Hitomi Mochizuki is Ex-Vegan. #NotSatire

lastly i found my dream pair of shoes that i have been just curious about when they would come into my life and it happened and there are these cowgirl boots which are so beautiful i thrifted a pair of cowgirl boots like five years ago and they broke within the first month because the leather was so worn and since then i have been open and ready for my next pair to appear into my life there is so much over consumption shown online but my relationship with clothing is fully it's just grounded like i only buy things that i absolutely love you can look up this brand online the sallian boots and belt company they fit perfectly and i just love all these little embroidered hearts and it also has some silver embellished hearts on there as well they're just so cool and then the internet was a big one because the internet came along and i started watching those videos that a lot of them that peta puts up of factory farming oh and terrible it's horrible it's not just terrible it's it's like it doesn't make any sense it's like this is this is like human beings at their very worst [Music] [Music] we treated these things as like the the most i mean not just as a commodity but we've ignored their feelings and their thoughts and their that the fact that they have instincts and needs and then we've stuffed them into these tiny little cages it's a sickness avalucienne i participated in a storm of controversy today i participated in not one but two massive debates on uh discord and i i won i won both i won the first one while bench pressing over 220 pounds i forget it was maybe 230 but 200 i was distracted i was having this debate on discord and the second one uh well i was doing push-ups and uh upright row with 105 pounds but i won that also anyway this is about the second debate and melissa's off camera but she's just uh asked me a few questions about this so the second debate which we're talking about here had to do with second-hand leather and secondhand morality a very small number of vegans want to make excuses for secondhand leather keeping retaining and using items that are secondhand leather themselves i don't dig secondhand morality and i'm morally consistent on this because i'm also against second-hand pets and second-hand horses i don't care that you didn't buy the horse in the first place if you keep the horses a captive and you ride on its back and you feed it hay and you take it to the vet you're doing all the things of that horse ownership entails whether you call this exploitation or use or just ownership it's not vegan it doesn't matter that you got the horse for free it doesn't matter if it was a gift doesn't matter if you bought it second hand doesn't matter if it was a rescue animal does not matter if you stole it right and this applies for me also directly to leather if you broke into the leather store with a gun and stole it at gunpoint it's still leather you're still acquiring owning and using leather and if inasmuch as veganism is opposed to the use of animal products it's opposed to the use of leather whether you stole it whether you got as a hand-me-down like was given to you for free by your older brother or you got it second hand buying leather at a second hand shop is still buying leather and again again even if you eliminate the buying stage you're still participating in this cycle of suffering at all the other stages you're still participating in the market mechanism and the ethical decision here just like anyone else but just without that first stage of paying money into the system now if your version of vegan ethics hangs totally on the moment of purchase you may not see it that way so those are the people i've just been debating with but for me it's the whole gestalt right um ultimately sorry i have used this example before on the channel if someone is putting cocaine down on a table and then they have to get up and leave the nightclubs there's a nightclub and somebody's put this cocaine i don't care that the cocaine is there for me to use for free someone else might say oh well this cocaine would go to waste i personally ethically wouldn't purchase the cocaine but given that it's free here given that someone else has in effect bought the cocaine they would use it for free from my perspective that's what you could call a free rider fallacy the fact that someone else has committed murder or someone else has committed rape or someone else has purchased cocaine if you regard it as morally bad you're not looking for your opportunity to jump on and take advantage of that for free if you regard the production of leather as morally bad if this purchase and sale of leather is morally bad you're not looking for your opportunity to be a moral free writer and jump on and get it get it for free say oh well somebody else already killed it somebody else already packaged it and sold it i can get it secondhand or i can get it as a hand-me-down great it was my chance to wear leather and use it no that's morally incoherent i'm not into secondhand leather i'm not into second-hand morality now there's a flip side of this which is what my girlfriend melissa asked me about which is about the vegan not being in the role of the recipient but the role of the donor so when people first go vegan they often own meat they have some meat in their fridge they own dairy they own eggs they own leather and the question is what should they do with these objects now i half jokingly say to people when they ask me get a shovel go in your backyard dig a grave and bury it i'm only half joking because this is indirectly my opinion if you make the decision to take this leather and give it to your brother tom you're making the moral judgment oh i would never wear this leather i would never this is immoral for me but for someone like you it's acceptable i mean this is looking down your nose at tom saying well for an inferior person like you tom this is okay same with cocaine if i have let's say somehow i've ended up with a bag of cocaine in my possession am i going to turn around and hand it to my own daughter and say well look i have no use for this i would never use cocaine but maybe you and your friends can have fun with it no it's totally morally incoherent again the the issue of it being my daughter obviously is more evocative because there's an issue of moral responsibility but my point is we're all morally responsible for each other doesn't matter if it's my daughter or my brother or my friend from high school or my high school principal go to the high school principal and say hey you you maybe you can make use of this cocaine if you think cocaine is bad you don't want to use it yourself you don't want to encourage others to use it you're not going to enable others to use it if i think wearing leather is bad i'm not