What is vegephobia, and how can it help our movement as a whole?
On Sunday, November 3rd, we recited a chapter from our ongoing effort, “The Book of Vegan,” a semi-humorous attempt to compile a series of essays about veganism to create a unifying text that brings into harmonious dysfunction all the shards of our lives as bold, adamant anti-carnists in a robustly carnist world, for the first time. A full month later, we would like to supply the second half of the essay not included during that livestream, which you can view via the following link should you so wish:
https://www.facebook.com/ProjectAnimalFreedom/videos/787828511652435/.
Vegephobia: A Secret Prejudice
“Donne moi tête.” For an entire semester, our class valedictorian, sitting just behind me in Madame Schlotz’ small, downstairs classroom, would pur this line to me, knowing full well what he meant, much to the amusement of his fellow cronies. “Fag.” Every time I rendered a competent response to a question posed by our professor in the first ethics course I ever took, I would, almost without fail, be greeted with this epithet, its vile intent searing through the remaining shreds of my long-lost dignity. A gang of teenage thugs slowly creep up on me and my partner in the park, until both of us, fearing bashing, released each other’s hands, hurrying toward the main road should homophobic violence erupt. After decades of enduring homophobic slurs, vicious rumors, and near daily mockery, there exists another prejudice so potent, yet so overlooked, unknown, and even unnamed, I have suffered far more in consequence of it than I have in consequence of homophobia. What is this secret prejudice? What makes is so powerful? And why should we do our best to address it that all may know justice? In this essay, we shall clarify the nature of this oppressive ideology, its impact on nonhuman animals and their foremost advocates, and our means for liberating both ourselves and our nonhuman animals compatriots from the intoxicating strands of this oft-overlooked, yet thoroughly insidious prejudice.
“Vegephobia” is a powerful term, one subject to near immediate knee-jerk ridicule, rejection, and repression. Even fellow vegans, struggling to cope with the forces of homophobia and vegephobia alike, all too often castigate this concept as one deserving of the utmost contempt. “Don’t even talk to me!” one queer woman told me after she excoriated me for even daring to give vegephobia a name, exasperated as she was after I explained to her the bundle of qualifications which apply to this concept. She felt the concept of vegephobia itself—irrational prejudice, bias, and discrimination against anti-carnists, prime among them vegans—diminished the suffering of fellow members of our LGBTQIA+ community. She felt this concept stole the spotlight from those oppressed by the forces of homophobia, Islamophobia, and xenophobia, even after I explained to her nonhuman animals, not vegans, remain the primary targets of vegephobia, facing the same rampant discrimination, violent persecution, and brutal death as do other oppressed groups. Rather than grapple with the true implications of my thesis, including her own marginalization from (yet indirect support of) our dominant culture, she ultimately sided with her initial emotions, judgments, and impressions, understandable given a lifetime of not only experiencing homophobia, but also witnessing her friends struggle with the often severe forces of homophobic discrimination, harassment, and negation.
In this manner, it is perhaps best to understand the concept of vegephobia by first clarifying what it is not. Vegephobia is not necessarily a reason to feel oneself oppressed; as revealed above, one can struggle with far more pressing issues in their life, from homelessness to homophobia, without feeling vegephobia seriously impacts them. But the experience of these social phenomena vary from person to person; for this reason alone, it is important we validate the experiences of those who cite vegephobia as a greater detriment in their daily lives, just as it is important to validate the experiences of those who cite homophobia, racism, or any other barrier to be a greater detriment in their daily lives. Thus, one gay vegan might find vegephobia to be a much more potent force in their daily life while another is apt to jeer in contempt we could even conceive of such a concept. Nor does vegephobia necessarily represent a diminution of other injustices. One can cite vegephobia as a major factor in their current discontent while acknowledging far greater injustices afflict far more vulnerable animals, both human and nonhuman, than ourselves. Acknowledging the existence of vegephobia therefore does not entail we discount the existence, severity, and scope of other injustices. Likewise, vegephobia is no more a repudiation of the existence of other injustices than the existence of racism is a repudiation of the existence of sexism. It would seem, in fact, the more injustices we recognize, the more complete an account of justice we can render; under an intersectional framework, we are no longer constrained to categories, such as “racism” and “sexism,” but instead can acknowledge the intertwingularity of these related, intersecting oppressions, recognizing that sex is raced and race sexed. To acknowledge the existence of vegephobia is therefore to introduce a new dimension of moral complexity into our account of social justice, especially within intersectionalist accounts that all too often fail to take adequate account of the nonhuman animal question, including the implications thereof for animal advocates. Nor is vegephobia a “suffering competition.” It is merely an attempt to codify the emotional, social, intellectual, ethical, and occasionally physical discrimination to which vegans, vegetarians, and other anti-carnists are all too often subject, not a claim as to who suffers more with respect to a given oppressive ideology.
