Vegans: Animals are being abused by the meat, dairy and egg industries and you shouldn’t support it.
Tumblr: We need to care HUMAN issues first okay HUMANS
Vegans: Slaughterhouse workers are some of the most exploited people on earth and these facilities disproportionately affect communities of colour, the inefficient resource use of animal agriculture also contributes towards world hunger and climate change which hits the poor hardest.
Tumblr: *scrolls furiously*
There is no cruelty-free way to live under a capitalistic system because it always puts profits over welfare, both human and animal.
That’s a great point and it’s absolutely true. The issue is that this is where the conversation ends in social justice circles and especially on this website 99% of the time. “No ethical consumption under capitalism tho” which is a truism, but no call for action beyond that at all or any suggestions for what we are supposed to be doing while we just sit around and wait for The Revolution. At that point it becomes nothing but an apathetic cop-out.
Vegans aren’t suggesting that our lifestyle is 100% cruelty free or that we don’t contribute towards suffering just by existing in a consumer society, because of course we do. But there is nothing I can do about that. Veganism, however, is something practical and actually attainable that I am able to do, here and now, to significantly reduce the harm I cause to animals and the planet. If I have the option to cause less harm, why wouldn’t I do that? And more even more perplexing, why do people feel the need to point out that that “there is no cruelty free way to live” every time we even try?
"Once upon a time I thought it was a female thing, this fear of men. Yet when I began to talk with men about love, time and time again I heard stories of male fear of other males. Indeed, men who feel, who love, often hide their emotional awareness from other men for fear of being attacked and shamed. This is the big secret we all keep together—the fear of patriarchal maleness that binds everyone in our culture. We cannot love what we fear. That is why so many religious traditions teach us that there is no fear in love.
We struggle then, in patriarchal culture, all of us, to love men. We may care about males deeply. We may cherish our connections with the men in our lives. And we may desperately feel that we cannot live without their presence, their company. We can feel all these passions in the face of maleness and yet stand removed, keeping the distance patriarchy has created, maintaining the boundaries we are told not to cross."
— The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks (2004)
you are not just you
you are a collection of the stories you’ve read and the night skies you’ve admired. you are the smiles you’ve given to strangers and the tears you’ve lost on your pillows. you are the lives you’ve touched. you are a mixture of cosmic stardust and earth. you are a descendent of nomads and sailors. you are the flowers you’ve received and the plants you’ve watered. you are the adventures you’ve had and will have. you are your imagination and anticipation. you are not simple. you are a complex yet magnificent product of the life you have lived so far.
disability rights involves the right to do fuck all. the right to be a useless member of society and STILL be loved and cared for and have a fair standard of living. human beings are not defined by the capital we produce.
My aunt called me for a family outing, and I refused because my pain was reaching higher levels and I knew it was flaring up and I just wanted to go to bed. I told her about it, and she goes "I'm tired as well, aren't I going out? I'm so much older than you, I'm still going out with all of you- "
I'm disabled.
I pleaded with my mom to convince her - I was feeling terrible. My pain was sooooooo high I was in tears. And to make matters worse, she told "if you're not coming, then we're not going as well." I felt so terrible.
EVERYBODY told me to suck it up and come along. A cousin was even so sure of why I was hurting, and blamed me for my pain. Told me that I should've listened to her and not done x and that's why I'm in pain.
I'm disabled. I have chronic pain.
And my own mother gave in to peer pressure and I was surrounded by ableists convincing me, blackmailing me to go along with them just so that they don't have to face the guilt of leaving someone behind. It was one of the worst days of my life.
I ended up going, and I cried that night because I was in so much pain. I had been on a bumpy car ride while my arm was flaring up.
Able-bodied people, if you're reading this — please understand that when a disabled person tells you to go somewhere without them, just go. Telling them that you would stay would only make them feel more terrible. And also, believe disabled people when they say they're hurting. PLEASE. Its the one thing we ask of you.
Speaking as a disabled person, it really rubs me the wrong way when people focus on an animal's "purpose," whether that's domesticated animals such as dogs and cows, or wild animals such as mosquitoes and wasps. Nothing needs a reason to exist. You don't have to be useful for your life to matter.
Cars are just not very economic
I just had this discussion with someone and I just kinda feel the need to talk about it here, because it is closely related to the entire Solarpunk thing.
If you look at it from a purely economic point of view, cars are just not a very efficient way of transport.
Now, this argument has been made to death, really. And literally economists have been arguing about this for literal decades. Again, I was discussing it and looked up sources - and I found sources going back to the 70s. So, yeah, this has been discussed for at least half a century.
But... yeah. Speaking from an economic point of view rails are most economic, followed by busses. Only then there is the cars. (No data on water transport and air transport is a bit more complicated from this point of view.)
Now, why is this?
