CW discussion of animal agriculture and all it entails
I never made a “why I’m leaving” post. At the time, I was too stressed and upset to bother, and the drama was so high, and so many others were making those types of posts, that I figured it wouldn’t be worth it. I’m a very avoidant person, and so when other mods begged for any talk of veganism to just die down for a while, even though it was completely unjust, I did as asked. I had already quit anyway.
Well, it’s been over a year and a half. The draconian measures against talk of veganism never went away. To the surprise of no one, silencing activists who fight for the liberation of the animal slave class only appeased the slave owners and those who lick their boots. Ironic considering how hexbear started in the first place.
Over a trillion sentient beings are murdered every single year, a number that is unimaginable. It’s devastating enough all on its own, and yet the impacts of this never-ending worldwide genocide are horrifying too. Animal ag is the leading cause of climate change. It destroys ecosystems and massively pollutes, causing mass extinction of wild animals and harming the most marginalized humans. It has been and continues to be used as a tool for human genocide, intentionally destroying the lifeways of indigenous communities. Most people who work in animal ag are impoverished if not enslaved, forced to do the dangerous and traumatizing work of brutal subjugation and slaughter, all for the profit of the capitalist class. Animal products are more than completely unnecessary, they are destructive and corrosive.
Who qualifies as a “person” is extremely political. Carnists insist that sentient nonhumans are not people because it excuses their oppression. “It’s just an animal.” Well, I’m just a woman, just a jew. My personhood has always been at risk as well, to those who wish to see me oppressed. The division between human and animal is as arbitrary as the division between man and woman, between jew and aryan.
Human supremacists show their whole ass when they try and essentialize differences enough to justify the complete debasement and subjugation of nonhumans. They will argue that nonhumans cannot speak English, as if one needs spoken language to have an interest in not being raped, or forced into labor, or murdered. They will argue that nonhumans are not as intelligent, as if IQ is a real thing, as if ordering society based on who the white man deems “intelligent” isn’t a terrible precedent. They will argue that nonhumans lack certain abilities that humans have, as if all humans have those abilities, as if nonhumans don’t have abilities that humans don’t, as if ableism is totally okay when applied to the ones we desire to oppress.
Nonhumans have interests. They do not want to die. They resist their oppression. They fight to escape. When their children are taken from them, they scream and they cry, tears drip down their faces. When they resist laboring for us, they are coerced with violence. They are beaten, whipped, yelled at, broken, because we know they feel pain. We know they feel fear. We know because they communicate these feelings to us every day, and we choose not to listen. It’s a good cope to pretend nonhumans are automatons, that they live some idyllic life on Old Macdonald’s farm. Oppressors always tell themselves stories about how the oppressed prefer their oppression. There is no nice way to rape someone, no nice way to enslave, no nice way to murder.
Anyone denying the sentience of nonhumans either doesn’t know what sentience is or is a liar.
Carnists are always grasping and moving the goalposts when it comes to justifying their ideology of supremacy. We do not exploit animals because we deem them to be inferior, rather, we deem animals to be inferior because we exploit them. The ideology arises from the material circumstances. The point, however, is to change them.
Animal liberation and human liberation are rooted together. So long as we live in a world where oppression of others based on ability, intelligence, and other arbitrary differences occurs, there will arise ideologies of supremacy which will in turn harm humans as well. So long as we destroy this planet through continued animal agriculture, we will continue destroying ourselves, especially the most vulnerable humans.
Upon the revolution, we must immediately abolish animal agriculture. But we cannot wait until then because we do not have time. The planet is already on fire. More importantly, nonhumans do not deserve to have their justice delayed for the comfort of their oppressors. Over a trillion nonhumans are murdered every year.
Hexbear admins begged for our silence because they wanted negative peace. They don’t care about justice. They don’t care about liberation. They cared only about their image. They banned indigenous vegans and vegans of color because those vegans challenged their image. They banned Jewish vegan mods like hamid and lotf because they dared to challenge the reactionary idea that we shouldn’t be allowed to call the animal holocaust exactly what it is. Billions of nonhumans are held in concentrations camps (CAFOs) and killed in literal gas chambers every year. Reactionaries always prefer to listen to right wing jews than left wing ones. It doesn’t matter to them that many holocaust survivors and their families are vegan and are begging, begging people to make the connection so that “never again” ever once means something other than Zionism.
