Honestly, I have seen intense emotional responses on both sides. While yes, nearly all vegans are emotionally invested (because we made a conscious choice based on sincere beliefs to change daily habits, so we clearly cared), I’ve been surprised at the intensity of emotional reactions I have seen in omni people when they realise someone is vegan, even if the vegan does literally nothing beyond personally refraining from eating animal products. I’ve had people get genuinely angry at me and give unprompted and ludicrous lectures about plant sentience when they realised I wasn’t eating the meat, or give long and comprehensive histories of why they can’t go vegan, when I never asked. Similar to turning down cake at a party, and realising the person next to me suddenly feels a strong need to justify their cake consumption to me, when I really do not give a shit whether she eats cake or whether she had breakfast and how long she worked out today, but apparently, she really needs me to know now. Food is just a really emotional topic. I remember being a teenager, and being asked to sign some bizarre petition at my vets to get our government to put pressure on China to stop people from eating dogs. And I said why, I eat pigs, they are equally sentient, seems hypocritical to me, I’m not signing that. The next ten min, I thought I was going to get literally quartered by the (equally pig eating) dog owners in the waiting room. Because I refused to condemn other people for the animals they were eating. It was surreal.
I focused my answer on the morally charged side, not emotional. The quoted statement said A and B so as long as B is mostly true for vegans, A and B is mostly true for (a sub-group) of vegans.
I’d agree with the characterization “it’s deeply emotionally and morally charged for one side in a conversation, and often emotional to the other.” because most people don’t have small identities and do feel attacked by others behaving differently indeed.
Honestly, I have seen intense emotional responses on both sides. While yes, nearly all vegans are emotionally invested (because we made a conscious choice based on sincere beliefs to change daily habits, so we clearly cared), I’ve been surprised at the intensity of emotional reactions I have seen in omni people when they realise someone is vegan, even if the vegan does literally nothing beyond personally refraining from eating animal products. I’ve had people get genuinely angry at me and give unprompted and ludicrous lectures about plant sentience when they realised I wasn’t eating the meat, or give long and comprehensive histories of why they can’t go vegan, when I never asked. Similar to turning down cake at a party, and realising the person next to me suddenly feels a strong need to justify their cake consumption to me, when I really do not give a shit whether she eats cake or whether she had breakfast and how long she worked out today, but apparently, she really needs me to know now. Food is just a really emotional topic. I remember being a teenager, and being asked to sign some bizarre petition at my vets to get our government to put pressure on China to stop people from eating dogs. And I said why, I eat pigs, they are equally sentient, seems hypocritical to me, I’m not signing that. The next ten min, I thought I was going to get literally quartered by the (equally pig eating) dog owners in the waiting room. Because I refused to condemn other people for the animals they were eating. It was surreal.
I focused my answer on the morally charged side, not emotional. The quoted statement said A and B so as long as B is mostly true for vegans, A and B is mostly true for (a sub-group) of vegans.
I’d agree with the characterization “it’s deeply emotionally and morally charged for one side in a conversation, and often emotional to the other.” because most people don’t have small identities and do feel attacked by others behaving differently indeed.