In my experience it is not NEARLY as prevalent as when someone learns that you are vegan or finds out about vegan communities and whatnot. People make countless memes about vegans for example, but when was the last time you saw a meme about someone choosing to eat Halal? Because to my knowledge there is no scientific study on the different experiences of these groups it is impossible to talk about this topic in any way that isn’t anecdotal but for what it’s worth I have been all over the US and the anecdotal experience that I have had is so overwhelming that I refuse to believe someone is arguing in good faith if they are claiming that, for example, someone eating Halal has even a remotely similar experience to that of vegans.

My guess is that this is because people tend to associate other dietary or lifestyle decisions as being just a different way to live. Like oh, that person is Muslim or Jewish and that influences their diet. And they don’t take that as a personal judgement anymore than they do when they learn that that person is Muslim or Jewish to begin with. But with veganism it is usually not something that a person is raised into. It is a decision that that person has made after learning more about the animal agriculture industry and it is usually for ethical reasons primarily. Not because a religious book told them to. Therefore they hear that someone is vegan and are instantly defensive in a way that isn’t true with halal, kosher, etc.

Like naeva said comments by nonvegans are allowed. The rule doesn’t explicitly preclude anyone who isn’t vegan from engaging in conversation. What it does not allow is for bad faith comments, strawmen arguments (carnist rhetoric and the like), and those that are hostile to vegans (antivegans) to come here and as the OP would put it “meatsplain”.

I remove comments that are advocating for animal abuse, carnist propaganda, speciesism, and those made by antivegans.

Discussions about veganism here are heavily skewed as vegans are outnumbered vastly and it tends to be a sensitive topic due to cognitive dissonance. This makes it so that actual discussion is very hard as it often gets overun by reactionary takes and hostility to empathy.

Pinning posts has not helped in the past as most people don’t read it or refuse to listen to the message before commenting here.

I cannot speak for any other mod, being newly minted, but this is not a vegans only sub.

Respectful and contextually appropriate replies are welcome but replies specifically hostile or following standard, trivially disputed, rhetoric will be removed.

For example I would not remove a reply like “What is it that determines whether or not something or someone is ok to eat in your eyes?” but I would remove “don’t you know grass screams when you cut it. You’re just hypocritical!”

Basically if you’re posting stuff to own the vegans, explain why vegans are wrong, or saying something against veganism that a trivial search or five minutes considering the opposite position would show as false or grossly distorted your comment will be removed.

EDIT:

Just to add on to what I said. I think most of us would actually love to be wrong, if someone had strong evidence. Going vegan isn’t tremendously hard, but it is definitely harder than never thinking about food and eating/wearing/using whatever you feel like because the whim to do so takes you. Mostly it can be socially isolating, because regardless of how much empathy you might actually have for carnists (having been one yourself, there is no shame in having been indoctrinated) people will feel that you condemn them and consequently try to shame you. (there was some study about this but I’m struggling to remember the title).

If someone could show me evidence that idk dogs were mere reflex machines like Descartes maintained when he vivisected them I would chow down. It’s not really a particularly comfortable position to feel like you’re living in the middle of a holocaust and most of the people you love and respect are not only oblivious, but actively defend and relish it.

It’s just incredibly tedious to deal with the same set of disingenuous excuses. Like the aforementioned plants feel pain thing, I have never in my life seen anyone actually protest something like mowing lawns. I have basically zero reason to believe that anyone who isn’t a jain thinks this is true, and even then… what is it that animals eat and how does physics work?

Tourists without guides can end up in very strange situations.

If someone is going to browse all then they should be aware that they are entering different communities and be respectful of those communities. If they are disrespectful, whether it is a result of being unaware or just not caring, in my opinion that should warrant an immediate ban pending a demonstration of understanding and admission that what they did was wrong. Unfortunately even that might not make a noticeable difference since many of the disrespectful people are probably not repeat posters. Beyond that the only thing that I’m aware of that could really be done is making the community private which is obviously not ideal. Perhaps there could exist some middle ground of a community not being private but also not appearing on all but I’m unaware of if that’s possible or if it would even be any better in practice.

which means it often comes along with judgemental opinions about carnists

I would disagree with this portion of your post if it said most or all vegans. I have found most vegans are making a personal decision without passing judgement on others.

Even so, there absolutely are militant vegans who want to shame others, and those vocal minority give the rest a bad name.

Source: Spouse is vegan. I am supportive, slowly changing my diet. Blood tests show really positive results. I still don’t understand honey.

I wouldn’t call it “a good number.” It’s a very small minority. Outside of the memery of the militant vegan, I’ve never experienced a vegan preaching to me about dietary habits.

I say cool

not cool tho

I never had a meat eater stand up next to me harassing me for eating a salad while I was eating out.

Removed by mod

It is wrong though. Like you clearly care but what, it’s ok to do a little evil as a treat? why?

I don’t hate vegans at all, I hate people that are pretentious assholes about being vegan

Which is zero vegans.

Veganism is (mostly) binary for a reason. You either kill and exploit non-human animals for your pleasure (taste, comfort, affordability, i.e. a want) or you don’t (exceptions exist, but mostly represent needs and not wants, e.g. conditions, intial acclimatisation etc.)

Veganism and Vegetarianism are not two steps of the same ladder. I’m not an expert on vegetarianism, but AFAIK vegetarianism aims to avoid meat-eating. Veganism aims to minimise suffering from the killing and exploitation of (non-human) animals by abstaining from consuming products directly made from (non-human) animals.

Veganism isn’t inherently utilitarian. I don’t agree with them, but there are vegans who are climate change (impact) denialists. I don’t agree that giving up on veganism (which has huge climate action potential) for some vague ‘free energy’ is a viable climate action path that doesn’t follow RCP8.5. Nevertheless, I consider those either-or, dichotomy debates as delayist discourse or simply put fossil fuel arguments. Food AND Energy need to cut emissions completely.

One of the things that really changed my perception was learning that a single burger patty might contain some ground up flesh of a few, or possibly even a hundred or more animals.

Our food system does a really good job of hiding it’s brutality behind heavy processing, and clever packaging and advertising. But once we open our eyes to what really goes on, it can’t be unlearned. We have a responsibility to at least make ourselves aware when our actions are responsible for awful things happening.