From what I can tell, it's more to do with how oppressed a group is which can sometimes correlate with how large a population is, but not always. Case in point animals.
From what I can tell, it's more to do with how oppressed a group is which can sometimes correlate with how large a population is, but not always. Case in point animals.
AFAIK it's about both of these things. You wouldn't call women minorities, for instance. Asians and Africans get called minorities despite there being more of them globally, but this is due to them being a minority within the USA (or other relevant Western country).
"The attempt to claim that veganism is somehow antithetical to the interests of the marginalized is particularly demented. The global meat industry is especially bad for many marginalized humans; a vegan world would have much less hunger, environmental destruction that particularly harms people in poor countries, and disease."
I think you're missing a core aspect of common-sense morality and justice. Morality and justice have to do with people that are near us (in whatever sense is most salient/applicable given the context). Eating only vegan would be bad for poor people in the U.S. because it's unpleasant to eat only vegan food. And that is the group of people that common sense morality says we should be most concerned about when we talk about policies. Invoking issues about people in other countries is of little relevance. See the field of "political philosophy" for more on this.
It's always interesting when you reference Omelas, which is, of course, an anti-consequentialist thought experiment that invites us to admire people who are following some weird kind of virtue ethic, neither freeing the child, nor punishing anyone, nor apparently attempting to expose the situation to the wider world.
I'm surprised at how many people I've talked with about Omelas seem to think "the ones who walk away" are taking a deontological position ("No injustice of this severity should be tolerated"). They're doing no such thing. Someone with that position would rescue the child and let the city go to hell. The ones who walk away are basically accepting that the optimal tradeoff in the world is what it is, but not personally able to be happy anymore knowing about the downside of the tradeoff. Either some interesting form of virtue ethics, or just a particular personality trait.
"Those who defend ethical veganism are often claimed by those who defend left-wing positions to be “speaking from a position of privilege,” or “failing to speak up for the marginalized.” Many on the far left seem to believe there to be a fundamental tension between the injunction not to eat meat when one can and advocacy for the oppressed."
You didn't provide a source for the claims so I googled it and found this attitudinal research which found that 35% of Nonhuman Animal rights activists identified as Democrats, while 37% identified as (mostly left-leaning) Independents, and 14% identified as Republicans: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/016224399201700402 You might fear that it's out of date, but recent surveys find similar results:
This Pew Research Center survey found that 15% of liberal democrats are vegan or vegetarian, as compared to only 4% of Republicans
The framing is vegans vs left-wingers, not mentioning most vegans are left-wingers paints a misleading picture of left-wingers. When you say "many" that might mean anything from half of left wingers to more than 20 individuals. Maybe next time you can be a bit more precise or cite a number or at least cite an example.
I suppose it's technically possible that the animal activists study is out of date and all the left-wing vegans are doing so because of health reasons and all the right-wing vegans are doing so because of animal concern reasons.
So informally both the r/veganism, r/veganactivism have left-wing signifiers in their rules e.g:
"3. No hate speech
No hate speech or other oppressive speech that may make other users feel unwelcome or uncomfortable based on their biological sex, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, cultural background, age, or physical or mental ability."
And the rules of r/vegancirclejerk are even more explicit:
"No Non-Leftists, Health and/or Environmental "Vegans"
Veganism is a leftist social justice movement for animal liberation. It is not a diet for your health and it is not for the human environment. This also, obviously, means No slurs/bigotry [...] We do not condone or advocate for plant based capitalism. We will never support animal agriculture companies, or any business that exists to extract profit from vegans while funding animal exploitation. We are frustrated these businesses have infiltrated every vegan space and being represented online by ads for TVP and first world convenience food. We're not here to make food aisles bigger, this is about animal liberation.
The subreddit r/socialismandveganism has 3192 members while r/rightwingedveganism has 16 members
Animals are the most marginalised group by far. If anyone is a minority, it’s those who are killed and exploited on farms and in slaughter houses.
Well, they are absolutely not a minority though =(
*copy pasted from another reply*
From what I can tell, it's more to do with how oppressed a group is which can sometimes correlate with how large a population is, but not always. Case in point animals.
Aren't animals as a class a vast majority? Has the word "minority" lost all connection to numerical inferiority of a class?
From what I can tell, it's more to do with how oppressed a group is which can sometimes correlate with how large a population is, but not always. Case in point animals.
AFAIK it's about both of these things. You wouldn't call women minorities, for instance. Asians and Africans get called minorities despite there being more of them globally, but this is due to them being a minority within the USA (or other relevant Western country).
Good point, but I think women could be called minorities when they’re oppressed; though I admit that it doesn’t feel natural to say.
