Vegans being banned and comments being deleted from !vegan@lemmy.world for being fake vegans.
From my perspective, the comments were in no way insulting and just part of completely normal interaction. If this decision reflects the general opinion of the mod team, then from my perspective, the biggest vegan community on Lemmy wants to be an elitist cycle of hardcore vegans only, not allowing any slightly different opinion. Which would be very unfortunate.
PS: In contrast to the name of this community, I don’t want to insult anyone here being a ‘bastard’. I just want to post this somewhere on neutral ground. I would really appreciate an open discussion without bashing anyone.
Linking the affected users and mods: @Cypher@lemmy.world @gaael@lemmy.world @gredo@lemmy.world @iiGxC@slrpnk.net @veganpizza69@lemmy.world @veganpizza69@lemmy.vg @jerkface@lemmy.ca @TheTechnician27@lemmy.world @Sunshine@lemmy.ca @Aqua@lemmy.vg
Looks like the vegan admin has an aggression problem. Maybe he or she should at least occasionally eat some meat to calm the cravings.
she should at least occasionally eat some meat
Even though I don’t share her point of view, that part of your comment is totally inappropriate and rude.
jesus christ. i don’t think i’ve ever seen a longer sidebar as I scroll down to the modlog… not a good start…
and okay, so the mod is unhappy about a vegan restaurant turning to non-veganry to stay alive? to the point where they’re silencing all discussion of it in a positive or even ambivalent light? This seems like there’s more to it than the mod is willing to admit publicly. “the restaurant isn’t vegan” doesn’t account for “it’s a shame but I’d rather an otherwise vegan restaurant survive than not. how sad” and “it seems like there just weren’t enough vegans in town to keep it alive” being banned. it’s clear ethics policing and again, im sensing some passive-aggression and unstated resentments on the mod’s part.
PTB. vegans deserve better representation in their leaders than this i hope we can get an alternative community that can allow discussion without weird purity purges.
so true! plants are based
Dang, an actual PTB!
Defining removing the comments was already borderline PTB, though one can argue that since vegans tend to insist on dealt strict policies in vegan C/s, that it is within bounds to remove comments and posts as needed to maintain their space.
But holy shit, the “you aren’t a real vegan” went right off the rails. And then bans for it. That’s not even crossing the line in this specific case, it’s kicking the line and spitting on its grave.
Mind you, sometimes it’s necessary to ban people that aren’t an actual part of the specific group a forum/community is for. It is case specific whether or not someone is power tripping.
But this case is soooo far into power tripping it’s almost a parody
I’m not undoing the bans as the comments literally go against the definition of veganism ie no animal products for the reason of ethics, serving meat options in an establishment isn’t even vegetarian let alone vegan. Words are supposed to have meaning or language is completely pointless.
The foods that are vegan and plant-based have zero animal products. It is not up for debate.
You’re welcome to post and comment in flexitarian communities instead.
Thanks for taking the time to comment here.
The foods that are vegan and plant-based have zero animal products. It is not up for debate.
From my perspective, that’s a classical strawman. No one said that food with animal products is vegan or that a restaurant that serves animal products should be considered a vegan restaurant.
I just prefer a restaurant that still serves a large number of vegan options over the average omnivore restaurant that has no or just very few vegan options. That’s better for me personally but IMO also for the vegan movement as a whole as it eases access to vegan food for everyone.
I went fully vegan 3 years ago - I don’t think it’s fair to call me or others fake vegans or flexitarians just because we have a slightly different opinion on a certain topic.
Lol found out here that I had been banned from the community. Ty for sharing the information :)
Regarding the matter, I understand their reaction.
I’ve been interacting with some vegan circles IRL and some are more “hardcore” (not in a negative way) than others. When you consider animal exploitation as mass slavery, mass torture and mass murder, it becomes increasingly difficult to tolerate even light deviations from the all-vegan path.This being said, I would have preferred they had a better wording for the temp ban reason than “fake vegan” by which I feel insulted and hurt.
The “all or nothing” crowd really knows how to stomp on progress, huh?
It’s like they don’t realize that by being this hostile towards any other viewpoints, they drive away people who might otherwise be interested in becoming vegan or want to learn more. All it does is harm the community in the long run, and then they wonder why there’s a stigma around vegans. That stigma then feeds into a persecution complex and that becomes a nasty vicious cycle.
