If you think humans are better than other animals, you’re a speciesist, and you might as well be judging humans on the color of their skin.

At least, if you believe anti-speciesist vegans. 

Speciesism, they say, is no more acceptable than other forms of discrimination; looking down on organisms because of their biological classification is just as arbitrary and loathsome as doing the same to humans because of their gender or sexual orientation. We’re not nature’s most impressive creation — we’re just nature’s most arrogant, our delusional sense of self-importance blinding us to the reality that we’re just one of many kinds of sentient creatures who happen to inhabit this planet, none more or less valuable than the rest. 

Many who go vegan for ethical reasons believe that anti-speciesism is a key component of any serious vegan philosophy, and that vegans who don’t accept it are vegan for the wrong reasons and are part of the problem. For this reason, vegans who can’t quite get into the idea that species is a meaningless division which shouldn’t really be considered at all tend to be private about this view. 

But not Speciesist Vegan, the anonymous vegan writer who uses his blog — also named Speciesist Vegan — to discuss why he thinks anti-speciesism doesn’t make sense, as well as why there is still an argument for veganism anyway.

The blog is only about a month old but is already one of the most fascinating vegan blogs I’ve read. Which is why I did this interview. 

And in case you prefer your speciesist veganism in small doses and can’t commit to the full interview just yet, CarpeVegan has the abridged version.

Many vegans say that speciesism is a form of discrimination akin to racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, ableism, classism and heterosexism. You, however, are speciesist, yet maintain an opposition to prejudice against different groups of humans. What makes speciesism different than those others?

Well, to state the obvious, all the -isms you mentioned in the first sentence concern intraspecies relations and speciesism deals with interspecies relations. 

Basically, for various reasons, but largely because I AM a human and not some other type of animal, I feel that humans have more moral worth than other animals. I hope it will be more clear why by the end of this interview.

And just to be clear, it’s not like I don’t see any similarities between how some people treat animals and how some people treat (or used to treat) other humans who are different from them. There are plenty of analogies to be drawn. I just have a general distaste for moral argumentation by analogy. Even if there are some legitimate parallels that can be made between dairy farms and slave plantations, the analogy is offensive to me (and almost all non-vegans). If I have to explain to you why the analogy is offensive, you’re definitely a vegan and your name might be Gary.

Yet you’re vegan. Doesn’t accepting speciesism allow for an anything-goes treatment of animals?

It doesn’t preclude such a course of action, but it certainly doesn’t demand it or even encourage it. The vast majority of people are already speciesist and most of them are in favor of at least some measure of protection for animals. I just don’t think that something has to be like humans for me to respect it and choose to leave it alone rather than destroy it.

This is something I find problematic with the idea of species equality being the reason for animals having “rights.” A rigid anti-speciesism seems to make the case that animals deserve rights/protection because they are like us. Why do we feel that only beings who are like us have value? In the same way that we say the differences don’t warrant poor treatment, isn’t it also folly to argue that the similarities are what should warrant good treatment/rights?

Why can’t we just decide that animals have value because they have their own interests and just leave similarities and differences out of it? I think it’s enough to say that it’s wrong to regard sentient beings as objects or property simply because they are sentient and especially because using/regarding them as property is unnecessary the majority of the time.

So, no, I don’t think that admitting that you’re speciesist is the gateway to puppy punching. I think it’s actually a more honest, acceptable position to most non-vegans and therefore it is potentially a position that is more likely to win converts to veganism.

I was once debating with an abolitionist vegan in the comments of one of my blog entries, and I admitted to being a speciesist. She then said that further discussion would be impossible and left the debate. Is disagreement over speciesism so wide a gulf that it makes arguing about other animal issues a waste of time?

I got kicked off of the Vegan Freaks Forum for openly admitting that I’m speciesist. For some people, there are certain philosophical differences that simply preclude further debate, and I think that’s terrible. But that’s how some of these hard-liners see it: since animals and humans are coequals, denying this supposed equality is tantamount to making claims of racial superiority, and they just won’t stand for it. These are the types of positions that a rigid anti-speciesism, taken to its logical extreme, can force people into. They see no point in arguing with someone who actually cares about the issue and who they might actually have a lot in common with philosophically. I fail to see how that makes for good activism.

