In the more insular of environments, this desire can explode into nonsense quite quickly. If there exists no damping mechanism to thwart the proliferation of garbage, then the garbage keeps piling up. It collects until someone excitedly climbs to the top, smitten with their own stature, yet not realizing she's atop a bunch of diapers, vomit, and moldy food. And with that I give you: Racism versus Speciesism: A moral Battleground?
This article really speaks for itself, so I'll highlight my favorite bits with the most astounding at the end:
Are white animal rights advocates who promote veganism inherently racist by not taking into account different cultures’ perspectives on animals? I’ll state upfront that I am a white-skinned (half-Persian by birth), queer, feminist vegan who advocates for animal rights and ethical veganism in my writing for both niche and mainstream media, and recognise that anything I say is coming from a position of white and class privilege and white racialised consciousness.OK, I seriously can't read anymore, here's the highlight:
Both sides are working hard in their own ways to create a fairer and just world, whether their focus is on women, people of colour, or animals, and I’d to think (idealistic as it may be) that instead of fighting among ourselves we can unite in the face of the real enemy: structural societal inequality in which food production has been hijacked by white, western corporations that utilise technologies and systems that oppress both humans (predominantly people of colour) and animals...
In her analysis of veganism and animal rights advocacy, Harper points to examples of how globalised racism sustains geopolitically racialised hierarchies of food and animal-free textile production and how the concept of ‘cruelty-free’ touted by animal rights activists pertaining to vegan items doesn’t take into account the human cruelty that may have been involved, such as non-fair-trade cocoa products manufactured under sweatshop conditions by people of colour in the global south.
Many of us attending believed the catering for such a conference should be vegan so as to avoid supporting an industry that relies on not only the killing of predominantly female animals (meat) but the control of the reproductive systems of female non-humans (dairy, eggs) – more on why animal rights are a feminist issue is set out in my article here.So the carnivorous diet is misogynist because most of the animals eaten and used for other purposes (dairy, eggs) are female. I'm not sure anyone can "top" that one.
This article serves two purposes: showcasing the increasing inanity of the more niche leftist ideological camps and the correspondence between vegetarianism/veganism and leftism. The author somehow connected feminism, racism, environmentalism, and speciesism, a subset of amoralism, to diet. I've been meaning to collect a number of sources illustrating this connection and thereby supporting my contention that vegetarianism is yet another surreptitious aspect of liberal academia, but perhaps she completed the job for me. I can't imagine finding anything more convincing than that.
I wonder if I should even respond to this article. I mean what exactly can I even say. The author and her peers fall over themselves to identify whatever "-ism" du-jour fancies them. In fact, the article doesn't even really have a coherent theme because one could classify any behavior as "oppressive" or "racist" or "whatever-ist". So the article just goes around and around with an ever expanding list of moral transgressions, almost of which castigate Westerners. I'll conclude by saying that I can begrudgingly accept a vegan who does so for moral reasons, but all the extraneous stuff about racism and elitism is, of course, just plain dumb. I won't apologize for the West, its meat-eating or its cultural, social, national, and technological preeminence. And if someone irrationally takes offense to my personal actions in an effort to attain social power via the imposition of guilt, then I really don't care.
35 comments:
It reads like a brilliant parody. I'm not entirely sure it isn't one. I mean, what better way to get vegans to stop pushing their veganism than to play on their guilt with charges of race/class/sex "privilege"?
But whether intended as parody or not, that was pretty damn hilarious.
"I'll conclude by saying that I can begrudgingly accept a vegan who does so for moral reasons, but all the extraneous stuff about racism and elitism is, of course, just plain dumb."
I can't. Plants are aware that their leaves have been picked, they bleed (sap) to close wounds, and they are alive when you put them in your mouth.
Being a vegan is a thousand times more horrible,from a moral standpoint, than eating meat, because animals are dead when you eat them,they can't feel anything because their brains must be present to perceive pain. A plant's "brain" is distributed throughout its entire "body".