Having thus clarified several misconceptions surrounding our freshly minted concept of vegephobia, we can proceed now to better codify what it actually is, to whom it applies, and why it is so crucial we finally address it. As suggested above, vegephobia is an extension of social justice, a recognition of an additional axis of oppression on an already crowded playing field of various oppressive ideologies and their antitheses. Unlike racism, sexism, and classism, however, speciesism and its corollaries, most notably vegephobia, almost never receive mention let alone depiction in modern accounts of a “unified” intersectionalism. Instead, the nonhuman animal question is almost always glossed over, the oppression of human animals always taking center stage as if nonhumans and the problems they face do not even exist. This lack of moral consideration, even in modern intersectionalist theory and practice, itself requires we make an exerted effort (indeed, any effort at all) to acknowledge the underlying strands of speciesism which daily afflict trillions of nonhuman animals. But even as nonhuman animals remain the primary target of vegephobia, vegephobia still captures a vital phenomenon that befalls many a social justice movement, seemingly without exception: namely, the advocates for an oppressed class, by advocating against this oppression, themselves become oppressed, if only secondarily relative to the primary recipients of this vile hatred, callous indifference, and mass, socially sanctioned maltreatment. Advocates for LGBTQIA+ rights become themselves stigmatized, even if they do not themselves belong to the oppressed class for whom they advocate; advocates for radical environmental politics become delegitimized, especially on the annals of corporate-controlled media; and advocates for Marxist economic revolution find themselves McCarthyized, even to the present day. Likewise does a certain antipathy befall the animal advocate, for whom we append the word, vegephobia, to our social justice lexicon.
Though the human animal victims of vegephobia certainly do not suffer as much as the human animal victims of many other unjust ideologies, institutions, and other forms of invalidation, vegephobia still entails the existence of all too real discrimination, be it social, emotional, intellectual, ethical, or even physical. A core aspect of vegephobia therefore involves the tendency of human society to discriminate against those who lie outside the dominant culture. Aspects as trivial as one’s appearance, skin pigment concentration, and even voice timbre can have significant implications for one’s standing within many human societies, not by some undeniable logical necessity, but by a seemingly inescapable social reality, bound up in social meanings, customs, and habituations. The more one deviates from the dominant culture, the more one seems to find oneself on the receiving end of society’s worst impulses. Any diligent intersectionalist will readily admit not only that certain prejudices, when combined, produce unique, though not wholly distinct, oppressions, but also that the more oppressed categories intersect, the more an individual will tend to find themselves of an inferior social stature, the subject of ever increasing amounts of ridicule, ostracization, and marginalization, socially, physically, intellectually. A gay black man, for example, often encounters stauncher social censure than someone who is merely gay or merely black, as harmful as the forces of racism and homophobia, in relative isolation, may be. A gay black woman who identifies as a vegan anarchist would likely encounter stronger social censure still. In every case, belonging to more than one oppressed class seems to increase the propensity with which one succumbs to the insidious social forces at play in demarcating, delegitimizing, and even demonizing the other.
