Non-vegans, a.k.a. carnists, are an interesting bunch. What many vegans tend to forget is that many vegans themselves were non-vegans at some point. That’s just something that goes into the memory hole.
For example, there is a vegan poster online (I’m not gonna link to her because I’m still holding out hope that she is fake and that she and her team are causing fake controversy for the clicks & cash) who became vegan at age 52 and quickly became blaming others, attacking others, and hating on others.
I’ve become vegan twice. First was as a teenager in the 90s. Instantly, I had one last meat meal and never looked back. The only reason for me were environmental, including climate change, but I quickly fell into the animal rights groups lists of rules and regulation. No honey, no leather, here’s a list of approved bands to listen to. That lasted for over a decade. I had a handful of minor breaches of rice-pudding or sourcream chips or whatever that I accounted for in my online friend group.
Don’t worry, I didn’t take up meat or go gung-ho anti-vegan, but I became lacto-ovo-vegetarian for five years (allowing eggs & dairy), and in the last of those five years, fish. I thought I would be healthier—that was dumb; you can argue for liver or whatever but eggs and dairy aren’t healthy, and cheese is as bad for the climate as pork is—and that my mindset would benefit from being less beholden to rules.
Going back to veganism the second time in 2017 was slower going with a couple of false starts. I also tried to go WFPB which I’ve only intermittently being able to keep up, often backsliding into a junkier vegan diet that allows chips & candy. The longest I was on WFPB was fifteen months, starting from when the pandemic just started in 2020. I guess, as always with disordered eating, I was striving for a sense of control in a chaotic world.
I don’t advertize myself as being vegan now since there are many vegans who wouldn’t consider me vegan since I have (very small amounts of) wool and leather. It’s not that I don’t know how bad wool and leather is, it’s plenty bad, it’s just that I think plastic is so much worse. Linen, cotton, kapok is great of course, but plastic, even many bioplastics (non-fossil origin but just as bad pollutantly) is bad. I eat plants, is what I say instead. Vegan on the plate but not on the wardrobe, I say. Not to diss vegans but to dodge the expectation from vegans since they scare me!
Also I made the rule for myself that I can have fish as long as at least seven weeks pass between times, but since 2017 I’ve only had it four times. It’s super bad for the environment and I’m usually happy with just beans & grains! I pretty much never eat fish but I’d better write this here anyway to manage expectations properly since there has been so many times where a vegan has been filmed eating fish and then torn apart and killed by the other vegans.
Although most of the gung-ho ones who vow up and down that they’ll never ever ever break it are ones that have been vegan for way shorter than my original run, or even my second, current run.
To vegans: be aware & compassionate against non-vegans since they are your own past selves. Stop hating your own selves.
To everyone else: eat plants, you primitive screwheads!