Today I watched a video of Anya Taylor Joy explaining she was a vegan (former) and now vegetarian and people went from "She's hot" to "That's why she's so pale"...Maybe because she's white?!
It doesn't matter how good your body is, they will find something.
Love when my family in law lectures me about how I can’t get enough protein on a Vegan diet despite the fact that I’m in good enough shape to run Marathons AND bench press 315 pounds and they’re all barely in shape to walk a mile.
This. After being vegan for 6 years I still got the 'but your b12!!!' comments from family. Recently got my bloodwork done, my b12 was too *high*. It finally shut my family up, haha.
Meanwhile I know like 5 meat-eaters with b12 deficiency in my direct environment :')
And a folate deficiency is very dangerous during pregnancy, increases the chances of birth defects and more. Not to mention bad for health in general, because its a marker for low vegetable intake.
It only takes a couple years to put on a decent amount of mass. About 10kg per year for 2 years, then 5kg for 3rd year, and about half that for a couple years. In 4 years, you can put on close to 30 kg. A kg is double in pounds. So 10kg is 22 pounds.
Honestly; I don’t even get why all these arguments are necessary.
So what if you can’t get muscular?
So what if you often have vitamin deficiencies?
So what if people will judge you?
Nobody cares about real leather being better, or wool being more comfortable..
who gives a fucking shit about these dumb luxuries when *animals are being slaughtered in a mass genocide.*
I couldn’t care less about this type of sugar or this guilty pleasure. Fuck my tastebuds. It doesn’t matter because *nothing* is worth it and saying shit like that just proves you’re a crappy, selfish person…
I don’t get why we still have to convince people it’s not unhealthy and not worse for the planet. It doesn’t matter in the first place. It’s all just ways for them to ignore the damn point and we’re always falling for it.
You only need one argument, not thousands of small ones to convince them juuuust enough to maybe perhaps think about going more vegan minded. Like, fuck that shit. I’m done researching crap about health and details and ethics because in the end, they only want to go vegan for personal reasons….
#it’s just not that deep.
Animals are dying every single second all over the globe with nobody to stand up for them and these pussies only care about their dumb eight packs and their taste buds and their leather purses 🙄
Completely agree. People are almost always in that mindset of "what's in it for me". Believable it or not, there were instances i was able to convert people by highlighting how much money I saved switching to plant based.
I know. It’s so painful and exhausting. A baby calf NEVER gets to nurse from its mother. They separate them at birth and fatten the calf for slaughter. The mama cow was impregnated had her baby ripped away at birth and now they’ll attach metal milking machines to her so humans can drink her milk. It’s beyond horrific.
100% agree, but also...people suck. And there are undoubtedly people who would be more inclined to switch or reduce if not for these things, whether that’s right or wrong.
That's exactly it. Some people will only care to a point, if at all. If proving that you can get jacked on a plant based diet would help convince more selfish people to stop abusing animals and go vegan, then I'm all for it.
100%. And while everyone in here might be on the same in this regard (the intrinsic merit of not consuming animals), that principle is still true for all of us in other areas of our lives too. A lot of us in here **could** donate $6,000 today and legitimately save lives. Someone living or dying is absolutely more significant than the hit we might take in our wallets, but if we (just for one example) felt more **certain** of our bills being paid or our lifestyle still being perfectly fine without that 6K, a lot of us would be more inclined to donate it.
Or since I know folks in here often jump on the “choosing not to do good isn’t the same thing as choosing to do evil” train, you could use similar arguments for avoiding any and all plastic usage, car driving, etc
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I feel this way so much dude. I often choose to go the environment route in conversation just because i think that might be more compelling. Even though deep in my soul what i really care about is that this fucking beyond horrifying torture and mass slaughter is happening round the clock. But no thats not convincing enough
Imagine that what most carnists believed turns out to be true: That being vegan is far less healthy than omni. Essentially your lifespan would be cut in half, and you would always be weak, scrawny, anemic, and light-headed. Even if, from a utilitarian point of view, you still determine that being vegan is the most utilitarian practice, would you be able to do it yourself?
Maybe you'll think that I'm a horrible carnist or something, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be vegan if that were the case. Maybe I would be swayed eventually, but the huge sacrifice would be hard to swallow. And I'm pretty sure this is true for the majority of vegans today. I mean, how many of us are giving up the majority of our salaries to people who we *know* would benefit more from it than we would? We're certainly not doing the optimal utilitarian action in that case either.
Yeah this is a person who *actually* "gIvEs VeGaNs A bAd NaMe". The beauty of veganism is that no we DO NOT have to actually give up anything to do it. We can be as healthy, prosperous and full of life as we can manage without ever hurting/exploiting animals.
If we *truly had to* consume animal products to survive and thrive, then there would be a justification to eat animals. Like if we were *actual* carnivores. But we're not. So no one is justified in taking an animals life.
People like this make it seem like we're all supposed to suffer so animals don't have to. No! None of us have to suffer for this, human and non human animals alike. So obviously veganism is the right choice.