(not in a negative way)
Debatable.
One of my best friends is a long-term vegan. He generally avoids telling people because he so strongly hates being lumped in with this crowd of asshats.
Not a lot of 100% vegan grocery stores, where do they get their food?
EDIT: It’s pretty telling that everyone is reading this as an excuse to keep murdering instead of accepting that murder is part of being alive. “Life feeds on life.” It is not pretty, it is ugly and dark. What should be taken away is a greater respect for all life and an understanding of what we’re taking when we feed on life. It should be used as a pretext to respect all life and do your best to reduce harm to all life. Whatever life you’re taking should be considered valuable and a sacrifice made. (Mass deforestation to make way for agricultural farming doesn’t just hurt trees, it hurts the animals that live in them and among them, for instance. A soybean farm doesn’t have the same ecological importance as an old growth forest, sorry.) The fact that this view is seen as a reason to kill more instead of kill less and have respect for the life you take is pathetic.
But keep ranting to me in your total misread of what I’m saying.
Just popping in to say the main reason that attitude is dumb because there is no such thing as moral absolutism.
animal exploitation as mass slavery, mass torture and mass murder
Do we consider antibiotics exploitative to penicillin? Do we cry over every breath we take in which our immune system automatically murders billions of bacteria?
Just because plants don’t have faces like ours and don’t look like us and don’t scream when we kill them killing plants is fine somehow. They’re all alive, you’re still killing life, and in our great inhuman lack-of-wisdom we’ve decided that if it doesn’t have a brain and consciousness like ours, then it most not have consciousness and thus it’s okay to murder and exploit them.
Just call me the fucking Lorax. Who speaks for the trees, dude?
Anyway, no such thing as moral absolutism and these people will continue to climb higher and higher on their holier-than-thou-mountain only to become caricatures of a real person.
Isn’t it pretty apparent?
If it can feel pain and suffer it shouldn’t.
Bacteria do not have the capability to feel suffering. They cannot even feel.
Plants and fungi, despite their increased complexity, do not have the capability to suffer either.
The entire point of the field of ethics and half the field of philosophy is to reduce suffering. Torture is bad because it causes suffering. Killing is bad because it causes suffering. Slavery is bad because it causes suffering. Rape is bad because it causes suffering. Abuse is bad because is causes suffering.
Veganism extends this to animals who are capable of suffering in ways identical to us humans. It also raises important questions: Would it be ethical to treat aliens the same way humanity treats non-humans? What if the aliens are sufficiently stupid, yet still capable of civilization? What if they’re smarter but live in solitude? Why exactly is it unethical to kill severely mentally disabled people? Is it just because humans view themselves as superior to every other living being in the universe?
I believe veganism is the objectively moral choice. Still, I’m not vegan for various reasons. But I don’t have any qualms with admitting my behavior is objectively wrong.
The entire point of the field of ethics and half the field of philosophy is to reduce suffering
this is just a lie. one type of ethical study, utilitarianism, is focused on that. many ethical theories don’t regard suffering at all, or only as a facet of some other concern.
Plants and fungi, despite their increased complexity, do not have the capability to suffer either.
you can’t prove this
Bacteria do not have the capability to feel suffering. They cannot even feel.
you can’t prove this
Plants feel pain too so it’s okay to stab babies. There’s no difference between pulling a potato out of the ground and punting a chihuahua over a fence! :)
If you disagree with that, you must be a moral absolutist.
I will not debate about whether animals, plants and bacteria suffer the same way.
This is an argument I’ve heard time and time again from the antivegan crowd and imo falls into the “at best very uninformed, more likely troll” category.
Here I am fully ready to deep dive into some drama from a community I have zero investment in and it’s impossible to read 😩
Are you using sync? If so, It’s a sync bug. Open the post and then click the image from there.
Your instance seems to be serving you up a thumbnail of the image instead of the actual image. I recommend temporarily looking at the post from another instance, such as mine.
?
Lol, I got my vegan card revoked (declared “a carnist”) and handed my first fedi ban by the “Real Vegans™” too, for daring to call out their bullshit and ableist militant gatekeeping.
