As a vegan I find it fun to create delicious meals from scratch. Effortless to find cruelty-free make up brands and straight forward to buy clothes with no animal products in them. Does this mean I face no difficulties? No. I do. But for the most part, it's a great lifestyle.
In the 7 months I've been vegan I have found the most difficult part of this lifestyle is seeing some vegans over-analysing (with intent to be super unnecessarily critical) and in some cases, viciously attacking other vegans.
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| X-23 Cosplay by The Vegan Cupcake |
I've had a few vegans nit-pick me and my life to find out if I'm 'vegan enough'. I've had vegans trying to catch me out, trying to trip me up, trying to put me into a corner so that I feel 'less vegan'. It almost put me off this lifestyle. It almost made me want to disassociate myself from the label of 'vegan' completely. It gave me horrible anxiety and it left me feeling depressed and confused. It took some months into being vegan for me to stop caring what others thought about my 'level of veganism' if you will. And that was the best thing I ever did.
Realistically, it doesn't matter what type of vegan you are. There are ways to eat healthy when being vegan, of course, but so long as you're vegan it's up to you if you want to be a junk food vegan, a junk-now-and-again vegan or a fully raw machine. Or whatever other variant in between those you can think of. It doesn't matter. You're still vegan, you're still showing compassion for the living beings on this planet as well as the earth itself and that is what matters most in the grand scheme of things.
What's unproductive is spending your time nit-picking or attacking other vegans. They're striving to do the same things you are. It's easy to forget that other peoples' life circumstances are not your own. We are all in different positions in life. We all started from different points. We all developed through life differently.
When most people go vegan they are re-learning entire life lessons and habits. Do your best to not forget that just because you are used to the lifestyle now. Remember that they have made a very kind, awesome decision. Veganism is not just refraining from eating meat, dairy and eggs. It's learning to change an entire mindset and lifestyle. Learning new ingredient names you didn't know existed before, understanding where your food, beauty/lifestyle products and even your medicine come from. When you go vegan initially you have to address your previous non vegan lifestyle. And not everybody can afford to give up their non vegan clothing or other similar items. Not everyone will want to either and that doesn't make them a bad person. Understand that you don't know the full story behind someone's decisions to keep non vegan items despite being vegan, nor should you pry into them. Understand some vegans have good reason to take non vegan medication or use a product that isn't completely vegan and that's not their fault, nor does it make them an unethical person.
All the new information, intial changes and decisions can be alot to take in for new vegans (hey, even long term vegans can still struggle), so drop the megaphone to the side, stand off the soapbox and relax.
Being an abelist tool towards other vegans isn't going to help or save animals. It isn't going to do anything for the earthly problems veganism can mend. The animals who suffer, I'm sure, would far more appreciate you being a positive example of veganism instead of being an example of someone who attacks others for not being 'good enough'.
Instead of analysing how vegan someone is, how about spending that time and energy donating to an animal shelter, helping out at a sanctuary or even something as simple as posting educational material to teach people about the damage animal agriculture causes. Hell, do what I do and post yummy vegan food recipes, advertise cruelty free make up brands or create any other fun lifestyle posts if you want. Do what feels comfortable for you. You don't even have to be an activist to be vegan.You don't have to have extensive knowledge of complicated ingredients to be vegan. You don't have to throw away all your non vegan stuff to be vegan.
Veganism isn't a competition of who is the 'most' vegan (whatever that is) or who does veganism the 'best' or who lives the most 'pure' vegan life.
Attacking other vegans doesn't make you a better or more ethical person. As much as I understand your passion for helping animals, people and the planet, your actions just don't represent your intentions.
Nobody's 'perfect'.
Be as kind as veganism itself.
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