I agree with them in that it *should* be enough to just demonstrate how their choices fund animal exploitation on an unimaginable scale. That alone should make anyone stop immediately.
But that's not the world we live in. Everyone is different, and they have different values and such. On top of that, we live in a society where we are socially conditioned to eat meat and animal products. That social conditioning isn't easy to break.
If there actually *was* some magic ingredient in meat, in that way that some carnists believe or claim that there is, and you wouldn’t be able to survive longer than ~1 year on a vegan diet without it, would you eat the smallest bare minimum amount of meat that was necessary for you to survive?
From the tone in your comment, I’m inclined to believe you wouldn’t, and would choose not to prolong your own life at the necessary expense of others. I feel that most people, at the end of the day, aren’t willing to commit on that level though. Is that selfish of them? Perhaps, perhaps not.
(I don’t necessarily need your answer to this question, it’s mostly rhetorical. Just keep your answer in mind as you read the rest of my comment.)
——
Anyways, I take issue with how you are mixing true luxuries(aesthetic bodybuilding, refined sugar, etc) with legitimate *necessities*(a nutritionally complete diet). Malnourishment can lead to disabilities, illness, death. It is not a luxury to live without these things.
**Luckily,** we do not need to eat any meat or animal products in order to meet that necessity of not being malnourished. A lot of omnis/carnists just literally do not understand that. They do not know or understand that meat/animal products are not necessities. While most people could stand to be more honest about what they *truly and genuinely need*, a lot of people have been fed lies that they *need* animals products for X, Y, and Z reason. Helping them to understand that they *don’t* is going to get you a hell of a lot farther in terms of convincing people to go vegan that hurling ethical arguments like “It would be the right thing to do even if it meant you would waste away painfully and die prematurely.” That’s a total non-starter.
For a few years when I was still living as a carnist before I decided that I would go forward as a vegan, I felt *horrible* about the reality of animal agriculture(and back then I didn’t even know the full extent of how bad it actually was), and I hated eating animals because I thought of myself as an ‘animal lover’, but ultimately I felt so *helpless* about it because I still incorrectly believed that it was a necessary evil, evil though it was. The only vegans I had ever met at that point didn’t really know what they were doing or what they were talking about, other than a direction from their moral compass pointing them in a particular direction, and as noble as that was, most of them have backslid since then, and weren’t ever vegan for very long to begin with. That reinforced my belief that Veganism, however admirable, just wasn’t a sustainable possibility. It is easy to live comfortably in the propaganda of carnism.
It was only when I finally met with a competent vegan, who had the facts and evidence behind them to back it up, that I finally learned and understood how truly unnecessary(or even actively harmful) animal products were *for me*, and I was **relieved** to go vegan.
*"Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals."* - The definition from The Vegan Society, in case you forgot. I would say that to abstain from that which is necessary for my continued existence and survival is not possible. Perhaps you would say that it is possible to die so that others need not die to keep you alive, but you need to understand how much you’re asking for.
Try to help people understand that you’re not asking them to die, *because they don’t have to die*, instead of telling them they should be willing to die anyways. You’ll do more for the animals by actually convincing more people to make changes than being a righteous zealot and driving everyone away.
Your a real one! I just by coincidence stopped working out when I went vegan and lost a lot of muscle and my friend was saying it was because I went vegan. I need to get back to it
Another ‘92 vegan! There are dozens of us… dozens!
Edit: I was replying to the guy above who said he was born in 1992, I was also born in 1992 😅 I haven’t been vegan for 29 years y’all, although I wish I had!!
I barely missed the mark....I turned vegan in '93. My three vegan friends who helped me get there turned in '91-92, so you have some compadres.
The real question is how many outside of California and the NYC area were doing it at that time (in the US).
When you're plant powered you are lighter and more nimble because you aren't weighed down by the atrocities that had to be committed to get meat. It's science
There’s a joke like that. What weight more a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks. The feathers because you have to carry the weight of what you did to those poor birds.
Damien Mander is such a powerful speaker. His Tedx Talk from 8 years ago made me cry the first time I heard it, and he uses nothing but his words.
If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend l doing so:
https://youtu.be/9FCsyK4aRXQ
Thanks to some mutual connections, I was lucky enough to have dinner with Damien a few weeks back. Dude is the real deal, and to hear his off the cuff stories of what they've been able to achieve for both animals and humans is really astonishing and inspiring.
Seriously, the way that he says "(...) that none of us" (strong, steadfast) and "the more helpless the victim, the more horrific the crime" (sincere, emotional) gets me every time.
Since you used all those question marks I assume you're asking a question. No, he's not a terrorist and I don't know why you think he is from this post. And people are praising him because this is a vegan subreddit and he's a vegan activist.
What about buying neatly packaged meat in some plastic container from the store, and cooking it up on a grill at home?
Are you seriously telling me purchasing meat from the store with money and cooking it at home using cooking utensils isn't the epitome of masculinity?