On that same forum I requested on one thread that people stop making arguments formed on analogies to racism, sexism etc. and one prominent user there got quite mad that I would try to tell other people how to argue. But that wasn’t the reason it upset him, in my opinion. So much of Francione/abolitionist logic and argumentation is predicated on being able to equate speciesism to all the other -isms, so if you take away that rhetorical device, they feel like you’ve taken away their ammo.

How sad is that? Argument by analogy is just one way to make an ethical argument, so one shouldn’t feel disarmed if someone requests that they talk about the thing at hand. Analogies can sometimes illuminate, but analogies always shift focus AWAY from the thing at hand. There is no such thing as a perfect analogy because the moment two things become perfectly analogous, they’re the same thing and you’re just comparing something to itself. So analogies are always imperfect and it’s not unreasonable for a participant in an argument to request that the focus stay on the thing actually being discussed. But this is lost on certain AR/abolitionist types. If they can’t compare Dean Foods to Auschwitz, they just don’t want to talk to you.

I’d rather spend my time discussing issues with people who can build bridges rather than burn them or preempt them being built. The vast majority of people who profess a belief in anti-speciesism really don’t believe it as much as they claim to, and they are willing to discuss things with people who show good faith and a genuine interest in the issues. Let the hardliners try to impress each other with their intolerance for other views. It’s what they do best anyway.

Are a lot of vegans secretly speciesist, but deny it because they think it contradicts veganism?

Absolutely, except most of the denial is to themselves. Most of them are telling others “the truth” insofar as they basically believe that they are truly anti-speciesist. They basically have to proclaim it to be a “good vegan.” There are certain abolitionist types who simply brook no deviation from the anti-speciesist dogma. They would oust a dissenter or terminate an otherwise productive conversation before they would allow anti-speciesism to be seriously questioned. And I think that the more prominent you get in the abolitionist world, the more you feel pressured to display and enforce a rigid anti-speciesist view (and the more you internalize the sentiments and arguments).

And what is all this dissent quashing and self-censorship done for? Veganism can exist without belief in human/nonhuman equality. Maybe I’m the minority, but I suspect there are more people who think like me than many in the “vegan establishment” would guess. Some are probably reading what I’m saying right now and finding, possibly to their surprise, that they agree with a lot of it. I hope they do something about it. The problems associated with this are too big to dismiss this as a petty squabble between vegan factions.

What’s the problem with using anti-speciesism as a litmus test for being a real vegan?

The problem is that it inevitably turns the focus away from what people do to what they think. It turns vegans who don’t have AR as their primary motivation into “fake vegans.” It’s beyond me why vegans want to turn their already small group into an even smaller group by raising the bar for entry. It limits the pool of potential vegans to only those who will accept the idea that their life is only as valuable as a rat’s life. Most people will NEVER accept such a premise. Learn to work with it or fight it. I choose to work with it.

Is it even possible to be truly anti-speciesist?

I think maybe it is possible, but to be truly anti-speciesist, you would need to have some opinions that would disgust your fellow humans. You would have to say that you’d just flip a coin to see if you’d save the baby or the puppy. You’d have to say that killing a child to feed your starving dogs is morally equivalent to killing a dog to feed your starving kids. So, yes, I think technically one could be truly anti-speciesist, but that would make you a total psycho in most people’s eyes.

And consider that even the most extreme, radical, reckless animal rights activists, the ones who blow shit up and burn shit down, still go to great lengths to make sure that they don’t harm humans. If all life really is equal, why wouldn’t killing an animal researcher or hog farmer be justified? Answer: because humans have more moral worth than animals. Even the hardest of the hardcores acknowledge this through their actions if not their words. If a crazy AR activist ends up killing or even hurting a fellow human (intentionally or accidentally), they will be reviled by 99.9% of vegans and 99.9999% of humans. I think for all intents and purposes, most vegans are actually on the same page as non-vegans on this one. Some of them are just loathe to admit it.

