The Moral Blindspot of Eating Animals: Why I'm Becoming that 'Annoying Vegan'
Let me take you through a quick hypothetical.
Imagine a country in which at all points in time, 1.6
3 million women are kept in inside large warehouses across that country. With no sanitation or toilets, urine and faeces drip down her legs and she must walk in the waste of her fellow women.
Every now and again, they are dragged from this warehouse where they are placed into a crate (otherwise called a 'rape rack').
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An unfamiliar person places their arm into the woman's anus to push her uterus down and a large needle full of a random man's semen is injected into her vagina.
Once these mothers give birth to their baby, even while their placenta remains hanging outside her vagina, her baby is placed in a trolley and carted away, never to be seen again. She and her baby wail for their lost love.
She is then hooked up to a machine via her breasts, and faces a large pool of milk that was meant to nourish her baby.
This process repeats around 4 times until the woman's breasts become unusually enlarged and start to leak pus due to her repeated lactation and aggressive methods of taking her breastmilk.
By this point, she is kicked into a tight cage and an electrical stunning gun is placed at her head, she screams out for help and bangs on the walls before the stunning is achieved.
She is hung up by her feet, and her neck is slit just as she regains consciousness from the temporary stun, which did not work.
The woman bleeds out, alone. The next one is on her way.
Imagine if you saw this being uncovered on BBC News. A massacre. An atrocity. International outrage. Sanctions. Boycotts. Protests. It would likely be dismantled almost immediately after the rest of the world found out.
What I outlined earlier is the exact process female cows in the UK experience in the farms that supply our milk and beef to our supermarkets. Even under the label of RSPCA approved, the process is still the same.
Recently I watched a documentary called 'Dominion' (is what the start of nearly every 'why I'm now a vegan' story says). I was with a friend in a cafe discussing my lesson plan I was creating for a university project in which I teach year 10s a topic of my choice.
"Animal rights! I love animal ethics, I think it's so interesting" is what I said to her. I had previously done a lesson learning about Peter Singer's case for giving animals equal moral consideration; I agreed, but also was hungry and had a sausage roll an hour after. Still, as a philosophy topic, I found it fascinating.
A few years back I heard of Dominion, I'd read reviews and realised that once you see it, you can never turn back time. It changes you. But I didn't want to watch it - I wanted to live in ignorance. So I didn't, I forgot about it, continued eating meat regularly, and stuck my head in the sand.
How could I stand up in front of a class questioning their own speciesist biases while I am wholly aware I am doing the exact same thing by knowing I can know the truth, but just didn't really fancy switching my whole diet? That I liked the taste of meat too much to ever want to see how it ends up on my plate? That I love animals! But only the ones which don't force me to change my lifestyle.
After the cafe, I told her I wanted to watch something with her. We were both open to the idea of veganism, but never had the proper push to go ahead.
We stuck on the film. Within 15 minutes we were sobbing. Within 30 I was bordering on a panic attack. And after the 2 hours were up, we sat in silence, nauseous, shaken, but also awestruck.
Dominion shook me to my core. I lay in bed depressed and on the verge of vomiting for 2 hours after that. I felt like such an attention seeker but I swear it was an honest reaction. I had already gone to the shops by then and bought tofu and coconut milk, and swore to all my housemates I was changed.
If I'm being honest, I did not expect this to last long. I thought it was just a novelty, something that would last a week or two and then I'd return to my 'normal' ways. But I am so glad it hasn't.
I watch Earthling Ed on YouTube so much that his voice instantly calms me. I have searched and looked into every supermarket's and food chain's ways of supplying meat. I've made awful tofu dishes that were inedible due to me being a shit cook but I know one day I will master it.
I have turned into the most annoying vegan. I am preachy. I am proud. I am a little arrogant for feeling ethically superior. But why should I stop?
With women's rights, for example, of course I'm preachy and proud and feel ethically superior to misogynists! If it were women's rights, I wouldn't get called a terrorist (thanks Piers) for sharing my views. And most wouldn't say I'm "shoving it down people's throats". So why is it the case with veganism?
There is something that deeply scares me in society today is the idea of moral blind spots. Especially, what if our mass slaughter and exploitation of animals is one of the most damning moral blind spots of our age?
In the past, moral blind spots included slavery, colonialism, lack of women's suffrage, and even animal testing which is becoming more and more criticised. Moral blind spots consist of where something is deemed normal, natural, and necessary in the present, but after a few decades is seen as abhorrent and unimaginable that any society could engage in that.
Anthony Appiah gave four indications something would be a moral blind spot in the future:
1. The arguments against it already exist - see any vegan argument ever
2. The practice relies on strategic ignorance - what I was doing all those years
3. Defenders use tradition or necessity to justify it - "we've always eaten meat/we need it to survive!"
4. Cruelty is built into the system - the very existence of factory farming
When I realised that killing animals just to unnecessarily consume them could be a moral blind spot that in a few decades or centuries would be widely condemned, this prevented any form of novelty wearing off for me.
We as humans are at the top of the food chain, we have immense power and with that comes responsibility. Just like those ultra-rich 1% who exploit workers simply because they have the money and power to do so, we as humans are exploiting animals just because we have physical and cognitive power over them.
We have perceived superiority simply due to fact that we were born with particular genetic makeups.
Sound familiar to you?
Yeah, that very premise underlies justifications of racism, sexism, and ableism. We have white skin, they have black skin - we are better. We have penises, they have vaginas - we are better. We are human, they are not - we are better.
Personally, I'd rather not follow a practice which eerily reflects the logic of some of the most widespread and dangerous ideologies.
Obviously, the meat-eating I am opposing is the unnecessary, mass-produced consumption when we do have the option; some people say veganism is privileged, and appropriate indigenous communities to dismantle vegan points. The very issue with the meat industry is the excess even when we have alternatives.
I cannot list every single argument for and against veganism, nor am I going to discuss any more what actually happens to animals in factory farms (I've already introduced you to quite an example at the start). Because honestly? That's your job. Look it up yourself. Only you can lift your head up out the sand.
What side of history do you really want to be on? I know which one I'd rather pick.
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