Philosophical Vegan Forum

I'm sure you've heared it before, "I'm fine with your choice to be vegan, but I don't think you should try to make others go vegan". this normaly happens when doing no more than making a youtube video, or talking with others about veganism. The will oftern continue by surgesting that advocating veganism is the same as advocating religion. I know the vegan athiest has made a video on this argument.

"I'm fine with your choice to not own slaves, but I don't think you should try to make others free their slaves"

"I'm fine with your choice to not rape drunk women, but I don't think you should try to make others abstain from such rape"

"I'm fine with your choice to not smoke or binge drink while pregnant, but I don't think you should try to make other pregnant women abstain"

"I'm fine with your choice not to shoplift, but I don't think you should try to make others stop doing it"

"I'm fine with your choice not to molest children, but I don't think you should try to make others stop"

Almost nobody doing something immoral and harmful to others wants to be corrected, and they usually rationalize it to be a personal choice, because that's what makes them feel good. Try using an analogy.

If they decry your right to criticize their personal immoral actions, they lose the right to criticize others for doing things they disagree with- and if they do, they're hypocrites.

I believe that advocacy is incredibly important. Most people have not wrestled with vegan issues before. They hold skewed notions of what it means, and they are fearful of what they do not understand. If you believe that veganism is correct, and has evidence supporting it, and you wish the world to be different then it currently is... advocacy is the logical conclusion.

the only people that have gone vegetarian because of me asked me why I was vegan. I enjoy debates, I like hearing peoples thoughts, I like the challenge of it. I keep the debates that I have online. Every meal someone is probably going to see that I am eating unusual things and ask about it. Often people seem really curious why I'm vegan since I think (like many of us) I am not what they stereotype us to be. That being said most people start of defensive and mean even if they bring it up. It's not easy to be reminded that a sentient living being has to die for you to have a steak.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Try using an analogy.

I normaly do this, however, people will push back against it saying its difrent. So I ask why it's difrent. And to this I get two difrent answers.

1] "well, 2% of people are vegan." I don't understand the argument, my vote dosent count becouse I'm part of a minority. How white of them.

2] "that's difrent becouse they thought for people." To this I will ask for a rail ant criteria, not recive a rail vent criteria, and then show an example of a rail ant criteria.

Those are, respectively:

Bandwagon fallacy.
Speciesism.

The former is very easy to defeat, while the later requires some more discussion to explain to them how there's no fundamental difference between humans and non-human animals that makes others morally irrelevant.