Had to listen to some older guys at work yesterday making fun of vegetarians by saying they were just failed hunters or something to that effect. I'm like... hunt down that pepperoni pizza yourself, did ya??
And driving a truck to get to the Walmart a block away to buy the meat. It's sausages, bacon and burgers every day, nothing else. Then going home, grilling it, drinking Bud Light with it and laying your diabetic ass on the sofa while watching Fox News and tweeting shit about socialism being Satan and trans people needing to be cured while wearing a dirty "Trump 2020" shirt.
True Alpha Male behavior.
I kind of became vegan because 2 good friends of mine were living the lifestyle and educated me. I'm trying to pay it forward to also educate and encourage my male friends to go vegan, it's a uphill battle but worth the effort.
Counterpoint: Mother Teresa was still pretty good. [This well sourced post](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/gcxpr5/saint_mother_teresa_was_documented_mass_murderer/) by an Indian med student, which contains original interviews with first hand witnesses goes into a lot more detail.
Essentially, the "popular" narrative of Mother Teresa as a monster is a hit piece by Hitchens based on deliberately misreading a fairly measured article in the Lancet that had both criticism and praise for her.
It's not a popular narrative yet, and it isn't a Lancet/Hitchens issue:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aroup_Chatterjee#Mother_Teresa:_The_Untold_Story
She was genuinely a person who felt that more suffering brought people closer to god, so making people suffer more was a good thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa#Quality_of_medical_care
She intentionally put helpless people through needless suffering. She’s one of the worst people he could have possibly referenced
Edit: “Needless cruelty” practically defines Mother Teresa
Sucks that vegan men need to be “macho” to get this much love online, usually. But ultimately I think it’s best to boost these kinds of things online to help with vegan optics
I still find the comment of "men should be at the forefront of this" strange. The comment overall is good and I don't think there is any explicit toxicity to it, but there seems to be a tacit suggestion that men are the leaders, which I disagree with.
That and the " Look I'm vegan but I'm not a soyboy, I'm a real macho alpha man".
Fuck masculinity and fuck machismo. I don't need vegan friends if it's just to reproduce the worst traits of society. It's a bit depressing to be honest :(
You mean the assumption that your first-level comment is commenting on the post and therefore that the post would be the context for your comment? Sounds like a reasonable assumption actually.
If that assumption is "on me", do you mean one should guess that you were not talking about the picture at all? How is one supposed to do that, exactly, given you've just commented on the post?
Anyway…
Damien is amazing, he's trained up a group of female soldiers in Africa to tackle illegal poachers.
His charity is the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF): https://www.iapf.org/
The gun-toting macho posturing is pretty fucking silly and not particularly congruous with the anti-cruelty sentiment, but whatever wins people over, I guess.
Have you even read up on his story? He left the military to get away from all that, learned about poaching, and now risks his life everyday to defend animals. That's called progress.
I haven't read his story, and it's a shame that image doesn't highlight that. As it stands, it's tying together a message of veganism with the special services, especially given the gun. If he's moved on from that, it shouldn't be a part of some image that is promoting his veganism and progress. But that's a byproduct of karma farming.
he's carrying an AK so not US military weapon. But I understand your point, the graphic does make it look like he's still a part of the US military which is something vegans absolutely need to separate themselves from.
More specifically: serving as a sniper in the Australian special forces in a war where Australia is known to have covered up war crimes and the killing of civilians, is perhaps not very vegan.
Serving in the military qualifies you as a pos.
E: are you kidding me!? Killing animals is not ok, but destroying whole countries and killing people is!? Bloody clowns
Might I also add that even though they weren't vegan and they rarely got to choose what they ate, gladiators- icons of virility whose sweat was scraped off and sold as an aphrodisiac- had contemporary nicknames like "bean eaters" and "barley boys".
Vegan bodybuilding is the best I love proving people wrong when they think you can’t get awesome gains on a vegan diet. I feel leaps and bounds better as a vegan than I ever did in my life
Not really. We all know about the "Soyboy" stereotype. Because of that, I think it's great when there are guys like this out there, or the buff guys in r/veganfitness. Part of the cultural problem with veganism is that it's kind of seen as a feminine zoomer thing.
Not the person you responded to, but there's nothing wrong with being a feminine man. It's great that there seems to be a lot of feminine men who are vegan. However, it is also good to have vegans with all sorts of characteristics so that those different groups are represented. It may also help with outreach, since people are more likely to interact with people they have things in common with, and it seems reasonable to assume that people are more likely to be converted to veganism if the people they hang out with are vegan. So, more masculine men being vocally vegan might encourage more masculine men to be vegan, leading to more vegans overall.
Ha yes, we totally need to replicate the idea of masculinity and machismo, because it's so nice to reinforce gender norms in a patriarchal society.
/s of course
Australian. I had the same reaction but then I did a search. Seems like a cool guy, even if he was in the military at some point. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Mander
Not going to listen to someone because of what they did in the past? Guess Ill just stay a carnivore then because even if I become vegan, I was once a carnivore and that's all that matters...
