This is my first time at FARM’s animal rights conference.  Even though I’ve been vegetarian since 1982 and even though I’ve considered myself an animal-person for virtually my entire life, I haven’t considered myself a true activist until recently.

I had embedded the idea that I couldn’t do anything significant in the movement until I went vegan. Until I was vegan, any time I suggested that “meat is murder” I’d get called a hypocrite, which was enough to shut me up… temporarily. Any time I’d suggest that animals deserved better – in any circumstance – I’d hear someone, real or imagined, tell me I had no right to criticize until I abstained from all animal use.

A valid criticism, yet what was the result?
The result was: it became my excuse not to advocate for animals.

There’s a common story in the animal rights community. Many people say they feel like once they were exposed to the truth about animal suffering, they had to respond. They couldn’t not respond.

I don’t share that story. I think animal rights are self-evident. it didn’t require special education or new information, it’s obvious. I have known about animal suffering for virtually my whole life. Maybe I didn’t know the exact details of this or that horrid exploitation, but I knew the concept: animals are individuals with their own interests and rights; they are not ours to use for food, entertainment, clothing or anything else.

Yet I didn’t follow through. I told myself veganism was too hard, too expensive, too isolating. And I wasn’t lying to myself the way some nonvegans do. I had tried to go vegan. I was vegan for a year! I found the social isolation too difficult to bear.

Since I felt veganism was too impractical, I simply shifted my natural activist energies elsewhere and got interested in feminism. I can’t say I did a whole lot with it (so far) other than get a degree in Women’s Studies and volunteer for a year with a women’s lobby, but I did something real and concrete on behalf of women’s rights, which was more than I was doing on behalf of animals’ rights.

Why, when I didn’t have to get straight A’s or be a perfect feminist was I willing to fight for women, but I expected myself to be a perfect vegan in order to fight for animals?

It’s simple, really:  it was easier.
Fighting for women’s rights – as a woman – was natural. Whatever inadequacies I had as an individual weren’t significantly relevant to my struggles to abolish sexism and misogyny and improve women’s lives.

Later in life I followed through with my initial commitment to animals made decades earlier: I went vegan. And this time around it wasn’t nearly as difficult. Now that the web existed and vegans connect with each other regardless of location, now that milk alternatives are readily available, and now that the nutritional information about veganism is more available and more accepted going vegan was so much easier. Oh, and it didn’t hurt that my second try was as an adult without the confines of school cafeterias and cliquey teens.

So, finally as a vegan I was “good enough” to truly advocate for animals. It’s silly that I let my personal failings keep me from my passion, but I did.

Now I’m making up for lost time. Now I’m here at AR 2009 learning how to become a better advocate so I won’t waste more time: I’m learning strategies, hearing success stories, and conjuring up ideas.

More notes and more thoughts to come…

456 views
Sections: Vegan Resources
Topics: ar 2009, AR conference, veg, Vegan