I am fed up, I am disgusted, and I am disappointed.
This account I formerly followed (huge emphasis on the formerly) on Instagram made a series of "Are you two friends?" memes. This was one of the slides, and I, as a black vegan, am extremely uncomfortable with how the owner of this account, a queer and polyamorous woman of color who is, in fact, a carnist spoke on a commenter's concerns about this slide in the picture.
First of all, as you can see, the very first responder, @petitearisu is doing the whole "Veganism is classist." or "Veganism is inconsiderate of BIPOC struggles." excuse to further their own funding of animal slaughter, which makes them carnist trash the same way, but it's @decolonizing.love's response that I want to get at the most.
I am a poor, black vegan. If you all have seen my posts about my struggles, you all know that I've been unemployed and relying on mutual aid support to get by for a bit. Not fucking once, did it occur to me that I'd ever have to fund animal slaughter to feed myself during these trying times. If I wanted something cheap, legumes, rice, pasta, mushrooms, vegetables, and fruits always had my back. None of that stuff is even remotely expensive, but as far as @decolonizing.love goes:
FIRST OF ALL, LET'S TALK ABOUT THAT WHATABOUTISM!
Because you are so upset that people show concern and moral agency for the cruel way animals are treated for the sake of human sensory pleasure, clothing, and convenience, your first response is to divert to making this about trees? What makes this whataboutism worse is that it's a false equivalence, and even then, it fails as a "dunk" on vegans.
False equivalence because respect for trees doesn't necessarily have anything to do with respect for sentient life, and it fails as a dunk or accusation against vegans because many vegans are extremely environmentally conscious, and as a matter of fact, you could argue that they're the most environmentally conscious. Animal agriculture is causing more harm to this planet than so many of the other dangers that performative environmentalists pretend to care about, but let's push this aside because this is just a small fraction of your pitiful comment. What I'm primarily concerned about is:
THE "MORAL RIGHTEOUSNESS" ACCUSATION
This is a classic carnist excuse. You accuse vegans of being pretentious to make yourself feel like they're not actually making a material impact to liberate animals. This is cope. This is just you coping with the fact that you cannot own up to your own shortcomings in the way you abuse animals for absolutely no damn good reason. It doesn't even solidify as an actual argument or any form of coherent rhetoric against veganism as a philosophy. It serves as ad hominem at best.
As a black vegan, your point about how BIPOC can "perpetuate white veganism's hypocrisy" concerns me. Just so you Hexbears know, I didn't respond to this comment on Instagram itself because I didn't want dozens of performative leftists dogpiling me over this shit. If I, as a leftist of color ever disagree with any of these people on anything, they'll accuse me of just what they're saying vegans of color can do: "perpetuating white hypocrisy". They'll call me a bootlicker and say I'm simping for white people when I'm fucking not. As a matter of fact, this association of "moral righteousness" they tie to being explicitly for white veganism is something I'd be the first to speak out against, and you know why?
A carnist of color is still a fucking carnist.
This is hypocritical of them, and it is to a strong degree. So much of this account is reminding white people that even whites who are a part of a marginalized group, such as gay white people, trans white people, white women, or neurodivergent white people, need to understand that they still hold a position of privilege that their whiteness puts them in. They really want to make it clear to these people that them being marginalized in ways beyond race does not excuse them being discriminatory, bigoted, or inconsiderate towards POC within similar struggles.
I agree with this, but are they not hypocritically engaging in the same thing? She is using her position as a queer woman of color to justify another form of oppression and hierarchical domination she just so happens to be okay with: speciesism.
And the audacity she has to label any pushback to this hypocrisy as a product of "white veganism" is disgusting to my black vegan ass.
HER SAYING THAT "WHITE VEGANS DON'T CARE ABOUT ANIMALS"
As if you'd know what it means to "care about animals" when you're the one demonstrating how little you care about them. There are so many principled vegans who are white. Yes, this doesn't absolve them of the blind spots their white privilege may put them in, but as I said, you being a queer POC doesn't absolve you of the blind spots that your carnism puts you in.
Once again, this is nothing but an excuse to say that white vegans are not "truly" as morally superior as you think they think they are, but it has never been about "moral superiority" in and of itself. Veganism is something we do for the animals, and you all should do so too, especially if you give a damn about dismantling hierarchies. If you are to have an issue with this whatsoever, please kindly examine this issue internally rather than externally. Vegans are not the problem. You being unable to cease your carnism absolutely fucking is, though!
"SINGLE-ISSUE ACTIVISM"
"There are more important issues to worry about!" may be one of the most disgusting copouts that oppressors use. This is done to drift away from the focus of an important issue within the scheme of oppression so that you can seem justified in not doing anything about it! News flash! You don't have to focus on a single issue at once! I'm a vegan, and as much as I care about animal liberation, you know what else I care about? I care about women's liberation, queer liberation, and uplifting people of color on top of dismantling capitalism and other oppressive and hierarchical structures! I talk about these individual issues where it's relevant, and that includes the fact that I talk about veganism where it's relevant.
Yes, veganism needs intersectionality, as all progressive moments do! But it's shameful that you're pretending to help with that. If you are a POC who isn't vegan, you have absolutely no trustworthy foundation to give a grand statement about veganism needing intersectionality. It doesn't impact you because, no matter how many vegans of color try to speak sense to you on this matter, I know for sure that you'd still stuff your face with carcasses and feel absolutely no fucking remorse in doing so.
At this point, non-vegan leftists are too much for me to put up with at all.
Carnists make me sleepy so I go nap
[CW: Mentions of Homophobia/Misogyny/FGM]
Whenever I ask carnists this question, I actually get tons of them saying "Eating dogs and cats is moral in places where it's culturally acceptable, but where I'm from, it's wrong because they're pets and not food."To this, I always respond by saying "Okay, so in countries where homophobic violence is unfortunately a norm, is it socially acceptable? What about female genital mutilation? What about treating women as second-class citizens?" and despite me literally just taking their logic to its conclusion, I get some baseless "That's different tho!" as a response.
smh my head