It seems we cannot reject the foregoing analysis; the examples are simply too many, the strength of their collective inductive power too difficult to refute. Yet the fundamental concept at play here can be tested far more simply. Take someone who belongs to every socially advantaged class, and imagine this individual happens to be vegan. Now imagine someone who belongs to every socially privileged class who happens to be nonvegan, someone who, in no way, can be classified as a bona fide anti-carnist. Who seems more socially vulnerable: the optimally privileged vegan or the optimally privileged nonvegan? Before tracing further branches of our argument, it seems a class of comparatively marginalized individuals arises such that a nonvegan, by embracing the dominant culture, one of rampant speciesism, carnism, and vegephobia, enjoys greater privilege than the impassioned vegan, no matter the strengths of the vegan’s moral outlook or way of life. By this preliminary analysis, two groups emerge, one more privileged than the other, the nonvegan over the vegan. These two social groups seem to encounter, on balance, different barriers, with the vegan seeming to encounter more and stronger barriers, from vegephobic ridicule to speciesistic dismissiveness, delegitimization, and denial. As discussed above, it seems the vegan encounters these difficulties if for no other reason than belonging outside the privileged norm, deferring to those mainstream society would sooner deny, deprive, denigrate, debase, and devour before expressing a modicum of anti-carnistic respect.
Armed with a preliminary account of the discrimination—or, at the least, increased barriers—to which vegans so often succumb, we should also note that our account of vegephobia becomes complexified by the added ingredients of hate, fear, and other forms of prejudice. It is possible for members of the privileged and underprivileged class to not only hate the other, but hate the other’s strongest advocate—or any advocate at all, for that matter. In one case, the privileged party bristles with hatred toward the other; in the other, the one who sides with other comes to hate him- or herself, succumbing to the vile intoxication of internalized oppression. Thus can we better understand the complex internal workings of an animal advocate who, as we beheld earlier in this essay, denies the underlying strands of vegephobic discrimination, harassment, and minimization to which vegans are subject, for society has socially conditioned her, if not to accept full-blown speciesism, then to accept a dollop of speciesism whereby she denies her own oppression and the oppression of others along the axis of vegephobia, along the axis of speciesism transmuted. Though we do not intend to oversimplify the internal mechanics of this accidental denialist, we have succeeded in adding an additional layer of complexity to aid our analysis of the phenomenon in question. Namely, by denying the existence of vegephobia, even vehemently so, we can occasionally demonstrate the existence, potency, and impact thereof; in a bizarre twist of reasoning, externalized and internalized oppression rely upon many of the same underlying mechanisms that verify the very existence of the vegephobia we now analyze.
While we have sussed out the possibility of self-delusion, of self-denial and self-abasement, we should proffer a few examples to better demonstrate the discrimination we claim so typifies vegephobia in the first place. At this juncture, I will choose to speak in the first person, relaying my experience as accurately and completely as I possibly can to demonstrate both the existence and the potency of vegephobia. We need travel back no further than the past couple weeks to proffer at least one or two compelling examples of the reality and force of this secret prejudice. A few weeks ago, I received the following message in my Facebook Messenger inbox from Kurt, who I loved dearly: “I have to be honest with you I don't think we will be more then friends. I'm sorry. I like you but I think we are at two different points in our lives. You will find some one. To date. Also I cant be a vegan. I love meat. I just wanted to let you know so I don't lead you on.” While I appreciate his honesty, I am distressed he would cite my veganism, which I near constantly underplayed, going so far as to refuse discussing my veganism with words, instead sending him one or two non-graphic videos to explain my ethical lifestance, as a reason for terminating our relationship. Of all the issues he could have mentioned, why did one of them have to be veganism? Though I perhaps showered him with vegan food too lavishly, I am deeply hurt he used my foremost passion, which I concealed, transmuted, and diminished to better ensure his personal comfort around me, given my ability to rouse “carnistic anxiety” without even trying to, as a reason for terminating our relationship. From my perspective, he gives just two primary reasons for the breakup: 1) the fact we are at different points in our lives (which is true) and 2), “I cant be vegan.” Though one can more fully examine the underlying subtexts by knowing the full context—did you know, for example, that Kurt had just undergone a significant breakup, making it more difficult for him to commit to a long-term relationship?—we still observe a disturbing trend: veganism being used as a basis for exclusion, including the termination of ongoing relationships, even when veganism is kept on the “down-low.”
