Vegans being banned and comments being deleted from !vegan@lemmy.world for being fake vegans.
From my perspective, the comments were in no way insulting and just part of completely normal interaction. If this decision reflects the general opinion of the mod team, then from my perspective, the biggest vegan community on Lemmy wants to be an elitist cycle of hardcore vegans only, not allowing any slightly different opinion. Which would be very unfortunate.
PS: In contrast to the name of this community, I don't want to insult anyone here being a 'bastard'. I just want to post this somewhere on neutral ground. I would really appreciate an open discussion without bashing anyone.
Linking the affected users and mods: @Cypher@lemmy.world @gaael@lemmy.world @gredo@lemmy.world @iiGxC@slrpnk.net @veganpizza69@lemmy.world @veganpizza69@lemmy.vg @jerkface@lemmy.ca @TheTechnician27@lemmy.world @Sunshine@lemmy.ca @Aqua@lemmy.vg
That's okay. There are many people who only know their food as a bite-sized anonymous mass from the supermarket. who think that cows just give milk all the time. They don't know how piglets are bred. That you can walk into any barn and see unfathomable suffering in every corner. Who have never heard of forceful impregnation, confinement crates, premature separation, tail docking, mulesing, torture breeding, teeth clipping, CO2 chambers, castration, steroid growth, veal crates, tethering, weaning rings, induced moulting, sheep dipping... and we haven't even started on the illegal cruelties.
In this state of blissful ignorance, you might regard someone who associates eating a steak with rape as crazy.
I used to be like this too. And to be honest, there are times when I wish I could return to it and just dismiss vegans with a downvote as exaggerating and annoying.
I worked as grocery store meat cutter for a time after high school. It taught me a lot, but one lesson stands out to me most clearly.
I was cleaning the counter to shut down for the night, it's slow. A person comes up to my counter and asks if I can help find gelatin. While walking to the aisle I- helpfully I thought at the time- proceded to infodump about gelatin and its manufacture. The look of disgust, a comment to the effect of "I've been feeding my baby bones?!"
People don't know and they don't want to know. If they knew they'd be disgusted and would have to change, they know that much, subconsciously at least. So they don't look and they lash out at anyone who insists on the fact of a farm animal holocaust, every day, perpetually sustained so that they may continue to have eggs and bacon and milk for breakfast every day forever and ever and ever.
Wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings would we.
Are you me? I worked in a butcher's shop after school. For me, it was like a job in any other factory, except that the clothes smelled a bit disgusting in the evening. Curing pork belly I never made any connection and didn't feel any remorse. I was happy to have quick and cheap access to meat. Eating meat was part of the identity in my circle of friends.
The pendulum only swung around when I lived among complete strangers for a while. But I also realize that not everyone gets that chance in life.