The Comment Section for Every Article Ever Written About PETA
Laura saw this great piece on the Hairpin (she totes hearts the Hairpin) and I have to say, it’s kind of perfect. People! Always saying the same stuff! Oh, you wacky same-stuff-saying people.
Here is my favorite string:
28. Read “Diet for a Small Planet” and “Eating Animals” and “Animal Liberation”!
29. Peter Singer is ableist and hates babies.
30. What about the fetuses? What’s the difference between infanticide and abortion?
31. SHUT UP, 28!
32. I prefer Michael Pollan. Clearly you have never heard “Eat food, not too much, mostly kale.”
33. Pollan is loaded with rich privilege and is a total jag. I live on top of one bodega and under a second bodega and can eat only Fritos.
34. All vegans are rich.
35. INDIA! And we can feed the world with not-eating meat!
36. Meat eaters are fat.
37. SO MANY FAT VEGANS.
There are so many more though so click through to read the rest!
I have become so inundated with thoughts trying to conceptually make moralistic vegan concepts come to life within my mind, to find myself more resentful of the class hatred it takes to be hardcore and militant about something so trivial. I understand the need to end the brutality that has become the meat industry, but why is it so common place to protest this system of oppression and continue to treat human labor as normative? Certainly our capitalist society has been unremorseful and completely barbaric to our animal neighbors, but how can one worry so wholeheartedly about the welfare of cows and pigs while there are starving children in our midst? It has easily become the quandary that affects the creation of my own personal discourse the most. I read a post recently that complicity says that one cannot be a feminist and a consumer of dairy products. I literally had to sit back and ask myself how people can be that gullible and buy into such ignorant rhetoric. Certainly the dairy industry has become a racket of overusing of a cows life simply to force reproduction. It is a very sickening practice, and it has connotations within our own society’s rape culture. I guess this simply has to be another matter of morality and the value of certain lives.
I for one have always placed a higher value on the life of people than animals. I understand that some may find it honorable to protect and stand in the corner of animal life, and I believe humans need to do that, but I have a hard time believing that a person could ever stand in the corner of protecting life while telling half of the worlds population that their plight is no reason to not adapt to a lifestyle decision. Feminism is a human matter, not one that is contingent based upon other creatures in the order of life. Moral vegans are more worried and put off by cows being used and produced for milk than they are women being used as sex slaves and cheap labor throughout the world. That is irrational at best. Animal life can’t be protected when the agents of change are being treated as badly or worse. Over half of the world’s population is starving. Cows in the meat industry are still fed. Cows in the milk industry still have it better than human beings alive on this planet. That to me is a more pressing problem than milk. You have children being used as sex slaves and drug mules across the globe, and you want people to feel obligated to drop those truths to protect cows on a dairy farm? That is absurd at the very best.
I choose to drop moral conclusions from the vegan movement. My ire stands against capitalism, the leader in murder across the planet. Capitalism kills human beings AND animals in the name of profit and imperialism from coast to coast. WE are all targets and there is a price on all of our heads. When human beings have to resort to being nothing more than ticks on a balance sheet, how can you expect people to worry about the well being of chickens? When indigenous tribes are being slaughtered across the world to obtain fossil fuels and vital land bases for industrial use is it really ethical or moral to prioritize animal meat consumption? The animals will stop being used and abused for their commodity value when human beings aren’t treated in the same way. I do not intend to continue this lifestyle of abjuration of class ethics; it is not intended to do any real good. Our social structure is built on a system of necessity and convenience. I do believe that if someone can be vegan, it is in their best interest to do so, but isn’t this a fascist means of control over others to demean and convey ill willed sentiment with others due to their personal choices?
