Why I'm moving away from veganism
When I began doing street outreach, I started every conversation with word association. I asked “what words come to mind when you hear the word ‘vegan.’”?
People would say “healthy, diet, no meat, no cheese, no eggs, restrictive, that vegan teacher.”
Out of the hundreds of people I asked, not a single one said “animals.”
Not a single one.
This reveals a HUGE problem in the vegan movement. To us, the animals are everything. They are the reason we do what we do. The reason we work hard, deal with haters, and put ourselves in uncomfortable situations. And that’s exactly how it should be.
I rarely think about the definition of veganism, other vegans, or identifying as a vegan. For me, it centers around actions that I can take to help protect animals. One of our greatest challenges in the next decade will be shifting the focus away from vegans and toward animals.
What does that mean, practically? Well, I think it means that we need to stop using the word “vegan.”
I know this is a controversial idea. This blog is a way to get feedback on controversial ideas, create discussions around them, and encourage you to tell me why I’m wrong.
There are several reasons I want us to move away from veganism:
It makes people think about vegans, not animals. We want them to think about animals.
The root of the word “vegan” is “vegetarian.” Vegetarian is a crappy word. It implies people who only eat vegetables. We don’t want people to think that they can only eat vegetables in order to help animals. We want them to know that they can still eat the foods they love, just the vegan version. Vegetarianism is not about animal liberation, it’s a diet. Veganism is a life philosophy, and having a word so close to vegetarian devalues the animal rights message.
“Vegan” makes people defensive right off the bat. I could be having a super productive conversation about animal rights, but as soon as someone hears “vegan,” they shut down. There’s plenty of research about why people hate vegans. It’s hard to persuade someone to join a group of people that they hate.
Obviously I’m not going to complain about this without presenting a viable solution, and I’m happy to report that I’ve been testing a new word.
This isn’t something that I came up with, but an organization I’ve recently joined. The word we want people to shift to is “pro-animal.”
Why Pro-Animal?
It centers the animals. This term makes it clear that we’re talking about animals, not people who identify as pro-animal.
It’s a political movement. Pro-animal is about voting. Not just with your dollars at the grocery store, but actually voting on legislation that helps animals. Pro-animal Future is working on two campaigns in Denver: one to ban the sale of fur, and one to ban slaughterhouses. While we’re starting in Denver, we intend to emulate this strategy in other cities in the future.
People don’t get defensive. Most people already see themselves as “pro-animal.”
To test this new word out, I told students this:
“I don’t like the word vegan, because when people hear it, they think of a restrictive diet or annoying people. I want people to think about animals, so I identify as “pro-animal.” Are you pro-animal?”
Most people instantly understand why someone would want to be pro-animal, and say that they’re pro-animal too. Historically, vegans have told people that they can’t be pro-animal unless they’re vegan. I think this is a losing strategy. We can encourage them to identify as pro-animal first, and hope their behavior falls in line with their actions later on.
The vegan movement hasn’t given people enough ways to help animals. The only option we give them is “go vegan.”
But most people are not going to go vegan.
Pax Fauna’s research found that asking people to go vegan is harming our movement, and it’s more effective to talk to them as citizens and voters.
Let’s get them to become “pro-animal.”
Not only with their diet, but with civic action.
Let’s show them that there’s more than one way to care about animals. We can get laws on ballots so people can help create a kinder future for animals.
If you want to learn more about Pro-Animal Future’s strategy, click here:
What I’m Reading: The 12 Week Year
A radical productivity book that suggests we need to move away from annual planning and shorten our “year” to 12 weeks. By shortening our time frame, we create urgency and reduce confusion about the actions we need to take to succeed. Since I just started working with Pro-Animal Future, I want to do everything I can to make sure we win our campaign. This means working harder than I ever have, and this book provided a blueprint to help.
Some of the advice was fairly basic, but if you feel like you’re not living up to your potential, you should give it a read.
What I’m Watching:
Honestly, I haven’t had time to watch tv shows or movies. Instead I’ve been watching social media marketing videos and Skillshare courses. I’m going to see Christspiracy tonight, so keep an eye out for that review!
My latest video:
If you want to help support my work, please consider donating to Pro-Animal Future! We can change the course of history for animals, but we need your help.
Natalie
I sort of agree with this in the sense that "vegan" does tend to get linked to diets a lot. As someone who does a lot of work in the vegan fashion space, I'm constantly still confronted with how little people realise that this is a lifestyle that applies to more than just what we eat. The only exception is perhaps beauty - people tend to understand what vegan beauty products are. But then I also think that "pro-animal" risks people identifying as "pro-animal" and then still eating animals' bodies and derivations. This is why we have people who claim to love animals yet still eat them. So I'm not sure what a good term would be, but for now I'm sticking with vegan. It's finally going mainstream, which can only be good for the movement.
The word "vegan" comes with a lot of baggage. Everyone thinks they know what it means when they clearly do not. DxE had whole effort around not being vegan in the sense that they did not use the word "vegan". As long as the people you are talking to have an action item that reduces the suffering of animals, that is what matters. If avoiding the word vegan accomplishes that goal, then do it.