Let's Taboo the V-Word

There is a deep cultural problem in pro-animal spaces

“How long have you been v*g*n?”

This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It’s a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers.

But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the space, has a few conversations, realizes they’re surrounded by v**ns, and they have one of two experiences:

a) if they are v**n, they feel like they’ve found their people; or
b) otherwise they immediately feel out of place—maybe they’re stressing: “uh-oh, I’m realizing everyone else here is v**n, I probably need to be very cautious about what I reveal about myself, do I need to hide?”¹ This makes it hard to interact normally and they’re probably on track to silently not returning.

Compare this to a slightly different world where the word never comes up—where you just get what you expected, namely participation in an animal-protection movement which you opted into.

A dogmatic culture

The V-word is the most visible symptom of a broken movement culture causing us to (accidentally) hold a very high bar of commitment, pushing away a wide swath of people early on, right as they are getting oriented.

Imagine if climate activism were gatekept based on whether you, personally, restrict to only electric transit. In this world, common icebreaker questions are “how long have you been electric?” and “how many miles does your car get on a full charge?” You might have taken a diesel train to get there but you definitely shouldn’t mention it. If you took an Uber and the car that picked you up was a hybrid, you’re expected to, at a minimum, request them to turn off the gas engine while driving you to your destination.

I believe this world would have repelled the vast majority of the people who have ever pushed for climate action. And for no good reason!

Diet restrictions have costs, sometimes very high

Our dogmatic culture has a very steep barrier to entry.

I’ve known about the problem of factory farming for decades. I just didn’t do anything about it in my personal life because it was too hard. Now I’m committed to not eating animal products², but I still feel the social costs of my commitment: fortunately not every day anymore, but I definitely feel it whenever I travel, especially I visit my family for holidays.

I think a lot of long-time v**ns underestimate the costs because they either don’t “feel” them, or have already paid and don’t remember:

• Your closest family and friends viewing your refusal to eat traditional meals as a betrayal of your relationship.

• Being the annoying one in the group who objects to pizza, or otherwise insists on a narrow selection of restaurants that nobody else likes.

• Being singled out getting a special meal that looks unappetizing.

• Having to throw out your turkey sandwiches, Kraft macaroni, chicken tikka masala, Greek yogurt, or whatever else, and figure out a whole new menu of comfort foods to meet your nutritional needs and inclinations.

• Wondering if you are meeting your nutritional needs with your diet, or spending your own money on tests that most people can’t get health insurance to cover.

Minimizing and gaslighting

Worse, everyone is expected at all times to act as though v**nism has no trade-offs and is the easiest thing in the world: if you acknowledge that costs exist, you might discourage someone from trying, or make a committed person question their commitment. You’re undermining the advocacy effort!

I’m being a bit tongue-in-cheek, but this does seem to happen online quite a lot, and I have seen it in person as well. My friend Elizabeth, who is one of the most truth-seeking people I know, wrote a long frustrated post after trying to debate v**ns online about health, and her experience didn’t surprise me. There’s an overwhelming amount of soldier mindset in these spaces. I have a lot of empathy about where this advocacy energy is coming from, but we need to try a lot harder to tamp down on it: if anything is “undermining the movement,” it’s lack of compassion and care by our community about others’ unique journeys into caring more about animals.

Celebrity chef influencer Gaz Oakley recently announced that he was no longer v**n:

there’s extremists in every group and they’re often the loudest, which gives a movement that is based off compassion a bad rep…I would never ever, ever eat industrial farmed animals or dairy. I think that is hell and I’ll avoid that at all costs.

Gaz Oakley is someone to look up to, but extremists are tearing him apart³, even though he still lives by and preaches the same moral framework which motivates us all on a daily basis: compassion for animals. We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and through showing that you don’t have to be perfect, Gaz is likely going to bring more people into compassionate eating and animal protection. Good for him. We need more influencers and role models for people who make different types of commitments, who clearly think about the role they play in pushing for a better world, and who others can emulate. Let them not all be v**n, please!

There are lots of pro-animal people who eat meat

The dogmatic culture is kicking people out early.

The data shows that only 1-3% of people are v**n, and that trend has been steady in developed countries for decades. But it’s obvious that many more people care about animals. Animal videos, zoos, stories of compassion, nature channels. Polling shows that a supermajority are opposed to factory farming when they understand what it is. We are failing to engage people who care—and I think it’s largely because we have accidentally grown this dogmatic culture.

I don’t have rigorous supporting data, but I do have some anecdotal exceptions illustrating what’s possible when we don’t center v**nism:

The Ridglan rescue showed that there are tons of people who care about animals so deeply that they will put their own bodies on the line. I don’t have statistics for you but I know of at least two people who chose to take felony-level risks during that action who eat meat; I expect there are many more but we really didn’t talk about diet almost at all, and so I mostly didn’t learn who is or isn’t v**n. I heard many anecdotes of people who signed up for the action, made friends, trauma bonded, had a deep spiritual experience and only later did we hear that they are now moving to eat less meat, and are getting absorbed into the movement, etc. Ridglan “broke through” into the mainstream media in large part because it wasn’t perceived as a v**n thing: it was just an incredibly compelling, heroic story about everyday people participating in compassionate animal rescue.