There are many medical groups that understand the need for meat consumption, Doctors Without Borders for instance, have put together many programs that deal with child malnourishment and most if not all doctors say children need meat, milk, and eggs. Moral vegans scoff these ACTUAL facts as merely justification for more slaughter and more oppression. I can only imagine what these so-called moralists would say to a starving person in a third world country who has no options outside of the meager amounts of food they have, including insects and other organisms that they desperately consume because they have nothing else. Would you really tell these people they need to observe your dietary choices unless they want to be labeled oppressors? If so, you are my enemy and you are the enemy of egalitarianism. Egalitarian social structures are not built to support and make sure animals are happy, they are the realization that if human beings are free from oppression, then hopefully we can mutually build a priority system to not oppress other species either.
Animals will have a much better opportunity at survival when the agents for change and social growth (humans) aren’t being treated as the same slabs being sold in the market. There is no rhetoric that can be enough to change that fact so save your breath. I have kept my vegan lifestyle quite private because I am tired of the problematic arguments that seem to come from this movement. I don’t want to be associated with it. I refuse to be part of a classist, white supremacist, racist, non-egalitarian movement. I don’t support human hatred. You cannot be cruelty free and be a didactic high-minded vegan, they are not companionable. Sorry folks.
how can one worry so wholeheartedly about the welfare of cows and pigs while there are starving children in our midst?
Because caring for one does not negate care for the other. You can be a vegan and fully support humanitarian interests - in fact, it may be the most effective means of doing so. The animal agriculture industry is not a resource efficient one, nor does it respect the people in which it steals these resources from. Why would we eat meat, eggs, or dairy when there are starving children in our midst? Eating more is not going to help them - consuming more resources only hurts them.
My mom used to say “there are starving kids in Ethiopia who would eat that” if I didn’t finish my dinner. Does anyone get how backward that logic is? “These people would love some food, so you should consume more so its harder for them to have any. THAT’S respectful.”
says that one cannot be a feminist and a consumer of dairy products.
Fuck “true feminist labeling”. If you think it is wrong for any female to be forceably impregnated, only to have her child taken away and slaughtered, then you should go vegan. Chances are, if you have that morality, you are for women’s rights as well.
I for one have always placed a higher value on the life of people than animals.
You don’t have to love non human animals more than humans to be vegan. You just have to realize that their torture is not necessary. I don’t love a chicken more than my sister. But I do not have the right to order their death. We would benefit health-wise from a plant-centric supported health system, so being vegan IS caring about the lives of humans.
Feminism is a human matter, not one that is contingent based upon other creatures in the order of life. Moral vegans are more worried and put off by cows being used and produced for milk than they are women being used as sex slaves and cheap labor throughout the world.
Feminism is a human matter as defined by you. Just as “person” as a legal matter was once defined by white men as only white men. No woman should be used as a sex slave against her will, and no cow deserves to be used as a birthing machine. There is no “more worried” here. Both are concerns that we can address. We don’t have to give up one to support the other.Cows in the milk industry still have it better than human beings alive on this planet.
I would choose starving over slaughter. If the human race could only survive by being oppressed by a ‘greater’ race, do you think that is a “better” life? Being owned is not better. Being tortured, raped, and slaughtered should not be called “better”.
obligated to drop those truths to protect cows on a dairy farm
Here again, we see that you think people have to “give up” one fight to fight for another. Both are necessary. We are not such simple minded fools that we can only focus on one battle.
Doctors Without Borders for instance, have put together many programs that deal with child malnourishment and most if not all doctors say children need meat, milk, and eggs. Moral vegans scoff these ACTUAL facts as merely justification for more slaughter and more oppression.
To call these actual facts is downright hilarious. Children do not need milk, eggs, or meat, and if they did, all the vegans would be dead at this current moment. Uh oh, guess I’m a zombie! This IS merely justification, but we cannot fully blame them, as they do not know any better. It has been ingrained into these doctors minds (keep note that most doctors go through MINIMAL AMOUNTS of nutritional training) that there is a basic structure of human nutrition that rests on surprisingly the most profitable one.
i’m such a fanboy of thebourgeoisiehobo, it’s not even funny.
Reblog for emphasis.
Be Fair! Go Vegan! Posters
News Flash!
New posters from the excellent We Other Animals blog have arrived.
Get both versions of the posters here and check out the other posters in the outreach section to the left.
