This is the comment verbatim:

"To everybody that disagrees with this: do you grow your own food at home to ensure not a single crop death? If not, you’re not a perfect vegan either."

This was on a post on a "vegan" meme account that promoted "reducetarianism." Mind you, this person says they're a vegan!

HOLY SHIT! I'm baffled as to how you can be a vegan yet regurgitate one of the most overdone, shitty, level 0 (if I'm being generous) carnist talking points.

What factory are these people created in? How the hell are we supposedly adhering to the same ethics on animal liberation but view the matter on entirely different premises?

When I criticized this person, by the way, he told me to "stop infighting" because I'm "on the same side" as him.

insert Gus Fring "We Are Not the Same" meme

Carnists make me sleepy so I go nap

I'm starting from nothing... essentially just a microwave and a range. I need to know what to stock a tiny studio apartment with. I'm just learning how to cook, so no suggestion is too obvious!

I found out she's vegan through checking out her profile having the Ⓥ in her display name and her bio literally says (cut and paste):

"be kind to animals or I'll kill you"

end speciesism

Despite this, she is accusing me of anti-Semitism because I made a comment staunchly condemning Zionism, and when I wrote this comment that you see in the image, she didn't give a proper rebuttal. All she fucking said was:

of course you stalked my page 💀

The skull emoji is really telling.

It's like your average Instagram user is a bot produced in a factory where their brains have logic, reason, and reading comprehension skills extracted out of them.

I got into Veganism about 8 months ago now, and it was much easier than I thought it was going to be. Where it got difficult for me was when food was getting wasted. I have always been really good about not wasting things, and even eating other people's food if it was going to waste. Problem is nobody else around me eats vegan. At first I would eat the food anyway, and just continue eating plant-based as I normally would, but I've reached a point where I don't even want to eat animal product at all, so it goes to waste. Has anybody else had, or have, this problem, or is it just some autistic "quirk" I have involving inefficiency and waste.

(also happens at restaurants on the rare chance that I actually go, get something, and they get the order wrong)

It seems the fairer sex has taken to the fairer diet in greater numbers than their male counterparts. According to the data, a full 9% of women in the United States now identify as vegan, compared to a paltry 3% of men.

Zoe Rosenberg, an American animal rights activist and founder of the Happy Hen Animal Sanctuary, shares her experiences of protesting against animal cruelty and being charged for animal rescues. Growing up with a deep love for animals, Rosenberg became a direct action animal rights activist, organizing protests and rescues. She recounts her involvement with Direct Action Everywhere (DXE) and the arrests and convictions of its co-founder, Wayne, for animal rescues. Rosenberg also shares her personal experiences with being charged for rescuing dogs and facing harsh punishments, emphasizing her commitment to animal rights despite the challenges. The speakers express their frustration with the legal system's treatment of animal cruelty cases and encourage viewers to get involved in animal activism beyond veganism, including attending protests and visiting animal sanctuaries. They also discuss the intelligence and worth of farmed animals and encourage viewers to support individuals legally pursued for rescuing animals. Its time to save animals beyond veganism!

Vegetarians who say this shit say they enjoy getting encouragement from vegans, but they actually just want a pat on the back and brownie points from susceptible vegans, not actual encouragement.

This is the greatest encouragement I can give them, but because it's in an "aggressive" tone, they love to say "You're the reason why people shy away from going vegan!"

Sorry to tell ya, but if some harsh words promoting the very ideological foundation of veganism are enough to discourage you, then you clearly don't have a plan to "transition" to veganism to begin with.

Imagine telling someone "You really need to stop being fucking racist." and then they say "Ugh! I'm working on it! You being so pushy makes me want to be more racist actually!"

The cheese rots into their brains apparently.

Long live Lenin, long live the Soviet motherland!

Most humans aren't vegan for three reasons:

1. Material conditions. As a child, I saw children being kind to stray cats and dogs by feeding them. From what my parents said, they saw kids abusing stray animals and birds. So with better material conditions, people's treatment of animals changes.

