Please also check out vegantheoryclub.org for a great set of well-run communities for vegan news, cooking, gardening, and art. It is not federated with LW, but it is a nice, cozy, all-in-one space for vegans.
We ask that the you have an understanding on what veganism is before engaging in this community.
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Welcome to c/vegan@lemmy.world. Broadly, this community is a place to discuss veganism. Discussion on intersectional topics related to the animal rights movement are also encouraged.
'Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals ...'
— abridged definition from The Vegan Society
The rules are subject to change, especially upon community feedback.
A compilation of many vegan resources/sites in a Google spreadsheet:
Here are some documentaries that are recommended to watch if planning to or have recently become vegan:
Lemmy: vegantheoryclub.org
Mastodon: veganism.social
!homecooks@vegantheoryclub.org
Halal eaters and teetotalers don't try to preach as and convert as often, perhaps?
(I support vegans and I dont mock them, for the record.)
Halal eaters do try to convert you, but to their religion, not their eating habits.
They are also made fun of for that.
People genuinely don't like to be told what they are doing is wrong.
I've definetly heard plenty of people making fun of or discriminating against others with dietary restrictions due to their religions. Hell I've also heard people making fun of others with lactose intolerance or celiac disease...
We can and should strive for better, but sometimes people can just be terrible 🫤
I still remember fondly an occasion at a wedding when my friend group all got placed at the same table, and we were 90% veg with one couple who ate meat. They remarked on it, and we all spent the rest of the meal joking about how it felt to be the minority, and they had to field questions like, "If you were on a desert Island with only vegetables, what would you do?"
yeah the hardest part of being vegan is interacting with non vegans. gotta love how the default response to veganism (you know that thing we do to try to better the planet and animal rights and shit) is to argue as if doing something about the issues you care about is a negative trait.
mfs always got something to say and love attacking a thing that as far as i'm aware is proven to be better for personal health, the environment, your wallet, and animals.
Honestly I've been so quiet about it offline, and one time I just said no thanks to cake as I don't eat dairy, etc, and the whole room alternately made fun of me and told me why I was wrong and meatsplaines until I got up and left.
i hear you - i've basically learned to avoid any topic or activity related to food with other people irl, which really sucks.
cooking is one of my favorite hobbies, can't talk to my friends about it anymore. hell, a close friend from high school completely stopped talking to me because we had literally one very reasonable and civil (from my perspective) debate about veganism. it's been years since i heard from them.
i got a single one of my close friends to even consider trying it, and i've been too anxious to even bring it up since last we spoke about it - a couple years ago now. they didn't seem to believe in the ethics/lifestyle of it and i'm terrified of learning that this person i care so much about has decided that their sensory pleasure is worth more than the lives of the animals they eat.
my experiences with speaking about veganism to the people that i care about is that it is a taboo subject; one that will make other people upset with me and potentially ruin relationships. and i think that fucking sucks.
I even posted a picture of my dinner one night on Facebook, and it happened to catch a picture of my spouse's dinner across from mine which visibly had cheese on it as he's not vegan, and all my friends pounced on it and began haranguing me, they obviously thought it was hilarious.
One of my CW is vegan, and another staff member brought her a frosted cake, and just said to her "Oh sorry didn't have time to get a vegan cake", and stood there expecting her to eat it. Like what do they not get? We commiserate a lot. My spouse is also on a special diet for gastroparesis, which means he can't have corn and legumes as well as other things, and that makes our mealtimes really fraught with arguments.
So I feel you. Most people don't get it at all.
Just fyi, one of the community rules is "Carnist rhetoric & Anti-vegans are not allowed." which is why so many top level replies are removed. I (and I assume many others) interpreted this post as "carnists, why do you do this?" but it's NOT and per community rules we're not allowed to explain or defend.
This is a safe place for vegans and we should leave it to them.
Sorry for imposing, I'll leave now. Mods, maybe you should pin a post for people like me who wander in here without knowing that rule? Might cut down on the carnist replies.
Like naeva said comments by nonvegans are allowed. The rule doesn't explicitly preclude anyone who isn't vegan from engaging in conversation. What it does not allow is for bad faith comments, strawmen arguments (carnist rhetoric and the like), and those that are hostile to vegans (antivegans) to come here and as the OP would put it "meatsplain".
I remove comments that are advocating for animal abuse, carnist propaganda, speciesism, and those made by antivegans.
Discussions about veganism here are heavily skewed as vegans are outnumbered vastly and it tends to be a sensitive topic due to cognitive dissonance. This makes it so that actual discussion is very hard as it often gets overun by reactionary takes and hostility to empathy.