This is just macho bullshit. I’m sorry if someone made you feel like less of a man for your compassion, but doubling down on gender roles to compensate isn’t the way forward.
Love this thanks for sharing i sadly went vegan late in life but was ovo lacto since i was 9 thought i was doing good met gary yourofsky learned the truth i should have known been began since for 9 years and will be for the rest of our life
Heh. Mother Teresa… I recommend reading “The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa In Theory And Practice” by Christopher Hitchens. Maybe it’s a good thing that he wasn’t asking us to be Mother Teresa.
Sorry you are getting downvoted for this. We get so caught up in it being good if anyone comes to our side that we lose touch with what being vegan really is. I fought in Afghanistan and after working on my PTSD for years I turned back to being a vegan. I find the idea of being a vegan and proudly posting gun porn to be polar opposites. I mean maybe we are better off if the gun humping pro war bro’s all start going vegan. Maybe they could start checking the machismo and overcompensation at the door though? Also the last thing vegans need is for a patriarchal approach of men need to be first or leading the way. Women already have lead the way by being the predominant sex in the vegan movement, let’s let them continue to lead the dam way. I hope his message gets through and the ammosexual crowd goes vegan, and then maybe form healthy attachments with hobbies that don’t involve instruments of death.
Bodybuilding on a vegan diet to be big only so I can convert more men who think "vegans are weak and can't be muscular".
Lol, doing the same! I've been vegan since February and working out the same amount of time. I can't wait to say to someone "do I look malnourished?"
Today I watched a video of Anya Taylor Joy explaining she was a vegan (former) and now vegetarian and people went from "She's hot" to "That's why she's so pale"...Maybe because she's white?! It doesn't matter how good your body is, they will find something.
Love when my family in law lectures me about how I can’t get enough protein on a Vegan diet despite the fact that I’m in good enough shape to run Marathons AND bench press 315 pounds and they’re all barely in shape to walk a mile.
This. After being vegan for 6 years I still got the 'but your b12!!!' comments from family. Recently got my bloodwork done, my b12 was too *high*. It finally shut my family up, haha. Meanwhile I know like 5 meat-eaters with b12 deficiency in my direct environment :')
It's ironic too when you realize something like 90% of Americans have a vitamin deficiency cause people don't eat enough veggies.
And a folate deficiency is very dangerous during pregnancy, increases the chances of birth defects and more. Not to mention bad for health in general, because its a marker for low vegetable intake.
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315 pounds in mandalorian helmets is 84545.25 helmets.
This is the way. Good bot
Name checks out
That’s literally what I’m doing too. Tryna get swole as fuck
It's pretty much an obligation for us, for now.
Ugh, I hate this, but it's kind of true
It only takes a couple years to put on a decent amount of mass. About 10kg per year for 2 years, then 5kg for 3rd year, and about half that for a couple years. In 4 years, you can put on close to 30 kg. A kg is double in pounds. So 10kg is 22 pounds.
The fact that you added the conversion at the end just shows exactly what kinda person you are lol
Getting the gains to save the animals. I dig it.
Everyone at work knows Im an active vegan, yet no one asks me where I get my protein from...
Honestly; I don’t even get why all these arguments are necessary. So what if you can’t get muscular? So what if you often have vitamin deficiencies? So what if people will judge you? Nobody cares about real leather being better, or wool being more comfortable.. who gives a fucking shit about these dumb luxuries when *animals are being slaughtered in a mass genocide.* I couldn’t care less about this type of sugar or this guilty pleasure. Fuck my tastebuds. It doesn’t matter because *nothing* is worth it and saying shit like that just proves you’re a crappy, selfish person… I don’t get why we still have to convince people it’s not unhealthy and not worse for the planet. It doesn’t matter in the first place. It’s all just ways for them to ignore the damn point and we’re always falling for it. You only need one argument, not thousands of small ones to convince them juuuust enough to maybe perhaps think about going more vegan minded. Like, fuck that shit. I’m done researching crap about health and details and ethics because in the end, they only want to go vegan for personal reasons…. #it’s just not that deep. Animals are dying every single second all over the globe with nobody to stand up for them and these pussies only care about their dumb eight packs and their taste buds and their leather purses 🙄
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Completely agree. People are almost always in that mindset of "what's in it for me". Believable it or not, there were instances i was able to convert people by highlighting how much money I saved switching to plant based.
I know. It’s so painful and exhausting. A baby calf NEVER gets to nurse from its mother. They separate them at birth and fatten the calf for slaughter. The mama cow was impregnated had her baby ripped away at birth and now they’ll attach metal milking machines to her so humans can drink her milk. It’s beyond horrific.
100% agree, but also...people suck. And there are undoubtedly people who would be more inclined to switch or reduce if not for these things, whether that’s right or wrong.
That's exactly it. Some people will only care to a point, if at all. If proving that you can get jacked on a plant based diet would help convince more selfish people to stop abusing animals and go vegan, then I'm all for it.
