On Being a 'Judgmental Vegan'

Too often other so-called vegans tell me (unprompted mind you) that the reason they do not speak out for animals is because they do not want to be a judgy/preachy/self-righteous/sanctimonious vegan. And always I find this declaration amusing. Though left unstated the following is implied: that vegans who do judge their cause favorably and make those judgments known are by contrast annoying/grating/patronizing/condescending/moralizing/perhaps even downright detestable. Which, of course, is a very judgmental stance for them to take.

What conformist vegans (as I judgmentally call them) refuse to see is that any kind of justification for an action already entails a judgment. This is inescapable. To say ‘I do X because of Y’ is to judge Y as a good reason to do X. So, in the same way, to say ‘I do not speak out for animals because I do not want to be a judgmental vegan’ is to judge 'being a judgmental vegan’ a valid reason against ‘speaking out for animals.’

There is then a kind of chicanery to this declaration: while presenting themselves as taking a stance against all judgment, in truth they are taking a stance against only one judgment in favor of another. They are saying in effect that the badness of having convictions over the treatment of animals outweighs whatever good we may think we do in advocating for them; that it is better that we conform than let our judgments disrupt the Human Supremacist status quo.

I suspect part of why conformist vegans disguise their meaning in this way is that it shields them from reproach.

‘No, no—don’t get so defensive you preachy vegan. I did not mean to legislate what is right and wrong for all humankind, only for myself.”

Dishonesty aside, there is something fundamentally absurd about this—about endorsing a reason for holding a certain stance and not intending it as binding for anyone else. Presumably, if morality really could be so idiosyncratic as this, akin to deciding on one’s preferred flavor of ice cream, then why bother offering a justification at all? To attempt a justification presupposes that others could at least in theory understand your reasons and, in understanding them, also potentially take them up as their own.

In any case, it is illuminating here to ask them whether they take the same stance in respect to other forms of injustice or whether it’s only this one. Go down the list, I am sure there is something they find intolerable. Once you find it, then there you have once again a comparative judgment: yes, child abuse for instance is bad enough to merit being judgmental about, but not the animal genocide—that I just find icky.

As to what might be motivating this disavowal of judgment, that is not so hard to guess at. It is cowardice: a fear of being oneself judged by others, shunned for one’s convictions. What is ironic and sad about all this is that it means one can be both an ally in the fight for animal justice and also inadvertently an enemy, perpetuating a stigma that still haunts and hampers our movement.

To be clear, I am not saying that the judgments vegan activists are in the habit of making merit no scrutiny at all. On the contrary, I believe we all need to think really hard about who and what merit judgment and of what sort. To what extent should we hold individuals responsible for their complicity in the system that ravages animal bodies at an industrial scale? What about those who directly inflict violence at scales much smaller? And if what they do is born of necessity, how much does that exonerate them? What if they themselves are victims too? Or perhaps our rage and condemnation should be reserved for the systems, ideologies, practices that perpetuate the conditions that animals now suffer through. And how much of the decision of who we blame is to be informed by a strategic consideration of the effects that blame?