Pinning posts has not helped in the past as most people don't read it or refuse to listen to the message before commenting here.
I cannot speak for any other mod, being newly minted, but this is not a vegans only sub.
Respectful and contextually appropriate replies are welcome but replies specifically hostile or following standard, trivially disputed, rhetoric will be removed.
For example I would not remove a reply like "What is it that determines whether or not something or someone is ok to eat in your eyes?" but I would remove "don't you know grass screams when you cut it. You're just hypocritical!"
Basically if you're posting stuff to own the vegans, explain why vegans are wrong, or saying something against veganism that a trivial search or five minutes considering the opposite position would show as false or grossly distorted your comment will be removed.
EDIT:
Just to add on to what I said. I think most of us would actually love to be wrong, if someone had strong evidence. Going vegan isn't tremendously hard, but it is definitely harder than never thinking about food and eating/wearing/using whatever you feel like because the whim to do so takes you. Mostly it can be socially isolating, because regardless of how much empathy you might actually have for carnists (having been one yourself, there is no shame in having been indoctrinated) people will feel that you condemn them and consequently try to shame you. (there was some study about this but I'm struggling to remember the title).
If someone could show me evidence that idk dogs were mere reflex machines like Descartes maintained when he vivisected them I would chow down. It's not really a particularly comfortable position to feel like you're living in the middle of a holocaust and most of the people you love and respect are not only oblivious, but actively defend and relish it.
It's just incredibly tedious to deal with the same set of disingenuous excuses. Like the aforementioned plants feel pain thing, I have never in my life seen anyone actually protest something like mowing lawns. I have basically zero reason to believe that anyone who isn't a jain thinks this is true, and even then... what is it that animals eat and how does physics work?
“Meatsplaining” made me cackle, what a word
Lemmy's so small I can't browse without posts from the vegan community showing up on front page feeds. Of course that'll draw in anyone/everyone.
The screenshot is obviously wrong. People will make fun of anyone for anything, anywhere and anytime. Problem is the disagreement on what's acceptable.
Being vegan doesn't equate with being religious. I think that a part of the problem is that some vegans truly do base their entire identity around it and people find that annoying, like when atheists are surrounded by one friend who won't shut up about god.
This is why I launched https://vegantheoryclub.org I delete the carnist posts lol
!vegan@vegantheoryclub.org
I support purging animal abuse "content"
Non-vegan here. I was going to reply one time, but even tho I was supporting y'all I realized it's not really my place to speak. This community is supposed to be your safe space, and I respect that. I hope y'all have a good one and wish you all luck.
Gotta ask, if you support vegans/veganism I assume that means you take it as at least more right than wrong. Is that the case? if so what's holding you back from joining our feeble, protein deficient ranks?
I just ask because personally I spent a few years being like "Yeah these people are correct and don't deserve the hate but oysters? Is that really a priority concern?" before realising that was a baffling stance and I should align my actions with the 99% I agreed with and worry about the rest later if it ever came up.
Fair question. Right now I live with my family, and basically everything we make has meat in it and since I don't cook I don't really get a say in it. Everything I choose to eat for myself is vegetarian, so I'm at doing a little.
Even tho it's hard for me to stop rn, it's not like you guys are wrong about the horrible conditions and treatment of animals in farms so it would be hard for me to argue against y'all.
Alt text for image:
A screenshot of a post by a user "Brusswole Sprouts" with the handle "@swolesprouts". The post reads as follows:
I've been vegan for over 10 years and I still don't understand why it's acceptable to make fun of vegans in social settings while you would never make fun of someone eating halal or not drinking for religious or cultural reasons.
Why is vegan culture less deserving of your respect?
Relevant paper
Cole M, Morgan K. Vegaphobia: derogatory discourses of veganism and the reproduction of speciesism in UK national newspapers. Br J Sociol. 2011 Mar;62(1):134-53. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-4446.2010.01348.x. PMID: 21361905.
I was at my dad's birthday last year and the meal was: sauerkraut, potatoes and an ABSURD amount of different meats. Like it was bizzare, even for someone who is used to people eat a lot of meat. It wasn't even good (i guess) because it was all greasy and just too much. It wasn't good looking or anything, it was just a lot and like half of it they threw away. At some point one of his alcoholic friends said loud: thank god there are no vegans here har har har. Are you so absorbed in your meat religion that... No, i still don't know what the point was. But everyone found it very funny, so i guess it is.
It's the same mindset that gets mad about things being woke
Where I live its in the legal gray zone to talk shit about religion, so theres that. And so far that I know, no vegan have commited terror acts because of the ill treatment of vegans.