There was a post about making cats vegan. The mod then decided that people posting information on why that is a bad idea were antivegan or something. The mod started then removing any information that pointed to cats not being able to be health while on a vegan diet. The Lemmy.world admins them stepped in stating that improperly feeding your cat constitutes animal abuse and is unethical. This made many die hard vegans very mad.
For the record, cats can not be vegan. They can survive on it but they will have shorter more painful lives and they will go blind. There bodies start breaking down without the proteins and amino acids found in meat. I understand why vegans would be unhappy with that answer but it is the way it is.
Interesting enough, that’s not the case for dog. You can put a dog on a vegan diet as long as you are very careful and are constantly monitoring. It isn’t for the faint of heart and can have very sad outcomes. It isn’t something you can arbitrarily do.
I am a vegan. While my dogs were alive they ate meat as well as veggies. It seems to me that a lot of vegans don’t realise that it’s a scale and not binary. The whole philosophy of veganism is “as much as you are able” so I guess there is extremism everywhere.
It’s bizarre to me that harcore vegans want to own a pet to begin with. Keeping bees for honey is bad, but separating a kitten from its mother at an early age and castrating it for your convenience and deciding how they live (restricted to an apartment or not) is totally fine?
I understand that most pets live a good life, but man, I can’t bring myself to make choices like these. I mean there are ways to circumvent it (get an older cat from an asylum for example) but it doesn’t really remove the “pet dilemma” to me.
I knew a hardcore vegan girl like a decade ago when it was rather rare to see someone to that extreme, or at least to me. She said she feeds her cat only vegan food, and i was pretty sure that that’s not a thing, but i didn’t really know. Her roommate then told me that she goes through quite a lot of cats, because they either die or run away.
Most people I know adopt from rescue shelters and all the vegans I know do that, often even focusing on pets that are somewhat “disadvantaged” regarding getting adopted, i.e. disabled or chronically ill animals. They go to an animal shelter not primarily with the wish of having a pet but providing a better life for an animal (because let’s face it, even the best-intentioned shelters are understaffed and underfunded).
am not vegan but I’ll point out:
giving a cat a home, and fixing it so it won’t breed further rescue cats, is not a dilemma to me.
Imagine you wanted children and then someone would come along and castrate you because there’s a problem with overpopulation. You take away an individaul’s choice of reproduction for the greater good. And it makes sense, but the lack of consent or even understandment does not sit well with me.
Putting down pets is another thing. You make the decision whether a (sick/suffering) animal is going to die, while we are refusing to allow people to make this decision for themselves in most countries.
I absolutely see your point and I would not say you are wrong about it. But to me these are ethical questions that I just don’t wish to answer because there is not really a right answer.
Imagine you wanted children and then someone would come along and castrate you because there’s a problem with overpopulation. You take away an individaul’s choice of reproduction for the greater good. And it makes sense, but the lack of consent or even understandment does not sit well with me.
You’re anthropomorphizing animals too much. Cats don’t “want” children. Beyond a basic biological need they don’t give a shit about procreation. It’s not even a difficult question, ethically speaking. In almost every environment they exist in cats are considered invasive, reproduce like crazy, and tend to be incredibly destructive to local species. To be clear, I don’t think there is anything wrong with owning a cat, but it’s important to do so responsibly.
Disclaimer that I’m not even a vegan but you’re spreading disinfo here to make vegans seem completely unreasonable. I suggest anyone check out the actual discussions instead of trusting this summary.
I agree.
I’m not a expert so you should read up on it. The problem is that the vegan community was only allowing random studies saying how cats were healthier on a vegan diet. None of those papers were peer reviewed or all that credible. On the other side there is tons of research and articles written by actual experts that say it is a bad idea. I looked it up before making this comment.
Ye I don’t particularly agree that one should try to make vegetarian cats myself either and I also think it’s not coop to simply delete opposing research which doesn’t mean match one’s worldview (so long as the research is not flawed). But I also understand and can painfully see how embattled vegan ideas and spaces are which explains them being extra defensive
Cats are obligate carnivores, sparky. That means they can’t be vegan.
I don’t know enough about that topic to argue for or against which is not what I’m trying to argue
You don’t know enough about the topic to argue but claim someone else is spreading misinformation.
Well if you don’t know the topic but are making claims like this then it seems like you may be the one spreading misinformation.
Until I joined Lemmy I had no idea how militant vegans could be. I sorta just assumed they were a different brand of vegetarian.
I’m not opposed to their ideaology in any way, but after reading the comments on a few posts that found their way into my feed… I had to block their communities. It didn’t seem likely that I’d be reading any productive discourse there.
I was vegan for 8 years and during that time I didn’t talk to anyone about it other than to say, “I don’t eat that.”
I say that to say this - vegans are insufferable and a large reason why I quit the community and went back to omnivore. Even after 8 years, other vegans were still ‘more vegan’ and would nitpick the dumbest stuff.
“Bro, did you eat a date? That killed a bee or something. Not cool.”
Shut up with that. Let me eat my damn fruit.
I was healthier though. But, to be fair, I was younger.
In 5+ decades of living I have never once met a sane vegan, not once.
And I’ve met hundreds…
Calling a group of people insane is so cool and good 👍🏻
I’m not vegan. But I find it very shady to talk shit about people like this.
For the most part, the “unreasonable vegan” stereotype comes from two places.
- Confirmation bias. Veganism makes people uncomfortable with their own decisions, so people spread around the most outrageous stories about vegans as a defense mechanism. This is the same thing that happens in various circles with anyone whose mere existence makes other people insecure; e.g., teetotalers, or polyamorous people.
