You know the type. Even now, as you hear the word ‘vegan’, you can already start to hear a comment about where your meat really comes from or yet another reason why you should watch Earthlings. Fear not. I’m not here to try and make you a vegan. I’m not even a vegan myself; however, one of my goals in life is to eventually become one. Instead, I’d like to take a moment to explain why it might be a good idea to let the vegans that you find annoying have just a little bit of slack.
For one, one of the things you definitely find annoying about vegans is that they always come off as being so angry. You may be thinking, “I’m just eating my lunch. Why can’t they just eat their vegetables and leave me alone?”, but putting yourself in their shoes can almost immediately alleviate this common complaint. Just imagine for a second that there was a giant piece of important information has been kept from you for your entire life, and you’re just now finding out about it. An understandable first reaction would be anger at the society that has been determined to keep this from you. For a vegan, this anger could be directed at their family who never told them, the businesses that support the meat industry, and/or the people who some vegans believe intentionally ignore the truth about the fate of animals, people, and the planet in order to continue eating animal products. Whoever it’s directed at, it’s definitely there, and it can sometimes come out in ways that are inconvenient to you when you’re just trying to enjoy your burger. In cases like this, I think the best approach, if you’re really that opposed to just listening to what they have to say, would be to quietly acknowledge that they are experiencing a bit of misplaced anger and to move along with your day before heading to Twitter to denounce all vegans.
While you might think vegans should leave you alone, because you think what you eat is your business, many vegans would disagree. Even though you may think that vegans only care about being healthy for themselves, it is undeniable that eating a non-plant-based diet has a correlation with climate change and an extremely worrisome correlation with world hunger. When you look at it in that light, and by remembering all the other harmful effects an omnivorous diet has on people, animals, and the planet, it’s not too hard to resolve to give vegans a break.
So next time a vegan says something problematic in the name of their cause, call them out just like you would anybody else, but maybe hold back on that joke about how vegans can’t go five seconds without telling people about it. Yes, some vegans have said extremely problematic things in an attempt to draw comparisons or just to attack whoever is arguing against them, but you would be hard pressed to find one cause that does not have a few members who participate in things such as those.
Whether you want to eliminate animal products from your life or not, vegans are spreading an important, generally selfless message, and while vegans by no means experience the same marginalization and oppression as different minorities and can definitely take a joke or two, it is not hard to admit that some peoples’ attitudes towards vegans are in poor taste.
I don’t want to make you stop being a meat eater, for now at least, but in the meantime, treat your local vegan with respect and maybe try and exhibit some empathy for the hardships that come with changing one’s diet in such a drastic and life altering way.
