Transgender Activism vs. Veganism, a contrast (Calvin Neufeld, a conversation with)
18 August 2019 [link youtube]
http://www.calvinneufeld.com/p/about-me.html
#vegan #veganactivism #veganism
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I just attended what was for me a really
positive and inspirational lecture by this guy right here Kelvin new film dealing with trans activism veganism and some related and unrelated questions for me the most interesting thing to really look at are the nature and objectives of the trans movement what finally is the objective this is moving towards in our society and that is by no means a simple settled question that all trans activists would agree on yeah I think it's fair right what finally is the objective for the society of looking divorce so I really used this very evocative image during your lecture of a stack of turtles and where the turtle at the bottom is that fundamentally objecting to the hierarchy and the question I put to you is well how radical is the final end state trans activism or how different is it from the world we live in today given that we do have a few positive examples of societies on earth where you know I do think at least transgender people are accepted it may not be paradise may not be absolutely perfect but how different is the end goal trans activists are working boards in a country like Canada compared to countries like Thailand Laos Cambodia that seemed to me several steps ahead how radical is it to normalize human diversity to me that's not radical at all it's just radical because it's not necessarily the norm people who are different or often sort of kept out of the public eye or or seen as being less than others and I think we're past that point of seeing people with differences as being inferior or not the same we are all the same so I really see one of the many goals of trans activism being to just equalize all of us humans and human animals and just recognize the value of life in all of its forms and all of its expressions so one of the subtle aspects of your lecture is in the lecture itself and also in Q&A was that you see it as quite positive to regard transgender people as a third gender rather than absolutely being the gender they identify with today so I just say this is it I myself have talked to transgender people at different points on I guess the political spectrum it seems to me that's not a simpler settle point so where this conversation is happening in Canada by the way where there is and you mentioned it there is a special kind of influence of the First Nations tradition here the idea of a third gender that be positive I really liked him related deposit he said during the lecture transgender people have a unique kind of privilege and positive contribution or culture may because they're in the position of having grown up female and then at some point switch to living as a male or having grown up male and that that's a perspective that has some value I relate to that really positively I think okay great you know that that's something where you know within the diversity of society even if you regard it as eccentric which may well be I'm vegan I'm in many ways an eccentric you know I mean it's something that okay we talk about normalizing it but it's also something special it's something extraordinary it's it's a perspective that contribute contribute positively with all its eccentricities you know rolled up in it I do you feel or you know do other trans activists sometimes confront you or disagree with you where they say no there isn't a third gender like there's only two genders and they're there they're just born the wrong generative is that is that a conflict in the movement i I wouldn't say that all trans people belong to this third gender category I wouldn't say that some cuz as some cultures recognize a distinct third gender and it's been part of a long centuries and/or millennia long tradition just recognizing the diversity but gender is a spectrum so there are plenty of trans people who are let's say all the way on one end of a gender spectrum or all the way on the other end of the gender spectrum same with non trans people you can be hyper hyper hyper male or hyper hyper hyper female or you could be anywhere in between and so for me for example on that spectrum I would place myself on the Mae side of middle I'm not on one extreme or on another extreme and how trans people identify there's absolutely no Universal way to describe it there are as many ways of being trans as there are trans people but it's lovely to see how different societies and cultures have recognized the kind of diversity that occurs within every human population and just exploring that and not being threatened by by terminology so much people are very very sensitive about labels and terms and I just see it all as many different ways of describing human experience another kind of subtle question that was on my mind was this - the lecture is the kind of tension between normalization and radicalization so the lecture dealt with veganism animal rights and so on also actually prison politics as well as I mean oh it's a weird contrary situation where I kind of agree with both you know on the one hand okay yes you want to normalize the position of transgender people in society but there's also a call here to radicalize the role of transgender people in transforming society yeah I know everyone just comment on that it's kind of simultaneous impulse to say that it's completely normal it's completely not extraordinary and also hey this is an extraordinary opportunity to transform society and challenge so that yeah you know one of the things one of the things I absolutely love about being trans is that a minute somebody knows that you're trans they don't know what to think about anything anymore right Mizzou off and so all of your assumptions we are constantly imposing assumptions on everybody we meet so the minute somebody has that blank I don't know what to think right now that's when a real conversation can begin and that's that radical approach that we can take to everything you know we've talked somebody after my talk today he's a cisgender non trans tall good-looking white man and he says it's hard for me to talk about some of these things and the interconnectedness of oppression for example because people say oh you're just a privileged white man what do you know and I said but somebody like me I can say it because nobody knows what to think about anything and I can say there's femininity in me without thinking that that makes me less of a guy or we can compare human and animal suffering without humans getting all defensive saying what you're comparing me to an animal that's inferior to me it's hard for a cisgender privileged white man to make those comparisons right but someone like me