As a philosophy major who holds moral and intellectual integrity in high regard, demanding that others not only satisfy their burden of proof, but also their calling to ethics, I would like to address two other facets of the discrimination to which so many vegans frequently succumb: ethical and intellectual repression. Just examine the following debate, which we will preface thusly: during the 2015 Christmas season, vegetarians, vegans, and especially carnists distributed a series of widely syndicated new stories following the release of a Carnegie Mellon study which appeared to indicate that not only was lettuce three times worse than bacon when it came to per-calorie greenhouse gas emissions, but also that vegetarian, vegan, and plant-based diets were not as environmentally friendly as commonly assumed. To combat this narrative, I decided to share a video expounding the environmental benefits of veganism. Even though Mic the Vegan, as usual, failed to disappoint with his rigorously evidence-, fact-, and reason-based arguments surrounding veganism, including the environmental benefits thereof despite significant pushback (primarily from the industry), Missy Rung-Blue, the foremost leader of the Skeptical Society of St. Louis, decided to share a link to an article posted to Scientific American on December 15th, titled “Lettuce Produces More Greenhouse Gas Emissions Than Bacon Does: A vegetarian diet does not necessarily have a low impact on the environment.” While this article was far more rigorously fact-based than other, more sensationalized articles, the implicit conclusion was clear: vegetarian diets may not be as beneficial for the environment as we previously imagined, a conclusion clearly stated from the article’s subtitle on down.
Having defended a vegan lifestyle from such attacks for years, I knew there existed an underlying subtext, not scientific, intellectual integrity as Missy herself believes, but a certain intellectual antipathy and moral aversion toward veganism. As we will reveal, this inference to the best explanation is more than mere intuition; it is more than years of heartfelt consternation advocating for what I consider to be the single greatest overlooked, unsung social justice case of all time only to encounter forces which either silence me outright or convince me to silence myself. The insinuation for a beleaguered, embattled vegan such as myself is all too clear when carnists trumpet such articles: veganism is not legitimate; it lacks a firm scientific, intellectual, and moral basis. In becoming the “rational moderate,” Missy is neither perfectly rational, nor perfectly moderate. Instead, she is upholding not only millennia of speciesism, but also millenia of aversion to a radical moral truth: when it comes to suffering, animals are our equals, deserving of the same justice, love, respect, compassion, and kindness as human animals, not violence, suffering, and ignorement from the level of the individual to the highest political office in the land. As Dr. Melanie Joy implores in her masterwork, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Eat Pigs, we must be weary of such “rational moderates,” who seem “rational” and “moderate” not because they are perfectly so, but because veganism is perceived as “irrational” and “immoderate.” Such rational moderates, Dr. Joy concedes, succeed not so much in advocating for an alternative to the injustice in which our nonhuman animal compatriots find themselves perpetually enmeshed as they do in upholding preexisting social norms, attitudes, and prejudices. The “rational moderate” often styles him- or herself as a reformer, as someone who recognizes the injustices of the system, but who ultimately upholds the system of oppression itself, as when Temple Grandin conceives a more “humane” way to kill innocent creatures who want to live safe, happy, and free more than anything, the gustatory pleasure of a human animal appearing to count more than the rights, lives, and well-being of the thousands of animals such a carnist is likely to consume over her or his lifetime. Keeping in mind the nature of Missy’s status as our so-called “rational moderate,” we proceed now to my five-point refutation of the imputed import of this article and others like it: namely, that veganism is tainted, illegitimate, even laughable.
