My voice can't be silenced. I say, go vegan!

I want to thank everyone for the overwhelmingly positive response to my previous blog (as well as to the blog before the last one). I was surprised and very touched by some of the comments of complete strangers.

After I clicked 'publish post' yesterday, I started the clock to see how long it would take for another animal "advocate" to attack me personally for promoting veganism consistently. It took about 7 hours. The comments were the typical silly sarcasm that denote an inability to respond substantively to the issues that my blog raised. I would have preferred to be wrong, but it is what it is, and it was a tiny trickle compared with the otherwise remarkably positive response.

But I do want to take a second to underscore what vegan means: veganism is not just about food animals and it never has been. I don't know why some advocates keep repeating the argument (over and over and over) that veganism is just about food animals. I am not trying to offend anyone, but this reflects a serious misunderstanding of what veganism means.

But this argument also reflects a serious misunderstanding of how animals are used: in many cases, the same species is used for labor, for food, sometimes for entertainment, and so on. Geese are a good example. They're used for food, for clothing and often for entertainment. The argument that we should just address "only food animals" with veganism is misguided. We should speak for all sentient species as much as we possibly can at every turn and veganism does that.

Veganism refers, and always has referred, to animals as a whole. Donald Watson and the Vegan Society didn't sit down and write out a million-species long list of nonhumans to whose suffering and exploitation we shouldn't contribute. All animals meant all animals. All animals means all animals today. Promoting veganism and abolition is the best way to speak for all kinds of animals at once, regardless of why they are used or whether they live and die in factory farms, family farms, in circuses, in laboratories, in the wild or other places. Single issues campaigns probably do a great deal of harm to animals by confusing the public about veganism and what we owe others (and to which other animals we owe something, and so on).

If we take all animals seriously (we all should), then abolition, veganism and adoption are the meaningful ways to help them as a group and as individuals. No matter how silly the slogans, no matter how attention-grabbing the antics, if a group denigrates veganism and denigrates other advocates for promoting veganism, we should start asking: why? If we take what we owe other animals seriously, there is absolutely no reason not to promote veganism in every campaign, poster and press release. If it's easy to go vegan, surely, it's even easier to type "everyone should go vegan" and add it to the press release before it goes out.

In any case, I find the argument that veganism only refers to food animals to be as strange as the argument that veganism only refers to other animals used in entertainment or only other animals used for fashion would be. Veganism means considering all of our actions in a way that contributes the least possible to animal suffering and exploitation, whether it's for food, clothing or entertainment, and abolition (as an ideology) calls us to understand other animals as moral persons and to do what we can to make real and substantive social change for nonhuman animals in positive ways. I'm very disappointed to see people try to discourage advocates from promoting veganism in general; done in this way in particular, it strikes me as very misinformed. Furthermore, anyone who wants to save the life of a nonhuman animal can go right now today to any animal shelter and do so. Please adopt.

Of course, I could have spent hours criticizing the critics of criticization, but I know there is a growing body of advocates who understands clearly that what we owe other animals is veganism and wants to educate others about veganism. The public clearly understands this more and more. Moreover, The abolitionist vegan community is coming together and increasingly, ours will be the voice that the public hears. The goal of our opponents is always to keep us responding to them and not speaking to the public to promote veganism. Do not let your voices be silenced!

So, instead, I decided to express myself in a poster so awesome, so controversial, so hard-hitting that I know that all of my opponents will tremble at the mere sight of it. I've also included a previous poster that Joanne and I created that makes it clear what veganism means. I'm sure people will also complain because I'll give credit to another advocate where credit is due: I got some of the ideas for this post from someone else. I am neither ashamed of thinking for myself, nor about being intellectually honest when I use someone else's ideas.

I don't know how long it will take before the petty personal attacks for this blog start to surface. But I do seriously hope that animal advocates will start getting their poop in a group. I never want anyone to stop working, I want them to start doing work that will seriously help nonhuman animals. Other animals deserve our most thoughtful, our most careful, our most honest, and our most creative work.

Disagreement, discussion and moral dialogue that help to educate other advocates is wonderful and important work. Denigrating other advocates personally is a very petty thing. We should expect better from our opponents, and I even hope for better for them. Lurking around social media like Twitter and Facebook fuming passive-aggressively about the fact that I am right and they are wrong is no way to conduct advocacy and it's no way to go through life.

If you're not vegan yet, you should go vegan. If you are not an abolitionist, but want to learn more about the approach you can do so from my other articles or by visiting www.abolitionistapproach.com.