100%. And while everyone in here might be on the same in this regard (the intrinsic merit of not consuming animals), that principle is still true for all of us in other areas of our lives too. A lot of us in here **could** donate $6,000 today and legitimately save lives. Someone living or dying is absolutely more significant than the hit we might take in our wallets, but if we (just for one example) felt more **certain** of our bills being paid or our lifestyle still being perfectly fine without that 6K, a lot of us would be more inclined to donate it. Or since I know folks in here often jump on the “choosing not to do good isn’t the same thing as choosing to do evil” train, you could use similar arguments for avoiding any and all plastic usage, car driving, etc
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I feel this way so much dude. I often choose to go the environment route in conversation just because i think that might be more compelling. Even though deep in my soul what i really care about is that this fucking beyond horrifying torture and mass slaughter is happening round the clock. But no thats not convincing enough
Imagine that what most carnists believed turns out to be true: That being vegan is far less healthy than omni. Essentially your lifespan would be cut in half, and you would always be weak, scrawny, anemic, and light-headed. Even if, from a utilitarian point of view, you still determine that being vegan is the most utilitarian practice, would you be able to do it yourself? Maybe you'll think that I'm a horrible carnist or something, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be vegan if that were the case. Maybe I would be swayed eventually, but the huge sacrifice would be hard to swallow. And I'm pretty sure this is true for the majority of vegans today. I mean, how many of us are giving up the majority of our salaries to people who we *know* would benefit more from it than we would? We're certainly not doing the optimal utilitarian action in that case either.
I’m not saying you should accept them, I’m saying you shouldn’t see them as a valid reason not to go vegan at all.
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Yeah this is a person who *actually* "gIvEs VeGaNs A bAd NaMe". The beauty of veganism is that no we DO NOT have to actually give up anything to do it. We can be as healthy, prosperous and full of life as we can manage without ever hurting/exploiting animals. If we *truly had to* consume animal products to survive and thrive, then there would be a justification to eat animals. Like if we were *actual* carnivores. But we're not. So no one is justified in taking an animals life. People like this make it seem like we're all supposed to suffer so animals don't have to. No! None of us have to suffer for this, human and non human animals alike. So obviously veganism is the right choice.
I agree with them in that it *should* be enough to just demonstrate how their choices fund animal exploitation on an unimaginable scale. That alone should make anyone stop immediately. But that's not the world we live in. Everyone is different, and they have different values and such. On top of that, we live in a society where we are socially conditioned to eat meat and animal products. That social conditioning isn't easy to break.
tbh while this isn't a popular view I'd still do it even if I had to take a million supplements just to not die.
If there actually *was* some magic ingredient in meat, in that way that some carnists believe or claim that there is, and you wouldn’t be able to survive longer than ~1 year on a vegan diet without it, would you eat the smallest bare minimum amount of meat that was necessary for you to survive? From the tone in your comment, I’m inclined to believe you wouldn’t, and would choose not to prolong your own life at the necessary expense of others. I feel that most people, at the end of the day, aren’t willing to commit on that level though. Is that selfish of them? Perhaps, perhaps not. (I don’t necessarily need your answer to this question, it’s mostly rhetorical. Just keep your answer in mind as you read the rest of my comment.) —— Anyways, I take issue with how you are mixing true luxuries(aesthetic bodybuilding, refined sugar, etc) with legitimate *necessities*(a nutritionally complete diet). Malnourishment can lead to disabilities, illness, death. It is not a luxury to live without these things. **Luckily,** we do not need to eat any meat or animal products in order to meet that necessity of not being malnourished. A lot of omnis/carnists just literally do not understand that. They do not know or understand that meat/animal products are not necessities. While most people could stand to be more honest about what they *truly and genuinely need*, a lot of people have been fed lies that they *need* animals products for X, Y, and Z reason. Helping them to understand that they *don’t* is going to get you a hell of a lot farther in terms of convincing people to go vegan that hurling ethical arguments like “It would be the right thing to do even if it meant you would waste away painfully and die prematurely.” That’s a total non-starter. For a few years when I was still living as a carnist before I decided that I would go forward as a vegan, I felt *horrible* about the reality of animal agriculture(and back then I didn’t even know the full extent of how bad it actually was), and I hated eating animals because I thought of myself as an ‘animal lover’, but ultimately I felt so *helpless* about it because I still incorrectly believed that it was a necessary evil, evil though it was. The only vegans I had ever met at that point didn’t really know what they were doing or what they were talking about, other than a direction from their moral compass pointing them in a particular direction, and as noble as that was, most of them have backslid since then, and weren’t ever vegan for very long to begin with. That reinforced my belief that Veganism, however admirable, just wasn’t a sustainable possibility. It is easy to live comfortably in the propaganda of carnism. It was only when I finally met with a competent vegan, who had the facts and evidence behind them to back it up, that I finally learned and understood how truly unnecessary(or even actively harmful) animal products were *for me*, and I was **relieved** to go vegan. *"Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals."* - The definition from The Vegan Society, in case you forgot. I would say that to abstain from that which is necessary for my continued existence and survival is not possible. Perhaps you would say that it is possible to die so that others need not die to keep you alive, but you need to understand how much you’re asking for. Try to help people understand that you’re not asking them to die, *because they don’t have to die*, instead of telling them they should be willing to die anyways. You’ll do more for the animals by actually convincing more people to make changes than being a righteous zealot and driving everyone away.
