An introduction to veganism, Part 2 (Transcript)
This is what I’ve been calling the anti-oppression view of veganism. I don’t think anyone’s come up with a particular term for it.
One of the great things about this view of veganism is that a lot of us are involved in a lot of different areas of social justice. And I heard some great examples here before we started this talk. The theory behind the animal welfare arguments are not in line with many of our understanding of sexist oppression, racist oppression, classist oppression, all these different other forms that we’re familiar with in the human realm. And this brings it back to that kind of common language that we’ve developed in studying these issues and brings veganism into that fold, which is very beneficial because we can then use the insight that we gain from studying one form and apply it to veganism and vice versa.
So one of the interesting things is that if we look at the first published definition of veganism, we find that it’s actually in line with this anti-oppression view. This was published in 1951 at the Vegetarian World Forum by the Vegan Society. They decided to publish this because there were many different interpretations of the word veganism, so they wanted to say explicitly what it actually meant. It says here, “The object of the [Vegan] Society shall be to end the exploitation of animals by man.” which today I think it would say by people or humans. “The word veganism shall mean the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals. The Society pledges itself in pursuance of its object to seek to end the use of animals by man for food, commodities, work, hunting, vivisection and all other uses involving exploitation of animal life by man.”
So here they talk entirely about use and they don’t talk about treatment. Sometimes people come back and say veganism means this, well veganism really was defined as this and later it’s been modified to mean something different. And its come to mean more of a dietary thing and perhaps what we wear and what kind of products we buy. Here, it’s very clear it’s about living without exploiting animals.
In other words, anti-oppression view of veganism can be stated as the belief that it’s wrong to use any being without their free consent. This is a definition I like.
Another person says it’s the belief that it’s wrong to impose on the life of any being — that it’s wrong to force, control, or otherwise disrespect any being. And these are all great definitions.
A lot of people mistake this to mean that people who have this view think that suffering is okay. And that’s definitely not the case. It’s more of an understanding that the suffering results from the underlying use without consent, so if we work on that issue, that takes care of the suffering.
Because many of you are very active in other forms of anti-oppression work, I think you understand that there are very similar forces at play no matter what the kind of oppression; the shape is different but the pattern is very similar. So to oppose the oppression of non-human animals necessarily means to oppose the oppression of human animals as well. So we can do both. Just like there’s a FAQ for activists, “you care about animals more than you care about people” and “you can care about both.” Well, we can care about both.
So there is a great book called Animal Rights, Human Rights. This talks about a model of oppression that I personally found very helpful. I’ve never taken a formal class on anti-oppression, sort of learned as I went. If you know this stuff, then great. If you don’t know this stuff, I would ask you to look at this and see how it matches your experience and see if it makes sense to you.
According to this theory, there are three interrelated factors which contribute to oppression. So the first is the motivation, which is psychological or economic gain. The second is the capability, which is unequal power or power imbalance. So this is the capability to force something on another. The third is the justification, which is ideological control.
One of the interesting things about this theory is that ideological control actually comes out of the first two factors, although they’re all related and they all co-create each other. So, for example, racism doesn’t cause racist oppression, it actually is the result of racist oppression to justify it in the eyes of the oppressor.
This is something I think would be beneficial for the animal rights understanding, because a lot of times speciesism is thought of as a personal prejudice under those systems. We can see here, if we believe this model, then we understand speciesism to be the result of speciesist oppression. So, “Why should we care? They’re just animals. They’re here for us to eat.” So “they’re just animals” the speciesism comes out of our already benefiting from using them.
So in terms of speciesist oppression, we can see the first factor as exploitation of non-human animals in all its various forms, whether its the circus, a rodeo, aquarium, us cutting down their forests. The second factor is human supremacy and the third is speciesism.
Like I said, I never really had much book training on anti-oppression and I’m starting to see the value of it from reading this, because it was a really big deal for me to have a way of understanding this stuff. So once we start to understand it in this way, we can start seeing what happens with non-human animals in these terms, and then we can start to make good decisions about how do we oppose speciesist oppression.
So if you want to read more about it, it’s in the first chapter of this book, it’s called Animal Rights, Human Rights by David Nibert.
