Vegans being banned and comments being deleted from [email protected] for being fake vegans.
From my perspective, the comments were in no way insulting and just part of completely normal interaction. If this decision reflects the general opinion of the mod team, then from my perspective, the biggest vegan community on Lemmy wants to be an elitist cycle of hardcore vegans only, not allowing any slightly different opinion. Which would be very unfortunate.
PS: In contrast to the name of this community, I don't want to insult anyone here being a 'bastard'. I just want to post this somewhere on neutral ground. I would really appreciate an open discussion without bashing anyone.
Linking the affected users and mods: @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]
What we see in this post seems to be a debate among vegans about what kinds of places are best to support. Surely that should be welcome in a place called "vegan theory"? It's a form of "debating veganism", just not one between vegans and omnivores.
If I understand my history correctly, Vegan Theory Club is a theory club for vegans, not a club for vegan theory specifically.
There is a discord server of the same name which is way more active for the discussion of leftist theory. Members of the instance can make communities - it's just no one has created one specifically to talk about vegan theory.
Hamid was respond to a suggestion for communities for vegans to debate carnists which db0 correctly identified as draining.
I'm not sure what debate between vegans would be. Debating our interpretation of texts? There is a book club community that's perfect for that.
Literally what I just said. "Is it better for one restaurant to succeed with 100% vegan food while most other restaurants entirely lack vegan options, or for every restaurant to have a couple of good vegan options?"
Your instance admin seems to have established (in the comments of this thread) a pretty clear strong opinion on that topic, but a less obnoxious community could have debates like that among themselves and create fruitful results. Which is what it seems was happening in the thread this post is about, until the mods of the LW vegan community put a stop to it.
I really don't know why carnists have such strong opinions on vegan spaces.
For the most part, I don't care. But I do care about abuses of power, whenever I see them. And that's what is clearly going on at the LW community, and disappointingly seems to be the case also at VTC.
There is no debating on the side of allowing a restaurant to serve meat on a vegan messaging board. Debating this is missing the point of veganism entirely and my user community understands this and is why they created an account on a small instance like Vegan Theory Club. We are of a similar mind and the club is for people to find people on the same page as them. It works, we have off lemmy resources and an active discord. Veganism isn't a diet, it is a social justice movement to end the human exploitation of Animals, debating that serving meat is ok would get you banned on my instance as well. Personally I would have shut down a vegan restaurant before introducing meat and reopened as something else.
I don't personally eat at non vegan restaurants ever. I almost never go to restaurants at all frankly and prefer potlucks and cooking at our homes when I hang out with my friends. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-prole-info-abolish-restaurants
In an ideal world I'd love to have only vegan restaurants and everyone being vegan globally. As this is not within my power, I am looking for a way that benefits veganism the most.
I think the easier it gets to be vegan, the more people will get on board. If you get vegan options only in specialized places in big cities, that will make it hard for anyone not living close to that or being part of social cycles not 100% vegan.
If a purely vegan restaurant survives economically, I am more than happy. But if they don't, I definitely prefer them to add a few omnivore dishes rather than closing completely and getting replaced by another steakhouse.
I don't think having this opinion makes me any kind of bad vegan or fake vegan but I'm happy to hear your points if you think otherwise.
I think the piece of information that is being missed is that VTC is inherently anti capitalist and therefore the concept of "supporting businesses" so that they can survive doesn't really make sense in that context. (See link Hamid posted)
Just in the context of trying to get a work group to go to lunch, finding a place that fits everyone's diets is tough, so if a place exists that is one, and only one, diet type then big groups wont be able to go there for business events or catering. Depending on the location, that could be a huge revenue source missed.
Veganism is in its core a boycott, so that is the default take. I don't live in a big city so I don't go to restaurants. If you read the link I posted, I think there are a lot of problems with restaurants that go beyond veganism and they are offensive to me as an anarchist. I strongly dislike businesses, business owners and I like to do things for myself. To that end the more I lean on a life of compromise the less I feel is being done. By organizing pot lucks, friends dinners, participating in my local Food Not Bombs and promoting home cooking I am building an alternative to the carnist structures in our world that is more meaningful than making an individual decision to go to a carnist business and give them money that they then invest in more carnist businesses. This is also why I don't really like buying products labeled "vegan" from meat companies or buying impossible burgers from Burger King, we aren't convincing them to switch, we are participating in horizontal segmentation where they carve out two markets from one that don't cannibalize each other. I used to have the meeting notes from an shareholder meeting at Burger King where the CEO explains this but I lost it in my international move a few years ago among all my boxes of computer stuff. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/horizontalmarket.asp
I think adding meat dishes to a vegan restaurant and still calling it vegan is offensive and anti-vegan. If you want to go to restaurants then I guess that is a compromise you have to make for your own reasons but I don't think that it is vegan decision in scope. I don't attack people online or in person for it but I don't think you'd be a good fit for a community of radical vegans and anti capitalists. I probably wouldn't remove your comments from a message board like he lemmy.world one which is basically a vegan news community and appeals to beginners and transitioners but I would remove it from my instance. There is no requirement to go to restaurants in this world and my life got more interesting when I stopped going to places like that.