I’m sorry I didn’t say anything for so long. It was a mistake. Silence for the sake of negative peace is always a mistake.
Agreed with everything in this post. I was on a different account back then and switched for fear of it getting banned. It was a shitshow and handled terribly
Reminder to any carnists reading: your reports will be ignored
I hope the cowards who laugh at the defense of our exploited animal comrades are destroyed
Reactionaries are explicitly not allowed per the rules of hexbear. They continue to be protected, but it’s not too late to ban them
Inshallah
I can’t say much to the higher levels of the struggle because I’m generally a lurker and never had a knack for following those things, but for what it’s worth it did cause me to finally confront my privilege and hypocrisy and I’ve been vegan since March of last year.
I’m glad. It goes to show that talking about animal liberation is always better than silence, even if it’s divisive
Mashallah
Hell yeah nice job comrade
It destroys ecosystems and massively pollutes, causing mass extinction of wild animals and harming the most marginalized humans. It has been and continues to be used as a tool for human genocide, intentionally destroying the lifeways of indigenous communities.
This is why I roll my eyes whenever someone says veganism is colonialist. Pretty sure it wasn’t vegans systemically wiping out the buffalo.
Christopher Colombus: vegan
King Leopold II: vegan
Queen Elizabeth II: veganPretty sure it wasn’t vegans systemically wiping out the buffalo.
or currently waging genocide on indigenous people in Brazil and ecocide against the Amazon and native vegetation.
I quit the site over this and only returned when I forgot like two weeks ago
Uncritical support for comrade @chamomile
:heart-sickle:
Thanks for filling in a bunch of gaps.
That whole thing felt very fishy. In 2 years on this site I’ve had 3 comments removed, and one of them was expressing disbelief when someone said that urging people to go vegan, including indigenous people, was “a neocolonial relationship of oppression”.
I believe that a sort of weaponized fragility was brought to bear in this case and several others – a tactic that we are particularly vulnerable to as leftists, and that I have encountered all too often in the course of in-person organizing. But that on its own is another entire meta-struggle session.
An anti-fracking activist I once went to hear said something that really stuck with me. “The way they treat the earth is the way they’ll treat their employees, and the way they’ll treat you too.” Indigenous issues and animal liberation should go hand-in-hand. No one has taken better care of the nonhuman sentient beings on this planet than indigenous peoples.
I think one thing that could have been useful is a party line. It would clear up a lot to have something that said “we are not against the ability of indigenous people to hunt in the manner they always have; veganism is a correct ethical position/conclusion; CAFOs are extremely bad and esse delendam; people choosing a vegan lifestyle should be lauded, and we should try to build the viability of collective ways of life that are not built on animal misery” that I think the overwhelming majority of the userbase would agree on.
I side with the vegans on this one, obviously, but am also wary of wreckers taking advantage of this to escalate something that should be a very simple issue. Veganism is good, and vegans are often unfairly bullied and therefore posts shitting on vegans should be removed under the hostility rule.
Keep in mind that Kiwi Farms just went under so there are a lot of bored wreckers out there. Mods might make mistakes, they might take time to address concerns, but IMO they have always at least tried to be fair.
:im-vegan:
great essay comrade. the points you shared were articulated very, very well.
i agree that abolishing animal ag should be a priority for the coming wave of communist revolutions and the IRL vegan struggle sessions are probably gonna be wild lmao at least it seems like that most marxist parties have pretty good takes on veganism and animal agriculture, despite most of their members being carnists.Just wanted to address the bit at the end with me (not the original account, but admins have confirmed it is indeed me, which is why this one’s not banned).
Me issuing those bans was the only time I ever lost my temper while moderating. To you in particular, chamomile, I think by the time I’d processed that, you were gone. I never got a chance to say sorry to you or to the people I banned. And thank you to the admin who called me on my shit and undid that. You know who you are and I appreciate you immensely for a myriad of reasons.
