As I said before this is an unsafe site for Indigenous people. I’m out. Don’t bother DMing me. I’m scrambling my password and locking myself out of my own account. I’ve grown to care for and trust a lot of you so it’s hard to leave but it is clear that this site isn’t for me. I understand that the world and internet at large is really shitty to vegans so I understand and support the need for a safe space to process your experiences and to practice your dunks. All the best, signing off.
Reposted here since it is invisible where I first posted it. https://hexbear.net/post/94432
/c/vegan seems adamant to prove every single vegan stereotype true lol
I get feeling sick of constant bad faith counterarguments but come on.
I’ve had vegans around me my entire life and with one exception, none of them act as rotten as the ones on this website.
Exactly my last ex is vegan and I have probably 3-4 vegans in my circle of friends and acquaintances. I respect their choices and they respect mine… it’s very simple. based on what I’ve seen overall I wouldn’t be surprised at all if some of the vegans on here would call me the N word if they were to come across me in real life at a BBQ lmao the yt vegans on here comparing eating meat to slavery fit the type. Then the casual racism toward our Asian and indigenous comrades on here. Shit’s crazy lol and a lot of the mods are being supportive or at least sympathetic with their actions. Literally less tolerant than many actual lib communities I’ve dipped my toes into, but most people here are cool so it’s all good
-Soulja
I have very close friends who are religious “vegans” (they do not use any equal term). I respect them a lot and will come eat with them any day. They are nothing like this, and yet they are the most devoted to being vegan, it is their divine order! Vegans have a lot to contribute and are important. I want to hear from them. If I could enough I would probably become.
The way these user act is more like the way I was treated by some during the time in my life where I was living as a Chinese minority in Indonesia. They do not understand and will not listen, trying to make me follow the Muslim customs and berating my culture. (many people I met were also very nice though)
Understandable, best of luck elsewhere. This has been really terrible.
Its a bit concerning that the post calling out the racism of people referring to indigenous people as barbaric was removed. I think this is going to drive a lot of people away from the site. There are ways to have these discussions without resorting to bigotry.
Yeah I’ve been around from pretty much the beginning and was on the old sub a long time before that, and this is the first time I have felt like I have to self-censor to avoid mod retribution. I get wanting to grow the site and provide safe spaces for all sorts of communities, but when one of those communities become antagonistic to far more oppressed/marginalized groups that’s a problem and I won’t stand for it.
It’s absolutely possible to acknowledge that longstanding and even cherished traditions in minority and indigenous cultures can be problematic with regard to the goals of the larger socialist project without being a bigot or chauvinist about it, but those conversations should start in those communities - not on a predominately white, predominately american shitposting forum - and have no reason to be a priority within the larger project until well after the liberation of those cultures. The issues that are present and aren’t just imperialist bullshit and western chauvinism dressed up in emancipatory language are trivial compared to the insane, industrialized injustice of shit like factory farming and trying to make people feel like shit about them is extremely counterproductive. Also, context really fucking matters and people on this site should be real goddamn aware of it when we live and breathe irony and analysis. Using the term “barbaric” to describe anything isn’t great, but at least if you apply it to things like the conditions and practices in US slaughterhouses you aren’t directly reinforcing hundreds of years of violence and racism. Using “barbaric” like a slur is using a slur and should be bannable. We routinely ban for less.
A message for my fellow white westerners: Do you consider animal liberation integral to the goals of socialism? Are you “concerned” about indigenous traditions like, for example, hunting marine life? Here’s an idea: focus that time and energy instead on issues in non-minority communities like seal clubbing by white hunters, cleaning up ocean plastic, transitioning away from petroleum products, and greater accountability for companies and individuals directly responsible for the destruction of marine habitats. Heck, even the Japanese policy excluding whales from protection is fine to fight against as long as your criticisms aren’t racist (there are Japanese environmental groups oppose it! find out how you can support those groups and use your position in the west to boost their message without co-opting it!). Focus on positive and productive preservation and repopulation efforts and environmental causes to help make wild habitats more livable and reduce the impact of yourself and your own community. You’ll save more marine life and further animal liberation more than you ever could condescending and denigrating indigenous people, who have endured centuries of genocide at our hands and as a result occupy a small fraction of the population and are responsible for an even smaller fraction of the animal cruelty inflicted globally. Stop fucking throwing racist, chauvinist stones in glass houses. Work on getting western traditions like veal, fox hunting, and other murder tourism like safaris outlawed before you think about bringing up comparatively minuscule problematic traditions in oppressed communities you don’t belong to.