2. Social norms. For men, being vegan is sometimes a "feminine" thing. For women, refusing to cook carnist food for your husband is unwelcome (at best) and dangerous (at worst).

3. Consumerism. You're conditioned to eat burgers, you're brainwashed to believe you need meat, your TV series never show vegans in good light (haha their food is boring XDDDD). The animal-industrial complex funds disinformation think tanks, assassinations, lobbyists to keep their business afloat.

Is there "natural" speciesism? No idea.

If humans are heartless by nature, then they must at least reduce animal ag to simply not destroy our planet and public health. They don't do that. To me it looks like animal ag propaganda is not only hostile to anti-speciesism, but to any reforms. Even environmentalists can't stop animal ag. So maybe there is hope to make the world vegan, after the world become socialist?

Lots of carnists pretend to be socially progressive, but eating meat is as bad as racism or transphobia. So you're not socially progressive if you eat meat (or dairy, or eggs). We know that the proletariat is very conservative these days, we must convince them to fight for socialism. For that, all successful movements like the Bolsheviks allowed socially conservative folk to join. No revolution succeeded without your woodworker Ivan and farmer Vladimir, who still have reactionary ideas. These ideas will disappear. So we should ok carnist leftists until capitalism is dead, unless they are actively counterrevolutionary.

Vegan athletes have mentioned several key benefits of following a plant-based diet:

1. Improved heart health: Vegan diet can help reverse plaque buildup, lower blood pressure and cholesterol, and reduce inflammation, all of which are beneficial for an athlete’s cardiovascular health.

2. Enhanced performance and recovery: Vegan athletes have reported experiencing increased energy levels, faster recovery times between training sessions, and improved endurance and aerobic capacity

3. Anti-inflammatory effects: The plant-based nature of a vegan diet may have an anti-inflammatory effect, which can help reduce pain and improve athletic performance and recovery.

4. Better blood flow and oxygen delivery: Vegan diets have been shown to improve blood viscosity and arterial flexibility, leading to better blood flow and oxygen delivery to the muscles.

5. Higher antioxidant intake: Vegan diets are typically high in antioxidants, which can help neutralize free radicals and reduce muscle fatigue.

6. Reduced body fat: The low-fat, high-fiber nature of a vegan diet can help athletes reduce their body fat, which is associated with increased aerobic capacity and endurance.

A lot of leftists are marxist-leninist, anti-sexist, LGBT+ and anti-racist. BUT, they'll tell you the dumbest right-wing arguments to justify eating animals. I get that people aren't ideal, but when you are the urban middle class of the West, there's no excuse to not be vegan. Absolutely, no, excuse, to, murder, animals. Historical materialism lets me ok people from poor/oppressed backgrounds being carnist. I would never denounce a carnist in Gaza, but the Westerners have no any excuses to abuse animals.

I get that some people just have no will, I know people can be addicted. But at least DON'T BE A JERK to vegans. Some "leftists" post propaganda about veganism like YT videos that are literally funded by oil corporations. Some "leftists" are so toxic I'd rather have a conservative as my roommate than them.

The "leftists" lie all the time. Meat, dairy, eggs and honey are luxury products available mosty to those in the imperial core. The poor countries like India, Nigeria, Uganda and North Korea eat diets closest to veganism BECAUSE plant foods are the cheapest foods, not carnist subsidized McFood.

Dealing with leftists, especially online, is draining to me. How can I be productive as a leftist and not go insane? How can I cooperate with carnists to achieve the revolution? I see no easy solution here

https://medium.com/@chrisjeffrieshomelessromantic/a-pound-of-hamburger-meat-would-cost-30-without-tax-payer-subsidies-6547b80963a6Hamburgers, those quintessential fast-food delights, have become a staple in many diets around the world. But what if I told you that the price you pay for that juicy patty doesn’t reflect its true cost? Buckle up as we explore why a pound of hamburger meat could cost a whopping $30 without taxpayer subsidies.

