Vegan abolitionists have a reason to wake up today — Gary L. Francione published a new blog entry. It’s called “No, Ethical Veganism is Not Extreme”:
Dear Colleagues:
There is nothing extreme about ethical veganism.
What is extreme is eating decomposing flesh and animal secretions.
What is extreme is that we regard some animals as members of our family while, at the same time, we stick forks into the corpses of other animals.
And so on. I expect better from the leader of a school of vegan thought. All Francione has done is rephrase a cliché that vegans rephrase all the time. It’s the “Veganism isn’t extreme, meat eating is” cliché:
digging through the dirt: People who profit from animal exploitation like to call animal-rights advocates “extreme.” But what’s extreme about not wanting to see animals suffer? … Eating plants is innocuous, but hanging a chicken upside-down, slitting her throat and throwing her into scalding-hot water is extreme.
Vegan Chai: it bothers me when people accuse me of being “extreme,” because i think it’s much more “extreme” to (pay someone to) torture and kill an animal rather than to just eat a peanut butter sandwich.
Silentmanu: [E]very once in a while I’m accused of being an extremist just because I’m a vegan … What about those who insist it is perfectly alright to endlessly devour murdered animals, and demand stuff derived from exploiting them? Who are the true extremists?
Dan Cudahy: The animal exploitation industry’s front groups often call vegans who want to abolish animal exploitation “extremists”. But let’s take a glance at the so-called ‘extremism’ of abolitionist vegans in contrast to the real and violent extremism of industry and a ‘civilized’ society that permits such violent extremism. In the United States alone, ten billion innocent nonhumans are tortured and intentionally killed for trivial food preferences, and that does not include sentient marine life or sentient life from fresh water. … That’s extreme.
the veg blog: Veganism is not extreme. Eating dozens of animals a year (even more if you’re into chicken rather than beef) is extreme.
A lot of what vegans posit as extreme behaviors compared to eating only plants are factory farming practices, and it’s hard to argue that dumping hundreds of baby chickens into a plastic bag and suffocating them isn’t extreme. But this cliché usually suggests that the act of eating an animal is in itself extreme. This perspective can only make sense in a civilization that affords plenty of detachment from the natural world. There could seem to be something strange about eating the body of an animal when we are used to thinking that food is the processed granules that you pour out of a box, and the way you hunt it is to put on a tie or heels and type stuff on a computer.
Since most of our hours are spent in clothing, interacting with others from somewhat of a distance, sexual abstinence advocates could make a similar argument for another activity that is arguably at odds with being rational, civilized modern folk.
“Abstinence Isn’t Extreme — Sex is Extreme”:
Going to a church dance isn’t extreme. Stripping all your clothes off and inserting a weird looking part of your body into a weird looking part of someone else’s body and releasing a sticky white fluid into them is extreme.
Eating a bowl of cereal isn’t extreme. Putting someone else’s genitals into your mouth until they lose all their rationality and self-control and scream as they release a sticky white fluid into your mouth is extreme.
Reading a book about ethics while fully clothed isn’t extreme. Risking emotional pain, pregnancy, disease or even death for fleeting pleasure is extreme.
Are you an extremist?