Missy prefaces her post as follows: “Related article to the one I posted earlier today. Good points raised in this one, too. The main thing: there are a variety of ways to quantify the problem and not all diets, even all vegetarian/vegan diets, have the same impact.” Before we even launch into my critique of this article and the implicit conclusion—veganism lacks a sound, rational basis, and remains, given such “deficits,” illegitimate—we should immediately note Missy is going straight for vegetarian and vegan diets, even though the article examines nonvegetarian and nonvegan diets. This point is important to remember; when it comes to anti-vegan advocacy, the purpose is not to promote justice, truth, or mutual accountability, but to antagonize veganism and its foremost advocates, even when such antagonism does not align with their purposes, both stated and unstated; underlying, often subconscious intents; and facts of the matter. As we shall soon see, in the process of invalidating veganism, Missy almost inadvertently invalidates her own commitment to skepticism, rationalism, and empiricism. Rather than rest our laurels on this preliminary analysis, however, we proceed now to my five-point critique not so much of the article Missy shared as the intended conclusion thereby derived:
Problem 1: The Carnegie Mellon study cited in the article does not examine a specifically vegetarian or vegan diet, and the results therefore cannot be generalized to vegetarian or vegan diets.
This study examines three different scenarios, none of which assume vegan or even vegetarian diets, calling for increased consumption not only of fruits and vegetables, but highly energy-intensive and greenhouse gas-producing sea foods [as well]. These scenarios also assume continued high-dairy consumption and only moderately reduced meat consumption, other environmentally-destructive foodstuffs that vegan diets exclude. These major confounding variables prevent this report from being generalized to vegetarian and vegan diets, which differ significantly from USDA guidelines.
Problem 2: This article uses lettuce as a straw man and commits the fallacy of composition (yet again).
At roughly 70 calories per pound, lettuce is so low-calorie a food that it occupies the smallest bar on a graph which catalogs over 70 different plant foods. Meanwhile, other plant foods are 3-7 times more calorie-dense per pound, including grains, which account for roughly half of the calorie's [sic] in the average vegan diet. On the other hand, bacon is a remarkably fatty food. Hence, we are comparing one of the most calorie-dense animal foods to one of the least calorie-dense plant foods. While we can make such a comparison, we cannot generalize this comparison to other plant foods let alone [vegan diets as a whole].
Problem 3: This article fails to demonstrate whether vegetarian or vegan diets are worse on balance than meat-laden diets.
While this article succeeds in making the logical point that vegan food is not necessarily more environmentally-friendly than non-vegan food, the point Missy clearly intends to emphasize and a point to which I concede, this article fails to adequately defend its implicit conclusion that vegan diets either lack environmental benefits or present a net environmental harm when compared to the average meat-laden American diet. To reach such a conclusion would require additional factual premises which I argue do not obtain; otherwise, the entire [desired, implicit] conclusion relies solely on a fallacy of composition.
Problem 4: Vegan diets are demonstrably less carbon-intensive.
Since confounding variables seriously undermine the Carnegie Mellon study as it applies to vegetarian or vegan diets, we must search elsewhere to determine the relative carbon intensity of vegan diets. Conveniently, I found an article published in 2008 by the same department at the same school. After accounting for virtually every stage of the food production process, this article concludes that cereals and carbs have a relative carbon intensity of .13; chicken, fish, and eggs, .38; dairy products, .5; fruits and vegetables, .39; oils, sweets, and spreads, .05; and red meat, a whopping 1 out of 1 on a CO2 per calorie basis. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es702969f
Problem 5: Vegans diets [sic] are on balance less environmentally destructive than non-vegan diets.
Though the average vegan consumes 3-4 times more fruits and vegetables than the average American, increased inputs for these extra fruits and vegetables are more than offset by decreased agriculture inputs elsewhere. For example, vegans replace meat, eggs, and dairy primarily with grain, which has a relative carbon intensity 1/8th that of beef and 1/3rd that of chicken, fish, and eggs. Moreover, vegans eliminate monstrously inefficient animal products which require trillions of gallons of water and millions of tons of grains [to produce]. Though some vegan foods are surprisingly resource-intensive on a per calorie basis, vegan diets remain, on balance, more environmentally sustainable than most diets high in animal products.