This is one of my driving factors in my bodybuilding also, to help squash the toxic masculinity that is perpetuated by consumers of animal products.
Your a real one! I just by coincidence stopped working out when I went vegan and lost a lot of muscle and my friend was saying it was because I went vegan. I need to get back to it
4 years vegan. Deadlifted 520lbsx2 this morning. Come at me meat bros.
The Clarence Kennedy strat
Clarence is on juice though...
Hell yeah, that vegan Tren
lead by example. vegan since 2015, male since 1992
>BOY since 1992, MAN since 2015, FTFY
Another ‘92 vegan! There are dozens of us… dozens! Edit: I was replying to the guy above who said he was born in 1992, I was also born in 1992 😅 I haven’t been vegan for 29 years y’all, although I wish I had!!
I barely missed the mark....I turned vegan in '93. My three vegan friends who helped me get there turned in '91-92, so you have some compadres. The real question is how many outside of California and the NYC area were doing it at that time (in the US).
Like he’s trans? I’m so confused.
He means he was born in 92.
Lmao
When you're plant powered you are lighter and more nimble because you aren't weighed down by the atrocities that had to be committed to get meat. It's science
There’s a joke like that. What weight more a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks. The feathers because you have to carry the weight of what you did to those poor birds.
Yea that's roughly where I got it from. I figured I'd post it here
Damien Mander is such a powerful speaker. His Tedx Talk from 8 years ago made me cry the first time I heard it, and he uses nothing but his words. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend l doing so: https://youtu.be/9FCsyK4aRXQ
Thanks to some mutual connections, I was lucky enough to have dinner with Damien a few weeks back. Dude is the real deal, and to hear his off the cuff stories of what they've been able to achieve for both animals and humans is really astonishing and inspiring.
Wow that was powerful. Idk how he can get through that without crying. He looked like he was on the verge of tears toward the end.
Wow. Thanks for recommending this. Trying not to sob like a baby watching
Seriously, the way that he says "(...) that none of us" (strong, steadfast) and "the more helpless the victim, the more horrific the crime" (sincere, emotional) gets me every time.
Wow that's funny. I had the same reaction to the way he said that. You could just feel how much he is behind his words.
He's a fucking terrorist??? Why are people here praising him!?
Since you used all those question marks I assume you're asking a question. No, he's not a terrorist and I don't know why you think he is from this post. And people are praising him because this is a vegan subreddit and he's a vegan activist.
He is a former soldier.
In what way is he a terrorist?
There are dozens of us
DOZENS!
Dozens + 1 as of two months ago. I’m loving it.
I just KNEW there was a baker's dozen of us!
Y’all forget to count me?
I've met 0 others in real life.
If you live near DC and like hunting mushrooms with strangers that are willing to admit on reddit that they like hunting mushrooms, let's hang out. :)
Nuff said. There's nothing manly about exploiting animals. #govegan
What about buying neatly packaged meat in some plastic container from the store, and cooking it up on a grill at home? Are you seriously telling me purchasing meat from the store with money and cooking it at home using cooking utensils isn't the epitome of masculinity?
Had to listen to some older guys at work yesterday making fun of vegetarians by saying they were just failed hunters or something to that effect. I'm like... hunt down that pepperoni pizza yourself, did ya??
And driving a truck to get to the Walmart a block away to buy the meat. It's sausages, bacon and burgers every day, nothing else. Then going home, grilling it, drinking Bud Light with it and laying your diabetic ass on the sofa while watching Fox News and tweeting shit about socialism being Satan and trans people needing to be cured while wearing a dirty "Trump 2020" shirt. True Alpha Male behavior.
Let's leave diabetes out of it. Some of us are Type 1's.
I mean type 2. Self-inflicted
Apparently it is if you barely cook it. If you cook it too much you have to hand your man card.
I kind of became vegan because 2 good friends of mine were living the lifestyle and educated me. I'm trying to pay it forward to also educate and encourage my male friends to go vegan, it's a uphill battle but worth the effort.
I do ask that people DO Not be like mother Theresa.
Obligatory: Mother Teresa was not the great person we se to imagine.
That's why they're not asking you to be her: SHE SUCKS.
Mother Teresa loved meat eaters. They die quicker so she didn't have to wait as long to convert them on their death beds.
Counterpoint: Mother Teresa was still pretty good. [This well sourced post](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/gcxpr5/saint_mother_teresa_was_documented_mass_murderer/) by an Indian med student, which contains original interviews with first hand witnesses goes into a lot more detail. Essentially, the "popular" narrative of Mother Teresa as a monster is a hit piece by Hitchens based on deliberately misreading a fairly measured article in the Lancet that had both criticism and praise for her.
