I’m so fed up with all this vegan wankery

[TitaniaQueenOfTheFairies]

To all you actual vegans, amazing, I wish you a long and happy life.

I am just so fed up with veganism taking over the world, when I have yet to come across an actual one. *edited to say that some places in the world don’t have a choice

Restaurants falling over themselves with vegan menus offering fake meat and plastic cheese.

Veganuary - people just going to the supermarket and buying fake meat, rather than actually trying to eat differently.

People eating ‘vegan food’. Just eat an apple, or a carrot with houmous or any other naturally occurring food that an animal hasn’t produced. It’s not hard.

And I can’t even begin with all the plant based twattery. Many people have been quietly eating less or no meat, fish, eggs & dairy for many years and have had no need to pontificate about it.

I know I am probably being unreasonable but I just need to say it.

YABU. Very. But it's obviously the way you feel about veganism so maybe ask yourself why you find it so triggering? It's a social justice movement. Not a diet. And like other social justice movements before it upsets the way that people think. Which is why people try to demean vegans by calling them preachy and annoying in the hope that they will just shut up and go away. Rather like women who campaigning for women's rights were called 'shrill' or 'lesbians' to try and get them to 'shut the fuck up' and 'get back in the kitchen'. It's not a fad and it's not going to peter out. Would recommend watching Earthlings, Land of Hope and Glory, The Game Changers and Forks over Knives. Then come back and tell us how annoying vegans are.

I once had the misfortune of working with someone who on a daily basis asked me all sorts of hypothetical questions involving increasingly bizarre situations to try and 'catch me out'...he even said 'one day I'll get you'. I could never figure out quite why it bothered him so much as I never, ever preached. Then he got sacked so I never did get to the bottom of it.

Oh yes the "gotcha!".

Disclosure. I don't eat meat or dairy. But...

I feed my cats cat food, I eat bread made from wheat from a field where mice lived, my second hand car has leather trim, I take painkillers, a few ants scurried when I moved my washing line pole, my favourite restaurant washed up with liquid not tested on animals.

We're all hypocrites. We know that, which is why I would never be holier than thou and I'm vegan for my own reasons, but I've been subject to a few supposed "gotchas!" over the years, including being asked if I was veggie back in the 80s because of Morrissey....

It’s a very similar mindset to the anti feminists “You’re wearing lipstick- I thought you were a feminist!” “That wasn’t a very nice thing you said about that woman- not very sisterly. I thought you were a feminist!”

@HandsOffMyRights Don't forget but If you or your child got nits, what would you do!! Idiots

I could say exactly the same about dry january- same wankery.

If you want to stop drinking alcohol, do so. No need for sponsorship and banging on about it like it’s some huge achievement.

Same with low alcohol beer and wine. There’s no need for fake alcohol either.

You're so right.

The biggest gotcha was on the abortion thread this week when the pro choice OP was 'outed' for being a vegan. Still not sure if that thread was genuine.

“Same with low alcohol beer and wine. There’s no need for fake alcohol either.”

Why not?

*“Same with low alcohol beer and wine. There’s no need for fake alcohol either.”

Why not?*

Same reason there’s no need for fake meat as stated upthread. Just drawing a parallel.

But if I don’t want to drink alcohol but like the taste of beer or wine why is that an issue? Same with neat. Many vegetarians and vegans like the taste and texture of meat- what’s wrong with substitutes?

@beestripey
Better I think to eat meat that is local, organic, ethically and humanely raised, from animals who are killed humanely and close to home,

This doesn't work because there is literally no such thing as ethical and humane slaughter.

Please explain how you define it? How you see it happening that means you justify it to yourself? And what would change your mind?

And please bear in mind that these sort of claims are now starting to be challenged in court. Check out the ruling against an ad campaign by Goveganworld which stated that dairy was inhumane. It was challenged by the dairy industry but the law found in Goveganworld's favour. Because it IS inhumane. However you do it - organic, freerange, grassfed, bollocksie marketing bollocks.

amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jul/26/humane-milk-is-a-myth-veganism-advert-cleared-by-standards-body

Just drawing a parallel

You're right, it's a good parallel. Both are totally harmless to other people and anyone who gets annoyed at either needs to relax.

@Underdone exactly there is no way to humanely kill someone/something that doesn't want to die......