I'm free because nobody knows what to think about anything anymore and I just love being in that position where I can just turn things up upside down and and have people just listen with an open mind and an open heart so I'm gonna tell a really brief anecdote that I think for me illustrates all the points from the lecture and the questions I'm asking now cuz I mean these are just broad questions about the final destination for transgender activism when I was living in Thailand and Laos so it's back and forth cross the border so is living in both places I was out doing research I was out doing humanitarian work I wasn't living there as a tourist but you know I encountered a group of high school students who were out in a camping trip and one of them was transgender and the other high school students treated hearse is a male to female transgender person completely normally like it was absolutely no awkwardness or stiffness like not even if you can cast your mind back I'm 40 years old I can remember a time when in a lot of situations like oh there's a black person coming to dinner it's it's just a little bit of special decorum or something we will stiffen up a little bit or a little bit more there was absolutely none of that you know like one of the one of the cysts hetero teenagers was tuning his guitar and the transgender teenage care was like no no no you're doing it wrong everything about this scenario where you know you could see they they don't care it actually doesn't matter this is so in a positive sense this is a different this is indifference it's an indifference of inclusion not an indifference of oppression or excellence you know before when I was female bodied when I looked like a girl that people treated me like a girl all nothing made sense nothing made sense to me right and honestly even if people were uncomfortable with with being lesbian gay bi or trans and stuff like that I didn't really make sense to them either so even people who were have had a hard time accepting me as trans when I came out once that initial confusion and shock wore off all of a sudden they realized actually a lot of things make sense now our gender is not our body our gender is in our mind so they say you know genders in between your ears and your sex is between your legs so there's a difference between your sex and your gender so your biological sex versus your your sense of your own self as male or female and you know what makes somebody male or female is is a whole complex set of factors and a lot of the time when somebody finally comes out as trans says this is who I am and if you're willing to do not have a fear-based response to them you're gonna realize it all makes sense mm-hmm I am a guy just like that person journalist teenagers was a girl you know regardless of what sex they were assigned at birth right so as long as we're open to that and not have a fear base to phobic response to people right we realize that this is their truth and it just makes sense and you know you're hanging out with a guy right now just like those people were hanging out with a girl and I'm terrified look you know so some people all right I I have maybe 2,000 regular viewers I would say five of them are trans people to my knowledge maybe a lot of you are you haven't and then it's big but both about five people and the last time I talked about transgender politics I would say one out of five really reacted negatively maybe three or four wrote to me positively said they see where I was coming from and you know some people react to what I what I just raised about indifference they actually regard that as transphobic you know what I mean now okay interesting point it's who currently in Thailand there are some transgender politicians they run in elections the last elections there were several that we're talked about um they probably have a slight disadvantage in elections there's probably just a question of like okay well you know what was your career what did you really do with you life there's maybe a little bit more scrutiny but they're not at us if they're not disqualified or they're not regard as a laughingstock in that society and by contrast I'd say by the way you know in Italy it's very very hard there have been some transgender politicians but you know it's really kind of a freak show for the press reacts in a very different way but you know I don't see the end goal of transgender activism as being heterosexual society being ruled by people is something I totally see great you know okay however many you know I totally could have a transgender a prime minister or as it happens but I don't think they'd be elected for that reason and so on so yeah you know I'm sorry that's really all I have to say on the topic but it's deficit I can understand it's difficult to see a word like indifference as a as a positive value but if you look over the border from Thailand to Malaysia or Thailand Indonesia to Muslim majority countries look wow what an amazing accomplishment it would be if transgender people or homosexual people could could be regarded with indifference it'd be an unbelievable step forward absolutely and I think we're well on our way no I think indifference is wonderful wonderful I keep telling people it's no big whoop right and it's a naturally occurring morally benign phenomenon and it just has always existed and we're just coming to recognize it more today because we live in a world where it's uh we can you know express our truths a bit more and we're heading in the right direction but it's simply no big whoop and honestly like i i've been FLETC up geez 12 years ago I transitioned so 12 years ago at first it was big it was huge most people didn't had never met a trans person in their life or at least four they didn't know that exactly exactly and so that was kind of like part of me was like oh that's kind of neat because it's neat to see people surprised and that kind of reaction sometimes not always in a good way but at the same time the novelty of it was kind of interesting to observe today right it's nothing and it's always like man and this is nothing now this is within one lifetime yeah everything has changed and you you tell someone you're trans now and okay but yeah and that is progress because it never was anything big it's never was anything shocking so I think to end this interview that I'm gonna ask you to contrast that to veganism I mean they're totally different in so many ways don't get me wrong but you know obviously discussed also the ways in which for him these are intersection intersecting and overlapping you know interests interests or movements would I be one things that occurred to me while I listen to your lecture is you know what nobody really enjoys opressing trans people and this is to extend that also the gays and bisexuals and lesbians most