Good luck to them and the toxic cesspit they’re so adamant on maintaining, the last thing anyone should be seeking is these people’s approval, especially not on being a “good” or “real” vegan, since they make it crystal clear that their top priority is and always will be their own egos. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m so sorry! I’ve had that happen to me as well. It’s not only toxic but just makes me feel bad
This is why plantbased was made recently
And it’s a great community too. I don’t participate because it isn’t for me, but so far it has been a breath of fresh air how chill it is
Yup!
Purity gatekeeping, and purity competitions, are the bane of any movement. Sorry that happened to you. FWIW I thought your comments were reasonable
Generally very radical vegans also have a right to their own community, however I also think there should be spaces for less radical veganism as well. It seems that currently there’s none of those available, or maybe the general hostility of social media against vegans makes any of their more tolerant spaces eventually close ranks to protect their sanity. Unfortunately vegan spaces are constantly brigaded by trolls so it’s understandable they have a very short fuse, and a lot of people get caught in the cross-fire.
I think the only solution here would be for a new vegan community with a focus on debate with non-vegans. However it will be tricky to find the right moderators for it who either won’t be non-vegans themselves and therefore support a flood of concern-trolls and bad faith arguments, or be vegans that won’t get immediately burnt out.
So, last time people were mad that vegans were mean to them this community got created:
https://lemmy.world/c/plantbased
Edit: I should finish my coffee before posting, the only post there literally points to this more active com lol: https://lemmy.world/c/plantbased@lemmy.dbzer0.com
See: https://lemmy.world/post/23634881
We all know r/vegan exists and is a cesspit of carnists, but there doesn’t seem to be an actual demand for a ‘plant based’ space. I’m not sure why people would post about something they are kind of meh and not committed to?
If people are interested in just the food, there are communities for that:
I really don’t think the rules there are onerous. Just don’t talk about abusing animals and don’t be a jerk to the other posters and you’re good?
Hey, I didn’t make plantbased to be a less committed version to veganism. I made it because from reddit to lemmy every vegan community I’ve encountered has power tripping toxic mods and I wanted to provide an alternative space.
I’m fully committed to my veganism. But I also wanted people who aren’t to be able to discuss it without being attacked.
After I wrote this I see you’re writing from a vegan instance. I have less experience with there versus vegan communities around here.
The hardcore/toxic crowd do nothing except alienate and turn people against the cause and make people think being vegan means being surrounded by assholes.
It’s people like you that welcome everyone into the discussion that inspire more people to try it out; you’re bringing about the real change.
Lol, every vegan I know which includes a chunk of my own family went vegan because of militant vegans.
I see lots of carnists with no intention of going vegan talk about how militant vegans are bad but I have never actually met someone who is vegan and stays vegan that found wishy washy people motivating or inspiring.
That’s so extremely nice of you to say :)
I’m not even a vegetarian but I am slowly trending y’all’s direction. Finding good recipes or product recommendations is key to getting my family to come along with me.
I appreciate being, if not welcomed, at least quietly tolerated!
I view that as a net positive :) trying to force people to change in one moment will never succeed.
You’re more than welcome! I view it as a space to learn and explore, not to be judged by what level vegan you are lol
The only thing I’ve moderated recently is people pushing meat in the community or being rude.
pushing meat
Tee hee
I should clarify: when I refer to people who aren’t committed to veganism I am referring to the same people you are referring to when you say “people who aren’t”, i.e. the non vegans discussing veganism.
I’m apparently banned from vegan theory club. I have no idea what I could have done to them.
Lemmy world is a blocked instance on vegan theory club. @Arcanepotato@vegantheoryclub.org won’t be able to see your comment.
Wow. Thats… their choice, I guess. All hail the fediverse.
They got sick of trolls invading and demanding to be debated, and lemmy.world was one of the most egregious instances. I can’t blame them, vegans deserve a place to just be without every discussion turning into a debate with non-vegans.
Fair. Nobody deserves to get brigaded for living quietly and authentically.
Isn’t !vegan@lemmy.world less radical than !vegan@vegantheoryclub.org ?
Probably? I don’t know. It started with the same mod team, didn’t it?
