Found in the comments of a youtube vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwI6py78gsI (I didn't watch because I never watch youtube videos, only reading the comments.
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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Being vegan isn't about being "closer to what nature intended", it's about reducing cruelty and harm as much as practicable/possible.
Being vegan is a lot of things to a lot of people. It’s not only about animal suffering. This is true for some people but plenty of people are vegan for health reasons.
No they're on plant based diets. you don't stop using rabbit glue for health reasons, or not buy a leather couch for health reasons.
Veganism is not a diet, it is a philosophical and moral stance which necessarily includes making changes to one's diet among other things.
The dictionary disagrees with you: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vegan
ok but the vegan society, the literal originator of the word, disagrees with that.
https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism
I agree that many people view veganism as a diet, but they're wrong. It's a position of ignorance. you can probably find masses of people who understand feminism to be a superiority movement about oppressing men but that doesn't make that true.
Yeah but the difference is there is no dictionary definition that supports that definition of feminism. It’s just an interpretation. You could say the same thing about veganism as being a philosophy that animals are superior to people. That’s a more direct metaphor and you would be just as wrong, and no dictionary would agree with you.
Any “ism” will have multiple ways to define it, and those who coin a term don’t get to define its evolution. If you want to take the “GNU/Linux” approach and insist everyone else is using the word wrong then go for it. But in modern parlance, “vegan” is frequently if not almost always used to refer to the diet, whereas “veganism” does evoke the stricter definition you’re touting.
Dictionaries are just someone's attempt to record how people use words. They're not authorities on meaning, just records of use.
If someone says they're vegan you would expect them to use no animal products, including clothing, nail polish, colour pigments etc. That's not controversial, you can find shampoo and jackets marked as vegan it is a common understanding. That is just incoherent with health motivations, and indeed many "vegan for health " people do use animal products and have cheat days and crap. They aren't vegan, they're just dieting.
People call themselves lots of crap, doesn't make it true.
I absolutely hear that argument all the time though, that “our stomachs aren’t designed to eat meat so you shouldn’t”.
Personally, I have absolutely cut back on meat, especially beef, but still eat it probably twice a week. It’s a far more realistic ask than veganism, though I perhaps should’ve specified only the most deranged of vegans act like I was describing in the first place.