Vegan infighting and movement unity; response to ModVegan
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2017 2:09 pm
This is a response to this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_s_rLhKEVw&t=310s
I think Margaret's basic point in this video is right; nudging people towards veganism in a friendly manner should be our main priority. I write this with the risk in mind that we don't actually disagree on anything, but I think it's an interesting and important conversation to have. I do think my perspective is slightly different here.
If I understand correctly, Margaret claims that veganism needs to grow into a movement before we develop the minutia and exact implications of its doctrine. I think growth and the evolution of the doctrine can and should happen simultaneously. Strengthening our doctrine through criticising each other actually aids growth, and I think Margaret may overestimate the unity of other movements. I'd like to illustrate those points with two examples:
Firstly, when Andrew Sullivan wrote that gay people should have the right to marry in 1989 he was heavily criticised by his peers:
Secondly, black civil rights movements have always had two faces: one of equality with whites and one of dominance over them. Mandela had two equally great achievements: achieving equality and preventing black suppression of whites. Martin Luther King advocated for peaceful protest when a mass was about to assault police officers. We still see these two faces today; the black lives matter movement contains both.
if we see these movements through the rose coloured glasses of their success we risk forgetting what they owe their success to: figures such as Sullivan, Mandela and MLK always remaining critical of their own side.
When FullyRawKristina says you need no supplements and all spices are excitotoxins, this is harmful to people that listen to her and the vegan movement alike. Same goes for Yourofsky claiming that those who wear fur should be raped. These people are the dark side of our movement and we should criticise them (in a friendly and constructive manner) to strengthen veganism. As a result I see the vegan civil war as I see growing pains; unpleasant but unavoidable. We should, of course, try to keep our war of ideas civil and only fight battles that actually matter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_s_rLhKEVw&t=310s
I think Margaret's basic point in this video is right; nudging people towards veganism in a friendly manner should be our main priority. I write this with the risk in mind that we don't actually disagree on anything, but I think it's an interesting and important conversation to have. I do think my perspective is slightly different here.
If I understand correctly, Margaret claims that veganism needs to grow into a movement before we develop the minutia and exact implications of its doctrine. I think growth and the evolution of the doctrine can and should happen simultaneously. Strengthening our doctrine through criticising each other actually aids growth, and I think Margaret may overestimate the unity of other movements. I'd like to illustrate those points with two examples:
Firstly, when Andrew Sullivan wrote that gay people should have the right to marry in 1989 he was heavily criticised by his peers:
This change in the gay rights movement forms the basis for its success today.Wikipedia wrote:Many gay rights organisations attacked him for the stance at the time. Many on "the gay left" believed that he was promoting "assimilation" into "straight culture", when the aim of most at that time was to alter codes of sexuality and society as a whole, rather than fitting gays into it.[23] However, his arguments eventually became widely accepted and formed the basis of the modern movement to allow same-sex marriage.[43] In the wake of the United States Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage in 2013 (Hollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor), New York Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat suggested that Sullivan might be the most influential political writer of his generation, writing, "No intellectual that I can think of, writing on a fraught and controversial topic, has seen their once-crankish, outlandish-seeming idea become the conventional wisdom so quickly, and be instantiated so rapidly in law and custom."
Secondly, black civil rights movements have always had two faces: one of equality with whites and one of dominance over them. Mandela had two equally great achievements: achieving equality and preventing black suppression of whites. Martin Luther King advocated for peaceful protest when a mass was about to assault police officers. We still see these two faces today; the black lives matter movement contains both.
if we see these movements through the rose coloured glasses of their success we risk forgetting what they owe their success to: figures such as Sullivan, Mandela and MLK always remaining critical of their own side.
When FullyRawKristina says you need no supplements and all spices are excitotoxins, this is harmful to people that listen to her and the vegan movement alike. Same goes for Yourofsky claiming that those who wear fur should be raped. These people are the dark side of our movement and we should criticise them (in a friendly and constructive manner) to strengthen veganism. As a result I see the vegan civil war as I see growing pains; unpleasant but unavoidable. We should, of course, try to keep our war of ideas civil and only fight battles that actually matter.