Do you think the animal rights movement will eventually become violent against humans? And if so, will it be because of anti-speciesism?

I think it’s inevitable that part of the AR movement will eventually become violent against humans, sure. But I don’t see it becoming widespread. And, yes, if it does occur (especially if it’s intentional), I think it’s likely that the perpetrators would consider themselves anti-speciesist. One would need to have a way to rationalize why killing a person is okay. Anti-speciesism, plus either some kind of utilitarian logic or Old Testament “eye for an eye” reasoning could get you there. But I want to emphasize that I do NOT think that anti-speciesists are inherently anti-human or prone to violence.

Pretty much the only problem I have with veganism, philosophically, is that it claims to be a moral obligation for everyone who is capable of surviving as a vegan. But you don’t think veganism is a moral obligation. Why not?

While I was an abolitionist in training, I was told (over and over and over) that veganism is the “moral baseline.” But I could never really internalize it. I just didn’t think that my friends and family were being immoral when they ate meat. I thought that I was making the ethically better choice (and I still think it), but I stopped short of thinking of meat eating as being straight up immoral. Moral and immoral are such stark opposites of each other and I never felt like such a dichotomized understanding of the ethics of meat-eating described my actual feelings.

I really started to rethink it all after reading your posts on how vegans still contribute to animal death and how veganism is ultimately an arbitrary line. I had given plenty of thought to the former (and found ways to explain why it was just unintended, collateral damage, and therefore okay), but I had a mental roadblock about the latter. How can one have a moral obligation to achieve one arbitrary point along a continuum? How does that make sense? It doesn’t.

So I eventually did come to see that what I had previously thought of as a totally logical line in the sand was actually an arbitrary line (but that’s not necessarily a bad thing). It was around this time that I became okay with admitting my own speciesism. So when I read about the concept of supererogation on your site, all this started to click for me (although it took me a while to sort through it all).

I view being vegan not as a moral obligation, but as an act of supererogation. But I also believe that one should really always be striving to make the best choices available to them. So, I think that there is still a way to make an ethical argument for why one should be vegan (or veganish, or vegetarian, or whatever). And that argument is pretty simple: “being vegan causes less harm, causing less harm is good, so go vegan or at least try to reduce your animal consumption.”

I know that lacks the emotional, prescriptive thrust of “go vegan or you’re a fucking murdering scumbag!” but what can I say? It’s more in line with the way I actually think about these things. I am still unequivocal in my assertion that being vegan is ethically better than not being vegan, but I’m not saying that not being vegan is immoral. Hence, one does not have a moral obligation to be vegan.

As you’ve mentioned on your blog, one of the reasons that a lot of vegans say they don’t eat non-vegan freegan food (NVFF) is because of representation. They say that eating NVFF demonstrates that animals can be food (as if most people aren’t already aware of this), and also that someone might see them eating meat and not know it’s from a dumpster and then be confused about what veganism is. What do you think of the excuses vegans make to avoid freeganism?

It’s well known that some non-vegans are always on the lookout for signs of inconsistency in vegans, so I can understand why, given the predominant definition of veganism, some would view eating NVFF as inconsistent or hypocritical. What I am proposing is that we should have a new kind of veganism (or veganishism, or call it what you want) where the ability to eat NVFF is part of the “rules.” Eating NVFF doesn’t violate the ethics of veganism as I understand them, so we should give non-vegans the benefit of the doubt and assume that they’re intelligent enough to grasp this. Some won’t, but we shouldn’t design a movement around people who will never understand something that makes sense.

I don’t have a problem with vegans not wanting to practice elements of freeganism. For the same reason I don’t argue that anyone has a moral obligation to be vegan, I don’t argue that anyone has a moral obligation to go further than veganism. If some vegans just can’t or don’t want to get on board with it personally, that’s fine. Just don’t look down your nose at me if I choose to eat the end of a slice of pizza that my friend is about to throw in the garbage.