I got told today I shouldn't raise kids because I'd purposefully raise them in a vegan household, without animal products of any sort. I was told this would be dangerous and unfair to the kids.

It was a weirdly direct thing for this person to say to me (one of my coworkers). It's stuck in my head. I was told I should let my potential children choose what sort of morals they have, even though this person is raising their kids Catholic. Their advice to me was to allow my potential kids to choose every night between a meat-based meal and a vegan meal (???). And several other coworkers agreed. Where do they come up with this? No carnist raises their kids like this.

So is anyone raising vegan kids or does anyone know about what it's like? Or was anyone here raised in a vegan household?

I am fed up, I am disgusted, and I am disappointed.

This account I formerly followed (huge emphasis on the formerly) on Instagram made a series of "Are you two friends?" memes. This was one of the slides, and I, as a black vegan, am extremely uncomfortable with how the owner of this account, a queer and polyamorous woman of color who is, in fact, a carnist spoke on a commenter's concerns about this slide in the picture.

First of all, as you can see, the very first responder, @petitearisu is doing the whole "Veganism is classist." or "Veganism is inconsiderate of BIPOC struggles." excuse to further their own funding of animal slaughter, which makes them carnist trash the same way, but it's @decolonizing.love's response that I want to get at the most.

I am a poor, black vegan. If you all have seen my posts about my struggles, you all know that I've been unemployed and relying on mutual aid support to get by for a bit. Not fucking once, did it occur to me that I'd ever have to fund animal slaughter to feed myself during these trying times. If I wanted something cheap, legumes, rice, pasta, mushrooms, vegetables, and fruits always had my back. None of that stuff is even remotely expensive, but as far as @decolonizing.love goes:

FIRST OF ALL, LET'S TALK ABOUT THAT WHATABOUTISM!

Because you are so upset that people show concern and moral agency for the cruel way animals are treated for the sake of human sensory pleasure, clothing, and convenience, your first response is to divert to making this about trees? What makes this whataboutism worse is that it's a false equivalence, and even then, it fails as a "dunk" on vegans.

False equivalence because respect for trees doesn't necessarily have anything to do with respect for sentient life, and it fails as a dunk or accusation against vegans because many vegans are extremely environmentally conscious, and as a matter of fact, you could argue that they're the most environmentally conscious. Animal agriculture is causing more harm to this planet than so many of the other dangers that performative environmentalists pretend to care about, but let's push this aside because this is just a small fraction of your pitiful comment. What I'm primarily concerned about is:

THE "MORAL RIGHTEOUSNESS" ACCUSATION

This is a classic carnist excuse. You accuse vegans of being pretentious to make yourself feel like they're not actually making a material impact to liberate animals. This is cope. This is just you coping with the fact that you cannot own up to your own shortcomings in the way you abuse animals for absolutely no damn good reason. It doesn't even solidify as an actual argument or any form of coherent rhetoric against veganism as a philosophy. It serves as ad hominem at best.

As a black vegan, your point about how BIPOC can "perpetuate white veganism's hypocrisy" concerns me. Just so you Hexbears know, I didn't respond to this comment on Instagram itself because I didn't want dozens of performative leftists dogpiling me over this shit. If I, as a leftist of color ever disagree with any of these people on anything, they'll accuse me of just what they're saying vegans of color can do: "perpetuating white hypocrisy". They'll call me a bootlicker and say I'm simping for white people when I'm fucking not. As a matter of fact, this association of "moral righteousness" they tie to being explicitly for white veganism is something I'd be the first to speak out against, and you know why?

A carnist of color is still a fucking carnist.

This is hypocritical of them, and it is to a strong degree. So much of this account is reminding white people that even whites who are a part of a marginalized group, such as gay white people, trans white people, white women, or neurodivergent white people, need to understand that they still hold a position of privilege that their whiteness puts them in. They really want to make it clear to these people that them being marginalized in ways beyond race does not excuse them being discriminatory, bigoted, or inconsiderate towards POC within similar struggles.