I often think imagine if some more intelligent/advanced life form came down to earth and took over and started farming us for food etc, how we would feel about that? Would it be unethical of them or fair game as they're the most "superior" beings now

I often think imagine if some more intelligent/advanced life form came down to earth and took over and started farming us for food etc, how we would feel about that?

So are you saying that the people on this earth who don't have the option of veganism, because they don't have the range and abundance of food that we do, should still stop killing animals for food? Are they wrong to kill animals for food?

Humans have eaten animals for millenia, its how we all got here

@PeterRouseTheFleshofMankind I'm saying it's cruel, whether it's sometimes necessary or unavoidable to keep families alive is a different matter, it doesn't stop it being cruel towards the animal though, does it?

And I must add that I have no issue really with veganism, and actually I rarely eat meat these days for various reasons, but all this 'corpse, murder, rotting flesh' bollocks does get my goat (no pun intended!)

Yes, meat eaters eat 'corpses'. As they have done for a rather long time, and as do thousands of other animals on the planet. So what?

I'm saying it's cruel, whether it's sometimes necessary or unavoidable to keep families alive is a different matter, it doesn't stop it being cruel towards the animal though, does it?

So is lions eating antelope in the savannah 'animal cruelty' as well then? That's necessary and unavoidable too.

It's actually a huge luxury to be able to worry about 'animal cruelty' when you are talking about the basic concept of humans eating animals. I'm not talking about some intensive farming methods I'm talking, as you seem to be, about the very act of humans eating other animals.

If you lived somewhere where the available food was very limited and in order to stay healthy/alive you had no choice but to eat animal products, I doubt you or the people around you would be navel gazing about how cruel you are to animals.

In our society we are very lucky that we have more than enough to survive on without eating animals, which is why some people choose to do it because they don't want to cause unnecessary suffering to animals. But it is a luxury to be able to do that.

@PeterRouseTheFleshofMankind
Yes, meat eaters eat 'corpses'. As they have done for a rather long time, and as do thousands of other animals on the planet. So what?

Which animals are you referring to? There are many obligate carnivores on this planet. Human animals are not one of them.

Put simply, we do not need to eat meat or enslave other species. Fact. So why do you want to? Because lions eat meat? They also rape and murder each other but we don't encourage that do we?

You say 'So what?' And you you may genuinely not give a shit about cruelty to animals. But fortunately many do. In growing numbers.

I never got the water thingy that some vegans have as a reason. I grew up next to a farm, saw the cows drink the water from the brooke, then pee on the land next to the brooks. Surely no water was wasted?

I eat meat but always try to buy pasture produced beef and lamb, always organic free range chicken and pork. Never eat farmed salmon, have you read about the chemicals poured into it’s production?

I was totally fine with it until my workplace decided it was okay for people to push this lifestyle choice during working hours and making it difficult for people to eat meat and dairy based foods in communal areas for about a week in January.

It's a lifestyle choice and should be treated as such, with no more deference than any other lifestyle choice. It certainly isn't the business of my employer to be promoting it.

@Hopoindown31
It's a lifestyle choice and should be treated as such, with no more deference than any other lifestyle choice. It certainly isn't the business of my employer to be promoting

Thank goodness your employer is more enlightened than you are.

Put simply, we do not need to eat meat

No we don't need to eat meat, in our particular society, at this point in time, in order to survive and be healthy. This is not true of other societies (and I am aware that some societies eat a vegan diet but many don't) throughout location and time. They wouldn't have survived without eating animal products because the range of food they had/have access to is much more limited than what we have access to here and now.

My mum grew up in rural Ireland in a poor farming family in the 1940/50s. Funnily enough she has little time for the 'meat is murder' thing, I think they had other things to worry about back then!

@Underdone lions don't rape and murder. They are human crimes that, at the core of their definition, need to be commited by humans. Lions do not have the intellectual capabilities to make the moral choices required to operate with such definitions.

Live and let live, I say!

Although it does annoy me that I'm expected to provide vegan food when they visit, but very few provide me with meat when I visit them.

Although it does annoy me that I'm expected to provide vegan food when they visit, but very few provide me with meat when I visit them.

Well yes but you can eat eat a vegan meal, or go without meat for a meal, but vegans can't (well, you know what I mean by 'can't' here ) eat a meat meal.

I am happy to provide something vegan for my friend when she comes round tbh, and I usually eat it as well.