*please note i deeply value and respect the vegan movement. i am just critical of how humorously it precipitates in online spaces, particularly this one. :)
*please note i deeply value and respect the vegan movement. i am just critical of how humorously it precipitates in online spaces, particularly this one. :)
Me every time a militant vegan says “carnist”:
I’ve never interpreted that as an attempt at an insult, what word do you think is more fitting?
Omnivore, maybe? 🤷
But yeah, pretending that eating meat is an ism IS an insult when coming from an evangelical vegan who considers it morally reprehensible lol
“carnist” has a different meaning than omnivore. It’s used for people who actively defend what they think is their right to consume flesh.
Just like how evangelical vegans actively assert what they think is their right to control the diets and other lifestyle choices of adult humans who haven’t asked them to? 🙄
basically the same way we assert the right to tell people to stop using ai, to stop being racist, sexist, transphobic, using planes or heavy cars, giving money to fascists…
chosing to view animals as resources is not about diet, it’s about power over sentient beings and hierarchy of lives based on species.
Holy false equivalences, Batman! Are you going for the record or are you really THAT bad at discerning wildly disparate concepts and levels of severity from each other? 🤦
Now class, over here is a blatant example of the ad hominem fallacy
Nope. They’re objectively spewing a large array of false equivalence and my personal comment was directly and logically derived from that and that only.
It was thus logically sound AKA not a fallacy.
Your comment, on the other hand, is a textbook example of a reverse causation fallacy strawman combo:
you portray my criticism of their argument as a personal criticism when in fact my subsequent personal criticism is based on the illogic of their argument and nothing else.
It’s quite telling that you’re ready to say “control” to describe people arguing that you shouldn’t use animals as resources, but not to describe what happens to animals. Or if you would use it to describe what happens to animals, that you think nothing untoward of it. You know what I mean? Either controlling is, as you imply, inadmissable and you therefore become vegan because you mustn’t control animals, or controlling is sometimes admissable and you purport carnism.
Also since when is open exchange of ideas and concerns equated with control?
Am I trying to control you if I suggest that you not leave your tap running in California because fresh water is a precious resource in drought-plagued land?
Am I trying to control you if I suggest that you reduce your plastic consumption because we have a major microplastic crisis so severe that human babies are being born with plastic already in their body?
Am I trying to control you if I point out that the modern meat industry is ecologically unsustainable, so you’re going to have to switch to being vegetarian sooner or later since the meat production will literally collapse itself, so you may as well start now before it’s a global crisis?
If I suggest that you not hit yourself in the head with a hammer, is that me trying to control you, or is that just an act of very basic concern for your well being? And if hitting yourself in the head with a hammer becomes trendy, am I trying to control everyone if I suggest that we shouldn’t be doing that because brain injuries will make us dumber as a society?
You have to agree that there are at least two types of active, “militant” vegan: the ecological vegan, who focuses on the many global issues arising from the international meat industry, and the meat moralists, who are focused more on the immorality of meat consumption at all.
One of those is leaning toward control.
Veganism is an -ism as well. You’re getting worked up about a term that, at its core, just means that a person believes it is normal, natural and necessary to eat animals and animal products. Omnivore on the other hand means that you are able to digest and eat all kinds of food. If someone calls you a carnist, then the word itself is about as insulting as using “vegan” to describe vegans. Whatever derogatory meaning “evangelical” vegans put behind it is inferred from context or tone, not the word itself.
But NOT being vegan isn’t. In 99% of cases, it’s not an active choice based on values like veganism and indeed all other isms is.
Claiming otherwise while also asserting that it’s morally repugnant behavior is a value judgment and a bigoted one at that
Personally, I don’t eat meat most days and when I do it’s from a LACK of an active choice not to do so, not a choice TO eat meat.
There’s just not enough meat free alternatives that 1) taste good, 2) are within my means financially, 3) are filling enough AND 4) are within my severely ADHD-reduced ability to focus long enough to cook for myself.
As explained above, that’s just not true. An evangelical vegan calling someone who eats meat a “carnist” is more along the lines of a Protestant from Northern Ireland or Scotland calling a Catholic a “fucking papist”.
It’s a sectarian slur, basically.
Except for the fact that it’s only used in a derogatory context and tone, just like all other slurs.
Or maybe your opinion on what the term means is influenced by your biases about what vegans are like and act like towards carnists? If you interact with vegans on a friendly basis rather than assuming that they’re trying to insult you or that they’re calling your choices morally repugnant, you may find that it’soften used descriptively rather than to pass judgement. I have personally seen the term used neutrally more often than I’ve seen it used insultingly. It was also not coined as a slur: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnism by the way, Melany Joy was describing exactly what you mentioned: The pervasiveness of carnism, which makes it an unconscious automatism for many people.
Fixed that for you. Framed like that, the answer is yes: not all vegans are bigots, of course, that would ironically be a bigoted and untrue claim.
All proselytizing evangelical vegans I’ve ever been in contact with, many of which have been om Lemmy, have either used the word “carnist” as a slur or not at all. With the possible exception of you, though I’m not at all sold on that based on your denials of reality so far.
I never assume in advance. As I said, not all vegans are bigots. None of the few I know IRL are. A LOT of the ones here on Lemmy are, though, and they’re always the ones to initiate conflict since I frankly have better things to do with my life than go actively looking for things to be offended by. Unlike said evangelical vegans.
Even if that was the case, that’s still misleading as, like I’ve already explained, not being vegan isn’t any more of an ism than being atheist is a religion.
Even if not used deliberately as an insult, it’s inherently non-neutral as it infers a belief system that isn’t there in 99% of cases and simultaneously lumps everyone who’s not vegan together in one group like a fundamentalist religious person would lump everyone who’s not a follower of their religion together as “heathens” and “apostates”.
It was coined by a vegan activist to generalize about a lot of people who don’t themselves consider their lack of veganism a belief system. That Wikipedia article is about as biased towards support for the topic as the one about Israel 🙄
It’s a slur coined to lump people who have nothing meaningful in common together in order to make them easier to attack. It’s the equivalent of calling undocumented immigrants “illegal aliens”.
That’s the tricky thing with biases, right? They’re formed by our experiences. My experience interacting with vegans has clearly been different from yours, so that may explain why you would think I’m denying reality. Anyway, I hope you can keep an open mind when talking to vegans who use the word carnist. Not all of them are bigots :)
And also by believing unreliable sources like Melissa May and not questioning loaded terms coined to inspire and reinforce biases. Such as “illegal alien” and “carnist”.
Probably because you are one yourself and thus aren’t the target of their slurs and other bigotry towards people who don’t follow their extremist version of vegetarism.
The fact that you blatantly are is another big motivator as well.
I’ve seen the JBP crowd denounce the consumption of any amount of vegetables as woke and soy.
Yeah, THEY can accurately be described as “carnist”, unlike the rest of us.
They’re a tiny minority that DO elevate meat eating to an ism.
See the difference?
Honestly, no. It’s still just people being mad at each other for no reason.
If you don’t see the difference between eating meat at all and not just ONLY eating meat, but portraying eating vegetables as a moral failing, then I just can’t help you.
I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.
I don’t see the difference between people complaining online and other people complaining online
Yeah, people hurt themselves to own the people they disagree with…but I am pretty sure we are supposed to be omnivores…I don’t think carnivore works for us. #NotAnExpert
We are omnivorous by nature, but we can do fine without eating meat if we get the protein from elsewhere.
the militant ones are cool. it’s the evangelical ones that bring out my ire.