I invited a friend to a pro-animal discussion group. He revealed that he eats meat and even had enjoyed going hunting at times. He had a valuable perspective on one of the discussion topics by virtue of not being in the “v**n bubble.” Fortunately I think we did an OK job of welcoming him into that space at that time. We can and must build a much better habit of accepting people where they are as long as they’re interested in contributing to helping animals.

I know many people in effective altruism world who eat animal products and are extraordinarily sympathetic and committed. They donate tremendous amounts of money to pro-animal causes, have a deep understanding of factory farming and the dynamics of making change in the world, and clearly care as much as I do or more—they’re just channeling their care into a different form of activism than personal dietary change.

Lastly, I see tons of activists from a wide swath of society fighting against the “Save Our Bacon” Act. It’s a huge collective, embracing everyone: local farmers who raise animals of their own, people who might eat bacon but hate to see pigs abused, states’ rights libertarians, and animal welfare activists. Again, very little mention of the V-word.

Language can change culture

The problem is the dogmatic culture. Could a cultural solution be as simple as never saying the V-word?

I actually think yes. Think of it this way: Giving a name to something is a powerful way to get people to center the thing. The term “sexual harassment” was deliberately coined in the late 1970s to name a behavior which had been going on for decades but which, prior to the term, was hard to explain as a pattern or to push back against. The term made it possible for activists to point at and explain it, and that was crucial in getting workplaces to stop it.

In our case, we want to do the reverse: stop centering v**nism, especially as an identity and an expectation. The best example I know of is Disney, who carefully taboos the terms “customer” and “employee”, favoring “guest” and “cast member”. Disney’s terminology choices shape cast behavior, which shape the guest experience.

Disney is explicitly swapping one word choice for another, whereas I’m telling you to just stop saying a particular word, forcing you to say whatever it is in more words. I’m not sure this precise intervention has any precedent. Maybe it will fail because it’s too annoying. Let’s find out!

Really? Stop saying the V-word entirely?

Yes really. Reducing animal product consumption is a valid way to make change. Just as switching to electric cars, or giving up air travel, is a way to push on climate change. We should list consumption-reduction as a thing you can do among many. And we should be clear-eyed about its benefits and trade-offs.

Aidan Kankyoku wrote a post called “V**ns are Monks” in which he sketches out a world where tons of people are pro-animal but only a few of them have ascended into the world of eschewing all animal products outright. That world seems great as an end state, but I see no route to that world except for telling a lot of activists to stop saying the V-word in public. Yes it’s a big part of your life, of course you want to talk about it, and I’m saying you have to be a lot more circumspect if you want to help build a successful movement because it’s sucking energy out of onboarding the people we most need in support right now.

Let’s make the V-word a curse word, something that you don’t say in polite company. You can talk about it with friends who you know well, but if you go into a space with strangers and start throwing around the V-word, people should take you aside and explain that’s not very welcoming, we don’t do that here. Stop talking about whether people are v**n, stop talking about what foods are v**n. It’s not helping create the culture we need.

What to do instead

My recommendations:

• Icebreaker: “What made you decide to start caring about animals?”

• For members of the community: “animal people” seems ok, “pro-animal community” is a bit of a mouthful but works. Suggestions on this are welcome.

• You can talk all you want about consumption reduction, you can talk about activism, you can talk about cruelty and factory farming.

• You can say that a food “contains animal products”—but ideally be specific about which ones it contains, since different people might care about different things.

• You can also talk about “making a commitment to avoid animal products,” and it might make sense in some contexts to ask others to make such a commitment, or to talk about someone breaking their commitment.

Ultimately, you should decide on your own rules! I probably will still say the V-word occasionally, in situations where it’s just too long or annoying to say anything else, or I need to refer to the word itself. But most of the time I’m pretty sure there’s another way to say what I mean, and I’m going to try to internalize it as a curse word because I think it’s a powerful way to change our culture, build our movement and help more animals in the future.

Last thing

I was charged, along with 50 other pro-animal activists, with felony burglary last week (maximum penalty 12 years in prison!) after I rescued a dog from a factory farm in March. I have enough resources to support my own legal defense, but I know a number of other activists who are likely to bear much heavier personal and financial costs, who have put their own bodies and freedom on the line with a hope to make a difference for animals. If you want to support their defense financially, please support Simple Heart.⁴

1. I’ve had this experience quite a few times in other spaces, especially anti-capitalist spaces where I don’t know if I need to hide that I (e.g.) started a for-profit company and think the profit incentive is good for the world.

2. It took a romantic partner who I wanted to impress with my cooking. I wrote about my journey as I was transitioning to a v**n diet.

3. The Ed Winters piece I linked was constructively critical, but the commenters are really rough on Gaz. In general it seems like there are a lot of extremists in comments sections in this space.

4. This fundraiser link supports Simple Heart who is organizing the legal-defense for Ridglan activists, but isn’t specifically restricted to that use.