How does your speciesism change your attitude toward meat eaters?

When I was freshly vegan, I kinda tried to make myself buy the whole “meat is murder” line because once you do, all these other things fall into place, all this supposed consistency. And during that time I did have more antipathy toward meat eaters. But I always viewed it as a personal choice that everyone has to make for themselves, even when I (sort of) believed that it was immoral to eat meat. Maybe it was the libertarian part of my brain that made me think this way, but I never was on board with the idea of forcing anyone not to eat meat.

Now that I’ve come a long way in figuring out my philosophy (veganism as supererogation, admitting my speciesism, allowing for freeganism etc.), my attitude allows me to get along with people of all dietary persuasions much more easily. And life really is better this way. It can be draining to feel like you’re surrounded by sinners while you’re a martyr nailed to a tofu cross and no one gives a shit.

What do you think of the anti-speciesist “Why Love One But Eat the Other?” campaign, which tries to make us see the similarity between farm animals and pets?

I don’t know much about Mercy For Animals, so I don’t want to comment specifically on that organization or campaign, so I’ll just give my reaction to this poster and the idea itself. I like it. It probably makes some people question if there really is much difference between puppies and piglets, or chicks and kittens. I think their choice of animals indicates that they’re trying to manipulate the cutetarian sentiments that many people have, but overall, I like the idea.

But what I think you’re getting at is this: if I’m a speciesist, how can I make a case that the puppy and the piglet deserve the same treatment and protection? Well, I can’t really do that as a speciesist. I can only say that treating animals with respect is almost always the more ethical choice.

I don’t view the embracing of speciesism as a panacea, an all-encompassing ideological shift that will make everything better. I’m just trying to work within current reality. Anti-speciesists, on the other hand, view anti-speciesism (an idea that is embraced by an embarrassingly small percentage of people) as the linchpin that will usher in the Vegan Utopia. I just think this is naive.

It’s easier to convince people to take steps toward the vegan end of the spectrum than it is to convince them that all forms of animal life are equal. In four years of being vegan, I’ve seen one person become vegan, one become vegetarian, one become “freegan” vegetarian, two people become pescetarian, and a whole slew of people dabbling in making more veg*an choices. I’m not saying that I take credit for all of these, but I am saying that not ONE of these people would consider themselves anti-speciesist.

How does a speciesist veganism differ from an anti-speciesism veganism, in practice and theory?

I won’t pretend to have the right to define what speciesist veganism is, because I know there are other speciesist vegans out there (and a lot of them are probably afraid to be open about it, like I was). But I do have some ideas about things that could help veganism (or veganishism) find a wider audience and have a greater long-term retention rate. Only some of these points are a natural conclusion drawn from approaching veganism from a speciesist perspective.

The following list (which is in no particular order) is just an abbreviated list of the maxims on my blog. It is a work in progress. If any like-minded individuals want to help me hash out some new ideas (or even tweak or argue with me about existing ones), I’d love to have the added brainwaves:

*buy only vegan food

*eat any food (vegan or not) that can be obtained by freegan means

*one needn’t believe that animals have rights equal to or even similar to the rights of humans to be vegan

*acknowledge that not all forms of speciesism are bad

*avoidance of animal foods is supererogatory, not morally obligatory

*approach all debates and info with an open mind. The case for veganism is not absolute

*take nutrition, and critiques of veganism based on nutrition, seriously

*avoid analogies to slavery, rape and genocide

*be vocal about the fact that no one should have to sacrifice their health to be vegan

*promote the idea that veganism (and freegan veganism) is the ideal, but that near-veganism (or being veganish) is a laudable goal and may even be the end goal for a particular person

*take seriously the critiques of locavores, animal welfare activists, fair trade activists, anti-corporatists etc

*veganism is not, and needn’t be, globally applicable to be the right choice for the majority of people

*be realistic and honest about the dietary/culinary/taste/nutritional/lifestyle advantages and disadvantages of being vegan