I agree with this, but are they not hypocritically engaging in the same thing? She is using her position as a queer woman of color to justify another form of oppression and hierarchical domination she just so happens to be okay with: speciesism.

And the audacity she has to label any pushback to this hypocrisy as a product of "white veganism" is disgusting to my black vegan ass.

HER SAYING THAT "WHITE VEGANS DON'T CARE ABOUT ANIMALS"

As if you'd know what it means to "care about animals" when you're the one demonstrating how little you care about them. There are so many principled vegans who are white. Yes, this doesn't absolve them of the blind spots their white privilege may put them in, but as I said, you being a queer POC doesn't absolve you of the blind spots that your carnism puts you in.

Once again, this is nothing but an excuse to say that white vegans are not "truly" as morally superior as you think they think they are, but it has never been about "moral superiority" in and of itself. Veganism is something we do for the animals, and you all should do so too, especially if you give a damn about dismantling hierarchies. If you are to have an issue with this whatsoever, please kindly examine this issue internally rather than externally. Vegans are not the problem. You being unable to cease your carnism absolutely fucking is, though!

"SINGLE-ISSUE ACTIVISM"

"There are more important issues to worry about!" may be one of the most disgusting copouts that oppressors use. This is done to drift away from the focus of an important issue within the scheme of oppression so that you can seem justified in not doing anything about it! News flash! You don't have to focus on a single issue at once! I'm a vegan, and as much as I care about animal liberation, you know what else I care about? I care about women's liberation, queer liberation, and uplifting people of color on top of dismantling capitalism and other oppressive and hierarchical structures! I talk about these individual issues where it's relevant, and that includes the fact that I talk about veganism where it's relevant.

Yes, veganism needs intersectionality, as all progressive moments do! But it's shameful that you're pretending to help with that. If you are a POC who isn't vegan, you have absolutely no trustworthy foundation to give a grand statement about veganism needing intersectionality. It doesn't impact you because, no matter how many vegans of color try to speak sense to you on this matter, I know for sure that you'd still stuff your face with carcasses and feel absolutely no fucking remorse in doing so.

At this point, non-vegan leftists are too much for me to put up with at all.

Another one of my restaurants that i go to for vegan food sometimes (cooking is hard) unwittingly gave me food with meat in it. I struggle so much with cooking and long work hours, but fuck man.

When I realized how much sense this analogy makes, it explained to me full well why libs are as frustrating as they are to me these days.

A tale as old as time

Context: my friend was giving me an update about how someone at her workplace accused her of racism. As out of focus it seemed, I felt the need to address an odd part of her saying "I just prefer animals over people." in this misanthropic statement.

And Instagram comments are a mistake.

I have engaged with this commenter who specifically went to a vegan account's post to "dunk" on vegans, and this carnist is trying so hard to use an appeal to popularity fallacy. They've used this fallacy THREE times, since their original comment has been up, and each time, I'm trying to explain to them, with examples even, why this isn't sound rhetoric. All that, and they just hit me with it again, and yes, this is serving as my clear indicator that I'm wasting my time with someone who's brain has been deep fried.

The comment was put up 4 days ago, and this carcass muncher keeps trying to embarrass himself, but he's still interacting with replies. The most recent time I'm referring to? Just a few hours ago, he responded to me, "Vegans are less than 1% of the world population but you believe you are the holy and enlightened ones.".

Listen, I understand some people are really, really, and I mean REALLY bad at rhetoric, but there is no way that you can shamelessly uphold an appeal to popularity fallacy this intensely and not have any awareness of how goofy (and not in the good way) it makes you look, especially when this has been refuted each time you pulled it.

Instagram commenters tend to be like this with a lot of things, but omnis, virtually anywhere you can find them, seem to be extra guilty of this because they need to grasp at straws to justify such abhorrent practices that I feel like they, at the very least, subconsciously know are wrong. They refuse to acknowledge the wrongness because it'd make them come off as either a hypocrite or someone who actually feels more obligated to live up to their awareness and follow through with a lifestyle they deem "inconvenient".