Vegan Theory Club is more radical and different in scope. It is definitely not a place to debate veganism. I let them come to my instance after some nonsense about lemmy.world and we’re not federated with lemmy.world. Vegan Theory Club is social media for vegans specifically.
It is definitely not a place to debate veganism
What we see in this post seems to be a debate among vegans about what kinds of places are best to support. Surely that should be welcome in a place called “vegan theory”? It’s a form of “debating veganism”, just not one between vegans and omnivores.
If I understand my history correctly, Vegan Theory Club is a theory club for vegans, not a club for vegan theory specifically.
There is a discord server of the same name which is way more active for the discussion of leftist theory. Members of the instance can make communities - it’s just no one has created one specifically to talk about vegan theory.
Hamid was respond to a suggestion for communities for vegans to debate carnists which db0 correctly identified as draining.
I’m not sure what debate between vegans would be. Debating our interpretation of texts? There is a book club community that’s perfect for that.
I’m not sure what debate between vegans would be
Literally what I just said. “Is it better for one restaurant to succeed with 100% vegan food while most other restaurants entirely lack vegan options, or for every restaurant to have a couple of good vegan options?”
Your instance admin seems to have established (in the comments of this thread) a pretty clear strong opinion on that topic, but a less obnoxious community could have debates like that among themselves and create fruitful results. Which is what it seems was happening in the thread this post is about, until the mods of the LW vegan community put a stop to it.
I really don’t know why carnists have such strong opinions on vegan spaces.
There is no debating on the side of allowing a restaurant to serve meat on a vegan messaging board. Debating this is missing the point of veganism entirely and my user community understands this and is why they created an account on a small instance like Vegan Theory Club. We are of a similar mind and the club is for people to find people on the same page as them. It works, we have off lemmy resources and an active discord. Veganism isn’t a diet, it is a social justice movement to end the human exploitation of Animals, debating that serving meat is ok would get you banned on my instance as well. Personally I would have shut down a vegan restaurant before introducing meat and reopened as something else.
I don’t personally eat at non vegan restaurants ever. I almost never go to restaurants at all frankly and prefer potlucks and cooking at our homes when I hang out with my friends. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-prole-info-abolish-restaurants
There is no debating on the side of allowing a restaurant to serve meat on a vegan messaging board.
In an ideal world I’d love to have only vegan restaurants and everyone being vegan globally. As this is not within my power, I am looking for a way that benefits veganism the most.
I think the easier it gets to be vegan, the more people will get on board. If you get vegan options only in specialized places in big cities, that will make it hard for anyone not living close to that or being part of social cycles not 100% vegan.
If a purely vegan restaurant survives economically, I am more than happy. But if they don’t, I definitely prefer them to add a few omnivore dishes rather than closing completely and getting replaced by another steakhouse.
I don’t think having this opinion makes me any kind of bad vegan or fake vegan but I’m happy to hear your points if you think otherwise.
I think the piece of information that is being missed is that VTC is inherently anti capitalist and therefore the concept of “supporting businesses” so that they can survive doesn’t really make sense in that context. (See link Hamid posted)
Just in the context of trying to get a work group to go to lunch, finding a place that fits everyone’s diets is tough, so if a place exists that is one, and only one, diet type then big groups wont be able to go there for business events or catering. Depending on the location, that could be a huge revenue source missed.
Veganism is in its core a boycott, so that is the default take. I don’t live in a big city so I don’t go to restaurants. If you read the link I posted, I think there are a lot of problems with restaurants that go beyond veganism and they are offensive to me as an anarchist. I strongly dislike businesses, business owners and I like to do things for myself. To that end the more I lean on a life of compromise the less I feel is being done. By organizing pot lucks, friends dinners, participating in my local Food Not Bombs and promoting home cooking I am building an alternative to the carnist structures in our world that is more meaningful than making an individual decision to go to a carnist business and give them money that they then invest in more carnist businesses. This is also why I don’t really like buying products labeled “vegan” from meat companies or buying impossible burgers from Burger King, we aren’t convincing them to switch, we are participating in horizontal segmentation where they carve out two markets from one that don’t cannibalize each other. I used to have the meeting notes from an shareholder meeting at Burger King where the CEO explains this but I lost it in my international move a few years ago among all my boxes of computer stuff. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/horizontalmarket.asp
I think adding meat dishes to a vegan restaurant and still calling it vegan is offensive and anti-vegan. If you want to go to restaurants then I guess that is a compromise you have to make for your own reasons but I don’t think that it is vegan decision in scope. I don’t attack people online or in person for it but I don’t think you’d be a good fit for a community of radical vegans and anti capitalists. I probably wouldn’t remove your comments from a message board like he lemmy.world one which is basically a vegan news community and appeals to beginners and transitioners but I would remove it from my instance. There is no requirement to go to restaurants in this world and my life got more interesting when I stopped going to places like that.
