The Vegan Identity: "Ghosts" of Public Perception.

just got a question from the audience J
costliest here in the audience of my livestream he's appeared in this channel before in interviews and discussions J is asking to what extent veganism as an identity is something determined by vegans themselves now I think what he has in mind is the simple question is are you vegan simply because you identify as vegan is anyone who claims to be vegan therefore if so facto vegan but I view the question and the problem in a bit more of a culturally complex context what does it mean to be vegan I've been in a scenario in Taiwan where in the context of traditional Taiwanese culture Taiwanese Chinese culture Buddhist culture Confucian culture miscellaneous Chinese ancestor worship religious and supernatural beliefs when I identified myself as vegan people perceive me with a certain kind of snide contempt and they wanted to ask one way or another do you really believe in ghosts now to some of you watching this video that may seem completely surreal what does veganism have to do with believing in ghosts well in Taiwanese culture one has quite a lot to do with the other many of the people you meet who've become vegan in Taiwan believe in karma the more form or another and they may really live their lives in fear of the dead of dead people ghosts being entities that have to make decisions that have real impacts on their lives any a belief is kind of easy to talk about in that context it's often a lot more useful to talk about fear a fear of ghosts fear of the dead fear of bad karma etc because when people fear these things that changed their lives accordingly that's a very sure sign of how real the role of belief is in their lives one entered ad from a friend was of a young woman who got pregnant she and her boyfriend had an accidental pregnancy and they looked at the calendar and they actually delayed having the abortion until a date on the calendar that they felt was less likely to result in the ghost of the fetus haunting them this is telling about Buddhist morality in many ways they do regard abortion as bad karma was an act of violence and a sin that will produce a ghost but they're actually respond to that challenge by trying to kind of negotiate with the supernatural cosmology and choose a lucky date on the calendar but those are people who really believe in ghosts who really fear ghosts so in that cultural context when I identify as vegan I may think of veganism is something very strongly linked to ecology very strongly to a political discourse that I come on YouTube and talk about but the identity people are gonna impose on me reflects a set of cultural assumptions I have no control over now maybe Tom one is a little bit too exotic and bizarre for you watching this video some people are gonna be familiar with it so not obviously probably I have some regular viewers in this channel who are here because they know about my background in Asian Studies in Asian languages but for some of you that's a little bit hard to imagine let me tell you in France which is not nearly so exotic living in France when you tell people that you're vegan they have a lot of political assumptions about who you are and what you believe and they will often have the same kind of religious assumptions about who you are what you believe or they will perceive you as someone with supernatural cult-like beliefs as being the only explanation for why you'd be vegan and that stereotype is obviously not without a basis so I think that's part of the reason and why there is so much self policing of the identity within veganism self policing is too big about explain what I mean here I see a lot of irrational behavior on the internet of vegans basically castigating and beating up other vegans because they're really afraid if this behavior is perceived as normal within veganism if whatever the behaviour trying to proceed then other people will associate that with veganism now that can be true even of lazy veganism and making mature even with the fear that look if other people think it's okay to eat honey or if other people think it's okay to you know eat milk ingredients as long as they're invisible or some of that if there's somebody who's a lazy vegan describe themselves as veganism describe what they do as veganism describe themselves vegan that that will have knock-on effects for how veganism is perceived now they themselves as they begin to perceive that this will actually pollute the definition of veganism that's a little bit simple straightforward but you see the same kind of behavior kind of telescoping out into questions of you know what is the connection between veganism and the so-called anti VAX movement so that's hysteria about possible and actual side-effects from vaccines so in many cases the side effects the talking about are real but they're one in a million and that one in a million side effect is being too used to justify an anti medical establishment position refusing to accept vaccines well in the recent past that say just two years ago there was a very very strong connection you could see on the internet all the time or very significant overlap between the public face of veganism and the public face of the the anti-vaxxers there's a so-called crunchy mom phenomenon I think 10 years from now nobody's gonna remember the term crunchy mom but in the internet that was a big deal just two years ago and there were all these people on all these message boards putting together information and you know the same people who would put together these kind of crazy semi-scientific excuses for condemning vaccines what at the same time for putting together crazy semi-scientific excuses for why if you were vegan you didn't really need to take a b12 supplement and you do scientifically you really do need to take a b12 seven but even the meat-eaters should all be taking v12 supplements in terms of what what science tells us but you can understand why vegans get into trying to police the identity internally the vegans beating up on and censoring other vegan because of this fear if we let this pass if we let this become normal if we let this become publicly perceived as normal and veganism then that's going to come back to haunt us so the question the original question was is the identity of veganism something 100% determined controlled by ourselves as vegans or is it partly determined by perception by public perception I think the tragedy we're all stuck with is that it's a hundred percent determined by public perception when it really matters and when does it really matter it matters when you're in a prison cell and you're trying to explain to the jailer that you can't eat any of the food you've been given it matters when you're a parent in France and your child is required by the school authorities to eat meat that's a requirement that it launched they're served need and as a parent you don't have the right to refuse and maybe the principle calls you up and explains this to you or the principal calls in a doctor and the doctor informs you as a vegan that it's impossible for your child to get enough protein if they don't eat meat and cheese this kind of thing when you're dealing with people in positions of authority the way they perceive you their assumptions about you because you're vegan and they're assumptions of a veganism that may indeed you know directly or indirectly be based on the caste of crazy eccentrics who managed to get in the limelight here on the internet or it may be based on for example animal rights terrorists as it was for many decades in Europe a small number of people who used violence really destroyed the reputation of animal rights just as a term animal rights as a term had to be designed destroyed the reputation of the anti-fur movement because of its length of violence and I do think to a significant extent in the last 10 years veganism is had an uphill struggle precisely because the reputation earned by small numbers of headline-grabbing violent protesters so no sadly zero percent of it is under our control what's under our control is our diet what's under our control is our ability to organize ourselves politically to accomplish real things to real activism but public perception it can be terrifying it can be especially terrifying when you're talking about the perception of people who are in a role of authority over you to control your life to control your child's life at the prison at the school at the retirement home at the hospital and those already are really good reasons for why veganism must be articulated as a political struggle not just as a diet not just as a form of personal purity and indeed not just as an ecological or animal rights movement but ultimately as a movement for vegans themselves as a visible minority living within Western democratic societies