Conclusion: While the article makes the compelling logical point that certain vegan foods may be just as environmentally destructive or even more environmentally destructive than certain animal products, this article fails to demonstrate that vegan diets, on balance, cause more environmental harm than the meat-laden diet this article apparently defends. Future debate should strive to correct this deficit, using sources which specifically address vegetarian and vegan diets. http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-diet
Rereading these arguments brings tears to my eyes; I remember undergoing a small mental breakdown because of all the stanch, often unfair resistance I encountered from those who should be the most open-minded to the logical imperative of veganism, not the least. Here is how Missy responds to what I consider fairly strong criticisms of the implicit, desired conclusions for which carnists shared this content so vigorously:
1) The study is from Carnegie Mellon, not Cornell. 2) The intent of the article is to show various foods' impact on a PER CALORIE basis. The PER CALORIE is the great equalizing factor being examined. Based upon PER CALORIE factors, the article states, right in the beginning, that if Americans were to change their diets to the 2010 dietary recommendations, we would, on whole, consume 38% more energy, 10% more water, and 6% more greenhouse gases. So, a specific diet WAS being looked at and it is a diet that is clearly more vegetarian-like. No where does it indicate that the purpose of the study was to compare a totally vegetarian or vegan diet to the Agricultural Dept's 2010 dietary recommendations. It was just looking at the one diet. 3) The article also clearly states that there are SOME vegetarian and vegan diets which DO have lower impacts, but you cannot assume that ALL vegetarian or vegan diets have the SAME impact. 4) The article also clearly states which veggies and fruits are better to consume from an environmental impact: onions, okra, carrots, broccoli, and brussel sprouts all have good impact. Lettuce is notoriously water-hungry, and therefore has a worse impact. Again, as a consumer, these are important facts to know. If you want to have the most impact with your vegetarian or vegan diet, make sure you're not consuming a lot of lettuce and instead are consuming a lot of onions, okra, carrots, broccoli, and brussel sprouts. 5) The article also clearly states that there are confusing comparisons. The first paragraph under the heading "Some Confusing Comparisons" states that if we shifted to the 2010 guidelines, we would eat less meat (good for emissions) but drink more milk (bad for emissions). 6) Martin Heller, from the Center for Sustainable Systems at U. of Michigan makes a false dichotomy (logical fallacy) in his "bacon versus lettuce" claim. That is NOT what the article is about at all. The science cannot be simplified down to that ridiculous dichotomy. 7) The article also points out limitations to all studies, which is a fair point to make. 8) I'm not sure you actually read the article. I think you just read the headline.
I posted these articles on the latest science because good Skeptics would be interested in what the latest science is behind the environmental impact of our food choices. The study clearly brings up some good points, the most impactful being at the very beginning: that if we eat according to the Agricultural Department's 2010 dietary recommendations, we will increase water use, energy use, and increase emissions. That 2010 dietary recommendation clearly advocates for a more vegetarian-like diet. Calories HAVE to be considered because, in order to survive, we all have to take in a certain amount. A good Skeptic keeps their mind open to the possibility of having to change one's mind based upon the latest Science has to offer. In this case, it is clear that there is still more to know about the impacts of our diet and the environment AND there are other factors to consider about diet which means making sweeping arguments that vegetarianism or veganism are the best for the planet. A good Skeptic would accept this and keep their mind open instead of hunkering down and continuing to evangelicize their position.
Missy, I regret I gave you the appearance of winning this debate; I saw my reputation plummeting, and I feared, as you threatened elsewhere, I was just another post or two and a few more comments from being removed from our community, which I have remained permanently estranged from ever since, yet to which I continue to post in a desperate effort to be a “good Skeptic.” And, as I learned, “good” skeptics do not post anything about veganism, ever, unless it is to criticize veganism; it looks like we will be sharing pro-vax, pro-climate action, pro-“science” content, along with the occasional #HitchSlap, until the end of time, the greatest, overlooked social justice cause, fueled, at its best, by a dedication to science, logic, reason, evidence, and ethics, be damned. After all these years, I would like to finish what I started, if only for the pleasure of our readers, some of whom may think, given Missy’s critique, I lost not only the social debate, but also the intellectual one. Without further ado, here we go: 1) As soon as I saw your post, I corrected this minor error. But as with Kurt, why did this small detail hold so much relevance? Could it be because you wanted to secure one “slam dunk” in order to suggest the wrongness of all my other points you would criticize next? Most charitably, she wanted to correct an admittedly minor error. Unless I am missing something, however, I do not believe the premise “this study was conducted at Carnegie Mellon, not Cornell” has any logical bearing on the outcome of our real argument, not even the one about the environmental impacts of a vegan lifestyle so much as about veganism itself; after years of vegan advocacy, this I confide in you. 2) The intent of the article, indeed, is to showcase the relative environmental impact of various foods, including those, like lettuce, which, on a per-calorie basis, are disproportionately resource-intensive. Your excessive use of caps I find extremely patronizing, belittling, and condescending, as if I lacked the intelligence to understand the basic unit upon with this debate hinges. Missy, I would also suggest you please read my five-point critique more closely; in particular, please examine my second point more carefully:
Problem 2: This article uses lettuce as a straw man and commits the fallacy of composition (yet again).
