"Imperfect vegans" EXPOSED

Is it about personal purity? Where is the controversy though?

Most likely, you have seen people who claim to be “imperfect vegans”. Oftentimes, they make posts with dramatic, eye-catching titles that say something like “8 things I do as an imperfect vegan” or “I do these controversial things that other vegans hate me for”. What do they mean by “controversial”? Ironically, there’s nothing controversial about their takes. Not even close. In fact, I usually predict, say, about 80% of what they’re going to say just by looking at the title or at the beginning of a video. They sound like someone sitting in a positive pop psychology data center, copying and pasting the same regurgitated slop everyone has heard before, but with different profiles. No, there’s nothing controversial about eating an animal-derived cheese pizza with your friends, Meggie. But let’s get their takes under scrutiny if they actually hold any truth.

Oftentimes, the issue is framed from a purely consumerist, supply-demand logic, as in, whatever action they do, despite that being non-vegan (for example, wearing someone’s skin they bought before becoming”vegan”), it is considered “more effective than these purist, dogmatic vegans”. But here’s the thing: that’s a very shallow look at the issue. Why? Because animal exploitation doesn’t arise in its physical form out of nowhere. It exists because humanity is accustomed to viewing animals as resources, commodities, and slaves. Most humans view animals through these degrading lenses, most often without even thinking about it for a bit. The core problem lies precisely in the mentality of humans. That’s not just my word; it’s a sociologically established root cause of the injustice. It’s an exclusively social problem, not a consumerist one. This means that “effectiveness” here is not the “vegan effectiveness”, as in eradicating this whole societal narrative that places humans as masters and animals as objects to use for our desires. The “effectiveness” they refer to is this symptomatic, strict vegetarian effort in supply-demand reduction, via getting people to eat plants, often temporarily, as the people they influence have really no rejecting of animal exploitation.

This has nothing to do with a mind change on the issue of animal use, therefore nothing to do with veganism. So no, the claim of “effectiveness” is maybe true in the utilitarian sunshine and lollipops world, but not in the real one, where you perpetuate the root cause of the oppression via objectifying the individuals, undermining the movement’s meaning, yet claim to be a part of the cause you clearly disagree with.

Far too often, vegans are portrayed as “purists” who care about ideology and nothing else. The fixation here is again, on practices and not actually on what people’s views on the issue of animal exploitation are. The point isn’t in personal purity, but in opposing seeing an individual as our resource. The actions that we do in our day to day lives are just a reflection of that stance or a lack of thereof. There’s nothing unpopular or controversial in the lack of a vegan stance when you use animals with other non-vegans to make it lollypop comfortable for everyone. Remember: not a chance to get anyone to rethink their position on animal use — keep the root problem intact! Pink comfort all the way — who cares about justice, victims, and behavioral psychology? Just be liked by oppressors, be weak and ineffective, yet claim to be so because your friend tried tofu roast last year, and your sister was veg...ooops she ate fully plant-based diet for a year!

Practices are never the core problem when it comes to fundamental injustice. But notice, this is literally all they talk about in the so-called vegan discourse. This is not just ignorant, it’s intellectually lazy to not even try to figure out how justice movements even function. For example, they say that “nobody is 100 vegan anyway, tires contain something from animals, what about medicine, what about house materials? We live in the non-vegan world!”. We sure live in an exploitative world. But to make it clearer what the issue here is, let me make a human analogy. Imagine we have a world built on women trafficking. It’s so ingrained worldwide that almost everyone sees women as sexual objects, resources, and commodities — to the point that even those who oppose it sometimes have a hard time avoiding women use in practice, for example, in certain products. And then self proclaimed feminists come up with a notion of “imperfect feminism”, and what they mean by that is wearing “second hand” gloves made out of women skin, visit places where women are used as entertainment with their non-feminist friends “effectiveness, no dogmatism, yay!”, and claim “they won’t tell anyone to oppose women slavery, because that’s too aggressive and off-putting.” Do you see the upside down world these people are living in?

Again, the issue here in a women’s scenario wouldn’t be about “purity”, would it? Clearly, hard or impossible feasibility of the practices in some cases isn’t an argument to see veganism as a dietary deviation, individuals as things, and yourself as a utilitarian hero, all while you’re just an obstacle in eradicating the root cause. These people always see the matter in terms of influence on a plant-based diet. They’re also very ignorant and believe that you either shout at people or are a soft apologist, where the latter option is the good one. It’s almost like none of what we really need.

Assertive communication, characterized by respect, honesty, and firm stance, is proven by both the history of other movements and social psychology to be the only rational option. More about this here. Not aggressive, not blaming, and definitely not apologetic. Surely it’s not comfortable to question one’s beliefs about such a normalized injustice. But that’s exactly where actual change originates, and when people recognize their belief systems as false, not just eat lentil soup with you for a year and declare “ex-veganism”.

Discomfort. This is what these people usually avoid. They just want to feel comfortable with the status quo rather than challenging it at a fundamental level. Comfort is what undermines the effort of the vegan cause, just like it has with other justice causes. Sending these detrimental messages pretending that they’re controversial and that they’re vegan, effectively robs animals off ethical clarity that animals deserve, just like it would do the same in the aforementioned human scenario via “imperfect feminism”.

Another thing is that these people usually have no idea on veganism’s meaning and often conflate it with the harm that humans cause to ecology, health, and so on. For example, when critiqued on the fact that they objectify animals in their narrative, in response, you may hear something like: “oh but don’t you use transportation? Don’t you buy conventional produce? It kills a lot of animals, so why do you care about me eating a piece of animal-flesh lasagna with my friends once in a few months? It’s the same harm”. The misunderstanding here is that veganism is against harm, suffering, and killing, and not about the use per se, regardless of consequences, and therefore, the two actions are measured by their outcomes. In a human scenario, it would be like justifying women slavery by eating a bit of cheese squeezed out of their breasts because “hey, women are harmed by aviation, factories, pollution, and they’re even killed in the industries sometimes. Imperfect and effective feminism wins, you purists!” That notion definitely does not view women as resources and definitely doesn’t function as a part of the problem why women are considered as a form of property, not a chance. “They’re exploited because these dogmatic, puristic feminists are too aggressive when they dare to say that women shouldn’t be commodified. It’s they who are the reason people don’t show a basic decency to women.” Makes sense!

And if you’re tempted to say something like “but it’s far more normalized, we need a special approach, it’s different here” — that’s precisely the problem that animals are far more degraded than any group of humans has ever been. Which is not an argument for further dilution and utilitarian pink lollypops, but for education, questioning beliefs, and rejecting norms, so in short, to actually work on the eradication of this societal root problem. It’s an argument for strong advocacy, not more ineffective dietary influence.

The day will come when wearing someone’s skin, including “second hand”, will be very frowned upon, as well as other practices that come from exploitative non-vegan ideology. The very belief will be discarded and condemned. And just like proven by history over and over again, it will happen despite of your efforts that function as dilution, distraction, and harm to the movement. It will not happen thanks to you. You don’t “add up” to veganism with this (un)”controversial” copy-paste garbage. You take away from it, just like, again, you’d function as a dilution in the human causes, no matter how many more veggies were eaten because of your uneducated post. It’s exactly these people whom you label as “purists” that will lead society there, with you as a hurdle in the middle.

Maybe at least stop being one?