Me: literally wishing that everyone on this planet were vegan so that animals were treated better, I'd have more people to relate to, and I'd have more people that I'd actually feel comfortable with dating

Veganism makes me feel more of a weirdo, an outcast, and reserved actually.

🥺

On a walk home, I just took a peek at the menu of this local Caribbean place that says it has a "vegan" chipotle aioli. I looked at all the ingredients, and while it confirms that it does, in fact, use vegan mayonnaise, it said it had honey! And this place is actively labeling it as a vegan product! To be fair, at least they list the ingredients, but calling it vegan is wrong and misleading. Now, I like to read all ingredient lists on everything, but imagine a vegan reading the phrasing "vegan chipotle aioli" and thinking it sounds so good that they just glance right over the smaller details and order it not knowing it has honey. And furthermore, would it kill them to use agave or maple syrup?

This is giving me the anxiety that there could be places who do shit like this without even telling you what the ingredients are. That kind of paranoia makes me eat out a lot less to begin with which, in hindsight, is a good thing anyway.

The in-person menu explicitly lists it as vegan, but this is what the entry looks like on their website:

Excellent new video by Dr. Michael Greger with a fair and balanced analysis of the real world reasons why people are so confused about nutrition, and why there is so much food disinformation directing people away from plant based diets.

What is the vegan stance on working animals?

For example, a farm I used to work at had a number of cats hanging around the barn that would kill mice and rats, similar to ship cats.

Another farm I worked at had a dog that would roam the fields killing various birds and rodents.

And of course the thing that brought this up for me is horses. It's not super common like it used to be, but horses (or other pack animals) are still used for transport in many instances, such as to get supplies to remote locations. Also I believe pack animals are also still pretty common in many rural areas of developing countries.

Person the other week noticed I was wearing vegan Doc Martens (the tags are white for vegan shoes). I know they're polyurethane, which isn't great, but I'd prefer that over animal skin on my feet. This person was apparently also a vegan, but says they prefer wearing leather (what) because in their words "Animal leather is biodegradable, lasts longer, and is a by-product of the already existing meat industry." making the point that animal leather has less of an environmental impact.

I didn't know how to respond at all. I know veganism isn't simply consumption habits but it did make me feel weird. I still don't think anyone should wear leather.

Does anyone have advice? I'm just feeling weird and self-conscious now

When I see an omni say "Consuming animal products is wrong, but I still do it anyway.", I immediately consider them a more level-headed person than most who go through all types of batshit insane mental gymnastics to provide some off-the-wall, arbitrary, failed attempt at logic to say that "coNSUMING ANimal PrODuCts Is tOTally OKAy BRo!!!"

Obviously, this is just for my sake of finding the honest omnis less insufferable to put up with when I bring up that I'm vegan. However, I won't forget that, in practice, they're still exploiting animals the same, and I hope they come to put the acknowledgement of their hypocrisy into practice as soon as they can.

In the Russian region of Astrakhan, near the Caspian Sea, the regional government has approved spending 224 million rubles (~2.5 million EUR) to kill stray dogs. According to the new law, dogs caught on the streets will be placed in temporary shelters for only 15 days and then killed. When the same government rejected the proposal of the program to catch dogs for permanent placement in shelters, they argued that there was not enough money in the regional budget. But now, when the new program to kill dogs was approved, money was immediately found. Many local volunteers say that the regional government is in tight connection with the interests of the company that won the tender to kill the dogs. And they sabotaged all other options, for example, in 2019 they failed to spend even 70% of the money for the sterilization program. In 2022 all the money was sent to the private company, which did almost nothing. Some managers of this company were sentenced to prison, but the money was gone and the beneficiaries escaped punishment. This is how corruption and human greed kill innocent dogs.

A link the the same text in Telegram channel of one of Russian non commercial fund helping animals Givers of the Hope "Дарящие надежду"