VV64: Respect my choice (2)

Art by Pupavegan
Farm & slaughter photos by: 269Life, 269Life Netherlands, The Bloody Dairy Industry and Aella. Used with permission.


<sub>It's my personal choice
It cannot be called a personal choice when it involves harming a third party for a trivial reason, which is your desire to enjoy eating them / their secretions.

It's just a matter of opinion like religion
Religion is based upon ancient scripture, tradition, dogma and superstition. Veganism is based on having consideration for animals, and a desire to avoid animal abuse. Animal abuse is real, animals are being exploited and killed in their billions. It's a reality, can be proven to you. You might say it's a matter of opinion that we'd like to avoid it happening, but if you claim to have any consideration for animals whatsoever, then you will be in agreement.

It's just a matter of culture / social norms
Cultures and social norms develop over time. Whether it is slavery, women having the vote, or anything else, the fact that it was ever the norm or part of culture, is not a justification for it. If you think that culture is a justification, then if you look at other cultures, you must advocate every single practice that they do, regardless of how clearly unethical it is. That's not a rational point of view. You should be able to form a view on a practice regardless of where it happens. So if you say that killing dogs is unacceptable because your culture says so, but you think that it's fine if other cultures do it, consider the following: If someone is about to kill a dog in your culture, would you really say "Excuse me, can you please cross the border to that other culture where that kind of thing is the norm? Then I will stop caring about that dog". This is about the victim, it doesn't matter where it happens.

Morality is subjective, you can't prove it's wrong for me
Even if you think that morality is subjective, your ethics should still be backed by logic. They are not random, nor are they plucked from thin air. As such, the question is simple - do you have any consideration for animals or not? Most people would say that they care about animals, or at the very least, would not like to needlessly harm them. Farming animals for our consumption is needless, and so all harm visited upon them including their slaughter, is needless also. So your own subjective view should be to avoid harming them - if you have any consideration for them whatsoever.

Our ancestors did it
If you live in modern society and you're reading this on the internet, clearly you must acknowledge that you do not live like your ancestors. Your ancestors did many things that you avoid, and you do plenty of things that they never did. Times have changed, we can choose to live non-violently and avoid harming those that pose no threat to us.

We've got canine teeth
Even if we had massive fangs, it wouldn't justify killing animals for the enjoyment of eating their dead bodies. It is proven time and time again that we can live on a plant-based diet in great health, so the shape of our teeth puts us under no obligation to kill. But if we look at this argument more closely - firstly there are animals with far bigger canines than us who eat a plant-based diet, like primates and rhinos and so forth. Secondly, our own "canines" are only named that way because of their position and biological classification in our jaw. They have no similarity at all with true canines which actual carnivores have like lions. They are of no use in biting through raw animal hide, especially not that of a living creature.

Lions do it
Wild animals kill to survive. They must kill to eat, otherwise they would die. Whether they kill on instinct or are aware of their predicament is irrelevant, we are not in their situation. If you live in modern society and have access to crops, vegetables, fruit, grains etc, then you have no obligation or need for animal products. Also, lions exhibit all kinds of behaviour that you would seek to avoid, for instance, violent territorial disputes, and male lions will kill the cubs of a female he wishes to mate with because she won't mate while she has cubs around. Lions are not good ethical role models.

Circle of life
I am not really sure what this means but I will try to cover it - if the suggestion is that "you live you die, therefore killing is fine" then this would justify killing companion animals and also humans. If the suggestion is "we kill an animal so that we can live" then this is false. Animals are killed for the enjoyment of eating their dead bodies. It is not a matter of survival, as proven by all the hundreds of millions of vegans in the world.

It's natural
It is untrue that you only do things that you consider to be natural - you use the internet, you presumably use a car or a bus or a plane, and so on. You use modern technology, and do various other things that cannot be called natural. Likewise, there are other things that are natural that you avoid. Nature is pretty cruel, and we actually live life in modern society trying to avoid the perils of nature. You might argue that anything is natural which humans are capable of. But if you argue that, then the justification "it's natural" would apply to literally any human behaviour, and as such is ridiculous, since you would not say that any human behaviour is justified just because a human did it.

It's been happening for hundreds of years
The amount of time that something has been happening is not at all linked with how harmful it is to the victims. Indeed, the fact that it has been going on so long just underlines how harmful it has been, because the death toll is so high it will never be calculated, and has been entirely unnecessary since we were able to harvest crops successfully. With this attitude nothing would ever change in society, and things that used to happen for hundreds of years like slavery and so on would continue today just because that's what has been happening.

We have to eat animal products to survive
This is false as proven by all the hundreds of millions of vegans in the world.

~ Vegan Sidekick</sub>