going to use it myself i'm not going to give it to my brother tom et cetera now actually burning in your backyard is is not that great not that great to use uh it's not that great a solution it's not not that that great way to get rid of it but i think for for a lot of us i did come into veganism as an ecological vegan something uh melissa and i have in common um [Music] but i think there's a false aesthetic of waste and waste avoidance involved here where people say they don't want to waste things and then this justifies doing something that's immoral so for me it's the same with the cocaine oh well this cocaine is going to go to waste if you don't snort it up or use it because someone else left it you didn't buy it you didn't plan this way but it's here so now you can be a free rider no cocaine belongs in the garbage good for me it's morally positive to see cocaine swept off the table and thrown up with the trash good it belongs in the trash that's morally positive it's not morally neutral that's a good thing cheese belongs in the garbage good i don't regret that i don't say i don't say oh what a waste this should have been eaten by a human being no that's the opposite of what i believe i don't want to eat it myself i don't think anyone should eat it i'm morally opposed to people eating cheese so when cheese gets put in the garbage it's not a waste i don't work hard this is that's a waste i regard it as morally positive i'm sorry so on so on down the line leather i mean now my argument on this again is not based on the symbolic value of leather although that's also interesting if you are morally opposed to rape you won't be going around wearing a t-shirt that says rape is normal rape is okay rape is no big deal it's morally incoherent this is the symbolic argument that people like gary francione lean on where they say oh well by wearing leather you're sending out the signal wearing leather as normal wearing leather is acceptable now i think that's interesting kind of window dressing i think it's an interesting element of living in a culture and it's there's some truth to that if everyone around you is wearing fur it becomes socially normalized if everyone around you is smoking cigarettes it's social normalizing if you take a stand and say no smoking cigarettes is wrong then you're also not against cigarettes going in the garbage you're not regarding that as a waste great let's let's throw let's throw more cigarettes in the garbage they're not going to waste if they're if they're getting thrown out uh however so it's not based on symbolic reasoning in that sense but it is based on an acceptance that one there is no hard and fast moral distinction between acquiring something new and acquiring it second hand whether it's secondhand leather second hand rape second hand murder second hand cocaine now i just want to insert here the caveat i can recognize that something is the lesser of two evils but the lesser of two evils is still evil i do think it's different if you're given a leather jacket as a hand-me-down from your older brother i understand it's not the same as you going to buy there are people who inherit fur coats from their grandparents it's a hundred-year-old for a coat of selling i understand that's less evil than going to a store now and buying anyone or going to a store and ordering one and saying yeah kill that animal slit its throat and make it into this style of code no no no i want this style so make sure it's an extra gray animal and kill it and i want them vertical not horizontally in this kind of [ __ ] you can hear people talking about this is part of how the furniture a lot of stuff is made to order my mom's fur coat was was made to order i know my unless she's gotten rid of it my mom used to go around on a fur coat i remember that anyway um the fact that something is the lesser of two evils doesn't mean it's morally neutral and again wasting something throwing away something that you think is evil from my perspective is morally positive so i just got the argument for example oh but if you let it go to waste like if you don't eat this leftover cheese this leftover pizza if you don't eat this roadkill animal then you're going to go and buy more broccoli so do harmful and i expect no i see buying broccoli is morally positive oh if you don't recycle these second-hand leather shoes then you're gonna go and buy a new pair of vegan shoes and that's semi-terrible no buying vegan shoes is morally positive and again whether it's direct or indirect if it's a knock-on defect for your brother tom or something tom also you should encourage him to go and buy vegan shoes whether you're the the donor or the recipient ultimately if you're trying to stamp out the use of cigarettes a lot of cigarettes are going to end up in the garbage trying to stamp out the use of leather shoes a lot of leather shoes are going to end in the garbage if you call that a waste i think you're in a morally incoherent position what did you say all right okay hey under 10 minutes uh i think that's a wrap for me it's a really morally simple issue for someone like a natural vegan it's more complex because a natural vegan doesn't oppose all animal use she allows the use of animals as pets and then in an allegory to that she says you're allowed to own a cow and keep it in captivity and exploit it to produce milk in as much as you uh treat the cow as well as you treat a cat or dog for me it's all animal use those animals don't want to be a toy or a play thing for human amusement that cow doesn't want to live in a shed in captivity and produce milk free to consume none of that's morally coherent and using animals to produce clothing out of them or to produce food out of them is immoral even if you somehow got the animal second hand so buying meat from a grocer right from a grocery store obviously supports animal cruelty but eating someone's like chicken tenders that they were gonna throw away what how is that a problem i think it's a shame that someone who eats a vegan diet avoids palm oil but let's say they buy like i don't know maybelline foundation or something every few months or they buy a pair of leather shoes every few years they can't call themselves vegan and i just want more than anything like if i could have one witch of life even if it meant like after my wish i had to live on the streets for the rest of my life i would wish to go into every single slaughterhouse and free all those animals and give them love which is just so heartbreaking to me um yeah i really i don't know why i'm filming this i just want to build awareness more than anything and step one eggs all right we're gonna separate the yolks and the whites the whites are gonna go in the mixing bowl the yolks are gonna go and also a mixing bowl this one's for the mixer great [Music] um [Music]