Archive for January, 2009
Why did you go vegan?
Jan 29th
K. asked on the COMMUNITY list: “What was it that made everyone here go vegan?” I thought it would be nice to have a permanent location for us to share our stories and learn a little about each other. On the other parts of this web site, we use a specific definition of veganism, but please feel free to interpret this question however you like.
So, what was it that made you go vegan?
Anti-Oppression and Animal Rights
Jan 18th
How is anti-oppression different from animal rights? During the discussion of Steven’s post On Suffering and “Unnecessary Harm”, chernavsky wrote:
As far as I can tell, the philosophy promoted on this site is entirely compatible with the views of Gary Francione — and I’m actually surprised that he’s not mentioned anywhere. Here’s an excerpt from a lecture he gave:
“The foundational premise of the abolitionist perspective is veganism. As far as I’m concerned, veganism is the single most important form of social activism that anybody can engage in. And it’s not a lifestyle thing. It has to do with a commitment to non-violence, and it has to do with a commitment to the respect for persons, whether they are human persons or non-human persons.”
http://www.gary-francione.com/francione-rochester-lecture.html
I think there is an important distinction. Since this diverges somewhat from Steven’s original topic and because this may be of general interest, I thought I’d respond in this new thread. These comments are, for the most part, not specific to Francione’s formulation and also apply to the difference between anti-oppression and animal welfare.
An understanding of power (and the resulting privilege), which I think is central to the anti-oppression view of veganism, is something I have not seen in animal rights (or animal welfare) formulations. Stephen noted this as well. I know for myself I’ve had difficulty writing about power, so perhaps Francione’s view seems similar because we haven’t explained this point clearly enough.
My experience is that recognizing power comes naturally to oppressed groups. In the realm of confronting racism, people of color very often speak directly about power and privilege. I don’t think this is an accident. When one is in the oppressed group, I think it’s obvious that power imbalance is a huge problem. For those in the role of oppressor (as I am, among other ways, as a male), it may be more difficult to recognize: because I am in the power position, I don’t receive any push-back when exercising that power. Because privilege is so often invisible to the oppressor, if I don’t explicitly think in terms of power and privilege, I very likely will remain unaware of the true grip of sexism over my thoughts and actions and therefore be unable to disengage myself from participating in and perpetuating that system.
Similarly, when confronting speciesism, I am in the role of oppressor as a human animal with human animal privilege that is often invisible to me. By thinking directly in terms of power and privilege, I can start to disentangle myself from the sway of speciesist oppression, which necessarily also means working to end the broader systems supporting that oppression.
The anti-oppression view of veganism encompases both animal and human animal oppression. Power and privilege provide a common basis for understanding each of these oppressions. For many people, including myself, experience with multiple forms of oppression reveals patterns of interaction and behavior, all centered around power difference and privilege, common to all forms of oppression. For myself, it is difficult to speak in detail about any form of oppression without referring to power.
As a practical matter, I’m not sure how the abolition of animal use can be effected without addressing the issue of our power over animals. I imagine one might be able to say property status (a la Francione) is a way of exercising power over another, but that seems a step removed to me and therefore obscuring what seems to me to be the main point.
Acknowledging Privilege
Jan 17th
Conversations about privilege can be volatile. I feel an immediate contraction upon having my privilege called out. When Miranda points out a sexist statement or action I made, my reaction is to cover up my embarrassment by lashing out with anger “I’m not sexist! How dare you!”
This is an understandable reaction (right, Miranda?). After all, I don’t think sexism is okay and I don’t want to think that I participate in sexism. Basically, I’m embarrassed! But what I do is transfer my anger and make it the fault of the messenger. This is not very helpful. So one of my personal challenges is to move past the embarrassment and to listen to what Miranda is telling me about my actions.
I know when Miranda speaks with me about my privilege, she is not doing so to say that I am a “bad person,” but to let me know what I said hurt her so we can look at it together. Can I receive her feedback, not as a personal attack, but as one about my actions? At the same time, can I accept responsibility for my statements and actions and the harm they cause? And from there, what can I learn about myself and can this lead to personal growth and a deeper understanding of the issues?
Practicing communication with Miranda in this way helps me in the conversations we’re having at L.O.V.E. about speciesism. One challenge in speaking about speciesism is that we are speaking about ourselves. That is, each one of us holds speciesist views and human privilege. It’s inevitable given that we have grown up in and continue to live as humans in a human dominated world.