At roughly 70 calories per pound, lettuce is so low-calorie a food that it occupies the smallest bar on a graph which catalogs over 70 different plant foods. Meanwhile, other plant foods are 3-7 times more calorie-dense per pound, including grains, which account for roughly half of the calorie's [sic] in the average vegan diet. On the other hand, bacon is a remarkably fatty food. Hence, we are comparing one of the most calorie-dense animal foods to one of the least calorie-dense plant foods. While we can make such a comparison, we cannot generalize this comparison to other plant foods let alone [vegan diets as a whole].
Missy, are you confident, in your dissent, I refer not to a per calorie basis? In fact, I initially took most offense to this accusation prior to reading your final paragraph since I find your resistance here utterly inane, as if you did not read anything I wrote. I mention calorie density no fewer than four times in my second point alone. While you do not seem to grasp that calorie density, a ratio of environmental inputs to caloric output, logically constitutes your desired environmental-impact-“PER CALORIE” basis, I also wrote, and I quote, “Since confounding variables seriously undermine the Carnegie Mellon study as it applies to vegetarian or vegan diets, we must search elsewhere to determine the relative carbon intensity of vegan diets. Conveniently, I found an article published in 2008 by the same department at the same school [Carnegie Mellon].” Though I may have initially botched the names of these two universities, this needless hair-splitting and rampant goalpost-shifting have no significant impact whatsoever on the logical outcome of our debate; focusing on this small error, however, makes a brilliant smokescreen as Missy must, at least subconsciously, know in her heart of hearts. I proceed: “After accounting for virtually every stage of the food production process, this article concludes that cereals and carbs have a relative carbon intensity of .13; chicken, fish, and eggs, .38; dairy products, .5; fruits and vegetables, .39; oils, sweets, and spreads, .05; and red meat, a whopping 1 out of 1 on a CO2 per calorie basis [emphasis added].”
Contrary to your claim I only read the headline of that article, I actually read every article on this subject I could find, even the sensationalized ones. I have also conducted a semester’s worth of research into the environmental impact of vegan and nonvegan diets with the data so overwhelmingly in favor a plant-based diet as a means for reducing environmental harm, I stopped recording the findings of any more studies on 4x6” notecards, by then an inch thick. But the question remains: are you confident you not only read my contributions to this discussion, but also consulted the relevant resources I shared therein? Those who ask of others what they will not do themselves often lack the social, moral, and intellectual authority they claim, and this reality is perhaps no more evident than in debates about veganism, wherein all carnists need to do to win, in most contexts, is cite so many classic, straightforward, textbook fallacies the vegan has not the time to refute them all, giving the nonvegan carnist the appearance of winning, even when the carnist is losing by a wide or even massive margin, logically speaking. As I write in my essay, “Logically Fallacious: Exposing the Core Fallacies of Carnism,” responses, like Missy’s, to the vegetarian proposition are “all too common,” penning the following:
But just how satisfactory are these responses to the serious moral dilemma that faces the modern American omnivore? And why do we hear the same responses, over and over again, to the vegetarian lifestance? And even more crucially, why do we never ask ourselves these questions? In this essay, we will critically examine these common responses to the vegetarian proposition. In so doing, we will document the extensive, core fallacies of carnism that saturate almost every conversation about vegetarianism. As we advance through this paper, we will realize, ever more clearly, that the vast majority of responses to the vegetarian life-stance are, indeed, classic, text-book fallacies, which nevertheless remain remarkably popular, even among otherwise intelligent, educated individuals.