As a member of a marginalized community, I don’t think our beliefs or traditions or viewpoint should be held as sacrosanct. We’re humans, with flaws and fucked up-beliefs like anyone else, and nobody is asking for some Disney-style fetishization of POC or indigenous practices or customs.
What I do expect is, an acknowledgement that we may not be fully aware of other groups conditions, that we’ve often been silenced when we speak out and the fact that even attempts to regulate or promote behavior deemed to be more positive has often be applied in ways to suppress. Some tact, and common consideration is all I’m asking for.
Constantly using ham-fisted comparisons and equivocations to the worst atrocities in human history and blithely doubling, tripling, quadrupling (and so on) down after people apart of those groups affected have repeatedly spoken out against it is not consideration and tact.
Presenting a less harmful choice in consumption habits under capitalism as a pillar of leftism and excluding marginalized comrades and dismissing their explanations on why some presuppositions might be inaccurate or reductionist is not consideration and tact.
Depicting your less harmful choice in consumption habits and the pushback you receive as being apart of an ‘oppressed minority’ is not consideration and tact. Vegans have never been systemically hunted down, whipped and hanged from trees for being vegan, have never been forced into conversion camps to surrender their commitment to veganism, have never had their places of gathering torched and looted in pogroms, deported or murdered in droves.
I’m sure there are POC and indigenous among the vegans here with different views. That’s fine, our experiences are far from universal, what matters is that there is a consistent pattern of negative behavior that a very significant amount of the POC and indigenous community here have found very harmful and not without reason, as I’m sure you’ve seen by some examples now.
Veganism is good. It should be promoted.
Just don’t be racist about it and don’t confuse it for being leftist in itself.
I really appreciate this explanation, and I apologize for not seeing this earlier. I grew up as an ethnic minority being “hunted down,” as you say, and so while I originally defended the conflation of oppression of animals to the oppression of minorities, I was mostly thinking about my own marginalized community. So, that said, I apologize for not recognizing the bigger picture that every POC, indigenous, and marginalized community has a wildly different cultural identity and relationship with their past. The usage of slavery, for example, in the argument for veganism triggers a generational trauma that we as leftists should not force on our comrades.
Vegans have never been systemically hunted down, whipped and hanged from trees for being vegan, have never been forced into conversion camps to surrender their commitment to veganism,
Lots of sensible input, and I think we really ought not to compare it to the Shoa or such. As such I will not talk about anything related to that or comparable moments in history, though vegans/vegetarians were in some places and time frames systematically hunted, captured, tortured, and killed. Your argument still holds most weight, but it isn’t necessary to marginalize people who were kileld for not participating in murdering living beings or eating meat.
Sucks but I’d probably leave too if someone (especially a mod) treated me like that.
All the best for you going forward <3
It’s disgusting that the mods decided to nuke the other thread because it was a “struggle session”. It’s clear to me that their answer to the prevalent and clear racism on this site is to let it go unchallenged and to police those that are most effected by it. This is the natural result of being so focused on growing the site as utmost priority. Particularly if that growth is going to be coming from reddit there is no way that there can be any significant inflow while also ensuring that these attitudes are effectively challenged. Instead the focus should be on creating a community that is actually responsive and safe for it’s marginalized and oppressed comrades.
Tbh it seems like their priority is to protect their own / their friends, including those mods / friends that are actively participating in the arguments / rhetoric that’s leading to this kind of exodus. Racism going unchallenged, and policing those affected by it, are natural outcomes of this insular and combative attitude as punishing that behavior would mean punishing themselves.
Or, in other words, mods (COPS) are messy drama lovers that are too deep in the weeds to effectively police their communities
I remember seeing this kind of behaviour in facebook groups. The mods and admin would let a lot of shit slide for the sake of growing their numbers. It got to the point where the group imploded after they cracked down on criticism, especially from bipoc and FN who felt that they were ignoring the growing problems in the community.
