Vegetarians who say this shit say they enjoy getting encouragement from vegans, but they actually just want a pat on the back and brownie points from susceptible vegans, not actual encouragement.
This is the greatest encouragement I can give them, but because it’s in an “aggressive” tone, they love to say “You’re the reason why people shy away from going vegan!”
Sorry to tell ya, but if some harsh words promoting the very ideological foundation of veganism are enough to discourage you, then you clearly don’t have a plan to “transition” to veganism to begin with.
Imagine telling someone “You really need to stop being fucking racist.” and then they say “Ugh! I’m working on it! You being so pushy makes me want to be more racist actually!”
The cheese rots into their brains apparently.
From carnist to plant-based diet? It was instant.
From plant-based diet to wholehearted ethical vegan? It took some months worth of examination into various films, videos, books, resources, and interactions.
I started eating a plant-based diet for health reasons. However, I knew ethical veganism was an important movement when I first started abstaining from animal products, but I didn’t start to truly get how vital it is until a few months into it.
Once I realized how crucial animal liberation is, I realized there was no real reason for me to put “my health” at the forefront of why I abstain from animal products. I believe that tons of carnists reject the premise of ethical veganism because they find it too inconvenient, not necessarily that they believe it to be wrong. It’s just that many won’t admit that because it would make them self-admitted hypocrites.
Having awareness of this, I said, “I’m already not eating animal products, so it’s not like I have to worry about that ‘convenience’ excuse that carnists use to embrace ethical veganism,” so I went ahead and embraced ethical veganism, especially once the adequate knowledge was there, and that’s what baby steppers don’t have: adequate knowledge. If they did, they’d just go vegan. Signaling that urgency to them isn’t an evil, degrading move. It’s an effort to bring them to awareness.
Simply put, I never had a “I know I should go vegan, but I’m just gonna continue gradually lessening animal products out of my life to slowly transition” moment in the sense that typical baby steppers have.
Sometimes I’ll have very silly thoughts where I’m like “Animal liberation? No no no, I’m not an extremist, I just think we should stop eating them, or farming them, or killing them for their body parts, or exploiting them for labor, and hey so I feel really weird about zoos, and…”
I think my experience can be distilled down to essentially this, though my integration of the knowledge was rather unnecessarily prolonged because I was lying to myself in order to avoid feeling emotions.
Once I had enough information and importantly couldn’t lie to myself to ignore it anymore, being vegan became such an easy and freeing thing to do. In the face of the emotional turmoil I was experiencing working through understanding the immorality of my interactions with the animal torture industries, it was an incredible relief to know I was finally doing the right thing.