Vegan for justice

Not the plain awareness that “eating meat is wrong”, but a growing sense of justice makes veganism so attractive to people I think.

Ok this is a fine line, but I believe what makes people want to turn vegan now, is not that “by chances” they have been informed about the atrocities going on in farms and slaughterhouses and that more or less right away turns them into vegetarians and/or vegans. I think it’s rather the growing sense of justice as far as nonhuman animals are concerned and the human relationship towards them, that makes people get the “click” of becoming a vegan.

People find it easier to stand for what they feel and think today, in regards to nonhuman animals.

In the past when you thought it was wrong to eat “meat”, etc. the pressure around a person living in a homocentrist society was so strong that someone was confronted with so many more obstacles than the obstacles a persons meets today in most or at least many contexts and places.

The danger of thinking that solely information would almost automatically create a more enlightened and thus hopefully compassionate people all around us, lays in the often overlooked point that many meat eaters and hunters, for example, etc., are acting fully knowing what they are doing and endorsing their fully aware chosen stances publicly wherever they can as individuals “having something to do with the issue” (they feel being asked for their warped views, so much, I think). The same fanaticism about a practiced carnism and speciesism also goes for some people in the field of arts it has to be noted – a professional field that is in much danger of acting on an ideological plane in society anyway and speciesist art is a sad fact that is often being ignored way too much ( speciesism in art : http://www.farangis.de/blog/category/animalistic-issue ).

What I think is important, is that we don’t underestimate the will and the power of the individual person and society overall to foster a sense of justice in each other once the ice is broken that sealed (one could say) “the lips of humanity” in the past.

the “personal choice” debate and homocentrism

As much as I like the cons of the article:

http://freefromharm.org/food-and-psychology/five-reasons-why-meat-eating-cannot-be-considered-a-personal-choice/

I find the “pros” partly a bit superficially treated.

Point 1. homocentrists and speciesist don’t care really wheather it’s “unnecessary” today to eat flesh. It’s about sacrificing life. Like “my human life is worth more than … “.

Point 2. Again, underlying mechanisms in society are overlooked when we hold back in as much that veganism (or rather not wanting to take part in animal murder in any form) is solely a choice of personal decision. The part of neseccisty on the side of “what human rights lose in a speciesist society” would need to be addressed for instance.

Point 3. It needs to be explained why a nonhuman animal victim isn’t even considered a victim by a speciesist or homocentrist respectively. “No being who prides himself on rationality can continue to support such behaviour.” Exactly that is the problem, they say that just because they are “rational” they are allowed to kill for their taste buds, etc.

Point 4. The destructivity of meat eating has the speciality that it does not care that it destroys the earth AND other humans (partly direclty) too … . To believe in the false cloak of a “humanity” that bases itself on speciesism and homocentrism, means to fall for a dangerous contractualism:

I don’t buy that people really in a basic sense accept even other humans rights. They don’t even accept my human right for example that I consider nonhuman animals to be rights holders as personalities too. So to believe that a person basically has a sense for “rights” but only applies it to her or his group seems wrong to me, BECAUSE this would be ONLY a contractualism, but with the claim for animal rights we are looking for the basic, fundamental rights to life, and earth-/ independent environmental rights, etc.

Point 5. here again it should be highlighted more or at all how animal rights and humans rights are intertwined – in a positive sense.

Otherwise I find it good and always highly due to discuss the issue of rights, in particular and foremostly animals rights and human “personal” choices!

An e-memorial and about people who simply deny that their harboring speciesist attitudes when you confront them …

The grave site of Martin Eduard Staudinger, German Animal Rights advocate and anti-vivisectionist. His grave is on the Hauptfriedhof in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He shares a grave site with his grandmother Dorothea Staudinger geb. Behrends.

On a memorial site for the people who lie resting on the Hauptfriedhof his grave is mentioned as:
“146 Grabmal für Martin Eduard Staudinger (1842-1910), Kämpfer gegen die Vivisektion, Gewann C 59” (http://www.bomas.de/buecher/brauchitsch-frankfurt.htm , accessed on the 16.08.12)

The inscription on his tombstone reads:’Im unermüdlichen Kampfe gegen die Vivisektion und für die Rechte der Tiere’ = In the untiresome fight against vivisection and for the rights of animals. (http://ar-civet-cat.blogspot.de/2010/07/martin-eduard-staudinger-1842-1910.html)

People that pretend not to know what speciesism is, and how to deal with them?

Honestly I don’t know yet, I am still trying to find ways … . Have you encountered that problem too: you make a somewhat halfwitted and half-conscious speciesist aware about the fact that you disagree with them making speciesist remarks (when you are around or not directly around on social networks maybe. People like to do it more so when an AR person is somewhere close by, so that a direct verbal argument can start, or so that they can try to ridicule your stance face to face and in public)?

Telling someone that you are against speciesism can be dealt with by a speciesist with a form of denial as a “response”, in which the person just assumes not to know what you’re talking about. Partly anybody is aware of speciesism, partly not. A speciesist is likely (at least in these days still) not fully aware of this -ism that humans direct against the nonhuman animal world (that is, speciesism!). A person might be aware about the conscious degradation of nonhuman animals, but might not consider that as a form of oppression that he or she should take politically serious in a considerate form. So we deal with an ethical blindness in many speciesists.

So how can one address them?

Overall it can be reasonable in the most cases to go ahead and still tell someone what you roughly think about the human-nonhuman relation in our societies in general. On the other hand, when you feel that informing that person won’t lead to any useful effect for the cause, you can just try to ignore their ignorance (!) and just “stand for what you stand” – let them know you are a vegan anti-speciesist, but not argue with them -, because your stance (in thought an action) will have all kinds of effects on your environment anyway.

I’m trying both these approaches anyway.