Against Mexie, Against Halfway Veganism.

as a political stance people who believe
in Animal Liberation who are against speciesism will incorporate veganism into their lives as much as is possible and practicable this will look different for everyone based on a variety of factors socioeconomic factors what Mexi says here is that your commitment to abolish factory farming your commitment to refuse to eat meat dairy and eggs your refusal to wear leather your moral commitment should be allowed to vary should be allowed to vacillate with your socio economic circumstances if you watch the much longer video this is exerted from I think you can see that she's using what's called intersectional reasoning to talk about intersecting oppressions and basically say well you should be vegan in your own way at a level that's appropriate for you given how oppressed you are how oppressed you may be given your particular benighted socioeconomic background cultural background etc when my grandmother went to college anti-semitism was very very real and all over the world Jews really were an oppressed minority they may have been less oppressed in Canada than they were in Europe but still there was a very real oppression do you think that my grandmother wanted to write math tests and chemistry tests that were easier for her because she was oppressed do you think she wanted to be easier for her to get into dental college or virtus exceed in dental college because her family was poor because she was from at that time really and intensely hated and oppressed ethnic minority in Europe and in Canada given the whole generation that she lived through the struggle she went through do you think it would have helped her do you think it would have helped Canadian society as a whole to have two different standards for what it is to succeed on a math test separate but unequal one for an oppressed minority group and one for everyone else I had the conversation with a guy today about education for our indigenous people in Canada creative way Mohawk den a some people call them American Indians Native Americans the reality is in Canada still now we have separate but unequal education our First Nations people are Native people almost that exception have a much lower quality of education a much worse quality of education than Canadians they've worse quality of education than new immigrants and refugees and even people were just living as temporary visitors in Canada who live in the cities and a part of the mainstream white Western settler education do you think it would help our genuinely oppressed native people to hold them to a lower standard and to say oh well this math test is good enough for you this chemistry test is good enough for you this line here is good enough for you to live up to I think you'd find that extremely disturbing extremely dehumanizing but we're just talking about math we're just talking about chemistry how much worse would it be if you were to say morality ethics that these standards should be lowered for you because of your socioeconomic background because if you were cultural oppression to say to my own grandmother even oh well who could expect anything better from you you're just a blank from blank who would expect you to live up to a higher standard who would expect you to be judged or measured by the same ruler my grandmother all that she wanted all her life was to be judged by the same measure as everyone else she wasn't a profound woman being politically had nothing in common with her and no sympathy for her and what she did with her life it mattered a lot to her that for her as a Jew she had a chance to join a tennis club and a golf club things I find meaningless because she really was old enough to remember when whites only whites only Tennis Club thought it meant Christians only it actively excluded Jews she wanted that equal opportunity and when she got it well I got to see what she did with it I suppose that was her generation struggle veganism animal rights ecology ethics these are all in a major way my generation struggle our generation struggle and yours too Maxie I would urge you measure yourself and measure all mankind by one in the same standard don't treat people in a dehumanizing way as not having to live up to the same moral standard as yourself do to so-called socio-economic and cultural oppressions especially not when we're talking about something so simple and so fundamental as recognizing the difference between meat and tofu asking the question where does my food come from and how can I take responsibility for that [Music]