I love them, and according to the authors, even a 3rd grade kid could understand the message. So who knows, perhaps even the most defensive head-in-sand omni could make sense of why being vegan is the most morally awesome thing to do!
(via soycrates)
Grandparents one is 100% accurate
But alfalfa sprouts rule!
NEW: Chocovered Raisins! So yummy! (Taken with Instagram at Vx)
Soon I shall buy ALL of these, and rekindle my much-missed addiction to chocolate raisins.
Dear friends and fellow activists,
At a time when most animal rights organizations are actively promoting, advocating and rewarding “humane” animal products and farming methods, I am writing to you on behalf of three of the recipients of that mercy.
To the industry, they are known as production units #6, #35, and #67,595. To the “compassionate” consumer, they are known as feel-good labels: “organic dairy”, “rose veal”, “free-range eggs”. To welfare advocates, they are known as “humane alternatives”. To each other, they are known as mother, son, sister, friend. To themselves, they are simply what you and I are to ourselves: a self-aware, self-contained world of subjective experiences, feelings, fears, memories – someone with the absolute certainty that his or her life is worth living.
#6, is a first time mother. She is frantic. Her baby is missing. She is pacing desperately up and down the paddock, bellowing and crying, and calling for her lost boy, fearing the worst, having her fears confirmed. She is one of the thousands of defenseless females born into a quaint, verdant, organic dairy farm. She will spend her entire short life grieving the loss of baby after baby. She will be milked relentlessly through repeated cycles of pregnancies and bereavements. Her only experience of motherhood will be that of a mother’s worst loss. In the prime of her life, her body will give, her spirit will break, her milk “production” will decline, and she will be sent to a horrifying slaughter, along with other grieving, defeated, “spent” mothers like herself.
She is the face of organic milk.
#35 is a two-days old baby, his umbilical chord is still attached, his coat is still slick with birth fluids, his eyes are unfocused, his legs, wobbly. He is crying pitifully for his mother. No one answers. He will live his entire short life an orphan, his only experience of mother love will be one of yearning for it, his only experience of emotional connection, one of absence. Soon, the memory of his mother, her face, her voice, her scent, will fade, but the painful, irrepressible longing for her warmth will still be there. At four months old, he and other orphans like himself will be corralled into trucks and hauled to slaughter. As he will be dragged onto the killing floor, he will still be looking for his mother, still desperately needing her nurturing presence, especially at that dark time when he will be frightened and needing her more than ever in the midst of the terrible sights, and sounds, and scents of death all around him and, in his despair, in his want for a shred of consolation and protection, he, like most baby calves, will try to suckle the fingers of his killers.
He is the face of the “rose” veal we are encouraging “responsible restaurant leaders” to use.
#67,595 is one of the 80,000 birds in a family-owned “free-range” egg facility. She has never seen the sun, or felt the grass under her feet, she has never met her mother. Her eyes are burning with the sting of ammonia fumes, her featherless body is covered with bruises and abrasions, her bones are brittle from the constant drain of egg production, her severed beak is throbbing in pain. She is exhausted, depleted and defeated. After a lifetime of social, psychological, emotional, physical deprivation, she copes by pecking neurotically at phantom targets for hours on end. She is two years old and her life is over. Her egg production has declined, and she will be disposed of by the cheapest means possible – she will be gassed along with the other 80,000 birds in her community. It will take three full work days to finish the job. For two long days, she will hear the sounds and breathe the smells of her sisters being killed in the gas drums outside her shed. On the third day, it will be her turn. She will be grabbed by the legs and taken outdoors for the first time in her life and, like every single one of the 80,000 “spent” hens, like every single one of the 50 billion annual victims of our appetite, she will fight to go on living, and she will accept no explanation and no justification for being robbed of her pathetic only life.
She is the face of the “free-range” eggs we are encouraging college campuses, businesses and consumers to use.
These are the “beneficiaries” of the “humane farming practices” that we, the animals’ defenders, are developing, promoting, and publicly rewarding by encouraging “compassionate” consumers to buy the products of what we know to be nothing but misery. “Humane” practices that, if any of us were forced to endure, none of us would experience as humane.
