [sic] inherent to a vegan lifestyle". The truth is, though, that Weingarten's article displays a lack of the sort of consistency, logic and understanding (most notably of veganism, itself) that are inherent to actually being able to comment with any sort of authority (or sense, really) on veganism or on how vegans should behave in the world.

Her piece isn't so much written in good faith as it is a passive-aggressive reprimand of vegans who don't stay in the vegan closet. It ends up conveying a sense that vegans are outcasts who should keep their veganism to themselves unless asked (although if vegans should hide their veganism, one is left to wonder how non-vegans would even think to ask about it). It conveys that that vegans should keep their veganism to themselves, even if it means compromising their ethics to avoid hurting the feelings of those who choose to keep treating nonhuman animals as things for human use and enjoyment. I don't know about you, but I think that we owe nonhuman animals more than to agree to behave as if it's somehow improper to assert that it's wrong to use them as our property. Weingarten, on the other hand, makes it clear that she thinks that we owe nonhuman animals less. That, in fact, is a shame.

The Importance of Vegan Advocacy

Educating others about veganism is one of the six principles of the abolitionist approach to animal rights. Promoting anything less is promoting or endorsing the continued use of animals, and one's own decision to become vegan is merely a starting point in terms of everything we can do to teach others to stop using animals as property. As Vincent Guihan points out in his latest blog post at We Other Animals, educating others about veganism literally "lay[s] the groundwork for abolition" but there is so much more in addition to it that abolitionists can and should do for nonhuman animals.

Check out my friend Pao as she throws her own two cents in to discuss why we should be advocating for veganism (check out her YouTube channel for more videos at porolita22). For more information about the abolitionist approach to animal rights, visit Prof. Gary L. Francione's website, Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach.

What Other Abolitionists Have Been Saying

I've failed to keep up over this past week with many of the online goings of my fellow abolitionists, aside from just trying to keep track of who's been writing or engaging in some sort of advocacy work. I think that this next week will be one delayed reaction after another for me as I catch up on the great work and musings that have been shared online.

For instance, this morning I read Ken Hopes' latest post on his brockway hall blog about definitions or representations of the word "vegan" on things like t-shirts. It's an interesting post that says a lot about how one identifies with veganism and it conveys how the words describing it may indeed very easily become catch phrases that feel a bit lacking to actual vegans. Abolitionist Nathan Schneider also recently examined words and language, albeit in his case, it concerned how we (un)knowingly use speciesist language in everyday life to classify animals as things.

Over at We Other Animals, Vincent J. Guihan has been keeping busy writing about "Vegan" Outreach's Matt Ball, and how he's been parroting the welfarist mantra by referring to most vegans as fanatical and purist. Guihan uses this as a starting point to talk about propaganda within the animal movement and to reflect upon how

[c]onfrontational comments on blog posts, tweets and other media from regulationist advocates, name calling, mud slinging, and other forms of personalizing disagreements are intended to intimidate other advocates. Innocuous seeming enough out of context. But when it reflects a pattern of repetitive behaviour, it equally often reflects a subtle and not so subtle harassment of other advocates.

Guihan goes on to discuss recent attacks on the abolitionist community and how, at the very least, all they've managed to do is sway animal movement' attention from the really important work of promoting veganism and of advocating for nonhuman animals. Guihan engages in this thing called "advocacy", himself, in his most recent blog post in which he lays out how taking down the industry that profits off the cycle of animal exploitation cannot be attempted in any other manner than with an understanding that consumer demand is what drives suppliers to continue providing the general public with animal products. As long as consumers want, suppliers will provide and attacking suppliers for doing so is wrongheaded and ineffective at best.

(A few other recent pieces that I want to highlight are Vegan Examiner Adam Kochanowicz's "How to Reduce Suffering and Other Wrong Questions to Ask" which addresses how the very use of animals--and not how they are used--should be the focus in fighting the exploitation of animals and Gentle World volunteer Angel Flinn's recent essay "All Heaven in a Rage" in which she discusses how speciesism leads us to condemn the killing of some nonhuman animal while shrugging off the killing of others.)

I hope to post (and ramble) about more things that have been written (or said via podcast) by fellow abolitionists over the next several days. Although I feel that I've been missing out by falling out of the loop while on vacation, it's heartening to me that there continues to be so much activity and education on behalf of nonhuman animals.

Using Violence to Stop the Violence?

"The essence of nonviolence is love. Out of love and the willingness to act selflessly, strategies, tactics, and techniques for a nonviolent struggle arise naturally. Nonviolence is not a dogma; it is a process." -- Thich Nhat Hanh

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about violence over the past week. I mean, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about human violence--over and above the violent acts humans already commit against nonhumans every single day for the sake of human pleasure. There are some in the animal advocacy movement who believe that the only way to bring about the end of the everyday violent acts humans commit against nonhumans is to, in turn, commit violent acts against those humans. Considering that (depending on whose survey you read) a mere 1.5-2.5% or so of the population of the United States, for instance, self-identifies as vegan and claims to abstain from consuming animals in any manner, this basically means that a few individuals making up an ever-so-tiny fragment of that less than 3% want to put the smack down on the other 97%+ of the population to get them to stop killing the over 10 billion animals in the United States alone who are killed each and every year. (Uh, yeah--good luck with that.)

