Debate: Should vegans respect the views of meat-eaters?

 (relevant definition of respect in this context: 

 

"have due regard for (someone's feelings, wishes, or rights).

"I respected his views"

synonyms:

show consideration for, show regard for, take into consideration, take into account, make allowances for, take cognizance of, observe, pay heed/attention to, bear in mind, be mindful of, be heedful of, remember; archaicregard "at least they respect your privacy".")

So, blog post number two, and it’s time to get into some dangerous territory. I’m not certain of the wisdom in plunging in at the deep end with such a touchy issue, but this is definitely something that has to be said.

I have a large number of meat-eaters in my life. They’re in my family. I’m friends with them. I work with them and currently I’m even dating one. And they all seem to concur that they respect my lifestyle and what I’ve been working towards in going vegan, but I should respect them as they continue to eat meat.

For the most part I live in harmony with them. I make an effort not to start any arguments on the subject and occasionally hold my tongue when they say or do things I disagree with. However, I feel that in doing so I’ve accidentally misled some of them into believing that I respect their lifestyle in the same way they claim to respect mine. The cold truth is that I don’t.

Shock horror! Gossipy gossip. Let’s dive deeper into this; because I promise you, I’m not being harsh. There is a very logical sense of reasoning behind this.

So, the number one thing I hear from the majority of level-headed members of our meat-eating society (level-headed respectively to other meat-eaters) when it comes to serious, genuine debate on the topic of animal rights, is this seemingly very reasonable quote:

“It’s fine if you want to be vegan but you shouldn’t force it on everyone else. Respect my views and I will respect yours.”

This is said in multiple different ways, but the general message behind it seems to be “you live your life and I’ll live mine”, or put it even more simply: “Agree to disagree”.

Seems fair enough, right? Everyone has their own point of view, they’re entitled to their own lifestyle, and we are all equally deserving of respect. To treat them any differently just because they eat different food to you would be discrimination and prejudice, and unjustified.

So we agree. Vegans shouldn’t be so hard on omnivores.

Unfortunately, that’s not how society works. (In all honesty, that’s not unfortunate at all, it’s really very VERY fortunate, and I’ll explain why).

Now the very easy point I can make here is the fact that meat-eating is not a religious, moral, philosophical or ethical belief-system. People don’t base their lives around it, don’t have deep emotional connections to it and don’t have a moral or personal problem with people who don’t agree with it. No, seriously? Do any genuinely rational people get offended when they see someone go for the salad instead of the steak? And have you ever felt actually guilty because you had a day where you didn’t eat meat? Of course not, because that would be ridiculous! You don’t eat meat for some higher, selfless reason! You just like it (and possibly have been deluded into thinking it’s part of a balanced, healthy diet). I did too.

Now, all you meat-heads out there, before you start judging me for judging you, step into a vegan’s shoes for a second, and let me explain why expecting us to respect your lifestyle would be hypocritical from our perspective.

To start off with, I will provide a simple metaphor for the situation. There are two children building toy houses. One child knocks down the house of the other child for seemingly no reason. We call this bullying (okay, I didn’t mean for this to sound patronising but I’ve started it now so I’m going with it). But, say one of the children had built his house on top of an unsuspecting pet hamster, and the bricks were crushing that hamster. The hamster is in obvious pain, possibly close to death, so the second child knocks down the house of the other, freeing the hamster. This is no longer an act of bullying, because it wasn’t done maliciously, but out of concern and compassion. The same action may go unpunished and even rewarded because it had an entirely different motive. This, I believe, is relevant to the animal rights debate, and hopefully this will become clear by the time we’re done here.

Now, there is no denying that a meat-eating diet causes suffering and death to animals. And, as I think I quite aptly stated above, the reason for that is really just a selfish desire for it.

The vegan lifestyle, however, is generally based around animal rights, and reducing the amount of harm your lifestyle causes to other creatures as much as possible. These things don’t give a pleasant taste sensation, in fact they don’t appeal to any of the five basic senses. It’s not about what the individual personally wants. No, they made a conscious decision to put that aside when they went vegan. Do you really think we get some strange sense of selfish pleasure from giving up fine steak, burgers, cheese and bacon? No, by Ockham’s Razor we must conclude that it is a selfless decision based on what is best for others. When you acknowledge this, expecting a vegan animal rights supporter to respect your views to use animals is basically equivalent to expecting human equal rights supporters to respect slave traders and racists (stay with me here). In the same way you can’t expect a feminist to respect the views of a sexist, expecting a vegans to respect meat-eaters is a bit of an oxymoron.  All these groups of people exploit other groups for their own gain, based simply on what they get from it. Now, I’m not saying that being a meat-eater is the same as being a racist; that is in no way the comparison I am trying to draw you to. No.

What I AM saying is that when a lifestyle is based entirely around saving and protecting something, be it a species, a set of people, or even a moral guideline, expecting the members of said group to respect those contributing to the destruction of what they hold dear is more than a little insensitive. And comparing a moral and ethical code to a selfish set of actions based solely on a sensation of pleasure is just not rational. One is focused on what is good for the planet and everything on it, and one is solely focused on an individual.
I could even go to a more obscure level with the comparisons and say it’s like expecting a person to respect the wild animal currently eating their child. Vegans have made an emotional connection with the rest of the animal kingdom, and so there is a definite emotional connection with the slab of meat on your dinner plate. The negative impact on the lives of the animals, the state of the planet, and the emotional state of your fellow people (the vegans) all pile up on the scales, and all meat-eaters have resting on their end is their personal want for the momentary pleasure of taste.

