![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unspeakablehorrorOne thing I find absolutely bizarre and baffling is people who call themselves vegans saying 'oh, but of course I eat meat if I spend time with friends, otherwise how else would I socialize?'
And I'm just thinking
1. You need to find better friends. This is not even about asks you are making of them. I don't expect everyone around me or even all my friends to share all my ethics, including my veganism. That would be great, but it's not the reality I live in. But this isn't about that. This is about them imposing their food choices on you.
It's about the expectation that you're the problem if for whatever reason, you don't want to eat what they're eating. Like sure, that poses extra complications for people if you don't eat what they do, but if that's not something someone is willing to accommodate for their friends, that's a problem with them. And you can certainly offer to do things to make that easier on them, but even if you don't, forcing someone to eat something they don't want to eat is not friendship or hospitality. It's an attack on bodily autonomy.
2. Your ethics does not mean anything if it is contingent on social convenience. Do you do this for your other ethical precepts too? Like do you litter with your friends if they think environmentalism is cringe? It's one thing to have actual physical obstacles to doing something, another to just go along with injustice and oppression because everyone else is doing it. The latter is not only a major way injustice becomes enforced, but enlists you directly in its continuance.
3. Oh, you're not vegan for ethics but for health reasons? Well, that's not veganism, then. That's plant based eating. Common misconception.
And I'm just thinking
1. You need to find better friends. This is not even about asks you are making of them. I don't expect everyone around me or even all my friends to share all my ethics, including my veganism. That would be great, but it's not the reality I live in. But this isn't about that. This is about them imposing their food choices on you.
It's about the expectation that you're the problem if for whatever reason, you don't want to eat what they're eating. Like sure, that poses extra complications for people if you don't eat what they do, but if that's not something someone is willing to accommodate for their friends, that's a problem with them. And you can certainly offer to do things to make that easier on them, but even if you don't, forcing someone to eat something they don't want to eat is not friendship or hospitality. It's an attack on bodily autonomy.
2. Your ethics does not mean anything if it is contingent on social convenience. Do you do this for your other ethical precepts too? Like do you litter with your friends if they think environmentalism is cringe? It's one thing to have actual physical obstacles to doing something, another to just go along with injustice and oppression because everyone else is doing it. The latter is not only a major way injustice becomes enforced, but enlists you directly in its continuance.
3. Oh, you're not vegan for ethics but for health reasons? Well, that's not veganism, then. That's plant based eating. Common misconception.