You stabbed this whole community in the back. If you are truly sorry, you need to work on repairing the damage you did. You need to get rid of c/strugglesessions, allow talk of veganism on the whole board and not just siloed in this community, and you need to ban nonvegan reactionaries and abusers. Most vegans who were banned never came back because the circumstances you helped create on this board made it clear we would never be safe here nor be among comrades.
I can talk to the admins if you want but I don’t work here anymore
Please do.
Please communicate to site mods. I’m happy for this to be copy pasted or linked.
This is unformatted. I’m sorry. It’s bringing back memories and old emotions, and I’m too angry to write super clearly.
I can’t emphasise how vile my first week here was. One of two experiences that has had a long lasting impact on how I interact with online leftist communities.
Hmm, I’ve just had a thought: sounding an awful lot like a small trauma. Wait, no way, it affected my relationship with online leftist communities and changed my attachment type with them and created a change in my personality!? No way, I never realised something so serious until my reflection just now.
I really do emphasise how vile it was. Fuck that shit. I’m not having it in my life. Whatever I said and whatever many of my vegan comrades said was completely dismissed, with people:
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trolling - but that’s unavoidable on a site and probably new sign ups, so that’s forgiven.
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Issue #2: It’s absurdly funny and ironic that : ~rightist position - facts don’t care about feelings (foolish notion: but feelings are clearly constituting what facts they care about; their facts are to re-affirm values) (rationalising and philosophised justifications to re-affirm bogus values, and values inform decision-making.)
~with respect to last written paragaph, the majority Hexbear position quite literally seems to be the same as the rightist position ~leftist toxic idpol position: feelings or values (
wrongvalue systems/hierarchies) rule what facts facts you care about.-
Christ, I’m not even Marxist saying this: people were left, right and centre dismissing material reality/material analysis. Animals feel pain!! That’s what they avoid, and that’s why they cry when they can’t avoid pain and they’re going to their death. Did you know wasps also recognise faces!? Article Study I bet that subverses your stereotypes about animals. I haven’t even considered the shared animalised and racialised history (racialisation by animalisation, and animalisation by racialising imperialism.)
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The mods had people accusing an indigenous mod of being racist. ??? Assumed they were white ??? I always distinctly remember the user weenuk!! Just, ew. I felt Weenuk was on here a long ass time before they left?
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An indigenous mod, a black mod, two Jewish mods banned from the site (as an aside, there are people behind keyboards); people being banned for being vegan, whilst all the racist discourse on the site in response to veganism went unchecked and remained. (How many posts did weenuk make before they left!?) Not a good look, at all. It was fine to ban these vegan mods, whilst racism was being left and unchecked on the site.
Also, I’m certain ableist logic was rife at the time at the time. Always is with carnism (natural, normal, nice, necessary.) Did anyone know whether any of the banned individuals had disabilties? No one did! No one ever asked. I wasn’t asked when I was banned. Disability scholars use the social model of disability just as much as the medical one ~the social model of disability makes someone disabled due to social organisation/structure. By virtue, that model disability activists and scholars use all the time make victimised people disabled!! Social model of disability is seemlessly adjacent to material analysis, in that they focus entirely on social organisation (structure.) The organisational/institutional barriers in both the disability model and material analysis are there for racialised people, medically disabled people, non-human living beings aka farmed animals, vaginaed and bepenised individuals, with the enforcement of gendered expectations through gender roles and its corresponding values, ideals, oppressive behaviours (choices). and social organisation, constituting material domination. Ableist logic constitutes all oppressions to some or a large or an entirely relevant degree,
At this point, I am at a level of uncharitability to what went down that I’m wondering whether most of the site has internalised “Veganism is white supremacy.” Have you never heard of Al-Ma’arri!? Yes, it’s uncharitable, and I swear by the principle of charity [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity](Principle of charity) but it’s hard to think of the best interpretation of what went down! At the very least, I can soundly conclude that the majority Hexbear’s userbase racistly stereotypes on racist arbitrary taxonomies (~racism), or that they’re completely fine with that happening on their site (racism), which is a very bad look/is complicit/hasn’t taken accountability for/, which are no ~zilch ~nada: acts of solidarity with racialised people as one disenfranchised class/position in a hierarchy.