- Roads are all in all more expensive than rails, especially in maintenance. If you look into construction costs, you will find kinda contradictory information on this. But per kilometer costs a kilometer of rail is about equivalent to a kilometer of a four-lane highway to construct. But while both need maintenance, usually roads need more of it. Because the wear and tear on a road is harsher than on a rail (due to more friction and just the fact that concrete is just not a very durable material compared to metal). Admittedly: High speed rail does push both construction and maintanance costs for railways up a good notch, making it more comparable to a seven lane highway. Mostly because of safety concerns.
- While trains are more expensive than cars, they usually will be longer in use than a car and will drive many more kilometers during this time. Part of this is also, of course, that while trains are in use for hours each day, most cars spend the most of their life just standing in garages and parking lots. While the average car will get retired after about 150 000 to 200 000 miles, the average locomotive will last 1 000 000 miles.
- This comes even more into focus, when you take into consideration how many more passangers or haul the average car will transport during those 1m miles. A single train car can carry up to 150 passangers - and often during rush hours trains will carry about 800 to 1000 passengers at once. While a car will carry often only one or two people at once.
- Additionally obviously car infrastructure takes up much more space. Even if we are talking about countries with not as crazy "minimum parking area" restrictions as the USA. Cars need a lot more space than a train or even bus would ever need. And this space also carries costs with it.
- And in the end we obviously still do have all the kind of costs that comes from the environmental and health impact of cars. Be it the air pollution, the water polution, and the fallout from having those concrete deserts the cars need in their infrastructure. And to this you can STILL add costs from everything having to deal with accidents and the like.
But yeah... Cars are just economically not very efficient.
So, even if you just cared about the fucking money... Investing in trains and public transport is actually a way better use of that money, than investing in cars.
So I’m a historian who works particularly on the relationship between trauma, national memory, and childhood. The focus of my research is not the Holocaust, but it’s a subject upon which I’ve taught, mused, written, and examined. A few years ago, I was a TA in a class on the Holocaust (cross listed in the History Department and the Department of Judaic Studies) at a US University (a pretty prestigious one). Most of the course focused on the realities of the Holocaust: what happened? how? why? Now because of my areas of expertise/interest, I was invited to give a lecture to the entire class as opposed to teaching my particular subset of students each week. The subject of the lecture? The Holocaust in US education and children’s/YA literature.
The thing that I found most distressing about this lecture? The fact that only about nine state in the US require that students learn about the Holocaust in classrooms. Among those only a few require it as a part of history or social studies classes, the rest require it as part of language arts. And, the way that students actually learn about this subject is determined at the discretion of the school district, which means that, as long as students meet the general requirements of standardized tests, they don’t have to learn particular details. So, let that sink in. Even more distressing? The states that “require” students to learn about the Holocaust, have only done so since (at the earliest) the 1980s, and far more likely the 1990s and 2000s. This means that there is an entire generation whose knowledge of the Holocaust comes from popular media and triumphant narratives about US involvement in WWII: these narratives are hugely false, and what I call the “Punching Hitler” story after the iconic image of Captain America socking Hitler in the jaw. In the US the general shared narrative about WWII is that the US went over the Europe, lost a lot of boys, but killed Hitler, won the war, and saved the Jews. o__O That’s…not what happened.
In a class of 200 students, only about 10 percent knew anything about how the Holocaust happened. They didn’t know about the groups that were targeted, the way that anti-semitism and opportunistic nationalist politics helped make it happen, they didn’t know about complicity or bystandardism. They knew nothing. They didn’t know that US officials were aware of what was happening and refused to get involved in the war. They didn’t understand that there was concurrent anti-semitism and racism in the US. They were taught none of these things. And that is actually terrifying, not only because it means that these kids have no idea about the past, but because they can’t see the giant flashing warning signs in our current socio-political world.
it was actually thru the lens of veganism that it became crystal clear to me that the true purpose of the police is not to "protect the weak and vulnerable" but to defend the private interests of the bourgeois class. i had known this to be true for a long time but it never really clicked until i looked at it this way. for one, the ALF is considered a terrorist organization despite never having killed a single person. cops will arrest animal rights activists for trespassing and property theft because they rescued animals from factory farms, and then throw them in jail for it. cops will put you in jail for saving lives, defend a rich persons right to profit from the torture, exploitation and slaughter of animals, and expect you to believe them when they tell you theyre here to offer protection from violence. but if that were true they wouldnt be siding with those who make a fortune out of it.
Veganism always comes down to the same exact principle: Animals do not exist for us. They do not need to be “useful” to us to be live. Consuming and/or buying animal products always sends the message that it is okay to take whatever we would like from animals simply because we are humans and they are not. It doesn’t matter if the animal’s fur is stripped from their back while they’re still alive or if you’re gathering eggs from your backyard free range chickens. Both send the message of speciesism and needless expoitlation. Both acts are unnecessary and not morally sound.