rambling thoughts on veganism, people pleasing, finding balance, & accepting nuance in a black & white world
Last week, I made a video about how I am no longer strictly vegan, after making the choice to incorporate a few animal products–– namely cheese–– back into my diet. While it is worth noting that there have been positive reactions to this video, the response has been predominantly negative overall, with hundreds of comments criticizing my dietary change in the name of ethics and compassion. I fully expected to receive some backlash for posting this video, but was not fully prepared for the lengths people would be willing to go to in order to prove their point.
Perhaps this does not need to be said, but I am of the opinion that coming at someone with death threats, calling them vile names, attempting to get their accounts taken down (amongst other far worse things) is not an effective form of advocacy. Even when I was the most enthusiastic vegan I knew, I remember wanting to distance myself from anyone who’d partake in this behavior. I saw it as counterintuitive and ineffective at getting a message across. If anything, it pushes people away. This has been reiterated to me as truth time and time again over the past few years.
While this experience has been disarming and upsetting at times, I have found it equally as fascinating as I have disturbing. I felt inspired to write about this phenomenon, not as a means of having a moral high ground or taking a stance on the issue, but rather to share my thoughts on black and white thinking. Perhaps it’s the fact that I have a sociology background and am generally captivated by topics relating to ethics and the way we engage with them… or maybe I’m just sick in that I truly enjoy piecing together every possible side of every possible debate and finding nuance and understanding for all viewpoints.
In any case, one factor that makes this situation particularly interesting is the fact that I genuinely see the motivation of both sides. While I am definitively against the way the vegan community has been behaving towards those who disagree with them, I genuinely do understand the source of the uproar. As someone who was raised on a pescatarian diet from the age of 5, has never cooked meat in their life, spent five years committed to the vegan cause, and spends their days developing predominantly plant-based recipes for a living, I understand the vegan argument. Simply put, I am not against this diet or lifestyle, and I have no ill will towards vegans or veganism as a whole. I recognize those who take such an extreme hateful approach are likely outliers in the group. To this day, I very actively encourage people to eat a predominantly whole foods plant-based diet. As I mentioned in my video, I still do have ethical and environmental concerns as to whether adding some non-vegan foods back into my diet is the right choice. For personal reasons, I’ve simply taken a more nuanced approach as of late, and I suppose anyone who takes issue with this decision has every right to their own opinion on the matter.
I’ve realized that when you know nothing about someone’s own unique set of circumstances (financial limitations, food access limitations, mental health concerns, eating disorder behaviors, etc), you can’t possibly understand why they choose to do what they do. I have spoken at length about the levels of privilege that are required to live certain lifestyles that align with certain ethics. At the end of the day, most people are doing the best that they can with the resources available to them. Pitting those with different levels and forms of activism against one another is counterproductive to our shared goal. This is true in the environmental movement, and it is true in this scenario as well.
I’m no stranger to controversy over my dietary choices. When I was strictly vegan, I was criticized by people on all sides of the debate. For some, my vegan diet was offensive and biologically insufficient, and I was told to eat meat. In my five years of subscribing to the vegan label, I cannot overestimate the amount of times I was told my diet was nutritionally inadequate, that my choice to abstain from eating animal products was not actually having any impact, etc. For others, I wasn’t vegan enough. I actually received similar backlash from vegans online in 2021 for creating educational content about dietary choices that did not exist strictly within the vegan framework. I created this content for those struggling not to eat animal products but still wanting to reduce their impact on both animals and the planet.
Some examples of this include vegans choosing to consume eggs from backyard chickens, eating oysters (as much evidence shows they do not have a central nervous system and thus cannot feel pain), eating honey from local beekeepers, and consuming any food that would otherwise be wasted, regardless of whether it contained animal products (often referred to as freeganism). I also encouraged others to simply limit their animal product intake rather than give up altogether due to their inability to be strictly vegan. I believed, and still believe, that reducing consumption has a positive impact that should not be minimized. I shared content about all of these topics in an attempt to showcase a more nuanced approach, to share that there was an alternative to the black and white thinking we often found ourselves subjected to… and for that, the community came at me as aggressively as they are now.
I recognize that I may never be able to engage in civil discourse with anyone who is driven to a place of aggression over a diet change. It seems impossible to please anyone with such a level of black and white thinking. I accept this. I have made peace with it. It seems that we as people tend to cling to this type of absolutist thinking for dear life. Life is simpler when you never have to question your worldview, when nuance is left out of the equation. There were certainly times in my life when I chose to ignore all the grey, all the blind spots, all the in between. But as I see now, it leads to so much being lost along the way.
I don’t have all the answers. I probably never will. In earlier chapters of my life, I had a much harder time acknowledging that fact. Today, I choose to accept the things that I can, do what works best for me and my lifestyle, and make the exceptions that allow me to thrive enough to continue advocating for the wellbeing of people and planet. At this point in time, that has to be enough for me.
As more and more time passes, I’m more inclined to believe it is.