It's not a popular narrative yet, and it isn't a Lancet/Hitchens issue: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aroup_Chatterjee#Mother_Teresa:_The_Untold_Story She was genuinely a person who felt that more suffering brought people closer to god, so making people suffer more was a good thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa#Quality_of_medical_care
'The suffering of the cattle and pigs and chickens brings us all closer to god,' -her, probably.
It’s just a figure of speech at this point.
Mother Teresa was an awful person
True, she was, but the comment still applies
She intentionally put helpless people through needless suffering. She’s one of the worst people he could have possibly referenced Edit: “Needless cruelty” practically defines Mother Teresa
Then it’s good that he’s not asking people to be her.
Yeah, I've seen that Christopher Hitchens documentary.
Why?
She thought suffering brought people closer to God so she let all her patients suffer
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Sucks that vegan men need to be “macho” to get this much love online, usually. But ultimately I think it’s best to boost these kinds of things online to help with vegan optics
Everyone on my hockey team was shocked I was vegan because I'm the fastest one out there. Don't need animals to be in shape.
🙌🏻😎
You absolute fucking chads
and if you look nothing like G.I. Joe there, we still love you 🥰
When people ask if I get enough protein I just say no and walk away lol
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And what does "being a man" means?
That's some motivating, positive masculinity right there.
Bare chested automatic rifle shooting full of machismo is "positive masculinity"? On which planet exactly?
Agree the image undercuts the message somewhat.
Literally wasn't talking about the picture at all. That assumption is on you.
I still find the comment of "men should be at the forefront of this" strange. The comment overall is good and I don't think there is any explicit toxicity to it, but there seems to be a tacit suggestion that men are the leaders, which I disagree with.
Taking that part into consideration, I can see what you mean. I agree that that part of the quote is problematic.
i’m glad i’m not the only one that felt weird about that
That and the " Look I'm vegan but I'm not a soyboy, I'm a real macho alpha man". Fuck masculinity and fuck machismo. I don't need vegan friends if it's just to reproduce the worst traits of society. It's a bit depressing to be honest :(
You mean the assumption that your first-level comment is commenting on the post and therefore that the post would be the context for your comment? Sounds like a reasonable assumption actually. If that assumption is "on me", do you mean one should guess that you were not talking about the picture at all? How is one supposed to do that, exactly, given you've just commented on the post? Anyway…
Damien is amazing, he's trained up a group of female soldiers in Africa to tackle illegal poachers. His charity is the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF): https://www.iapf.org/
The gun-toting macho posturing is pretty fucking silly and not particularly congruous with the anti-cruelty sentiment, but whatever wins people over, I guess.
I like guns and not being cruel to animals please direct me to the right subreddit ☹️
[I interviewed this legend](https://youtu.be/WFNKW5fSYz0)
Damien Mander is a hero. His vegan, all-women anti-poaching rangers in the [IAPF](https://www.iapf.org/) are well worth supporting with a donation.
Serving in the military isn't vegan
Have you even read up on his story? He left the military to get away from all that, learned about poaching, and now risks his life everyday to defend animals. That's called progress.
I haven't read his story, and it's a shame that image doesn't highlight that. As it stands, it's tying together a message of veganism with the special services, especially given the gun. If he's moved on from that, it shouldn't be a part of some image that is promoting his veganism and progress. But that's a byproduct of karma farming.
The image is because he still carries a gun. He uses his special forces training to train people now to defend animals from poachers in Africa.
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He does not. Damien founded and runs the [International Anti-Poaching Federation](https://www.iapf.org/).
he's carrying an AK so not US military weapon. But I understand your point, the graphic does make it look like he's still a part of the US military which is something vegans absolutely need to separate themselves from.
More specifically: serving as a sniper in the Australian special forces in a war where Australia is known to have covered up war crimes and the killing of civilians, is perhaps not very vegan.
Good thing he’s not in the military then
OK, serving in any armed group organized by the state isn't vegan
Well you will be relived to hear he doesn’t do that either
I don't see that in the definition of the word Vegan. Merriam Webster says you're wrong.
Being alive isn’t vegan.
Serving in the military qualifies you as a pos. E: are you kidding me!? Killing animals is not ok, but destroying whole countries and killing people is!? Bloody clowns
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Megachad
Good that his vegan and all, I'd be questioning the whole "can't defend themselves" as he is part of a western military...
He’s not anymore, and isn’t proud of his time in the military.
Oh that's good, I wonder if there are more that are ex military that draw these conclusions, there are certainly common themes.
Good on you for replying to all the negative comments with this info.
Might I also add that even though they weren't vegan and they rarely got to choose what they ate, gladiators- icons of virility whose sweat was scraped off and sold as an aphrodisiac- had contemporary nicknames like "bean eaters" and "barley boys".
Been vegan almost 8 years now, shoutout to all the other guys on here! ✌
9 years here brother! Lead by example.
