this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024

29 points (80.9% liked)

vegan

2644 readers

197 users here now

Please also check out vegantheoryclub.org for a great set of well-run communities for vegan news, cooking, gardening, and art. It is not federated with LW, but it is a nice, cozy, all-in-one space for vegans.

We ask that the you have an understanding on what veganism is before engaging in this community.

If you think you have been banned erroneously, please get in contact with one of the other mods for appeals.

Moderator reports may not federate properly and may delay moderator action. Please DM an active mod if an abusive comment remains after reporting it.

Welcome

Welcome to c/[email protected]. Broadly, this community is a place to discuss veganism. Discussion on intersectional topics related to the animal rights movement are also encouraged.

What is Veganism?

'Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals ...'

— abridged definition from The Vegan Society

Rules

The rules are subject to change, especially upon community feedback.

Discrimination is not tolerated. This includes speciesism.
Topics not relating to veganism are subject to removal.
Posts are to be as accessible as practicable:
- embedded images of text require alt-text
- posts with an image of text should have a transcription in the body or alt-text
- paywalled articles must have an accessible non-paywalled link;
- use the original source whenever possible for a news article.
Content warnings are required for triggering content.
Bad-faith carnist rhetoric & anti-veganism are not allowed, as this is not a space to debate the merits of veganism. Anyone is welcome here, however, and so good-faith efforts to ask questions about veganism may be given their own weekly stickied post in the future.
- before jumping into the community, we encourage you to read examples of common fallacies here.
- if you're asking questions about veganism, be mindful that the person on the other end is trying to be helpful by answering you and treat them with at least as much respect as they give you.
Posts and comments whose contents – text, images, etc. – are largely created by a generative AI model are subject to removal. We want you to be a part of the vegan community, not a multi-head attention layer running on a server farm.
No brigading, either off-site or on-site. An incitement to brigade includes two elements: a call to disruptive action and a specific direction outside of this community in which to take that action. Exceptions include:
- Calls to boycott.
- Calls to in-person protest of a government, high-profile individual, or company/organization.
- Votes provided they have a sufficiently broad target audience or provably effective controls against vote brigading.
- Petitions.
All Lemmy.World Terms of Service also apply.

Resources on Veganism

A compilation of many vegan resources/sites in a Google spreadsheet:

vegancheatsheet.org

Here are some documentaries that are recommended to watch if planning to or have recently become vegan:

You Will Never Look at Your Life in the Same Way Again
Dominion (2018) (CW: gore, animal abuse)

Vegan Fediverse

Lemmy: vegantheoryclub.org

Mastodon: veganism.social

Other Vegan Communities

Attribution

Banner image credit: Jean Weber of INRA on Wikimedia Commons

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Direct Vegans Need to be More Supportive (lemmy.ca)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

TDLR: Be more supportive towards other vegans to reduce burnout in the community.

Rant incoming:

I wish the Direct Vegans would be more supportive of the friendly vegans as all forms of activism are valid and needed. It can be difficult enough being ostracized by your carnist friends and family for doing the right thing only to be met with the same treatment from your fellow vegans only because they're doing things differently (Not everyone is capable of doing disruptive protests as they take a lot of energy) Burnout is a serious problem in the vegan community, as not being supported is the number 1 reason why people quit being vegan.

Some vegans say just focus on the animals not health or the environmental aspects while ethics is important to bring up we need to focus on the whole picture. Some carnists are more likely to be swayed by health or environmental reasons, so its important to focus on those when discussing the matter with them. Some carnists need to have a baseline of knowledge before they feel ready to make the switch (it would be daunting to change if they didn't have someone polite walking through the beginning) then once they know we bring in the cold hard facts of how the animals are being treated in animal agriculture and now they have more options in reducing suffering in their minds instead of just "more free range family farms" or "we need to hunt more"

We need vegans doing street outreach, running petitions, writing to their representatives, creating flyers, organizing groups, teaching others how to cook ethically, filming documentaries, writing news articles, requesting vegan options, volunteering at sanctuaries, running fediverse instances.

No one has the right to tell your form of activism for the animals is pointless because it is making a difference.

We should be supportive of one another not dismissive of anyone's form of activism. We need to save each other's energy as much as possible because we all get enough flak as is.

If you believe your form of activism is really successful, please use suggestive tone as it more respectful towards everyone's different situations.

top 8 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] MrScottyTay 13 points 3 days ago (2 children)

What is a "direct vegan"?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Someone who is upfront and focuses their activism through the shock factor like breaking into factory farms to rescue the animals, going into grocery stores/restaurants and calling people out for buying animal products and displaying the factory farming footages publicly.

[–] MrScottyTay 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

That is a very wide net you've cast.

From what I see a lot of the ones that get into liberations and whatnot don't usually look down on those that don't because they know the risks behind it.

I think you might be projecting somewhat, or just been really unlucky in meeting awful people.

I've met nothing but super nice active people, I'm mostly on the support side when it comes to activism, helping out here and there but not getting into the actual outreach side because I'm not that good at remember specific talking points and facts, but I still find a way to help out.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 days ago

A phrase that made me roll my eyes, and tipped me over the edge, to block this community. Baaayyyeee

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Sensible argument.

In any form of activism there's a solid case to be made for the good-cop bad-cop approach. Take the environmental movement. Without direct action, many issues would never have made it onto the political agenda. But it takes lobbying by the establishment mass-membership groups to translate that energy into laws. The latter worries that the former is playing with fire, while the former disdains the latter as bourgeois sell-outs. In reality, it's the combination of both that's powerful.

As someone who is vegan-adjacent, I do worry about overreach by the "direct" vegans. For quite a lot of normies, veganism is now seen as something of a religious cult, an annoyance. Worse, it's been politicized onto the left-right spectrum, just like the climate issue was. Yes, that's all completely unfair, but it's also a perilous situation. Alienating such a hefty chunk of the population is not the way to achieve the goals of veganism.

So yes, the only way to start rolling this back is with a better effort at tolerance and understanding. Tolerance of different approaches to activism, and also just tolerance in general, including of non-vegans who may not be fully aware of the issues or who may already be taking small steps in the right direction.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I think a big part of the issue is that a lot of people view diet as an individual choice, and want nothing to do with activism.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Sure. That's certainly my case. But I don't think choosing "individually" is very common, in general. For most humans food is a part of shared culture: they just eat what the people around them eat. And so it inevitably becomes it becomes a pillar of identity, and to question it is to attack that identity. You know all this already, of course.

PS. Wasn't me who downvoted your polite and inoffensive comment. I wish whoever did would take their petty resentments elsewhere.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

+1 to health/environment reasons first, then animal rights.

I used to be one of those carnists who refused to care and justified my choices in stupid ways. I made the switch to vegetarianism for environmental reasons, and once I did that I had no reason to ignore animal abuse.

I became vegan for animal rights.

I think the argument made that rich people don't deserve to be rich because it's an accident of birth should apply to animals. It's an accident of birth that they're born into factory farms and know only suffering, our struggles for liberty are bound up with theirs. This world is cruel and we have a lot of privilege we can use to do a whole lot of good.