But if they are not participating in the vegan boycott, are they on board? I've been a vegan for a long time and understand people are at different places, that said the biggest problem is recidivism. The longer you go as a vegan making compromises the less likely that you're going to stick with it. For me this meant that at one point I needed to actually change my life and social groups to align with what I believe instead of forcing what I believe into a world that doesn't agree and is hostile. For me this was a good decision, I made new friends, I have new things to do and I'm far more socially active as a mid 40s vegan in my vegan world than most of my old friends and coworkers are.
no, it's an ethical philosophy. are kosher Jews boycotting lobster?
Yes. I was raised haredi and we boycotted all non kosher businesses by not buying from them and building out kosher alternatives. I don't think you know what the word boycott means.
that's not a boycott. it's just acting on your beliefs. there is no political goal in abstaining from nonkosher businesses.
Look, you can keep replying to me but don't fucking bother, you aren't right and I don't care what you think. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/boycott
veganism is an ethical philosophy, not a protest or a boycott.
interesting that you appeal to a lexicon instead of an encyclopedia
Isn't that akin to saying 'Muslims boycott pork'. A boycott implies you're doing it temporarily with the purpose of achieving some change in the boycotted party. If something is a core way of life to you, it's no longer a boycott, as there is nothing the boycotted party could do that would change your mind.
there is nothing in the definition of boycott to say it is temporary https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/boycott
Verb
boycott (third-person singular simple present boycotts, present participle boycotting, simple past and past participle boycotted) (transitive) To abstain, either as an individual or a group, from using, buying, or dealing with someone or some organization as an expression of protest.
Muslims are absolutely boycotting pork and everything that is haram. If they could they would make the whole world Muslim and prevent pork from being produced. This is a boycott.
Temporary, in the sense that if your goals were achieved, you would cease your boycott and return to your normal habits. In your case, these ARE your normal habits, hence there is no boycott to speak of.
That is a type of boycott but not the only meaning, I am done with this thread. I can't believe how fucking idiotic the people on lemmy are.
I agree with you that a boycott need not be temporary. But it does need to have the goal of ceasing the thing being boycotted or something related to that (e.g. secondary boycotts). Muslims and Jews don't think pork should be prohibited. They simply make a personal choice not to partake. That's not a boycott, any more than me not eating shellfish because I don't like the taste is a boycott.
Muslims absolutely think that haram things should be prohibited. Non kosher things are an affront to god. I'm blocking you now this is a waste of my time participating on this thread.
This is utter nonsense. Most religious people don't try to force their beliefs on others. Some do. We call them extremists.
At least it is apparent that you misname and follow veganism with as much zeal as any religious zealot. Feel free to block me, too ;-)
On a more earnest note, and with as much compassion as I can muster for a divisive extremist like you, your usage of the term "veganism" is a perversion of what a majority of people associate with it. I'd strongly recommend you to always prefix it with "political" or "extremist", or you're always bound to lose by default in any argument with anybody outside your bubble because you're pretty much talking a different language.
Yes, it's about boycotting animal products and abuse of animals. But from my perspective, that doesn't necessarily mean that you must boycott everything that is indirectly related to it. Of course you are free to do that but if your moral compass only considers 100% vegan restaurants acceptable, wouldn't the same rules apply to supermarkets, hardware stores, workplaces, service providers, friends, family etc.?
If you cut all ties to the non-vegan world, you'll... a) find yourself pretty isolated and b) will be having a hard time to inspire non-vegans to jump on board
That's fine and I'm also on board with many of these things. Still, being an anarchist or anti-capitalist isn't a prequisite to become vegan. IMO also Donald Trump can (and should!) become vegan, independent of his political world view. I guess we both agree that his other political world view is pretty fucked up but that should be seen independent of his veganism status.
100% agree. But from my perspective, neither myself nor any of the other commenters did call that restaurant vegan. That was never up for debate.
If the community was called 'c/radicalanticapitalistvegans' I'd agree. But neither the title nor the description nor the community rules imply that 'c/vegan' is adressing only this target audience.