How long does a cow live? 10,12 years max? How long does a tree live? Hundreds, maybe a thousand years. It is infinitely more evil to eat nothing but plants than it is to eat nothing but animals.
Veganism is ass-backwards.
http://eco-health.blogspot.com/2008/11/privilege-us-vegan-movement-whiteness_25.html
Notice the inappropriate ironic quotation marks around "foreign". This should be read as a globalist code or an endorsement of globalism, since they don't believe in the legitimacy of the concept "foreign" (these quotation marks are appropriate because the word itself is being discussed and not the concept behind it).
I had a hard time reading past the equivalence made between racism and a failure to take the culture of non-whites into account. What an idiot. These folks really should get a dictionary.
"So the carnivorous diet is misogynist because most of the animals eaten and used for other purposes (dairy, eggs) are female. I'm not sure anyone can "top" that one. "
That ding-dong has obviously never worked on a ranch. Or spoken to anyone in the meat industry.
It is male cattle that comprise the bulk of cattle sent to the slaughterhouses. So consuming meat is an expression of hatred of the male, ergo feminist in nature.
"queer, feminist, vegan"
She treats these almost like military titles or ranks. What does being gay have to do with being vegan? I've always found the liberal practice of making conspicuous public assertions of virtue to be disturbing.
"anything I say is coming from a position of white and class privilege and white racialised consciousness"
Doesn't this, by the twisted liberal ethics she espouses, disqualify anything she says?
Not being a loser, I don't spend a lot of energy, mental and otherwise, trying to cast myself as a victim. To me, being a victim only means I am accepting some sort of inferior status. This nut embraces it as if it were a title to be proud of.
The problem with trying to gain attention or pity by playing the victim is that there is always someone who is worse off than you. It becomes like a game of hearts where two people are simultaneously trying to shoot the moon. Only one will get the booby prize.
As far as cattle are concerned, it's mostly the males that are led early to the slaughter. The females are kept for milk production. And one bull can keep an awful lot of cows happy.
Anyway, yesterday I mentioned a distinguished person of color, Shaka, the brilliant Zulu military leader (and ardent anti-colonialist). When he wasn't fighting the Boers and the British, he liked to kill those among his followers who weren't according him the respect he felt he deserved. Then he ate some of them. So I guess he wasn't a vegan. But maybe this was just a quaint native custom we should learn to respect. I wonder where he fits in?
Excellent comment at 6:57 AM.
About the only entirely cruelty-free thing one could eat would be nuts that have fallen off a plant/tree of their own accord (not picked off, but fallen off). Of course many of these would probably no longer be fit for human consumption.
What irks me to no end about these people is how can they watch animals kill each other (or kill plants) for food, and not conclude we shouldn't do the same. Just about every fish in the water makes a living eating smaller fish, even if they are mere plankton. Carnivorous animals generally eat herbivorous animals that eat live plants that can't even run away. Herbivorous animals (like bears) eat live living plants, other animals, and live insects.
Where does she think that food could concievably come from and be cruelty-free, some big magic slush-puppy machine?
I think this woman has some sort of slight mental illness where she feels compelled to project herself as more moral than anyone else around her, in an attempt to transform herself into other people's guru/spiritual leader. In another age she might have been a witness at a witch trial or someone falsely claiming to be a prophet of some god or another. She's, of course, a useful tool for modern leftists who want to arrange civil dialogue into everyone vs. white males, so there isn't outright scorn of her. In east Asia, she'd just change the bad guys from white males to yellow ones and go forward with the same memes.
structural societal inequality in which food production has been hijacked by white, western corporations that utilise technologies and systems that oppress both humans (predominantly people of colour) and animals...
Hey guys, if you'd like and you really, really hate the way White people intervene in food production, we can really stop doing the kind of things the Green Revolution was set up to do and we can stop exporting grain and food in exchange for basically worthless debt that just gets written off anyway at the expense of Western taxpayers. I'm not sure you'd really like that (even though I personally think it might be preferable for us all in the long term).
...