I think the easier it gets to be vegan, the more people will get on board.
But if they are not participating in the vegan boycott, are they on board? I’ve been a vegan for a long time and understand people are at different places, that said the biggest problem is recidivism. The longer you go as a vegan making compromises the less likely that you’re going to stick with it. For me this meant that at one point I needed to actually change my life and social groups to align with what I believe instead of forcing what I believe into a world that doesn’t agree and is hostile. For me this was a good decision, I made new friends, I have new things to do and I’m far more socially active as a mid 40s vegan in my vegan world than most of my old friends and coworkers are.
Thanks for clarifying
This is super weird to me. Back on the Asian ass porn site known as Reddit I could just go into vegan subs and have casual conversations about recipes and cooking techniques. It didn’t matter that I eat meat.
After the API kerfuffle we all celebrated how friendly the internet can be and now you get preemptively banned because you COULD be a bad actor in disguise.
To a point I understand the frustration vegans have to live with. The constant childish trolling can be exhausting, but this is pretty much the worst way to handle this.
you’re just defederated. you’re not personally banned: it’s your whole instance.
Never said I was.
I thought it would make you feel better that it’s not personal
Even when I was banned I wouldn’t feel bad. I don’t need a community that unwelcoming to others. But thanks for looking out. I appreciate that.
Every good cause has fundamentalist dickheads who try to coopt it and make it about them.
And realistically they’re more likely to end up here
Definitely PTB.
Another day, another
dietvegan/carnivore dramafyi the normal diet people eat is omnivorous, not carnivorous.
Veganism isn’t a diet, it is a social justice movement for animal rights.
It can be. I know a lot of the loudest vegans insist this is the only acceptable definition. But that’s not how language works. A vegan is someone who abstains from all animal food products, and usually all/most other animal products. Their reason for doing so is not an essential part of the definition.
You are simply not correct and there isn’t much more to discuss. There is an actual agreed on definition of veganism by vegans, created by the vegan society who created veganism and coined the term vegan to describe themselves. They created the word vegan for this specific reason, it didn’t exist before and you can’t redefine it because you don’t like it. The reason for doing so is absolutely an essential part of the definition. If they are not doing it for this reason then they are plant based and not vegan.
“Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”
There is an actual agreed on definition of veganism by vegans, created by the vegan society who created veganism and coined the term vegan to describe themselves
Sorry, but that is just not how language works. One group does not get to define a term and insist everyone else uses it in the precise way they do. Words’ meanings are defined by how they are used. And the term vegan is used in the way I described all the time.
A word’s meaning can also change over time. Even if you were correct that the term was coined to be an ethical standpoint, that would not preclude it later evolving to have the broader meaning it does in today’s society. That would be the etymological fallacy. But in fact you are not correct about that either. The term was coined by Donald Watson and Dorothy Morgan, because they wanted a more concise term for non-dairy vegetarians. The first time the term had caught on in the wider public enough to make it into a dictionary, the agreed meaning of vegan was “a vegetarian who eats no butter, eggs, cheese, or milk”. You can thus talk about ethical veganism (which seems to be the only subtype of veganism your definition would accept), environmental veganism, or dietary veganism.
I made exactly the same point to the university when I wanted to open a quantum research lab studying really big distances (see quantum leap) but they said it would be confusing and stupid to accept ignorant people’s definition of technical terms.
blah blah blah, I am dumber for having heard from you
Whoof, the projection is strong with this one lol.
Dude, we really don’t care. Could you please go back to vegan@lemmy.world and yell at clouds there instead?
It’s both!
Edited
Vegans biting each other 😉
Heh, getting warmed up for their inevitable turn to cannibalism, to rid the earth of evil humans.