*recognize that vegetarians, near-vega*ans and “conscientious omnivores” are allies, not enemies to be either converted or denounced as weak-willed

*Admit that veganism is an arbitrary line in the sand

One point that I want to stress (especially since this is appearing on the blog of a person who left veganism for health reasons) is that a speciesist vegan would be okay with someone eating non-vegan food if they were having health problems that they felt were due to nutrition. No one should have to sacrifice their health to be vegan. A speciesist vegan can admit that their life and well-being is more important than the well-being (or even the life) of a chicken or a cow. Instead of having a definition of veganism that forces someone with health problems to abandon veganism so that they can eat the food that makes them feel better without feeling like a murderer (and then start an anti-vegan website - ha!), why not have a definition of veganism that allows them to “stay in the club” while eating whatever they need to eat to feel right? I think speciesist veganism has the potential to do that.

Many vegans will feel very adamant that what I’m describing here is unequivocally NOT veganism, and that’s fine, because I never did and never will have interest in those types of arguments. I eat the way I do because it’s what I’ve found to be a good balance between my ideals and my own comfort and health, not because I want to maintain my membership in some elite group of hypermoralistic, specialized eaters. I advocate for a “big tent” type of veganism because I see that having a much better chance for growth than the culty, puritanical version now in vogue. If vegans object to me calling it speciesist veganism, they can offer alternatives.

In one of your early entries, you mentioned that discovering CarpeVegan inspired you to start your blog. How did that get you going?

I live a pretty lonely existence as a vegan. I have a pretty fulfilling social life, but my curious “mix” of beliefs often makes me feel like I have no real home when it comes to what I eat. So whenever I find a blog or a person who is thinking in a somewhat different way about all these issues that I care about, I get excited by the possibility that there are people out there who think like me.

I just want to talk to (and read posts from) people who are trying to do something different with veganism (or any kind of philosophy that takes issues of animal use seriously), like CarpeVegan is doing. PCrank is cool too. He seems to be attacking the anti-science “woo” in veganism, while I am exploring the problems of theory, argumentation and rhetoric. I think that veganism (or something substantially like it) really could have an increased role to play in our future (out of necessity, because of changing mores, or both), but I have really come to dislike most vegan rhetoric.

I specifically dislike the Francione / “veganism is the moral baseline” crowd. I feel they have exerted undue influence on what it means to be vegan. I think a lot of vegans are attracted to that camp because the ideas seem so radical, but the more I engage with their ideas, the more I realize that they’re really just the most simplistic - they keep repeating the same things over and over again. Lack of nuance is a good thing to them. I have debated many abolitionist types and I don’t think there is any winning with a lot of them. I just hope that some of us newer vegan bloggers will expose some cracks to the rank-and-file abolitionists and fence-sitters and that they’ll slowly start peeling off from that camp.

And it wasn’t just CarpeVegan that inspired me. More inspiring than that, oddly enough, was Let Them Eat Meat. One thing that reading LTEM has opened my eyes to is the number of ex-vegans out there. It seems that a lot of the more vocal ones became ex-vegan for health reasons, which makes sense, because leaving for health reasons gives you better cover than just saying “I just got sick of all the idiots.” Not that all vegans respect when people leave for health reasons, though. Some are the asshole types who say “you didn’t do this right, you didn’t do that right.” But what does that do? All they are doing is being an apologist for something that is imperfect. I think there has got to be a less vocal contingent of people who left veganism for other reasons. I would really like to talk with them and find out why.

What I think about when I ponder ex-vegans is: what KIND of veganism might have allowed this person to want to continue to be vegan? What KIND of veganism would have allowed this person to address their health concerns without feeling like they were questioning the sanctity of an inviolable concept? What KIND of vegan community could help foster and support such a new concept of veganism? It certainly isn’t one that shuts down debate and parrots decades-old dogma.

Veganism as we currently know it is flawed. If I can play even a small part in helping people to find “A New Way” then I will feel like my effort is worth it. That’s why I started my blog.