- The (disgusting) enlightened centrist or rightist position and accusation against the left (in my anecdotal experiences) of: the most dangerous people are those that are righteous
…is unironically right when in application to the large userbase of this site, with all the toxic idpoling, reactionary, pro-patriarchal thinking, pro-hierarchical and pro-various supremacies in this site. (hierarchy has both ideal and material realities, with large coconstitution and continuity between the two.)
All strikethrough text is what comes to mind on what Hexbear fails on with their disregard for vegan considerations. a non-exhaustive list of things this site should stand against:
ableism(ableist logic is rife: veganism is anti-ableist logic)speciesismageism
sizeism,
lookismfatphobiaracism and colorismethnic discrimination
unorganised-religious discrimination
sexism(as an aside, it’s important to note that sexism, for example, contributes to commodified, objectified, or animalised both vaginaed and bepenised individuals through many mechanisms. one mechanism is sexism and or newer ideologies based on that. another one mechanism the coconstitution between different ‘types’ of oppression: for example between sexism and racism, and sexism transphobia. of course, bepenised individuals across all demographics also get SA, through other unnamed or uncategorised mechanisms. that’s a part of the diversity of life and lived experience. we’re more diverse than we can ever give credit for.)the reason i bring up SA is a stark example of sexism. you can’t do one oppression without beginning or entrenching the the oppression of others. that’s how unjustified hierarchies perform. Christ, if someone is a sexist, they oppress about half of the racialised population! That’s just continuity in the human species. Now, Hexbear needs to see other coconstitutions/continuities between different disenfranchised classes. P.S. on veganism, for starters, check continuities between species! But it doesn’t end there on the different forms of oppression of disenfranchised classes/arbitrary, manmade taxonomies.
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transphobia (I’ve heard this site had a problem with transphobia before…) (I wonder how much of transphobia come back to internalised gender roles in a disgusting patriarchy or any pro-hierarchal society, codified into actions, forcing in material domination for a victimised person, with no recourse or justice a) by the nature of wanton hierarchical societies and b) by nature of material domination producing imparity in power between victimised and abuser.) Point is, if this tangent on transphobia is the case, for which we have good reasons… : if sexism and ideological carnism are coconstituted to any degree, Hexbear has a hand in sustaining all sorts of oppression.
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homophobia and biphobia and all that jazz
a list of things we stand for: valuing sex positivity, body positivity + body neutrality, ethical consumerism (im pretty sure someone’s disenfranchised child slavery/animal chattel slavery/victims of child SA don’t appreciate a ‘leftist’s’ no ethical consumption under capitalism’ ideological justification for catering colonial desires and keeping convenience.) broadly valuing difference instead of sameness (valuing sameness >> white and human superemacies!)
and ultimately culminating in: acts of solidarity with disenfranchised classes, anti-class / anti-hierarchy, ultimately bringing us to anti-classism (and anti-acac for those who act against solidarity for disenfranchised classes and act in solidarity ~in accordance with exploitive and unjust classes.) and anti-imperialism and decolonisation of actions
I don’t want to call you out; I’m calling all of Hexbear out. Though I do feel the non-vegan mod team was more responsible, by virtue of its position in a (justifiable) (mod-for-a-forum) hierarchy and not being vegan and not all standing behind OP in not standing behind faer in calling wreckers being wreckers. And, considering you were on the moderation team, both helping making these bans and I guess not vegan, you can take it personally in that sense, I suppose. It was a moderation wide failure for the non-vegans and a sitewide issue for Hexbear users. They should have supported us and the mods should have stood behind the vegan community, instead of putting all vegans including vegans in precarious positions on the site: coercive.
I can honor my bad experiences by telling you. I hope you can tell the site administration what I’ve said here (to your understanding) to honor my experiences and the experiences of other users and do your part in taking restorative action for what happened and for the bondage of animals. I also expect you go vegan (gain vegan ethics) (and I don’t expect you to deny yourself medical care…~) , don’t do racism, ableism, speciesism, racism, sexism, and transphobia in response to veganism and vegan considerations (incorporate becoming non-oppressive, to your ability, in your self-actualisation!)
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