We, the activists, know that there is no such thing as compassionate, responsible or ethical farming on any scale. We know that the only humane and ethical alternative is vegan living.
Why are so few of us telling the truth? Why are we describing “free-range” products as “humane” when we know the horror such practices inflict on their victims? Why are we lying to the public, and ourselves, that “compassionate” animal farming is anything but a myth, a marketing scheme, a deceptive label? Why are so many of us offering up the lives of animals by encouraging the consumption of their flesh, eggs and milk, when our only duty is to fight for their lives as if they were our own? Why are we promoting the practice of consuming animals when we know it to be brutal, inexcusable, unconscionable and completely unnecessary? Why are we rewarding consumers for demanding more of the the very thing we are struggling to eliminate? Why are we strengthening and rewarding the worlds’ entrenched speciesist assumptions, when our job, our only job, as vegan educators and activists, is to challenge and change those assumptions by offering a new model of thinking about nonhuman animals, a new model of interacting with them, a new practice of living, a new way of being in the world?
Many of us justify our endorsement of “humane” animal products and our pursuit of welfare reforms by saying that the world is not ready to change, that it may never go vegan, that the most we can hope to accomplish in the meantime is to reduce the suffering of today’s doomed animals. But this is not true. This is not a fact. It is a fear – a fear of action, a failure of will, a self- defeating attitude and, ultimately, a self-fulfilling prophesy.
The truth is, the world can change. Indeed, the world has changed many times before, and it has changed in ways that seemed impossible at the time. The truth is, the world will change, but only if we work towards creating that change. It will stay the same if we, the self-proclaimed agents of change, encourage it to stay the same. It will change if all of us tell the whole truth that there is no such thing as humane animal farming, or animal use of any kind, the truth that the only humane alternative is vegan living, the truth that animal farming on any scale is an ethical and environmental disaster, the truth that animals are persons like you and me who happen to be nonhuman and who have the same inherent right to life and liberty as you and I. The truth that vegan living is not a “lifestyle choice”, but a moral imperative.
We can do better. Indeed, we have an obligation to do better.
I invite you to see for yourselves how much can be accomplished when a small group of dedicated activists commits all of its time and resources to vegan education that is consistent with, not undermining of, our ultimate goal – Animal Liberation – and when the Go Vegan message is central to every single one of its communications, from online resources, to printed literature, to ads, demos, and billboards, to outreach events, to the in-depth exploration of farmed animal personhood detailed in the individual portraits published on the Prairie Blog.
On a shoestring budget, with an all-volunteer core of vegan educators who are determined to tell the whole truth about meat, dairy and egg production, a small, grassroots organization like Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary has built something that large, wealthy organizations have not only failed to bring forth, but have consistently undermined through years of anti-vegan advocacy: A vibrant vegan world growing in the middle of the nonvegan world, a place where the animal refugees are regarded and represented as the persons they rightly are, a place where the human residents advocate tirelessly for nothing less than total liberation, a Free State in the heart of the human-subjugated world, a place where the principles of abolition are applied in word, thought, and deed. A vegan enclave whose very presence has already changed the world’s physical, political, psychological and spiritual geography.
I invite you to experience it for yourselves. Join us in our struggle to expand its reach. Help us make it borderless.
Joanna Lucas, Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary
My Drunk Kitchen does a vegan episode! They make vegan cheesecake, drunkenly, and learn that vegans can be fatties, too. I laughed a lot. Probably too much, because some of it hit very close to home. Tonight: It’s just whiskey and walnuts, baby.
It’s not a choice! I was born that way!
Antagonist A.D. | Show Some Heart (Go Vegan)
I was talking to my flatmate about New Zealand hardcore the other day because she’s a kiwi and that’s where they come from and how I didn’t think I knew any kiwi hardcore and now this is the first step in my education and I like it a lot stay angry stay vegan as fuck
(via tryandstayupright)
I blog because my handwriting is terrible.