Like I said earlier, this is a very integrated understanding that brings into veganism all these other social justice movements and what they have learned over the years. And it also means that as an anti-oppression vegan, my opposition to all these other forms of oppression falls under the same umbrella and can come from the same place. And so my understanding of anti-speciesism can inform my understanding of sexist oppression, and it can go the other way as well.
This understands oppression as a systemic condition and this is very, very important. This is one of the biggest differences between this understanding and others is seeing the way that there are larger forces than personal ones at play.
Again, it views speciesist oppression as one form among many.
So if we look at this first one, we can start seeing that all those ad campaigns that might give some of us the chills, so there is a recent one, “Fur is a Drag” which is transphobic, and other ones that exploit the female body, or which play on racist stereotypes or play on xenophobia. We can start to understand them as antithetical to veganism versus seeing them as a tactic that promotes veganism; we can see them as something that doesn’t really help.
Talking about veganism changes quite a bit under this view. I know I’ve been trained to talk about veganism in terms of all the different things that happen to animals. So we talk about tail docking, we talk about beak searing, toe trimming. When I first became vegan, I started learning every single thing that happened to animals, because I wanted to be prepared when I spoke with somebody. But now, actually, I’ve started intentionally not talking about these things because they’re not so important. What’s important is that we are imposing our will on another being without their consent.
This is one way, it’s in the pamphlet, of talking about it. And this really emphasizes relationships. It talks about humans do this to animals, it’s not animals are suffering in a vacuum, it’s humans are doing this to other animals. That makes it very explicit what the power relationship is and lets people know they can do something about it because they’re part of the category of humans and they can work to end that connection.
“Humans breed, ‘raise,’ and kill animals so we may take the products of their bodies” — that’s talking about the motivation — “milk, eggs, flesh, fur, skin — from them for us to consume. We breed animals to serve us; they’re never given a choice.” You’ll notice it doesn’t talk so much about the particulars of what we do. Even though at the top of the pamphlet, it does talk about some of the things that happen to animals, but as a way of illustrating use without consent, rather than the specific practice being something we’re working on ending. We want to end the use entirely. So it’s a different way of talking about veganism which I haven’t been able to find anywhere else, so that’s why we made this pamphlet. Otherwise, we’d use someone else’s.
One thing that people often have as a concern about this view of veganism is that it seems a little abstract and maybe difficult to convey with other people. I’ve actually found that the opposite is true. I had that concern as well at first, but my experience is that people really do connect with this very directly, particularly if they have some other area in their lives where they have some understanding of these issues already. Previously, conversations about this issue were like, “animals are suffering,” they say, “I eat animals who didn’t suffer,” and I say, “well, okay, great.” Today, I say, “animals are being used without their consent.” People say, “well, i’ll eat the free range beef.” Then I can bring it back and say, “animals are still being used without their consent.” And they say, “Oh! You’re right!” And I can see that happening in people and what’s been really interesting is how in speaking with groups of people, people will start off by saying that and then they’ll start making the connections: “oh yeah, use without consent.” So no matter what the omnivore says, they understand there’s still use without consent involved. They make the connections themselves, so they’re like, “oh, wait, that’s still the same thing.” And they can work it out that way. Even if they end up saying, “I still want to eat meat,” at least that’s the actual reason. It comes out, versus having some sort of way out that is consistent with the argument I was presenting. I’ve seen people connect with this on a far deeper level than I’ve seen with speaking with people starting from suffering.
We talked a little about animal rights, a little about animal welfare. This middle section is really about my experiences with animal welfare and how it related with my understanding of veganism, and some of the contradictions that I felt, some of the tension which was underlying a lot of my activism when I was working with suffering as a starting point. And I’m happy to say that tension is not there now because I feel like the starting place for my advocacy now is much more in line with what the real starting point is for me.
I would encourage you all to really think about what veganism means to you. If you come into uncomfortable situations like I do, to think about why you’re in that position. If something is nagging, not to ignore it, but really to just investigate it, and see if there is something else going on there that is important to look at. because that can really change your advocacy quite significantly. I obviously believe in the anti-oppression view, but more important to me than promoting that view is for each of us to speak whatever truth we have personally about veganism rather than just taking what this group says or what that group says or what individuals say to us. To really understand what it means personally. With that, we learn a lot about ourselves and learn a lot about veganism and become very, very powerful advocates as well.