So for me, when we speak about speciesism, there is always the specter of that moment of contraction as I realize, “Whoa! You’re (or even I’m!) talking about me!” At that moment, my challenge is to not personalize the statement and to try to discern the content of the message to better understand my own human privilege and the larger society it emerges from.
I think this is an important role of being an ally to non-human animals. After all, it is only after recognizing and acknowledging my own speciesism that I can begin the work to end it in my own life and in the world.
thank you for being a friend
Jan 12th
This week, L.O.V.E. began rolling out our brand new Vegan Buddies project, intended to create groups of local vegans who work to take the philosophy of the L.O.V.E. collective in its virtual space and build a vegan community in their neighborhoods with the same principles. We are hoping that this will connect activists around the globe and help to create a vegan world.
Vegan Buddies will engage in such activities as demonstrations and video outreach, potluck dinners, book clubs, movie nights, bike rides, community building, and more! The great part about the project is that small groups of people can connect and organize events to fit their individual schedules. We are really excited about this project and hope it will help even more people to live veganism.
While we have received a number of great applications to the project, we still have a number of buddies not yet paired up because there is no one in close proximity to them! It’s only through word-of-mouth that we can grow this project to become a global effort. I would encourage you to sign up today for the project if you have not already done so, and please spread the word to your friends and allies.
Please contact me if you have any questions.
Much L.O.V.E. and best wishes for a happy new year!
On Suffering and “Unnecessary Harm”
Jan 12th
As long as vegans keep basing activism on suffering, I don’t believe other animals will see liberation, true freedom, and true respect. The suffering of other animals, as I see it, is only the effect of a bigger problem—human supremacy, humans wielding power over other animals, humans controlling the lives of other animals—and is not the problem itself. Focusing on suffering takes activists with good intentions away from the issues that can really effect change, the issues upon which nonhuman animal oppression is really based.
Here is one demonstration of such a distracted focus that I recently came across online. Gene Baur of Farm Sanctuary appeared on Larry King Live in 1991 to discuss factory farming. Many vegans currently support efforts to educate the public on factory farming. However, if the suffering and “cruelty” of these facilities—instead of the human supremacy, the dominance—is the focus, then I see endless reforms as being inevitable, delaying and even challenging deeper change. Here is a transcription of one exchange between Baur and King (video interview here):
Larry King: “Are you opposed to the eating of animals?”
Gene Baur: “Personally, I’m a vegetarian. But that’s a decision each of us has to make for ourselves.”
Larry King: “So those who want to be able to eat it [meat] should be able to eat it. You’re just saying there’s a more humane way of treating them and killing them.”
Gene Baur: “Absolutely.”
This is coming from the president and co-founder of a so-called “vegan” organization—one that “has never and will never support so-called ‘humane’ meat”—one that “maintain[s] that the words ‘humane’ and ‘slaughter’ are mutually exclusive” (from their website).
My point here is not to criticize a single organization or single individual, or a single individual’s slip-up, if that’s what it was. My point is to steer us away from this general notion that “humane” is what we’re looking for—that “suffering” is what we’re against. These are popular views in animal activism today, even among “vegan” groups.
For instance, another “vegan” organization, Vegan Outreach, claims the following: “[I]t is naïve, at best, to believe that any system will really take good care of the animals we pay them to slaughter. If you say an individual is just meat, they will be treated as such” (from their website). I think this logic lures in many vegan advocates, because it seems to staunchly oppose all meat production, and it seems to suggest a way of seeing other animals as individuals, not just the products taken from their bodies—a kind of respect, then.
But notice that the complaints VO makes are only about how other animals are “treated” on farms—not the fact that they are forced to stay on those farms in the first place; that they are held there without their consent; that humans have complete control over their bodies and lives. VO does not complain about human supremacy; they only complain about particularly cruel instances of human supremacy. They are O.K. with the master-and-slave relationship—just not O.K. with specific, “cruel” manifestations of it.
I haven’t read as much from Francione, so I would be personally unfounded in making general, sweeping claims there. However, from what I have read, I’ve seen a similar trend in focusing on suffering/pain/harm, specifically “unnecessary harm.” I realize that some of our supporters at L.O.V.E. currently espouse Francione’s beliefs, so in critiquing these ideas I want to emphasize that I am not personally attacking anyone or the work they’ve done. We all mean to do well, and I condemn no-one. I just want to start a discussion about these issues, because I think they are vital to our really achieving liberation in the long run.