I won't ramble on about why committing violence to end violence is wrongheaded. Abolitionists like Vincent J. Guihan (over at his blog We Other Animals) have already made clear cases for the common-sense, efficacy and logic in using nonviolence and vegan education to effect change for nonhumans. For instance:

As advocates, our work is not a matter of reaction; it is a matter of transformation. We have to struggle to avoid confusing the wallpaper for the walls. We have to struggle to avoid confusing our work pulling down the walls of the house of slavery and violence with building those walls back up again through violent and confrontational behaviour of our own. We can only “tear the house down” by convincing its other builders to join us, not with threats and idiocy, but creative and nonviolent education that calls them to join us in a life that respects the rights of other persons to be free from violence and slavery.

It baffles me, really, that anyone would truly think that using fear and intimidation will change people's hearts and heads to allow the major paradigm shift that is needed to stop the overwhelming majority of us from thinking of nonhuman animals as things that exist solely for our use and pleasure--as our property.

Prof. Gary L. Francione, who has consistently promoted nonviolent vegan education to abolish the exploitation of nonhumans (you can read a couple of his earlier essays here and here), has also re-emphasized the avoidance of violence by vegans and animal rights advocates in his recent responses and reactions to the more recent calls for violence by a very few in the animal advocacy movement. He's done so in his podcast commentary of a few days ago, as well as over on the Opposing Views website and on his Facebook page, where discussions pertaining to the subject have been ongoing for several days on his Facebook profile page. It's on this Facebook page that Prof. Francione recently revealed that he has invited Steve Best, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso and spokesperson for the Animal Liberation Press Office, to a formal (or even an informal) debate on the use of violent or nonviolent approaches in animal advocacy. Although the conditions surrounding it are still being ironed out (and you'll need to visit Prof. Francione's Facebook page to get the dish on those details), it appears that there is indeed a good chance it may happen sooner or later. Stay tuned for more information!

Update: Although Vegan Examiner Adam Kochanowicz reported earlier today that a formal debate would be held on September 18 and would then appear on the Animal Voices talk show, Prof. Francione has since stated that he and Best will, in fact, be having the actual debate in a one-on-one Skype call with no moderation. There has been no information concerning a potential later broadcast as of this time.

After Turning My Head Away from the Internet for a Week

There's so much abolitionist animal rights activity online right now that I'm not even sure of where to start in terms of raving about it in any sort of detail. Two things worthy of nothing right off the bat, however, are that Prof. Gary L. Francione has entered the world of podcasting. In the "Abolitionist Approach Commentary", Prof. Francione has begun presenting a series that explores different issues and aspects of why we need to bring about the abolition--and not the regulation--of animal exploitation. His first podcast is on the myth and misrepresentation of vegetarianism as being a "gateway" to veganism and can be found here. His second podcast examines the issue of "pets" and can be found here. Speaking of podcasts... Vincent J. Guihan has steered his We Other Animals blog in a new direction with WOARadio. You can listen to his very first podcast ("I would throw 1000 ancient redwoods out of the lifeboat to save one kitten") here. Now to catch up with the rest of what's been going on while I've been sidetracked...

What I've Been Reading

The interwebs have been abuzz over the past few weeks with all of the abolitionist animal rights blogging that's been going on, as well as with the discussions that often follow. No mention of the pieces that have been published and circulated widely this week could be made without bringing up the recent essays by Prof. Gary L. Francione on his Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach website. His most recent, just from today, is called "Creative, Non-Violent Vegan Education--Easy and Effective". It's a culmination of sorts of several pieces he's written on the topic over the past while, as well as of a request for input he issued using the social networking site Facebook to ask his fellow vegans what they do to engage and educate others about veganism. When there's so much frustrating misinformation being passed around by animal welfarists about how regulating the existing horrors inherent in animal agriculture is the only possible way to have any impact upon the status quo, it's heartening to see that vegan abolitionists who take the rights of nonhumans seriously are plugging away nonetheless, working hard with great energy and enthusiasm to change that status quo.

(ETA: Speaking of things that are heartening: I'd mentioned a few days ago that Vincent J. Guihan, abolitionist and soon-to-be published vegan cookbook author, has resurrected his We Other Animals blog. In the tradition of Twitter's generally well-intentioned #followfriday (or #ff) ritual, I'd like to point out that We Other Animals is a positive kick-in-the-pants blog that every serious vegan abolitionist should bookmark, add to their readers of choice, or at the very very least, visit frequently for updates. Check out today's "The Pseudo-Zen of Regulated Animal Use Activism" if you need convincing from the man, himself, that "thankfully, not everyone is taken in by the absence of thinking". Do it!)

On Consistency

Vincent Guihan at We Other Animals wrote something today that anyone and everyone involved in animal advocacy needs to read. An excerpt:

They'll know us not by our words but by our works,and if our works promote a kinder, gentler slavery rather than an immediate, unconditional and unequivocal end to that slavery, then regardless of what we tell ourselves or others, there is no meaningful difference between "liberation" and "exploitation".

The rest of it is here.

N.B.: For a stellar example of a complete lack of consistency, check out this story about HSUS' "Save the Seals" cocktail reception, held at a swanky DC restaurant called Policy to promote their boycott of Canadian "seafood". Then check out the restaurant's menu, which aside from featuring a wide variety of all types of animal flesh and excretions also happens to feature PEI mussels. (The link to the original story about the HSUS reception was obtained from a tweet by Professor Gary L. Francione. You can follow him on Twitter @garylfrancione.)