Stupid person is stupid though. Not much more you can say about this. It is fascinating that this person will push the idea of sexual alliances over general relatedness and similarity to the point where she considers female animals and plants to be more her comrades than human males, but hey.
That ding-dong has obviously never worked on a ranch. Or spoken to anyone in the meat industry.
Be interesting to see if she thinks male chick culling or male veal calving are sexist against males or consider them to be "child abuse" or "child murder"... Probably wouldn't suit her point...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veal
This lady is quite right- she has stumbled across the fact, however inadvertently, that veganism and animal rights are ideas and concerns of well-off Westerners. The idea is to show their moral superiority over other white people, but in doing so they also show their superiority over minorities, an unintended and unpleasant side effect.
There is an excellent book and subsequent movie called The Botany of Desire. It is quite debatable which one is exploiting the other. Looked at from another point it could be said that the cow are exploiting humans because their numbers are far greater than they would be in nature without human intervention. I think the question is how vegans try to expoit the greater population and what their numbers would be if no one gave a shit.
If "white, western corporations" are oppressing "people of color" with "technologies and systems", I vote we stop oppressing said people. We won't sell them anything produced with our technologies and systems, including food, medicine, and labor-saving machinery. The resulting enlightened golden age, free of oppression by "white technologies and systems", will be glorious!
About the only entirely cruelty-free thing one could eat would be nuts that have fallen off a plant/tree of their own accord
That would be the equivalent of eating a fetus so the tree's perspective on Roe would need to be assessed.
Fruit is the only thing on this earth that was designed/evolved to be eaten. Nothing else wants to be consumed. Eve thought she was doing the right thing after all...
I don't care if someone doesn't eat x. And I don't care why they don't eat it. I do care when they try to make others conform to their ideals. Hey, there are all different foods in the free market of the grocery store. People can make their own choices.
Anyway, they have to act morally superior because they can't demonstrate physical or intellectual superiority, and moral superiority is far more subjective.
Great points Chris and Silly Girl.
I was the Anonymous that suggested the Nuts Chris, and as you have pointed out, even that wouldn't truly be cruelty free-from the plant's perspective.
Silly Girl,
I think you may be onto something in that second paragraph: Most of these folks aren't talented in intellectual or physical areas, so perhaps they are trying to stand out by being uber-moral and create new standards of morality hardly anyone could adhere to and declare these behaviors essential to the planet's future. Its a type of hero-ism that very ordinary people can aspire to, and indulge in moral vanity while doing so.
I think its important that the right "get to the bottom" of leftism, create some high-minded definitions describing the behaviors, and use them against the left rhetorically like making a dragon look at its reflection in a pool of water, over and over again. They need to know that we are well aware of what they are up to, and they need to be made to feel self-concious about that fact.
When a women doesn't get cock, she goes insane.
These feminist queer vegans really chap my hide. They are the real bigots! Their incessant elevation of the needs of female creatures is totally at odds with creating an entirely affirmative society that privileges on sex regardless of species.
Who speaks for the asexual beings? The hermaphrodites (both simultaneous, pseudo, and sequential)? There is a world of oppressed organisms being cavalierly dismissed by radical feminism!
This is bottom line debased post-Calvinism.
The Five Points of Calvinism lists:
1. Total depravity, everyone is born into original sin and are totally sinful in nature.
2. Unconditional election, i.e. God has chosen to save from the beginning only a few and damn everyone else.
3. Limited Atonement, Jesus died only for the elect, those God chose from the beginning to save.
4. Irresistible Grace, if God has chosen to save you, you will be saved.
5. Perseverance of the Saints, the saved will stay with God, or return, all others never were to be saved in the first place.
Basically, everyone is damned except the special, special snowflake someones. You can see its innate appeal to women, who view themselves as special princesses, generally, and the desire to have ever-more exclusive abnegation of past sins arising from a uniquely sinful condition, and finding communion with (Post-God) whatever.
Really, it is very, very post-Calvinist. All the inconvenient bits about God and Jesus thrown out, with the form of the special saved. It is the fairly post-Mormon attitude without even the trappings of Christianity, merely the form.
