Gaz Oakley no longer vegan and the backlash he has received is ridiculous

[Magicalbroomstick]

Gaz Oakley is no longer vegan. I can’t believe the amount of backlash he has received. He has deleted his instagram. People saying he was never really vegan.
I’m a vegetarian and was a vegan for 3 years when I was breastfeeding my oldest, then realised I couldn’t live without cheese!

@ClaudiaWankleman
I don’t think it is the same as someone changing a belief eg religion. Because that is a question of belief or opinion or feelings.

Ethical veganism is based on facts - animals are harmed, land is razed, habitats are destroyed, water is wasted. These facts do not change.

Many people abandon being vegan for many reasons, but in doing so they are choosing to turn a blind eye to the facts that made veganism a sensible choice.

For religious believers they also see those things as facts?

Meat eaters - at least some of them - don't believe in the 'facts' that vegans do. I don't put facts in quotes to diminish the importance or the reasoning behind the things that you believe, just to indicate that they are not universally shared understandings of the world.

Do they really see those things as facts? Religious language is about faith and belief, isn’t that what makes religion so special? People hold a faith and a belief in an ideology which can’t be proven, they choose to keep that belief.

For that reason, we don’t tend to argue against a person’s religion do we? I can’t argue that someone’s belief is wrong because they aren’t telling me they are right and I am wrong, they’re telling me what they believe in and who am I to challenge that?

Veganism is literally based on facts. You can ask for proof and evidence and look up the facts for yourself. You can decide that those facts are trivial and unimportant and irrelevant, you can argue that some of the facts are exaggerated, you can present counter arguments, but they remain actual facts.

This is a fallacy, often cited and challenged on these types of threads.

I think principles can be important, but still relinquished because the cost benefit isn’t working. I was very low plastic use for a while- didn’t buy cosmetics, skincare or hair care, made my own shampoo etc. almost ten years.
I realised one day that all the effort I went to, and making my own life much harder, was making no practical difference. Anything I saved was dwarfed by the relentlessness of plastic crap churned out around the world.

What a load of shit. Honestly the vitriol some of you have towards vegans is crazy.

Lol. My mate has a vegan cake making business as a sideline. Makes some truly exquisite stuff for weddings and local coffee shops etc. Has loads of followers on IG.

Last time we were at a party she was stuffing her face with sausages from the local butcher. 🤣🤣🤣 They were pretty good tbf. They'd chopped them into chunks and put them on sticks like cocktail sausages, served with a mustard dip.

Buy venison in autumn, that's hunted too and the culling is necessary to both protect the environment and stop the deer suffering (starvation from overpopulation).

For some one who believes in God, it is a fact there is a god.

For someone who believes it is wrong to kill animals, it is a fact that it is wrong to kill animals. That isn't a factual belief that I share - I think you can (maybe should) kill animals in some circumstances.

The way you present your belief in veganism is far closer to a religious belief than it is a scientific one. Because veganism is a philosophy.

What is a fallacy? I made several points in that post.

I’d not considered that, but it’s a good idea, thanks.

I couldn't care less if people are vegan if that just means they don't eat animal products. If they start preaching about it and trying to covert other people to their way of life, that's where I draw the line. It's as annoying as when actual religious people do it. What is next? Vegans knocking on your door along with the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons?

Makes 2 of us.
Merely confirms my low opinion of vegans.

I've been really disappointed by the venison available in supermarkets.

In Tesco there's a brand which markets itself as Scottish venison. On the back in small writing it advises the venison is from New Zealand. What is the point?!

Veganism might well be a more moral choice. But as humans we are constantly making choices that aren't the most moral choice.

Driving a car means emitting particulates that kill people every year (even if it's electric from braking and tyres) and not using public transport means emissions that impact global warming. Consumption and use of plastics results in micro plastics in the environment. Using a mobile phone and other computing devices means pollution from the rare earth metals required and terrible conditions for the people mining them. Flying on holiday causes emissions which is causing climate change and therefore the extinction of animals all over the world as well as the deaths of humans. Going on holiday at all can often mean impacting those places where tourism then out earns and causes the degradation of other industries. Earning money and keeping it is less moral than donating it to malaria charities, reducing human suffering. Spending your evening on the sofa is less moral than spending time out helping the homeless, which would reduce human suffering. Or you could spend your weekends picking litter and that would be better for animals and the environment.

So I while I think it's great for people to make more moral choices where they feel able to, I don't really think not being vegan is any more or less important than all the other immoral choices we make on a daily basis.

I'm lucky where I live, all the little butcheries and local vans have loads at the right time of year.
That said, I've had good stuff from Tesco too.

@ClaudiaWankleman your points about religion are really interesting. I’m not at all religious so have never given much thought to the similarities between religious belief and vegan beliefs.

I don’t agree with you, but it has made me think about the way non vegans think about the concept of veganism.

That’s the funny thing about Gaz Oakley, which is where this thread started. He was a preachy campaigning vegan which was annoying for a lot of people ……. now he has turned his back on it and annoyed the vegans too!!

The thing is, we only get life. We all change our minds hundreds of times about decisions and beliefs and principles. As we grow and age and learn new things. I know veganism is like a religion to many people, but in effect, it affects no-one else other than the individual. Eat meat, don’t eat meat. Whatever means you are healthy and happy and can look yourself in the eye. Making a big drama over anything does lead to a risk you may get a backlash but I’m sure he will ride it out and people will soon forget.

This is why we need to cancel influencers. By all means follow the guy but never put them on a pedestal. They are just as fickle, and human as us mere mortals.

I struggle a bit to understand how you reconcile the concept of ‘ethical’ veganism with supposedly being factual.

Ethics are not objective facts, by definition.

For example, if you want to eat meat then you accept that an innocent animal has been killed to feed you. That’s a fact. An animal was killed needlessly.

You might say that you don’t care, fair enough, but animal abuse is a fact.

Not everything you have written there is factual though - at least not to both of us.

Words like 'innocent', 'needlessly', even the choice of the word 'killed' over any other are all moral/ ethical considerations, not factual.

In actual fact I don't think the slaughter of animals is needless, I don't believe that there is such a thing as 'innocence' in animals and I'm not even sure whether I believe that all animals suffer.

You believe those things so they are facts to you, but that doesn't make them objective facts to the rest of the world. It's exactly the same as the Pope (presumably) believing absolutely that God put man on earth to have dominion over it, and then 2000 years ago sent his son to earth to be sacrificed for the sins of humanity. That is a fact to the Pope but not to the billions of non-Christians in the world.

So, to bring it back to Gaz Oakley, he might have believed in veganism at one time and come to have those views challenged, and then had his beliefs changed. That doesn't make him 'say anything he wants for publicity' as was unfairly asserted earlier.

I understand people who turn a blind eye to how meat ends up on their plate. But you can’t seriously be trying to argue that it does not involve the needless killing of an innocent animal.

How are you disputing these words

needless
innocent
killing

Genuinely I am baffled at what you are trying to say

A living creature is killed so that a human can eat it. That’s a fact. In most cases that animal has been bred purely so that it can be slaughtered for food. That’s how the meat industry works.

Those animals have done no harm and pose no threat, so they are innocent aren’t they?

Needless - I suppose this is a question of nutrition and whether humans need to eat animal products or not. The existence of millions of healthy vegans around the world proves this to be a fact.

If he's made an entire brand and a good living out of styling himself as 'the Avant-Garde Vegan' (oh please) then he has to be a big boy and accept he's going to receive some backlash from that same community now he's turning his back on veganism. He'll survive.