#2 Apparently I'm Not A Vegan, Even Though I Don't Buy Animal Products. There Are Toxic People In Every Community
But even if we disregard, let's call them, extreme vegans such as the ones we see in the pictures, many people are still wary of this community. To understand them a little better, let's look at the situation from their perspective.
"The caution around our dietary requirements is arguably warranted," Dejan Jotanovic wrote in The Guardian. "Many assert that veganism just isn’t an option to a large chunk of the population. The labour and cost of sifting through nutritional requirements, alongside inflated pricing for plant-based meat alternatives, is often too great."
Jotanovic also raised the issue of food accessibility. "Many live in areas – popularly termed 'food deserts' – where access to fresh produce or even supermarkets is difficult. Meat, dairy and other animal products are also staples to a variety of cultural and religious groups. In Australia, for example, our overtly masculine and sunburnt culture has a real appetite for red meat, namely beef, as per the annual promotional campaigns. The intersections of class, race, culture and veganism makes for a recipe that’s pretty damn hard to swallow."
However, Jotanovic argues that most people find vegans annoying because "it's one of the only social justice causes whose point of entry is entirely negotiated by real, quantifiable, fundamental behavior change."
"Everyone thinks of themselves as a good person. But it's much easier to slap 'Feminist as F**k' on your T-shirt and #BlackLivesMatter in your Twitter bio than it is to actively support animal welfare and the climate through an upheaval of your current lifestyle."
However, Jotanovic understands that vegans are constantly splashing around in their own hypocrisy too.
"What we need to do instead is look internally and reconsider what it means to care," he said. "I can, for example, say that I care about labour exploitation around the world, but it's obviously not bountiful enough considering my current purchasing habits. Saying that we care for absolutely everything – because we want to be deemed as fundamentally good – just isn’t sustainable or done with any real integrity."
Regardless of their diet, most people recognize that factory farming is a moral problem. Nearly 70% of Americans have "some discomfort with the way animals are used in the food industry."
Things is, many simply believe that going vegetarian or vegan is too demanding — and too annoying — to be sustainable.
Subconsciously, people don't hate vegans. In a 2017 study, for instance, researchers tracked the meal purchases of over 300 people at a Stanford University cafe who were asked to fill out a survey while waiting in line.
Some patrons were told that a fixed minority of Americans reduce their meat consumption. Others were told that these people represent an increasing trend in those avoiding meat. Patrons in the second group were almost twice as likely to order vegetarian meals when they reached the cashier.