"women, who view themselves as special princesses, generally,"
I think a lot of women's inflated self image is cultivated by the media. For example, the kiddie movie I hate the most is Little Mermaid. The little tart disobeys dad and gets a reward. WTF, that should be enough to get a kiddie show character eaten by a shark. I hate all of those stupid princess shows. Women used to be taught by the men in society that to have any worth they had to be virtuous and serve others. AKA the truth.
" Women used to be taught by the men in society that to have any worth they had to be virtuous and serve others"
Women have turned into sluts for the most part.
"Notice the inappropriate ironic quotation marks around "foreign".
I would like to check the NYT's and see if they leave racist with no quotes and foreigner with quote.
This lady is quite right- she has stumbled across the fact, however inadvertently, that veganism and animal rights are ideas and concerns of well-off Westerners. The idea is to show their moral superiority over other white people
Forgot to add this so I'm glad someone brought it up.
Good point.
I just want to puke.
I just want to puke.
Sorry, I forgot the trigger warning.
Obviously the only ethical solution for these yo-yo's is a starvation diet based on organic lead paint chips and free-range asbestos.
By the way, guys, it's all those labor-saving machines devised by white men that give these silly cows the time and energy to come up with this muck.
One of the hottest topics in the academy right now is "animal studies from the postcolonial perspective."
Katrina Fox makes me want to barf too.
I knew some vegans, I straight up told them the "moral argument" for veganism wouldn't cut it with me, because these ladies who were so concerned about cows,fish and chickens, and their precious "feelings" don't think twice about killing rats, spiders, snakes, or any other form of life that women generally find "icky" up to and including many human males and fetuses.
So they tried the "health argument". I've seen this in person. Do you know how many beans a vegan has to eat to get the same protein a human being gets from eating a couple of strips of bacon?
2 pounds. That's right, 2 FUCKING pounds of beans a day or their hair and teeth fall out.
Yeah, real fuckin' healthy.
It really sounds like the author of the OneSTDV post and most of the commenters didn't understand the original article. Try again.
Playing devil's advocate here.
If you consider yourself a moral agent, then why wouldn't you want to be as moral as possible? There's no posturing on the part of these people.
I *do* think the case could be made that wanting to be as moral as possible is a mental illness perhaps caused by a genetic defect, but you would never be able to convince them of that because logic (being as moral as possible) is on their side.
"Playing devil's advocate here.
If you consider yourself a moral agent, then why wouldn't you want to be as moral as possible? There's no posturing on the part of these people."
If you don't see an element of oneupswomynship (i.e., posturing) in that discussion then all I can do is remember that there are none so blind as those who will not see.
"I *do* think the case could be made that wanting to be as moral as possible is a mental illness perhaps caused by a genetic defect, but you would never be able to convince them of that because logic (being as moral as possible) is on their side."
No. Logic is not on their side nor is it on yours.
For example, those moral people you defend would doubtless agree that it is moral to take in a stray cat and care for it. By their--and your--logic, it would therefore be even more moral to take in 50 or 100 or more cats and try to care for them. But whereas in my first example, you end up with a well-cared-for cat spared a short, nasty and brutish life; in my second example, you end up with dozens of cats subjected to short, nasty and brutish lives--cats that individually might have been rescued by people who are less moral--according to your weird logic.
Now you've played devil's advocate, go play something else somewhere else.
"queer, feminist, vegan"
Randian says she treats these almost like military titles or ranks. Agreed. But why does she feel the need to tell us this?
Recently I wrote a blog entry offering a leftist critique of the ideology of “Green” environmentalism, deep ecology, eco-feminism, and lifestyle politics in general (veganism, “dumpster diving,” “buying organic,” "locavorism," etc.). I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter and any responses you might have to its criticisms.
if vegans couldn't brag about being vegans (like if it was illegal or something, hypothetical situation bear with me) then they wouldn't bother to be vegans in the first place
the healthiness aspect comes in a distant second to egotism and political correctness
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