I consider my political and moral stance to be "anti-oppression" - and I've considered it as such long before I became vegan. However, I can honestly say that my attempts at veganism were stunted by the my passion for human rights, and the community of human rights activist. Why? Because apparently, vegans have no human oppression analysis - which I have found to be untrue.
I'm a systematically oppressed person - I am transgender, queer, mentally ill, and I don't exactly come from riches and gold. Anyone who says that vegans are all privileged, middle- to upper-class folks has no idea what they're talking about. Yeah, I'm white, but the insistence that vegans of color don't exist is quite frankly, racist. And no, I don't mean that in a "racist against white people" way, I mean that in a "you've got some serious internalized stuff against people of color & your perceptions of people of color" kinda way. Like, don't get me wrong, there are some white, racist vegans - see me over here a few weeks ago, coughing at vegans using the "all lives matter" hashtag for animals - but that's no different than any other group of people, and that doesn't mean that we care more about animals than people. In my experience, we care about them equally.
And I mean, every activist has issues that they focus on. Someone might consider themselves a "racial rights activist" but not a "women's rights activist", so what's the big deal when someone considers themselves an "animal rights activist" but not a "human rights activist"? Fact-o-the-matter-is, is that animals are often treated worse than any person...thus why we compare human suffering to the treatment of animals, ie "they treat us like animals" or "they treat us like we're subhuman", the latter of which has the implication that our fellow living creatures are less than us and deserve to be treated as such.
I'm not gonna sit here and argue about comparing factory farming to the holocaust (even though it was originally people who had been through the Holocaust who made this comparison), or saying that dairy cows are raped (even though the farm workers themselves call them "rape racks"). I'm not going to argue about that, because I get that people get a little skeeved out by the idea that animals are worthy of being lifted up to human status, and I also get that these statements are doing just that, rather than bringing humans down to "animal" status. That's what those comparisons are about. But I'm not here to talk about that in particular today.
It's weird to think that the human rights activist community and the animal rights activist community are constantly going at each others throats when we all want the same thing - to change & reverse the harm caused by societal structures like racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, saneism, and in the case of vegans, carnism & speciesism.
There is nothing wrong with being both a human rights activist and an animal rights activist. These do not have to be - and generally are not - opposing stances. It's all about trying to make a better world for both those in it, and those who will be. It's about anti-oppression.
So, all in all, it's up to you who you fight for, and who you mock, and who you hate. But as someone who knows all too well the face of oppression, an animal deserves life, love, liberty, and safety, just as much as any human being does. Every living thing on this planet deserves equality & liberation from suffering. That's my truth. What's yours?
I'm a systematically oppressed person - I am transgender, queer, mentally ill, and I don't exactly come from riches and gold. Anyone who says that vegans are all privileged, middle- to upper-class folks has no idea what they're talking about. Yeah, I'm white, but the insistence that vegans of color don't exist is quite frankly, racist. And no, I don't mean that in a "racist against white people" way, I mean that in a "you've got some serious internalized stuff against people of color & your perceptions of people of color" kinda way. Like, don't get me wrong, there are some white, racist vegans - see me over here a few weeks ago, coughing at vegans using the "all lives matter" hashtag for animals - but that's no different than any other group of people, and that doesn't mean that we care more about animals than people. In my experience, we care about them equally.
And I mean, every activist has issues that they focus on. Someone might consider themselves a "racial rights activist" but not a "women's rights activist", so what's the big deal when someone considers themselves an "animal rights activist" but not a "human rights activist"? Fact-o-the-matter-is, is that animals are often treated worse than any person...thus why we compare human suffering to the treatment of animals, ie "they treat us like animals" or "they treat us like we're subhuman", the latter of which has the implication that our fellow living creatures are less than us and deserve to be treated as such.
I'm not gonna sit here and argue about comparing factory farming to the holocaust (even though it was originally people who had been through the Holocaust who made this comparison), or saying that dairy cows are raped (even though the farm workers themselves call them "rape racks"). I'm not going to argue about that, because I get that people get a little skeeved out by the idea that animals are worthy of being lifted up to human status, and I also get that these statements are doing just that, rather than bringing humans down to "animal" status. That's what those comparisons are about. But I'm not here to talk about that in particular today.
It's weird to think that the human rights activist community and the animal rights activist community are constantly going at each others throats when we all want the same thing - to change & reverse the harm caused by societal structures like racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, saneism, and in the case of vegans, carnism & speciesism.
There is nothing wrong with being both a human rights activist and an animal rights activist. These do not have to be - and generally are not - opposing stances. It's all about trying to make a better world for both those in it, and those who will be. It's about anti-oppression.
So, all in all, it's up to you who you fight for, and who you mock, and who you hate. But as someone who knows all too well the face of oppression, an animal deserves life, love, liberty, and safety, just as much as any human being does. Every living thing on this planet deserves equality & liberation from suffering. That's my truth. What's yours?
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