Roaming Millennial: the Gay Rights Model for the Vegan Movement.

- yen here are five problems I have with
your behavior number one you don't shut up about being vegan veganism isn't a bad thing but it's just it's not something that you need to tell us about all the time you can probably just go ahead and keep it to yourself and I'm not trying to start a war with vegans with this video I think a lot of vegans out there you wouldn't even know they were vegan huh nah no Yin so her position is there's nothing wrong with being vegan if only you can keep it to yourself if it's just your little dirty secret and you know this really runs parallel to discussions about gay rights that I can remember from the 1980s I am old enough to remember the 1980s kids you actually cannot sustain the position ethically that there's nothing wrong about homosexuality as long as you keep it to yourself it's not sustainable on the small scale of just one gay person your gay best friend your gay cousin your gay brother your gay co-worker and it's also not sustainable when you scale it up and look at a society of millions of people in which there are at least hundreds of thousands of gay people it's not but it does actually take some work you have to invest your imagination your intellect into really thinking on but knock-on consequences the indirect consequences of homosexuals concealing their sexuality and their sexuality is only one part of their identity it might seem harmless to say and again back in the 80s many people thought it was harmless to say many people did not consider themselves homophobes but they still maintained that if they have a co-worker who's gay they don't want to know about it if they have a cousin or a brother or a friend who's gay it should all just be kept secret in that way society could just keep going on well in a sense it could in a sense you could have a society where absolutely all homosexuals has to live in the closet and where every day they have to live with the inconvenience of people offering to set them up on a date with their sister which they're not because they're gay or co-workers asking about their roommate and them having to make up lies if a white as they go to Disneyland with their roommate which is kind of weird if you're a heterosexual or you know their grandmother asking them why they haven't had kids yet or this kind of thing there's a lot of awkwardness on that one-to-one level and beyond that there's also an element of living in fear long term if the whole society stays in the closet if everyone lived by Bill Clinton's principle that was Bill Clinton who set up the principle of Don't Ask Don't Tell he thought you have the military work with all the gays being in the closet it doesn't work it does not work you don't get ten guys living in a tent together you know you don't get guys in the sniper corps living in such close quarters for such a long time and not knowing about each other's sexuality that's ridiculous it is I mean on that level the one-to-one scale is dick ulis that the next step I want to take of this is not just the one-to-one scale what if your position in the Army is that you can be fired at any time if the reality of your sexuality is confessed what if you are a fireman or a school teacher and the school board that you work for their position is that if anyone is known to be a homosexual they can be fired and maybe you get called in and asked about it maybe you have a meeting in the principal's office where you're asked about why you live with your roommate not with a girlfriend or a wife or you know why you haven't had kids yet and you're being interrogated for that you're being persecuted for that over time what is it that creates the social conditions the cultural change and the legislative change the new laws that today protect the rights of homosexuals in the classroom in the fire department in the army what brings that up though is its secrecy is it is it living a lie is it making people like you more comfortable by just keeping it to yourself by treating a secret no we had to have like 10 billion awkward conversations coast-to-coast I'm Canadian not American by the way but coast-to-coast in Canada there were a billion awkward conversation I mean really the 1980s I could say was the turning point where there was this cultural change of saying no no you're not just gonna sit down with your grandmother and say yeah I don't have kids yet maybe you'll have grandkids next year you know uh where people actually said look grandma I'm not going to have kids this year I'm not gonna have kids next year I'm not gonna have kids ever because the guidance of my roommate is not really my roommate and I think a lot of grandparents thought yeah I'd always suspected that I mean it's well most cases it wasn't right out of the blue in some cases I'm sure it was I mean if you have gay friends a lot of them sorry lousy what do you mean you donated that girl back in high school whatever the story is different families have different stories but sure on the on that one-to-one scale there were a billion awkward conversations but this connects to on a larger scale on the social scale say as a whole people organizing themselves into foundations into advocacy groups into lobbying groups influencing government influencing public education ultimately bring about legal changes that protect your status in the office in the school in the army where you cannot be fired for your sexuality where you're not obliged to live a life now homosexuality it's a really interesting comparison to veganism I really often say to vegans don't compare the future of the vegan movement to the abolition of slavery or the history of the American Civil War you know homosexuals managed to fundamentally change our culture or legal structure their status in our society without a civil war right it was a very fundamental change in society that was brought about with in democracies by Democratic means and without too many people being shot dead in the streets it's really a largely nonviolent very fundamental change and that's one that vegans can learn from however in this woman's line of critique vegans it's also worth contrasting just how many times veganism comes up in a day or in a week in a month at your workplace compared to homosexuality now this is my personal opinion I think when you start a new job we have a new workplace a whole bunch of new co-workers at first there are a few discussions pertaining to your sexuality whether those are polite or employed when you first show up people want to know if you're single if you're available or if you're married or otherwise off the market people want to know if you're gay or straight what's up with you nor when you first start a job there are a couple of conversations and a little bit of gossiping and then it fades into the background unless things suddenly change unless while you're at the job you get divorced whatever uh but it's not something that comes up every day it's true and that's very different from being