liberationista:

socialistguineapigs:

Think twice about becoming vegan

In today’s trendy artsy world, more and more young people are becoming vegan every single day. The reason most of these people become vegan is for the protection and welfare of animals. They encourage vegan meals, no meat, cheese, dairy, eggs etc. What most vegans do not realise is that there is a dirty underworld to the growing and manufacturing of this disgusting world trade that is kept well hidden from society.

Above is a picture taken in Indonesia of a carrot being prepared and slaughtered. The carrots are first skinned, then drowned, and can be eaten raw or are cooked in boiling water.

Also above is a disturbing picture of potatoes being ripped from their home. The preparation is the same as the carrots.

Bananas grow together in a herd. When they ripen, they are stolen from their family, and whilst they are still alive their skin is peeled back and their entire body is usually in eaten in about 6 bites.

^It’s snarky bullshit like this that makes me even more likely to defend vegans. Let’s make a joke out of animal cruelty by comparing the abuse and torture of animals to cutting up a carrot.

If you wanna point out hypocrisy in the vegan movement, fine. You wanna point out scientific inconsistencies (like where they claim that meat is inherently bad for you)? Fine. Wanna call out privilege? Fine. But don’t belittle animal cruelty with this shit.

All these people who wear “People for the Eating of Tasty Animals” tee-shirts, who say shit like, “what about the vegetables? They feel pain, too,” or “meat is torture. Delicious torture,” just STFU.

Yeah, I mean, people like this have nothing of worth to contribute to the dialogue.

The problem is not veganism; veganism itself is great. The vegan movement, on the other hand, contains an awesome group of extremely diverse people (people of colour, white people, people of all genders, rich people, poor people, etc.), a bunch of whom are unfortunately waaay overrepresented because they stand at the podium of the mainstream animal rights movement (being mostly privileged white peeps and men) doing fucked up, problematic shit (such as directly equating the experiences of people of colour, women and nonhuman animals, while using racism and misogyny to advocate for animal rights).

This doesn’t say anything about veganism, though it does say a lot about power and privilege dynamics in our society. Criticism should therefore be aimed at the ways in which the (western) vegan movement in general tends to silence the voices of copious vegans of colour (who came up with this whole idea of not being complete fuckwits to the planet and its beings in the first place) by promoting a white-washed, consumer version of veganism which largely ignores the intersectional nature of oppression.

There is no critique of veganism itself, because, um, basically it’s about doing the least harm possible. And that’s, ya know, pretty cool.  The vegan movement leaves a lot to be desired, however.

So, if you wanna talk about the issues within the vegan movement, be my guest, but if your ‘critique’ of veganism relies on diminishing and making a mockery of the horrible ways in which billions of living, feeling beings each year are being exploited, tortured and killed, and how the ‘meat’ industry relies upon the exploitation of mostly poor people of colour who work in extremely unsafe conditions and who suffer greatly in this line of work, then you’re obviously a complete waste of space.

Year 12 Formal 2010, this guy was punching way above his weight and I ruined the only two photos he put on Facebook. Special mention to the brown suit and orange tie I bought at vinnies.