Is your trivial pleasure indulgence more important than the lives and freedom taken away from animals? It’s one thing to think your life is more important than theirs (speciesism), but it’s quite another to believe your pleasure matters more than their lives. This is an inbalanced consideration of interests - their interests to not have those things done to them by humans are more important to them than your addiction/habit and greedy desire to have very specific, privileged and unnecessary products for which you have plenty of alternatives. I’m presuming you don’t think pleasure is a justification for victimizing humans or dogs, so there’s still a double standard of discrimination happening based on species - despite them all being sentient beings with similar foundational interests (e.g. to live, be free, be happy, be with loved ones, avoid danger, not be harmed or exploited or killed, etc). Heck, they want pleasure too. Why does their pleasure not matter? And what you take from them is much more fundamental and valued than any kind of pleasure.

Moreover, do you think you can’t experience pleasure without consuming animals & their secretions? Beyond all the other non-food-related ways of entertaining yourself, there are plenty of tasty plant based foods, much of animal flesh is seasoned with plants anyway (which we can use to season other plant based foods), and there are products designed to replicate the same exact experiences of consuming animal products. It’s simply a lie to think that being vegan means giving up pleasure - many vegans can attest that vegan food is not only tasty, it’s tastier (and makes you feel better health wise, and in terms of happiness and lifting the burden of guilt toward animals and the environment off your conscience), and it inspires you to expand your culinary horizons and experience many more foods than you did before, since there are so many more plants and plant based foods/recipes than the few dead animal species and their secretions that most humans eat. “It takes nothing away from a human to be kind to an animal.” - Joaquin Phoenix, actor and vegan / animal rights and environmental advocate. However it should be noted that pleasure never justifies victimization anyway, and also that veganism is not a diet but an ethical stance against animal exploitation (beyond animal-derived food, including avoiding supporting/contributing to/participating in animal-derived clothing, any other commodity made from animals, or other industries, services or activities that involve animal exploitation).

Anti vegans are aggressively against the idea of veganism in general, not just opposed to going vegan themself (which is probably most people, who aren’t necessarily “anti vegan” - though perhaps anti-animal rights, if they knew what it means). So, not personally wanting to go vegan doesn’t really explain being anti vegan, unless it’s an extreme reaction and psychological coping mechanism to feel the need to reactionarily lash out at the people who make you feel guilty over exploiting animals (the “meat paradox” in psychology).

Vegans are not trying to take away anyone’s pleasure - we aren’t puritans or asceticists (inherently, of course a vegan could be separately). Veganism as a philosophy is in favor of respecting animals, not against experiencing pleasure - generally, even the same kinds of pleasure that come from consuming or using animals, which is why we often recommend plant-based replication/substitution products that aim to provide the same experience as animal products (for people who desire them, as an alternative means of persuading them to stop using real animals - they of course aren’t necessary and many vegans don’t have them).

Also, some vegans don’t even do activism or advocate for animals/veganism, they’re just vegan, so it would make more sense if anything to be anti-animal rights activism, but even then, activists aren’t trying to (and have no ability to) take anything away from you, including the animal products you consume - only attempting to reason with you and inspire you to stop doing it. Even if someone screamed in your face and told you that you were a murderer and rapist and enslaver of animals (referencing contributing indirectly to animal slaughter, exploitation, and forceful impregnation/artificial insemination) and that you need to stop (while much of activism is less confrontational), let me know when they’re actually stealing animal products away from you. They don’t and they can’t, and they almost never are violent either, so it’s just words and emotion directed at the issue you partake in. It’s valid freedom of speech, expression and protest, and if anything anti-vegans are trying to take away those rights when they argue people like Tash Peterson should be prosecuted or jailed just for yelling in McDonalds stores dressed as a cow, or agree with the massive fine she received for criticizing a veterinarian for being a hypocrite by eating animals (which has been contested under free speech protections).

