Posts tagged Vegan

lavenderlabia:

thatchickpaige:

I really do enjoy your posts and reblogs, but I’m just truly curious what it is you have against vegans? I’m a vegetarian on the path to becoming a vegan one day and it just seems that you’re another person shaming for our choice to abstain. I know you’re not like that, though, so could you give me some insight into this? Maybe we can help enlighten each other on this constant conflict between what I call the ‘tarians’ (vegans, vegetarians, pescetarians, etc.) and the society normal diet.

Thanks for your question (if you’re not happy with this being published, let me know and I’ll take it down). 

There are many things I have against vegans, namely most of the core tenets of the vegan belief system (I’m talking about those beliefs that go beyond mere dietary choices). I’m rather exhausted tonight, so I’m just going to briefly explain the main problems I have, and then link to a few other places in my blog instead of going over it all again. If there’s still anything that’s unclear just let me know. 

Racism: believing that all cultures and races should adhere to a value system that completely erases their beliefs, practices and needs; trivialising PoC’s history by using terms like slavery to describe farming or eating meat (the people who do this are usually the same people who evoke rape or Holocaust comparisons) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9).

Classism: ignorance of the difficulties lower socio-economic groups face when sourcing food; perpetuating bullshit tropes like “beans are cheap, you can live on beans”; failing to recognise that food deserts exist (1) (2) (3).

Ableism: refusing to understand the reasons many people cannot maintain a vegan diet (eating disorders, autistic/OCD textural aversion, digestive or gastric issues, etc) (1) (2) (3).

Hypocrisy: valuing animals over people and perpetuating the falsehood that vegan diets are “cruelty free” (when they are only “animal cruelty free” and even then it’s arguable they aren’t because of things like deforestation) (1).

PETA: this should be self-explanatory (1). 

Self-righteousness: same as above (1). 

To summarise: I’m not shaming someone’s choice to abstain. I’m shaming the choice vegans make to shame those who aren’t vegan, who don’t want to become vegan or can’t become vegan. 

Here is another excellent summary.

And to pre-empt someone derailing this with “but not all vegans are like that” let me say: I know that. And if you aren’t like the vegans described above, then I’m not talking about you and we’re cool. My issue with vegans is as a group, not on an individual basis.

If anyone has the energy or patience to contribute other links or commentary, please do.

adentrodemisojos:

ladyatheist:

myrrhactivism:

camirebolledok:

ladyatheist:

[Anonymous asked you: I’m in recovery from an eating disorder. A big part of my ED was going vegan. I noticed how much I lost, and it became an addiction. If I go vegan again, I WILL backslide into my ED, considering it already happened once. I’m sorry, but my life is more important to me.]

Veganism has helped many people with EDs too. I hope the person gets better though. Once it’s gone, veganism shouldn’t be a problem.

Hello, vegan person with ED here. Being vegan certainly made it easier to starve myself, but the two were not related.

I’ve been vegan for 5 years and mostly recovered from my ED for 4. You can be vegan and recover from your disorder. And you must, for the sake of the animals that die to become your food. It’s ok to need help but it’s not ok to use your ED as an excuse.

Please please read this. I know I should not engage in discussion in the english side of tumblr but I  HAVE to do it now. I feel obliged to inform people that says that people HAVE to go vegan of a few things.

I live in a country in which soy is the top exported good.  many multinational companies use my country’s land to plant soy. Soy is used for many things, and among them it is used to replace meat and produce a drink that replaces milk and many other foods that are very frequent in vegan diets. Now, while it must seem like a good thing to not kill animals and eat soy-based products as a source of protein I can’t even begin to explain how nocive and criminal the soy producing companies around the world are. I can tell you that in my country even cattle farming is done in a more enviromental-friendly way than soy production even as it sounds crazy. (And it is, because the system used for cattle breding, called something along the lines of extensive husbandry or extensive farming  is vastly different of the intensive model  used in the  USA, you can look it up  because I doubt I have the language to explain it well.)

Soy Companies are destroying vast lands of forest and jungles  to plant soy as much as they can, until the soil is left  virtually void of minerals and  useless, so they go  plant somewhere else. And they plan to keep that up until there is no more fertile soil in my land. And they CAN do that, because soy is such a great bussines that they become richer and richer and richer everytime.  The jungles and forest I mentioned that are destroyed are the homes of animals and people that loose their homes and their food  sources.  Many  animals DIE  becuase of soy production, and so does many people.   Casually, the people who suffers more are rural workers, many of whom live in really miserable conditions and many of whom are native american.  Also, those jungles and forest are  full of many endangered animal and vegetal species that are lost forever. This is happening in the Chaco and the  Amazonas. 

This happens because these companies bribe, coerce and intimidate senators and government figures to be allowed to do that to the land and our people. They  associate with and support finnancially the most opressive political parties in our country.  They have their workers in really horrible conditions and they show criminal behavior to the worker unions. 

Also,  there are a few companies, like the most important soy companies in the world, that do many other terrible things. They  have copyrighted seeds so when farmers want to plant soy they have to buy only to them and pay rights to the company for their production. They sue farmers for using their seeds  without paying rights… wich means that whoever you buy soy from you are ultimately  benefiting THAT huge company anyway. I won’t type the name because it’s like Voldemort.  You can see a bit  of that in Deborak Koons García documentary, the future of food.  There are other movies and sources of information but sadly the most that I know of are in spanish.

Please think that taking care of the environment is a lot more than protecting a part of it, the furry, big eyed part of the environment that has the ability  to stare acussingly at you. It’s a lot more than caring for the animals because we can tell that they can feel pain ( and if so, does that mean that  we should kill beings unguiltily because they don’t feel pain?), or becuase they’re cute, or because we like them and feel empathy for them. Taking care of the environment is taking care of how much impact  every action humans have on it. Forcefully, because we exist, we will have effects on the environment. We will serve from it, but thepoint is doing so with respect.  You can eat a cow, but if you eat the cow make sure that nothing is wasted.  Make sure of not wasting anything because an animal died. Eat that with respect, knowing where it came from. Use every part of the cow.  The same way your intestinal bacteria feeds from you now and will eat you when you die, we feed from nature and nature feeds from us.  You can decide not to wear leather, but will you buy plastic instead? You can decide not to eat meat, but will you buy soy instead? 

Please think again. Look at the bigger picture to know if you ARE taking care of nature or not. 

And if you decide to eat soy products don’t be offended if I paraphrase you, and tell you MUST, for the sake of the world, the endangered species, the fertility of the soil of my land, the welfare of MY PEOPLE, my people’s ability to fight for their rights without the interference of  multinational companies, the lives of my native american brothers and sisters, my country’s working class, our trees, our flora, our fauna, our soil, our culture, our lives, and the safety of future generations  eliminate soy as a part of your diet.  It’s NOT ok to use your simpathy for animals as an excuse for contributing to what is done to the environment  while feeling wholesome about it. 

I really am telling you this guys to she dlight about what happens here everyday. Of course it’s not your fault if you don’t know this things  but please please listen. 

(Source: brashblacknonbeliever, via brashblacknonbeliever)