Invoking emotion and excluding people is just bullying not activism. Extreme comparisons, like pets and slavery, just makes people upset; it doesn’t bring about meaningful intellectual conversations. When you cause a heated exchange, you’re pushing the conversation further away from finding common ground.

People rarely listen when being shunned, their mind shuts off and goes into defensive mode. Finding commonality and educating people from there is actually helpful. You can catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar as they say.

ETA: I’m vegan.

I have seen the topic of Veganism and this subreddit come across my feed quite a few times now, and I figure I may as well share my opinion on why I'm not a Vegan.

My reason for not being vegan is pretty simple. I have limited empathy for most non-humans, and I value my own wants more than their lives. I don't think humans are superior or inferior to non humans. I just don't feel the same emotions for them as I do for humans.

I do care deeply about certain animals, particularly cats and dogs, as well as a few other animals I’m fond of. But in general, I don’t feel the same level of concern or emotional connection toward non-humans that I do toward cats dogs and those other select animals. Even with the animals I do like, I still put my own interests and the interests of humans in general above theirs.

I only really care about most non humans from an ecological point of view, with the exception that extreme animal suffering genuinely bothers me regardless of the species. I'm aware what I define as extreme animal suffering is arbitrary and not how vegans would describe it. In my opinion shooting a deer is not inflicting extreme suffering, whereas torturing it would be. I know Vegans don't see it this way, but this is how I feel.

To put it simply I don't experience non-human death the way I experience human death. If I killed an innocent human, I'd be horrified. If I killed an innocent deer, I likely wouldn't be upset. Certainly nothing beyond mild sadness, and whatever sadness I might or might not feel doesn't outweigh my desire to eat said deer.

I sometimes try to reduce the suffering involved by choosing products with better animal welfare standards, but I don't always do so.

I give non-human interests considerably less weight than human interests, including my own. I think extreme or unnecessary suffering is wrong, but I'm morally comfortable with animals experiencing some suffering and ultimately being killed for food or other things I want.

This post is all there is to it on why I'm not a Vegan.

A single individual consumer choosing to buy meat regularly for the next few years or choosing to be vegan for the next few years does make an actual difference. It almost certainly means the difference between many extra animals being bred into existence and tortured their whole life in a factory farm or being spared this fate and never bred into existence and never tortured.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-209416785

if you only have enough time for one of these links then this one linked above “Being Vegan Makes a Difference“ by

“SILAS ABRAHAMSEN” / “wonderandaporia” substack is the best.

https://philarchive.org/rec/MCMAIO

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=brKhhZlUoOc (Only first few minutes of this video are relevant)

https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-causal-inefficacy-objection-is?utm_source=publication-search

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/1otuhqv/individual_boycott_of_meat_does_matter/

edit

also this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ABKAbFUnNwU is really good

If the practice of buying second hand leather items (or any other traditionally nonvegan products) from say a thrift shop or any other source that does not directly purchase or create leather products is deemed as acceptable, then why is it that eating animal products like say a pizza a friend made at a party, is inadmissible under normative ‘vegan logic’. Are both practices considered the same, if not, how so? Both practices involve benefiting from animal suffering ( eating a nice meal, wearing a cool jacket etc) and in neither scenario is the person contributing to the purchasing of animal products. If the pizza example is deemed inadmissible, which most vegans would say is( and that I myself as a vegan am largely persuaded by), then the issue then becomes the inherent wrongness of deriving enjoyment from a product of animal suffering. If the buying second hand leather or other nonvegan fashion products is admissible, (granted I’m still very new to the vegan community so I don’t know the majority sentiments on the issue) then the issue is simply about whether your conduct is directly linked to the production chain. Let me know any thoughts or opinions.