Are there actually “vegan subtitles”? I can only see regular language captions

I’d argue it’s potentially the most ethically bad form of animal exploitation there is, due to the “small body problem”. It holds far more sentient (yes, insects are sentient and some are seemingly quite intelligent) victims than other forms of animal exploitation/farming. There’s a vegan activist who focuses on this topic, his name is Dre and his Instagram is @banbugfarms

This feels like a roundabout rubegoldbergian conclusion. I’ll take it. However, what if you want to phrase it like a noun in the form of “The possible possibility” or “The maybe-not necessity/not necessarily necessary necessity/uncertain necessity”? Can’t say “The maybe possibility” or “The maybe necessity” now can you? And what about as an adjective? “It’s maybe possible”? It’s maybe not necessary"? These are too either boggled or clunky.

To bring it back to language and the word meat and what people mean by it, I have no idea why people use the phrasing they do. Some people told me things like gelatin and rennet aren’t vegetarian (even though many dairy products contain it, meaning I was never really vegetarian), and a lot of people say fish aren’t meat. Not much rhyme or reason lol, at least it seems inconsistent across different people who use the words. I’m sure some people are generalizing all animal products when they say “meat”, while others probably just mean animal flesh, and others still would mean the flesh of land animals, excluding marine animals.

Definitely agree it can stem from insecurity and feelings of guilt about animals and the environment, though maybe other or more complex motivations at times.

And for all intents and purposes, people are criticizing our diet, because that’s what most people believe veganism is, even though it’s really an ethical stance against animal use/exploitation that extends to all products and actions beyond food. They’re really attacking/lashing out/criticizing our animal-free/plant-based diet or lifestyle, even if they do out of their own moral beliefs. Someone doesn’t even have to say anything, the existence of vegans is enough sometimes to make people feel like they’re on trial and need to defend their actions to animals, & disparage the choice to avoid them. That’s how it feels anyway. And tbh, it makes sense to feel insecure about it because it’s pretty horrific what we do to animals, but responding to the notion that we don’t have to do this or some people are against it, in an aggressive & unproductive way seems irrational to me. We just need to work on controlling our emotions better as humans I think.

The religious analogy is SO accurate too. It really feels like people are having their worldview and belief system challenged by people with a different one that appears to be rooted in ethics and sympathy for animals, something everyone can relate to. I think there were studies showing people who cared more about animals were more likely to hate vegans, which is really enlightening. The more that people share our values, the more they seem to want to fight against us because it forces them to comfront uncomfortable parts of themselves. This is also why so many leftists are anti vegan, imo. And I say this as a leftist, basically. Even though leftist ideas are usually about human rights principles, it’s not too much of a leap to extend it to other sentient species, and the environment. So it can create this feeling of hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance, often termed as the “meat paradox” in psychological research

Also funny and coincidental, vegans often eat seitan (a product made from gluten/wheat protein), and we basically are like a satanic force that needs to be cleared out in the eyes of a lot of people. 😆While some Christians argue veganism is entailed by their religion (maybe after watching Christspiracy), others have literally called us satanic and demonic lol. And the same was said of abolitionists too, I guess justice and respect is super scary and evil to whomever is tasked with defending their antitheses:

He said, with an exasperated demeanor, that when vegans make certain arguments against animal exploitation, it makes him want to eat a whole bucket of chicken(s). This knee-jerk response is very interesting and should be the subject of psychological research if it isn’t already - carnism in general has been, and concepts like the meat paradox, so maybe. We could see in real time his worldview unraveling and devolving into basal emotional instincts rather than logic, reason or empathy. Interestingly, the other person in the video said they didn’t have that reaction, and Ben quickly walked back his comment and seemingly felt guilty for it.

He chooses action, a bad action, instead of nonaction in relation to those bad actions. In that case, nonaction is actually preferable. Veganism is opting out of animal exploitation - often described as a non-action.