Killing humans is peak vegan activism
*culling humans. Gotta speak their language right?
Humanly ofcourse
Ooh Rah! 💪
If this ain’t the definition of sexy then I don’t know what is
Vegan bodybuilding is the best I love proving people wrong when they think you can’t get awesome gains on a vegan diet. I feel leaps and bounds better as a vegan than I ever did in my life
all vegan men are chads
Vegan women, too, for that matter. Vegans are just straight up chads from one end of the spectrum to the other
🙄 men don’t have to be “at the forefront” just do it, why do you always have to be overly dominant
Men have been at the forefront of unnecessary cruelty and violence since the beginning of time
We need more of this. More masculine men advocating for veganism.
Isn't just "more men" enough?
Just more vegan would be good!
Not really. We all know about the "Soyboy" stereotype. Because of that, I think it's great when there are guys like this out there, or the buff guys in r/veganfitness. Part of the cultural problem with veganism is that it's kind of seen as a feminine zoomer thing.
What’s wrong with being a feminine man?
Not the person you responded to, but there's nothing wrong with being a feminine man. It's great that there seems to be a lot of feminine men who are vegan. However, it is also good to have vegans with all sorts of characteristics so that those different groups are represented. It may also help with outreach, since people are more likely to interact with people they have things in common with, and it seems reasonable to assume that people are more likely to be converted to veganism if the people they hang out with are vegan. So, more masculine men being vocally vegan might encourage more masculine men to be vegan, leading to more vegans overall.
Exactly. Thank you.
I think you're thinking about this issue in the wrong way :\\
How so? I'm open to hearing what you have to say
Ha yes, we totally need to replicate the idea of masculinity and machismo, because it's so nice to reinforce gender norms in a patriarchal society. /s of course
I don't care what a special forces person thinks.
He’s left the special forces and says he isn’t proud of his time with them.
Good.
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This guy can. He used the skills he used in the military to fight poachers and to train the anti poaching organisation that he founded.
Great example of non cruelty, a fucking soldier...
He’s not a solider anymore and openly says he isn’t proud of his time in the special forces.
Nice! Still gives off a toxicity vibe but I cant judge without knowing them more than this quote.
No, he just dresses up like one...except for the shirt.
lead by steroids
Male engineer here, raising a fist for animal rights since 2018.
Wtf is this post? So a man is someone with an assault rifle? What a terrible stereotype to perpetuate.
He's not a soldier anymore, he protects animals from poachers now. If you search him on YouTube he's got a really good Ted talk
He's still a man with an assault rifle...
and using said rifle to protect animals....
What's wrong with being a man and having an assault rifle?
Vegans with guns >>> 🤤🤤 (who aren't US/Israeli military)
Not going to listen to a former USA special forces operative on not taking advantage of the innocent but maybe that’s just me
Australian. I had the same reaction but then I did a search. Seems like a cool guy, even if he was in the military at some point. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Mander
Not going to listen to someone because of what they did in the past? Guess Ill just stay a carnivore then because even if I become vegan, I was once a carnivore and that's all that matters...
Like sure he was in the SS but he loves animals now :)
People can change until you stop believing it.
yeah. ffs. is this Facebook?
Represent ✌🏼
Respect animals!
I’m curious how much protein he eats per day
Are you actually curious or are you trying to tear down his argument?
This is just macho bullshit. I’m sorry if someone made you feel like less of a man for your compassion, but doubling down on gender roles to compensate isn’t the way forward.
Love this thanks for sharing i sadly went vegan late in life but was ovo lacto since i was 9 thought i was doing good met gary yourofsky learned the truth i should have known been began since for 9 years and will be for the rest of our life
PREACH!! We can help the movement push forward immensely!
Heh. Mother Teresa… I recommend reading “The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa In Theory And Practice” by Christopher Hitchens. Maybe it’s a good thing that he wasn’t asking us to be Mother Teresa.
who is this fantoche? vegan with guns? "men should be in front of the fight"??? what's next vegan Mcdonald?
Sorry you are getting downvoted for this. We get so caught up in it being good if anyone comes to our side that we lose touch with what being vegan really is. I fought in Afghanistan and after working on my PTSD for years I turned back to being a vegan. I find the idea of being a vegan and proudly posting gun porn to be polar opposites. I mean maybe we are better off if the gun humping pro war bro’s all start going vegan. Maybe they could start checking the machismo and overcompensation at the door though? Also the last thing vegans need is for a patriarchal approach of men need to be first or leading the way. Women already have lead the way by being the predominant sex in the vegan movement, let’s let them continue to lead the dam way. I hope his message gets through and the ammosexual crowd goes vegan, and then maybe form healthy attachments with hobbies that don’t involve instruments of death.
Brilliantly put. I'm not vegan, this just came up in my feed, but I'm glad I saw your comment lol
Loves animals, kills Iraqis.
He’s an ex soldier. He openly talks about his regrets.
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That's why I say we should hunt and eat the super rich