in the closet but you know if you're gay at the workplace unless you work at a strip club you're not going to talk about it day after day every day it's not going to come up with your boss and your coworkers and the reality is almost know that even if you do work in a strip club as a vegan it's amazing how it comes up it even if you don't want to even if you're tired of talking about it if you don't want to witness to other people you don't want to preach right my boss here in China there's several different people I could describe as my boss I work at a university so everyone's my boss all the other professors are my boss but my boss invited me to go to dinner with her family with her husband and her kid so it's a formal workplace invitation I actually went to the restaurant first to check it out and that restaurant there was not even one thing that was vegan it was a soup restaurant absolutely the soup had meat stock meat oil there was no way anything there could be could be began sank to the boiling meat was really a horrible stench or vegan I don't think meat eaters like that smell either so you know I had to turn down that that work engagement as a vegan day-to-day is really impossible to be in the closet and please Jen I am NOT saying this as a joke but if I just go out to coffee with a co-worker just coffee I have to explain I can't eat this cookie that came with the coffee because it's not vegan and I have to send this back this has milk in it it will come up it will come up and if you're gay you know what that coffee I do think I mean I don't think anyone's you live in the closet that would be wrong but it's also enough that's going to be mentioned three meals a day and it's not like you're going to sit down in the coffee shop and say I'm not really comfortable with this coffee shop it's too heterosexual it's not like you're going to say I can't drink this coffee this is straight coffee why can't they make gay coffee it's not like you're going to say no this cookie this is not gay enough for me all right send me email send me send me comments in the comment if you're acceptable I've never had a gay friend who had that kind of attitude like it never had a gay friend says they only eat at gay restaurants right or or asks when the waiter comes is there a gay option on the menu yeah I don't have any gay friends like that a lot of gay people so again I realize her approach here is fundamentally unsympathetic she's not interested in seeing it from our perspective but if you think homosexuality comes up too often in the workplace in school with co-workers with your family with friends whatever it is because you know sometimes you may be a little bit bored of hearing you may think oh you know Jim he's always talking about his sex life I don't really want to hear it life is full of those you know minor you know minor sources of friction and conflict personality company sure what you should be able to appreciate that even in the workplace even if it's just going out for coffee you're going to dinner with your boss or with coworkers that veganism actually is something comes above time even when we don't want to talk about it and when you scale it up our problem scaling up is actually much worse than it is for homosexuals homosexuals are a huge percentage of the population and vegans are unlikely to be more than one half of one percent right I have no idea the real number of how many people are gay it is vastly more than one-half of one percent and some gay people are born rich and some are born poor and some of them are lawyers and some of them are architects and they have the proven capacity to form the civil society organizations and the lobbying groups they need to defend their rights and give themselves a voice and democratic system and vegan so far we really don't have that there are a lot of differences vegans are a self-selecting minority were not randomly distributed the way gays are you'll find gangs everywhere to find them in Texas again among rich and poor in all walks of life and you don't find the against no walks of life right you find them here and there and little strange pockets a lot of vegans in Portland Oregon let's you know even if you go to the most right-wing town in Texas you're going to meet plenty of gay people shows that Albuquerque New Mexico always remember the gay club in Albuquerque New Mexico Wow anyway look uh when you scale it up we need to go through a similar process to advocate for our issues in a democratic society we need to identify one another get politicized get organized and give a voice to issues that matter to us we for example are not comfortable seeing schoolchildren taught in schools that milk cow milk is healthy for them the chicken eggs are healthy for them as a very real scientific fact those two things are not true we don't even have to get into meat here let's just stick with those two examples that are fundamental to the modern American diet an amount of Canadian diamond we know as a scientific fact that no human being should ever eat chicken eggs they are that unhealthy and dairy is not that far behind it is fundamentally bad advice to tell a child that they should eat cheese we want to change a matter of legal policy a matter of culture matter of Education we want to change what children are taught about food sure we'd also love to see questions of animal rights and ethics and ecology included in the curriculum but on a very simple level why do you have egg industry propaganda in the classroom while you have dairy industry programmed classroom can we change and take it over back to the 1980s to me that's very closely parallel to a time when there was Catholic propaganda in the classroom when there was Protestant propaganda in the classroom when instead of having education that's realistic about condoms and contraceptives and sexually transmitted diseases when children were we I remember I remember the 1980s when children were being taught taught things about homosexuality and about heterosexuality when children were being taught really fundamentally dangerous and scientifically false propaganda about sex in the classroom we want to change that right and you can look around today but I think there's no comparison I think even in the Catholic school board what they now teach children about gays in Canada I have looked into that it's very addressed in question that's a 180 degrees different from what children were taught about homosexuals in the 1980s so it's a fundamental change it's a change that doesn't just relate to the awkwardness of the avenida nur with my boss of me having to communicate it to my coworkers where I do and do not stand it's a change that ultimately links to questions of culture and public policy in a dynamic way what the future of the vegan movement should be is debatable but I'll tell you one thing right now it's not debatable that the way forward is for us to go back in the closet the way forward for us and for you cannot possibly be for us to keep it to ourselves the new gen