Tag: Abuse

Bullocks you say?

You say I can’t compare dairy with rape? And you’ve seen cows being milked before and they don’t looked terrified for their lives?

Yesterday I received an email essentially stating the two sentences above. And having never walked myself through, as in actually written out, the explicit facts I use to justify a statement as inflammatory as equating the sexual interference of a sentient being to the romantic notion of how it is we actually obtain “our” milk, I thought I’d share my response to that email below.

First off, and most importantly, the animal user industries have been extremely successful at selling us an image they need us to believe in order to conduct business as usual. That’s no mystery. It’s a fact. What is a mystery, figuratively speaking, is everything involved in providing us with “products” without a face or a story. Sadly the image they’re selling and what really goes on do not line up, even remotely, in the same vicinity of each other…

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‘THE WORLD IS VEGAN! If you want it’

Earlier this week, Professor Francione, outlined an intriguing premise on his website: Our Virtual Billboard: “THE WORLD IS VEGAN! If you want it.” Which reads, in part;

“In 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, John Lennon and Yoko Ono had a billboard placed in Times Square. It read: “WAR IS OVER! If you want it. Happy Christmas from John and Yoko.” I propose the following: That we flood the world with a message; that we create a virtual billboard: THE WORLD IS VEGAN! If you want it…”

War would be over, if we wanted it. And the world would be vegan, if we wanted it. We hold the power to change. So the question is, quite simply, will we change?

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Things Aren’t Always So Black Or White

So I’ve spent a fair amount of my time recently — the past 6 months seems to be a nice round number — thinking, or better yet, re-thinking how I really feel about a number of things. My approach to ethical veganism and animal rights specifics being most significant.

My previous stance didn’t stray too far from the Francione school of thought;

“[T]o provide a clear statement of an approach to animal rights that (1) requires the abolition of animal exploitation and rejects the regulation of animal exploitation; (2) is based only on animal sentience and no other cognitive characteristic, (3) regards veganism as the moral baseline of the animal rights position; and (4) rejects all violence and promotes activism in the form of creative, non-violent vegan education…”

That said, and recent gaffs aside, I can’t say my views have changed all that much. Meaning I still think much of what I thought, but I’m no longer convinced it’s a “strict,” or, more specifically, such a black or white issue…

Continue reading Things Aren’t Always So Black Or White