Having thus discussed a particularly potent example of intellectual discrimination along the fault line of carnistic vegephobia, we hereby conclude our essay by relating the foregoing material to the philosophy of the brilliant ethicist, Emmanuel Levinas. Central to Levinas’ moral philosophy is the encounter with the other, often dubbed the “face-to-face” relation. As Prof. Barber expounds, we are “called into question” in our encounter with the other, feeling an obligation to not only respond to but also assist the other. Yet, as he continues, this demand placed on the self by the other is not so much a rational disposition as it is, first and foremost, an emotional one. When we advance to what Prof. Barber describes as “the level of the third”—that is, when we adopt a third-person worldview of the encounter between ourselves and the other—we feel responsible to everyone, no matter the injustice, be it sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, and, yes, even vegephobia. On both a first-person and third-person worldview, we feel a sense of duty toward the other, an obligation to help, even a dedication to helping. We should, as Prof. Barber implores, put our energies toward helping certain oppressed groups, as many as we can while still being effective. This commitment to aid the other, however, does not entail we aid every oppressed group or, more strongly still, we aid every oppressed group we can to the point of marginal utility, as discussed in Peter Singer’s enduringly famous, breakthrough essay, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.” This commitment to aid the other, however, entails we remain ever accountable, ever vigilant toward the other, no matter their sex, sexuality, skin color, socioeconomic status, or even species, that we take a stand for all social justice causes, even if we have but one or two pet causes to which we devote the greatest outpouring of our heart.
This sense of obligation to the other, triggered by the mere, yet almost mystical face-to-face encounter with the other, can be expressed more strongly still—fearing the murder of the other more than our own death. I find remarkable insight in this formulation of the demands placed upon us by the other, not only for its transcendent quality, but also for its deeply personal one. Since the age of 12, I have spent over a decade advocating for the oppressed. When others refuse to stand up for those our society renders meek, powerless, and inefficacious, I take a stand, even at the expense of tarnishing my relationships with others, including those who have the power to alter the course of my future personal, professional, and academic career. If I am known for anything, it is being a social, moral, and intellectual gadfly, someone obsessed with doing what is right almost to a fault. Yet the more outspoken I become, the more I see the flies drop away, and the more I aggravate the horseflies, who whiz around me before finding just the right opportunity to inflict their stinging bite, vitriolic venom and all. Ableism, homophobia, speciesism—I pay every day for the sins of our society, encountering stauch pushback here, harassment there, and social, emotional, intellectual, ethical, and even physical discrimination left and right for, of all things, being vegan, especially for daring to be an animal rights advocate.
Despite all the pain, I am willing to one day die fighting for what I believe in, giving my “last full measure of devotion” to all the nonhuman animals whose cries, screams, and howls I spent a lifetime amplifying. I imagine it with twinges of fear and joy, marching on Washington with a million activists from across the globe, fighting to pass, for the 38th consecutive year, our Bill of Animal Freedom, extending the rights of personhood to all sentient beings, be they cat, dog, cow, chicken, pig, human, or rat. With a certain, epochal perversity, I almost wish for a former cattle rancher, deeply disgruntled and profoundly perturbed by our success in waging the largest social justice campaign in history, with the rights, lives, and well-being of literally trillions of animals hanging in the balance, to rise from the crowd, our security forces insufficient to stop him. Crack, snap, scream; torrents of blood, gushing from a wound. “Keep fighting,” I muster, missing a sizable chunk of my right hemisphere as the consciousness drains from me. Mass revolts take place. An apathetic Congress is forced to act. Our Bill of Animal Freedom finally passess, permanently and forever ending all factory farms, slaughterhouses, puppy mills, animal labs, and fur farms. “Free at last, free at last; thank god almighty, we are free at last!”, they sing in the streets, from the rafters and the rooftops to the fields and the mountaintops, the rebirth of justice finally upon us, rights restored to all, the “other” finally freed from their cold, confining chains, our shared animalhood now reimagined, respected, and revered.