- Just plain disagreeing with them. There are lots of vegan arguments that are logically valid, but they sound outrageous if you don’t already agree with them. People have trouble looking past their initial emotional reactions, so they respond to logically valid arguments with mere incredulity.
There’s a 3rd source: Trying for 3 decades to have a reasonable conversation with one, with hundreds of attempts made.
I’d be interested in seeing a trace of one of those conversations.
No you wouldn’t, they never go anywhere except to heated exchanges of unpleasant labels.
There’s really no use in talking to them, nor anything to be learned or won. It’s just losses for everyone.
I am a vegan. Is this conversation unreasonable?
Are you talking to the same person, or the same few people, repeatedly? There certainly are people out there who just are unreasonable. You can’t expect individuals to change.
Otherwise, I guess (and I admit that this is biased in my favor) that you simply disagree with each other at a foundational level, and that’s causing you to talk past each other.
I think that most people don’t really know how to discourse with people who have differing ethical foundations, because it can lead to situations where a person who meets all the societal criteria of a “good person” is nonetheless committing (according to whatever ethical precepts) a horrible crime. But, in this context, accusing someone of committing a horrible crime is not unreasonable; in fact, it’s too reasonable; it involves prioritizing reason over tact and politeness.
Are you talking to the same person, or the same few people, repeatedly?
Roughly 10% are repeat conversations, though I’ve rarely had a contact be kept past 3 exchanges, and not a ‘few’ people by any metric.
you simply disagree with each other at a foundational level, and that’s causing you to talk past each other.
I appreciate how you are trying to make this a ‘both sides’ thing, but it really isn’t and I have no way of imparting 30 years of frustrating experience in a way you will find meaningful.
Since you claim to be a reasonable vegan, then maybe this is the best place for this:
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What are your plans for all the currently living domesticated animals if, hypothetically, meat eating is made illegal?
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Have you ever considered that being raised by humans for consumption is literally the most wildly successful species survival strategy that natural selection has ever thrown up? Literally no wild animal thrives as well as a cared for domesticated example, and domesticated animals released in the wild have an abysmal survival rate. (it is literally animal cruelty to release most domesticated animals into the wild, with the exception of pigs. They can re-adapt no problems)
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Meat is one of the most nutrient dense foods out there and is likely the entire reason we were able to develop these incredibly energy and nutrient expensive brains, have you considered what the long term species ramifications are for us if we choose to stop a standard practice that has been with us since before our species was even human yet?
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What is your stance on pets?
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Do you not think the critical need for specific supplements to maintain good health is a sign that the diet was never intended for our normal operation?
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I would like to hear your opinion on parents raising their infants to be vegan from birth.
These are the questions I would usually ask to vegans I meet in the world and online. Most responses are immediate verbal abuse and a refusal to continue communications.
I sincerely hope you are a better person than that and I can FINALLY have this discussion start to finish.
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Vegans argued that cats, which are obligate carnivores, can eat a vegan diet safely. Lemmy.world admin removed the posts for being misinformation, and the vegan community threw a fit over it.
Ask your vet what they think about a vegan diet for your pets. They will tell you “no”. That should really be the end to the discussion, but I guess these guys think they know better than actual experts.
It’s so sad, because veganism is a good force in our culture. Look at all of the vegan meat alternatives and more and more restaurants that have to have at least vegetarian options in certain areas. That wasn’t a thing 20 years ago.
Vegan diets help the environment and improve health. But many vegans get this brain rot, probably a consequence of a superiority complex where they have to police everything around them. It happens in a lot of communities.
I’m not a vegan. But the idea has me eating less and less meat every year.
I think people confuse the Political Based Vegan lifestyle and the Dietary Plant-based Vegan. They are not the same. Most people hate the political wing because they just cannot shut up. I do not want to be subjected to your religion, and you are not helping the animals you claim to. Dietary people just choose healthier options for themselves and don’t evangelize to others.
This checks the Vegan Bullshit Bingo:
Calling veganism a religion sounds like an attempt at discrediting it as unreasonable and irrational, just to not seriously deal with it. As veganism is based on facts, logic and common sense, it is the exact opposite of a religion. Consuming animal products though, mostly means blindly following irrational traditions and ignoring the facts or refusing them by reasoning: “That’s how we’ve always done it”. That sounds more like a religion to me…
Apropos of nothing - a few months ago I was looking at one of the sites that curated Fediverse block lists. (Can’t remember which one.)
Now some of the blocks were quite reasonable. If a hundred site admins look at your site and go “wait a second, these guys are Nazis” and block the site, that’s not so controversial, OK?
But some of the blocks were, uh, how do I put this…?
Individual drama between site admins and their cliques.
Beef.
So much beef.
So much beef that I immediately thought “gee, how can c/vegan even safely exist in Lemmy? There’s so much beef everywhere.”Know how to tell someone is a Vegan?
They’ll tell you. Immediately, and never, ever shut up about it. Ever.
Censorship of dissidence discussions due to “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and only allowing “science.”
Our science institutions and media are just as corrupt as our politicians; that is why critical thinking should be encouraged instead of more censorship to baby the people.
Keeping predatory grifters away from health discourse is on a different level than discussions of differing opinions.
This person you’re replying to is basically Lemmy’s Goebbels.
So slightly right of Stalin? We know how you love to name call people
I don’t understand your comment, can you explain it please?
You like to call people names. I’ve seen you around, you do it a bit more often than most.
I don’t recognize you, what communities do you frequent?
You can just check my post history, it’s public. But I mainly just go around on /all
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I just want to ask for more details on the “they’re litterally right” part. Mostly cause I didn’t think the had an official organized statement to be right about. But I don’t really follow them, so maybe I’m missing something.
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