I recently brought up the following point about an abolitionist definition of ‘vegan’ on our mailing list.
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E mentioned something that has been on my mind lately:
“[W]e ought to unequivocally draw the issue back to veganism (as the expression of one’s belief that it’s wrong to unnecessarily harm any animal, not just this one or that).”
I noticed this definition a couple of days ago at veganpamphlet.com, too, but I don’t feel like that’s what veganism means to me. (This is, of course, no offense to E or anyone else who currently sees veganism this way–only an observation and something to discuss.) I feel like avoiding harm is only one aspect (or result) of vegan living, but veganism as a whole suggests a larger respect, beyond “‘harm’ versus ‘no harm.’” I think veganism is more like one’s belief that it’s wrong to impose on the life of any animal–that it’s wrong to force, control, or otherwise disrespect any animal. This is, I think, largely why and how L.O.V.E. distinguishes ourselves from other animal rights groups (in our website’s F.A.Q.); our understanding of veganism includes an understanding of power. We see control over another’s life/body as problematic in itself, regardless of pain.
I think “harm” is often a result of imposing on other animals’ lives, but not always. For example, I would be opposed to sterilizing free-living bears (Dani has discussed this, too–I probably first understood this concept from Dani’s writings), because sterilizing them means we are in control of their bodies and their lives. Because we choose for them whether they can have children; we impose on their natural life. But sterilization doesn’t necessarily cause “harm” (at least not pain, suffering). Many claim such sterilization even prevents harm in the long run, because fewer bears will be hurt and killed for “getting in the way” of humans. I would be concerned about vegans supporting this sterilization based on ‘avoiding unnecessary harm.’
[Dani at The Vegan Ideal also wrote that this sterilization couldn’t be seen as a manifestation of “animals as property” (another Francione concept). So far in my own understanding, I feel like “animals as property” seems to hint at a bigger problem with power and control, but again I just don’t see it getting at the root. That is, power abuse also exists between people who are not each other’s “property,” so I don’t think “property” status itself is the problem.]
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Notice that, when we focus on pain, suffering, or harm, then we are not focusing on the underlying issue of power itself (control, force, oppression). Yes we cause other animals terrible suffering, and I want that to stop, now. But I don’t see that suffering as faceless and random. I think nonhuman suffering only exists in such quantities because we humans assume control over other animals’ lives. That is, I don’t believe suffering is the root of the problem, only a result. We assume a position of power over other animals, instead of living side-by-side with them respectfully; that, I think, is the root of the problem. A vegan world is not just a world with less pain; it is a world in which we live side-by-side respectfully with all.
Dropping the activist label
Jan 4th
Over the past few years, I have noticed how many vegans divide ourselves into two categories: the activists and everybody else. Most of the time, the activist category consists of employees of animal welfare non-profits and a handful of “superstar” volunteers. I know some people who are very active in promoting veganism who don’t consider themselves activists. Ironically, some of these “non-activists” do more for veganism than the leaders of some of these non-profits!
LOVE’s FAQ defines veganism as “an active ethical stand against the oppression of any sentient being, human or non-human.” This means, when using this definition, we can drop the “activist” label and simply say “vegan.” Without the burden of the artificial delineation between “real” activists and the rest of us, we can concentrate on working to end oppression. It also means no longer ceding responsibility to “real” activists for change in our communities and instead taking personal responsibility for doing so.
This also means no longer confining activism to the narrow realm of what “real” activists do. So all the conversations we have with friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors about speciesist and other forms of oppression; our efforts to build a community with local vegans; our efforts to support new vegans so they thrive as vegans; the many ways small and large we each work to end oppressive systems – all of this is activism, all of this is the vital, necessary work veganism asks of us.
Last year, Miranda and I met fellow LOVE member S. when they were visiting from Spain. They told us how all the vegans they know in Spain are activists and how there is a culture of activism in that vegan community. When I think about what that would look like here, I feel very inspired. This is the kind of atmosphere I hope we can all help create in our communities. When we stop outsourcing activism, we reclaim the power and possibility of change.