Imagine your life or freedom depended on someone advocating for you or those like you. Who would you want on your side? 1: someone who is unequivocal about your right to be alive and free. 2: someone who makes exceptions to your right to be alive and free in favour of those who want to continue to deny you that right
If it were my life, autonomy and liberty were on the line, I’d always choose option 1. And because I would always make that choice for myself, I extend it to my advocacy with respect to veganism and animals. Their lives and freedom from exploitation are on the line hundreds of millions of individuals a year
Advocating in a human context
Advocacy focuses on the individual or group who’s on the receiving end of injustice or oppression. Advocacy doesn’t focus on how the perpetrator of the injustice or oppression might feel learning about the oppression or injustice. For example, if I’m focusing on sexism, my advocacy will be about recognising sexism, showing how it manifests, discussing its ramifications and harms
My advocacy wouldn’t include commendation of someone who declares they’re not sexist once a week, or who might be on a journey to reduce their sexism, or who might resists all forms of sexism except cat calling in the summer because they’re addicted to that. Those are all fine things, I suppose, but they wouldn’t elicit my praise. After all, it’s the least they could do
My advocacy also wouldn’t focus on packaging my message to make sexists feel better about themselves. It’s not about them. And I wouldn’t consider diminishing my message so I could, for example, sell more instructional courses on tackling sexism by calling sexism by some other, more acceptable name, whatever that might be
I wouldn’t focus on selling more if that meant selling out those who are negatively affected by sexism — that is selling out those whose lives and freedom depend on changing the reality of their lives. Doing so would draw a tremendous amount of criticism from anyone advocating against sexism. And if the advocate on my side who was advocating for my life and freedom, I wouldn’t stand for anything less than their advocating I live and be free
In a human context, we simply wouldn’t shift the focus or if we did, we’d be ready for an onslaught of criticism
What’s it look like to advocate for animals as if their lives don’t depend on it?
Unfortunately in an animal context and despite good intentions, we do often see advocacy for much lesser outcomes where we shift our focus from their oppression to catering to people’s purchasing power and feelings
Here are some examples you might recognise. Think about whether you’ve seen campaigns, writings, talks, groups focused on promoting selling plant-based products or even vegan publications, each advocating for less than veganism, less than stopping using animals for our own purposes. And doing this to make themselves, their products, videos, organisations and whatever else palatable for consumption or purchase by as wide a group of people as possible. And there is no thought about how a non-human animal would react at being de-focused. Imagine if that were you! How would you feel?
Or have you heard the argument we need to abandon the term vegan? Reasons given include because it doesn’t sell as much product or non-vegans don’t like the term based on anecdotal experiences or half-baked surveys. Veganism isn’t shopping. I talk about this in one of my podcast episodes. Having more vegan-friendly products is helpful and fun, but it will not change people’s minds. Sure they have more shopping choices. Ultimately, they will not understand the reasons for shopping and living differently unless it’s clearly explained
Or because apparently veganism is too complicated. Odd to hear that when I’ve written a 30 second elevator pitch summarising veganism in my book Think Like a Vegan
Or commending folks for doing the bare minimum of not using animals for their own purposes now and again as if they were a hero. For example, the Meatless Mondays reboot and here’s an excellent critique of it
Usually, you’ll also hear or read the term effective thrown in, as if changing who people include in their moral circle can be done effectively – what does that even mean when we live in a non-vegan world? For a critique of efficiency in activism, see The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism, by Carol J. Adams (Editor), Alice Crary (Editor), Lori Gruen (Editor)
And how does one even measure effectiveness when you’re talking about changing the habits we as a species created 10,000 years ago when we began to farm animals? Those habits can’t even begin to be changed effectively if we’re being less than the best and clearest possible advocates
We may all feel the frustration of a non-vegan world and I don’t blame anyone for that. It is frustrating, tragic and anguishing. Our frustration or any other feeling don’t matter to the animals who are on the kill floor. Frustration is our feeling, which we need to learn to manage
So what does advocating like your life depends on it look like?
I don’t believe we should base others’ lives and freedom on the feelings or spending habits of those who are perpetrating injustices. How we advocate is up to each of us. Some people choose to demonstrate or a variety of other types of street activism. Others choose art, writing or simply existing as a vegan
Veganism is about basic fairness and people can absolutely understand that once it’s explained to them. Whether they accept this notion and change isn’t within our control. Just like it’s outside our control whether people accept sexism as a problem and make necessary changes. But it doesn’t change the message
Whatever you choose, think about how you would want to be defended if your life and liberty were on the line and choose your words carefully. Extend the dignity you would demand for the value of your life and freedom to non-human animals who value their lives and autonomy as much as you do. Focus on these things whilst centring your message on those who are being oppressed, and you’ll know you’re doing all you can
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