the hardest question for new vegans.
Make it stand out
People are always going to ask you this question. So get ready to evolve.
When you’re a new vegan, this question usually comes to your ears in the shittiest tone possible, and you’d better have a quick response in your pocket if you want to get through it.
My girlfriend is cute. I’ve seen her get away with saying “the animals.” I never get away with that. I have a tattoo on my forehead that says “challenge me to a fight.” And since I’m not cute, I embraced the fight, especially when I first went vegan.
I used to like the arguments.
I’d say something like this: 1) “I don’t think it’s OK to kill somebody just because they look different from me.”
BOOM.
Non-vegans will immediately rifle through excuses for killing animals. They don’t have souls, we raise them for that, they’re not intelligent, blah blah blah, etc.
And that’s when I hit ‘em with this: “Those are the same arguments people made defending slavery in America.”
Slavery is a bomb you can drop in any conversation about veganism. Think of it like you have a grenade in your back pocket you can pull out at any moment.
And they always say: “You’re being offensive by comparing black people to animals.” Everyone thinks they can catch a vegan being somehow immoral. If they do, they think they’ve won somehow and can justify their murdering defenseless creatures one more day.
But I knew they were going to say that. “All people are animals. You said so yourself when you brought up lions or whatever.” (At some point muggles always bring up how animals eat each other in the wild). “What I’m saying is that no matter who is oppressed, the oppressors’ arguments and rationalizations are always identical. I’m comparing you to a slave owner or a nazi; you’re comparing people to animals.”
If you like debates so heated you have to take an ice bath afterward, if you want your family to kick you out of their houses, use this line. It worked great for me.
2) “I’m against violence, murder, and oppression.”
Later I made a change. People who latch onto the word murder get my previous murder material. But this one gives me a few more outs.
Everyone thinks they’re against these things, but they aren’t, and the cognitive dissonance causes a great deal of distress. But since that distress is usually evident, use this to your advantage. If you think those words apply to different species differently, you’re a speciesist. You open the door to talking about what real sexism or racism is.
For example, if you’re a true racist, you understand agree that all races feel the same highs and lows and are capable of the same high and low actions all humans are. But you still don’t like another race. Anything else is ignorant prejudice.
If you understand that people and animals are individuals capable of the same suffering and you still go ahead and torture and kill them, you are a true speciesist, and it causes you mental distress and it is an insult to your own intellect and ethics.
3) “There isn’t just one reason, there are too many because animal exploitation touches every aspect of our lives. What are you into?”
I started feeling like a meanie, so I switched it up to make it about the person asking me the question. Once you determine what they care about—literally anything—you can go into how supporting a violent and cruel industry is helping destroy the very thing they hold dear.
Make it about them.
You kind of have to be a black belt in this tiger style if you want to use this one though. So this isn’t really for beginners. Get some Wu-tang training watching vegan videos before trying this.
4) I couldn’t look myself in the mirror knowing I was part of the problem instead of the solution.
People get defensive about this one, but all you have to say is “I vote with how I want the world to go with my own dollar and my own actions. I might not be able to stop the destruction of the rainforest, but I can withdraw my support of its wholesale annihilation. There is no action I can take that is more impactful than the inaction of NOT killing animals.”
Everyone loves the rainforest, and unless you’re insane the environment is something you’re worried about.
5) Health Reasons
I don’t get along with people who “go vegan for health reasons” because they’re usually full of shit.
The only way to get away with this one is to say your health is a personal subject. The problem is that everyone thinks they’re a nutrition expert when they get around a new vegan because they took a class in high school that mentioned protein and incisors.
You’ve got to shut them down early saying you don’t eat meat for the same reason you don’t smoke, it’s bad for you, now ABCEDEFG, this conversation is over.
Protein is in literally everything. Tell them to look at elephants and gorillas, the real kings of the jungle, who are both incredibly strong and vegan. Americans have abundance of protein sources and don’t need to worry too much about their nutrition if they’re not total idiots trying to thrive on oreos and top ramen.
If none of these are for you, try being really cute and just saying you’re sad about the animals.
It’s not my style, but it works for some people.
The truth is this:
There are more pros than cons in adopting a vegan lifestyle and diet.
If you approach your own life the way a CEO approaches a business decision, with a cost/benefit analysis, the answer is clear: GO VEGAN.
