Missing the Point in Advocacy
Lately, I’ve been hearing quite a bit about George Monibot, an individual who once promoted veganism as the best way to go green and has recently denounced his views acknowledging some animal products are more green than vegan farming. On the same day, I noticed a new feature on Huffington Post where readers can vote on “game changers,” people who are making a difference in various categories. I noticed one of these categories was “food” and noticed this was basically where the animal welfare “game changers” belonged. While many of my fellow advocates have desperately promoted the existence of a (supposedly) pro-animal message in any context, I remain critical about the kind of dialogue we are having. I believe events like these back up that criticism. The dialogue we are having about animals asks whether or not it is “green” to use them and asks who is changing the game with our food (we are calling these persons “food.”) Do we ever ask if child labor is greener or if beating one’s wife has a lower footprint than driving all the way to the therapist’s? I’m asking my fellow advocates to hold off their excitement over the word “vegan” being brought up on TV or a celebrity deciding to eat “humane” animal products. This “let’s just take whatever we can get” motivation is not goal oriented. Our job as advocates For example, if the public has any opinion on the morality of fur, they generally believe it is somehow worse than leather or wool. You know better. You know leather, wool, fur, meat, milk, eggs are all forms of exploitation; they all involve death; they are all economic tokens of slavery. So what is our job as advocates when someone is public about their “anti-fur” stance? There are two things which our job is not: The first is not to let ignorance prevail, supporting this individual’s message with fear any objection or correction would “scare people away” or somehow be ingrateful. The second thing our job is not is to go about defending a consistent vegan message disrespectfully. No one should have backed the former version of Monibot’s position without a clear statement regarding environmentalism a secondary reason, if a reason at all, to go vegan. Now, it is not our job to create a semblance of an exclusive vegan club by publicly disrespecting Monibot or anyone else. Again, I feel I must state “not disrespect” does not mean “not disagree.” I encourage everyone to write publicly about Monibot’s problematic position as did Prof. Gary Francione and so many others. It’s about a mindset, not a trend. One of the most important things I’ve learned as an advocate, and my motivation for writing this article is that our goal is centered on changing not just what people are literally doing, but how they actually perceive animals. That is, we can convince people to go vegan claiming it is “green,” but this only solidifies the idea that animals are resources in the first place. How many recipients of our “green” message actually seriously question this deeply embedded idea in the first place? I am reminded of Bob Torres’s example when he asked if we should take a position against the Holocaust because of the carbon emissions of the concentration camp trains. The same goes for promoting vegetarianism or the consumption of “humane” animal products. These campaigns are motivated by “reducing suffering,” a nonsensical kind of points system that reinforces the notion that animals, humane or not, are things for us to use in the first place. And before I get the comments from readers reminding me of how some people “just won’t go vegan” or just won’t get it, ask yourself when you come upon that attribution of another person when you are speaking to them about animals. Personally, I never do. If the person with whom I’m speaking “just won’t go vegan,” do you know what I do? I let them “just not do that” all on their own. People do not need assistance with failure. That is why college professors teach 100% of the material even though the class average will reliably be only ~85%. We can do our best to bring others’ awareness of the ethical problem of our use of animals. Plenty of people will not understand that. However, without much effort, people will and already do understand there is something unsettling in our relationship with animals and they will act on that. Tricking people into “reducing suffering” does not a revolution make. We need to get people to change their perception of animals as property.