I understand the intent of calling it an action to stop exploiting animals, because ceasing an action feels like an action in itself, especially if resultingly, it’s replaced by other actions. It’s a change, which is an action of sorts. I use that language too because it’s effective.

But I think it’s interesting that we humans always frame issues related to impacting upon animals and the environment as if we’re “helping” and “taking action” by simply stopping doing something bad/harmful or reducing our harm.

When we talk about becoming vegan, we often say things like “save hundreds of animals a year through reduced supply/demand”, when really we mean more like spare them from the consequences of our own actions. And meanwhile, we never use the language of “saving” someone when a person decides not to kill someone they were considering killing - in the human context. So it feels maybe like we’re still untangling speciesist bias and devaluing or de-individualizing other animals in subtle ways. Where for example, respecting an animal is seen as a virtuous, heroic action, rather than basic moral decency.

For the environment, it’s the same, except less about individuals and more about feeling maybe like we’re so entitled with our human egocentrism/anthropocentrism to use/“harvest”/damage the planet as we please, that deciding to reduce our harm to it is a “supererogatory” action deserving of praise, or that it’s an encouraged option, rather than a moral obligation & duty. Same with animals more or less, except animals are sentient beings so it’s arguably worse.

Lol, it’s not virtue signaling if you’re actually doing something about the issue you claim to care about, and advocate for the purposes of inspiring others to do the same. That’s literally the opposite of virtue signaling, it’s aligning one’s actions with their values, putting their money where their mouth is, and extolling the virtues of doing so to other people if worthwhile.

Laughs in veganism (and thus taking personal responsibility for changing, non-hypocrisy and non-virtue signalling and non-deflecting)

When you buy an animal burger, you are effectively taking away the possibility of healthy nutritious plant based food from starving children. So many calories wasted.

Mahatma Gandhi:

“The earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.” “To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.”

In Frances Moore Lappé’s 1971 book Diet for a Small Planet, she wrote that eating animals is “like driving a Cadillac” in terms of waste — a metaphor later rephrased by activists as “eating a hamburger is like stealing bread from the world’s hungry.”

The downvotes should show you just how lost humanity is right now. “I care about food security and climate change and animal cruelty waa waa but i dont want to take any personal responsibility for it or change anything about myself because i like meat/dairy/eggs waa waa”

You’re technically correct, and that is what I meant, which should be pretty clearly inferred by me saying that we are growing so much food to feed to other animals when we “don’t have enough to feed everyone”. I meant we don’t have enough food AVAILABLE to feed everyone BECAUSE (among other factors such as overconsumption) we are feeding so much to other animals. I didn’t say we aren’t producing enough to begin with, we are, obviously since we are feeding 80 billion land animals a year.

So I agree the issue is somewhat related to logistics/distribution, but you have to look at the logistics and distribution that happens WITHIN the means of production as well, or rather resource allocation, since we are allocating/distributing so much of the food we make to feed other animals (who don’t even need to be mass bred/exploited/killed) rather than feeding the world’s hungry humans, and the other animals that exist if they need our help to eat.

With a plant-based system we can feed many more humans, I am reflecting actual scientific consensus, whereas you are reflecting societal knee jerk reactions to the suggestion that there’s a critical change we can make as individuals to help animals and the planet and ourselves. As usual, the majority are on the wrong side of history to begin, until they aren’t. And yes, it is an insane moral atrocity we are doing to animals as well, but I am deliberately not talking about that because I am talking about completely objective science and just showing how people who claim to care about the environment or food security but still support animal agriculture are complete hypocrites.

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

Always about the humans. What about the nonhuman animals? Animal rights? And why are we breeding so many of them to farm and feeding them all the food we can eat when we dont even have enough to feed everyone? Whenever someone promotes “lets fix food insecurity” or “lets avoid climate change”, I support it because inevitably if people actually cared enough about it and took those values to their logical conclusion and werent just virtue signaling hypocrites, theyd go vegan and promote plant based living.