 And the scales don’t tip. Because regardless of the ins and outs of the vegan versus meat-eater argument, there is not a single person out there that can say they eat meat for the benefit of others. It’s about what you want, and there has never been cause or reason in our society to respect people for self-centered behaviour. In the same way you tell criminals to respect the law but don’t tell the cops to respect the criminals, the parallel comes across the vegans. Certain actions, such as abuse and mistreatment of others, diminish your right to respect. And not to ignore the dangers of comparing meat-eaters to criminals and vegans to police, I belie here is where it’s important to recognise who is oppressing who, who is causing harm to who. Criminals generally act with their own self-interest and don’t take note of the negative impact they have on others. The police make it their job to protect the interests of others. Regardless of your own stance on animal rights, it’s not logical to expect the defenders of any group to respect the abusers.

Vegans, especially those of the activist variety, dedicate a lot of their time and effort to trying to change the way things are because they believe the way things are causes a great deal of harm.  For the most part, they have had an awakening; an epiphany, if you will. At some point, all vegans have decided that eating meat is wrong, eating dairy is wrong, and if they did so before they were wrong to do so. Acknowledging that your own actions were wrong is a prime example of selfless behaviour, being that you don’t generally gain anything from it. Using myself as an example, over a period of time I realised that my lifestyle had been harming the animals I had claimed I loved, and that I had been contradicting myself by eating meat. Think about it like this: For someone to make such a radical change, cutting out a large part of their lifestyle and going through tremendous effort to change things as basic and fundamental as what they eat on a daily basis, and even what they wear, they much truly and wholeheartedly believe that they were wrong. Now, if you judge yourself by standards as strict as that, and truly believe you are wrong to eat meat (which we are all entitled to think: As stated at the beginning of the article, you can think what you want about yourself and do what you want with your own life decisions), it would simply be illogical to think it’s okay for others to do it.

Now, earlier on I compared expecting vegans to respect meat-eaters to expecting feminists to respect sexists and human-rights activists to respect racists. Note that I was very careful not to say “women to respect sexists” or “ethnic minorities to respect racists”. That’s because I’ve danced this dance before, and one of the arguments I’ve heard back to the point I’ve been making is: “meat-eaters aren’t harming you! Racists are harming ethnic minorities and sexists are oppressing women!” To this person I say fair enough. But do you, as a white male (as this person happened to be) respect sexists, slave traffickers, rapists, homophobes and racists? Do you think their views are deserving of respect? The answer, of course, is no. You don’t have to be a member of the oppressed group to stand up for them and state that the ill treatment of them is wrong. You don’t have to be a woman to be a feminist, you don’t have to be gay to support gay rights (I should know, I’m a fond supporter of both those causes, and to the best of my knowledge I’m not a homosexual woman, though I guess I have been wrong before).

The bottom line is that animal rights activists (vegans and the likes) have dedicated their efforts to making the world a better place for other species. Expecting us to respect you when you want to eat bacon and eggs goes against everything we believe.

Which brings me back to the beginning of this post. (rewind rewind) “I live in harmony with them. I make an effort not to start any arguments on the subject and occasionally hold my tongue when they say or do things I disagree with.”

Yea. That bit.
So, it may seem contradictory to my cause to say that I often don’t protest their lifestyle, and I can see the logic in why this may come across as respecting them, and letting them live their lives as they choose without judgment from myself, but in all honesty, the reason I make an effort to not argue (I say make an effort, arguments do happen. I’m a passionate person) and sit by and watch them eat meat even though it tortures me to do so (I’m not being overly dramatic, I generally feel knots in my chest every time my best friend or my girlfriend or my cute, innocent younger sister takes a bite out of an animal. It really does hurt on an emotional level) is that I don’t believe shouting at them and telling them they are wrong will help the situation. It certainly wouldn’t have worked on me. Putting people on the defensive is not an effective tactic when you want them to see your point of view. But living your life peacefully, showing kindness and compassion in everything you do, and practicing what you preach makes people intrigued, it makes people like you and it means they’re more likely to listen to you. Now, I’ve had my fair share of arguments and debates, and from time to time I’ve let myself slip and gone on a rant (particularly when people seem to be looking to start an argument with me) but I’ve learned that the people I have had an impact on, who I’ve managed to steer towards a vegan, vegetarian or at least reducetarian, flexitarian or pescatarian diet, have been the ones that I’ve let come to me. Instead of approaching them and telling them how they should live their lives, I’ve waited for them to ask me about it, and they’ve seen the words I preach and they’ve listened to me, and their curiosity into my new lifestyle has made a positive change. But to imply that I ever respected their meat-eating diet would be wrong. I respect people for their actions: If you do something I perceive to be good, I will respect you for it. And I will say, I do respect my friends and family. But I respect them for their positive influences: when they’ve shown compassion in helping me through a tough time, or shown strength and perseverance in their own trials; when they’ve given to charity; when they’ve acted out of selflessness and love, and logical, independent thought. But I cannot respect their meat-eating, for the torture and the death it causes, just like I’m sure they wouldn’t respect my decision if I decided to break into someone’s house, or attack a stranger in the street. The real point I'm trying to make here I guess is what respect is really about, and that you can be friends with people and value them without respecting certain aspects of them. It's not about not respecting the individual people, it's about not respecting the choice to harm sentient beings. If we respect people for the things we perceive to be wrong, then respect no longer has any meaning. 

 (The post is over now. That's just a picture of me. Hi again.)