It’s not about numbers
"The attempt to claim that veganism is somehow antithetical to the interests of the marginalized is particularly demented. The global meat industry is especially bad for many marginalized humans; a vegan world would have much less hunger, environmental destruction that particularly harms people in poor countries, and disease."
I think you're missing a core aspect of common-sense morality and justice. Morality and justice have to do with people that are near us (in whatever sense is most salient/applicable given the context). Eating only vegan would be bad for poor people in the U.S. because it's unpleasant to eat only vegan food. And that is the group of people that common sense morality says we should be most concerned about when we talk about policies. Invoking issues about people in other countries is of little relevance. See the field of "political philosophy" for more on this.
I don’t think that’s proscribed by common sense morality and I certainly don’t think it’s true
Thank you for speaking out on this.
It's always interesting when you reference Omelas, which is, of course, an anti-consequentialist thought experiment that invites us to admire people who are following some weird kind of virtue ethic, neither freeing the child, nor punishing anyone, nor apparently attempting to expose the situation to the wider world.
Yeah I was referencing a modified version of Omelas where the population of people being tortured was more than the population of earth.
I like this point. It is incredibly weird that most people seemingly hold both:
(1) the suffering of one could not be justified by any imagined utopia.
(2) the real-life suffering of billions of animals is trivially justified, e.g. by our taste for meat.
Conclusion: people are idiots.
Kirk to Spock at the end of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock:
"Because the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many."
The ultimate trolling.
I'm surprised at how many people I've talked with about Omelas seem to think "the ones who walk away" are taking a deontological position ("No injustice of this severity should be tolerated"). They're doing no such thing. Someone with that position would rescue the child and let the city go to hell. The ones who walk away are basically accepting that the optimal tradeoff in the world is what it is, but not personally able to be happy anymore knowing about the downside of the tradeoff. Either some interesting form of virtue ethics, or just a particular personality trait.
"Those who defend ethical veganism are often claimed by those who defend left-wing positions to be “speaking from a position of privilege,” or “failing to speak up for the marginalized.” Many on the far left seem to believe there to be a fundamental tension between the injunction not to eat meat when one can and advocacy for the oppressed."
That's weird, every vegan I ever talked to was left-wing but you seem to be suggesting some sort of conflict between the two groups. I mean EA is 76.8% left-leaning https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AJDgnPXqZ48eSCjEQ/ea-survey-2022-demographics#Politics but maybe that doesn't count because not all of them are vegan.
You didn't provide a source for the claims so I googled it and found this attitudinal research which found that 35% of Nonhuman Animal rights activists identified as Democrats, while 37% identified as (mostly left-leaning) Independents, and 14% identified as Republicans: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/016224399201700402 You might fear that it's out of date, but recent surveys find similar results:
This Pew Research Center survey found that 15% of liberal democrats are vegan or vegetarian, as compared to only 4% of Republicans
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2016/12/01/the-new-food-fights/
This Gallup poll says that democrats are 11% vegetarian and 5% vegan whereas conservatives are 2% vegetarian and 2% vegan.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/238328/snapshot-few-americans-vegetarian-vegan.aspx
Vegans are disproportionately left wing but that doesn't mean that most left wingers are vegan and many who aren't make these types of arguments.
The framing is vegans vs left-wingers, not mentioning most vegans are left-wingers paints a misleading picture of left-wingers. When you say "many" that might mean anything from half of left wingers to more than 20 individuals. Maybe next time you can be a bit more precise or cite a number or at least cite an example.
I suppose it's technically possible that the animal activists study is out of date and all the left-wing vegans are doing so because of health reasons and all the right-wing vegans are doing so because of animal concern reasons.
So informally both the r/veganism, r/veganactivism have left-wing signifiers in their rules e.g:
"3. No hate speech
No hate speech or other oppressive speech that may make other users feel unwelcome or uncomfortable based on their biological sex, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, cultural background, age, or physical or mental ability."
And the rules of r/vegancirclejerk are even more explicit:
"No Non-Leftists, Health and/or Environmental "Vegans"
Veganism is a leftist social justice movement for animal liberation. It is not a diet for your health and it is not for the human environment. This also, obviously, means No slurs/bigotry [...] We do not condone or advocate for plant based capitalism. We will never support animal agriculture companies, or any business that exists to extract profit from vegans while funding animal exploitation. We are frustrated these businesses have infiltrated every vegan space and being represented online by ads for TVP and first world convenience food. We're not here to make food aisles bigger, this is about animal liberation.
The subreddit r/socialismandveganism has 3192 members while r/rightwingedveganism has 16 members