people don't really enjoy being homophobic or hating or oppressing and one of the stark contrasts is people really enjoy eating meat or eating cheese or dairy products or eggs so I mean now look some people are so warped with religion Christianity Judaism and Islam primarily that they are highly motivated to be transphobic or homophobic so I there's some kind but to me I mean that really seemed a very strange thing where the pleasure the pleasure principle if you want is really fundamentally against veganism this huge obstacle whereas I think it's I would think it's not with with transphobia or with with you know take that any from the trans angle you know when I came out you know I come from a conservative Christian family and but very loving compassionate intelligent parents and at first they didn't know what to think of it they didn't know how to fit it into all of everything they never believed and their belief structures and to today my mother you know in her they were never anything but loving and supportive but they couldn't be as celebratory of who I was as they would have liked to have been and today you know she experiences a certain degree of grief over that and she thinks if only if only if only I had known and you know what she also wrote the book suffering eyes a chronicle of awakening about her awakening to the suffering of animals and the response to that is if only I had known sooner I spent forty nine years my life not understanding learn how I was contributing to such enormous suffering in this world people who have had their eyes open to the suffering of animals and people who have I had their eyes opened to the diverse human diversity and the suffering of our fellow humans would never go back right so anybody who thinks no this is what I like this I'm just gonna stick as a meter and I'm gonna stick as a transphobic or a homophobic person and they think that that is their comfort zone they have no idea what they're missing and they have no idea how they're going to regret that once they open their eyes and their hearts and how they would never go back to that position that they thought they would never leave okay oh well thank you I mean look you guys know I'm cynical as hell this is one of the only people I've met who has a degree in philosophy that's putting it to good use it was a genuinely uplifting and genuinely inspirational lecture unfortunately makes me want to go back into prison activism I was yeah I mean here's the sense in which I'm jealous I think trans rights transsexual activism I think it's gonna achieve all its goals within 50 years except Saudi Arabia except a few places like that and you know veganism I think it's gonna be 500 years okay thank you very much for appearing on the show Calvin Newman I'll give links to his book so Colleen ooh felt gonna provide links to his book and his related websites in the description this is a brief follow-up recorded right after the interview a few meters away with a slightly different view of the park in the background very often right when you hit the stop button on a discussion like that you have a little bit more chitchat back and forth that clarifies and would clarify for the audience what the purpose the conversation was all about so what you guys didn't hear is that before that conversation he used this very evocative image that I challenged him on he repeatedly said in his lecture he talked about a hierarchy and oppression in society as being like a stack of Turtles and then the turtle at the bottom manages to bring the whole stack down and then all the turtles are equal hung lying in a pond together and the reason why I challenged him with these examples of Cambodia Laos and Thailand was that it seems to me very fundamentally that the objectives of trans activism and you could also say gay rights activism you could include them in one category or both movements they are not in this sense radical revolutionary anti hierarchical they're not anarchist I was asking him to consider well in a country like Thailand or even a country like Cambodia you still literally have a king along with all the other elements of hierarchy so isn't it isn't it rather the case that the objectives of Trance of the trans movement trans rights movement wouldn't you say that these objectives really can be accomplished without this fundamental challenge to hierarchy in society then he gave a very interesting answer during the lecture and then we continue this conversation afterwards recorded and shared it with you guys what I said just now when I hit the stop button was look you know in a country like Canada it's very easy for me to imagine that the trans movement will have accomplished all of its goals within 50 years and then at that point it can start to become invisible you know and he agreed with me he said yeah it's fairies he was talking to me about just how much progress has happened in the last ten years and he really feels that the goals of that movement are finite and attainable within the society we already have again it doesn't require tearing down this society we're currently living in not in Canada now there was an interesting footnote where I said well obviously in Saudi Arabia very different situation in Saudi Arabia how much really will change within 50 years and how much will change within 200 years it's really worth talking about as a separate topic I said my my profound apprehension about this issue is as follows I currently live in a small town in Taiwan where there are many many vegan restaurants within a short walk of me I think there about 50 vegan restaurants in the city as a whole and it's not enough for me that when I walk out my door there are four different vegan restaurants within a city block let's say okay that there were four vegan restaurants I could walk past on my way to the grocery store depending I'd have to take a bit of a zigzag route on a slate across all four but there were several vegan restaurants right around my home and then probably about 30 in the downtown core area 50 in the city's old it's not enough on a fundamental level my problem is that when I walk past one of those vegan restaurants right next to it there's a meat market which is hanging the corpses of chickens with their skulls crushed in they crushed the skulls there with like a metal peg it looks like caved in skulls there are you know dismembered corpses of pigs hanging that often the pigs face the pig skull the pigs the whole leg is hanging there with gay-rights it's enough if there were just a couple of gay clubs gay nightclubs in the whole city the gay rights is not trying to close down heterosexual nightclubs you see it will never be enough for veganism to merely open a few more vegan restaurants the objective of our form of activism ultimately is to close down the slaughterhouses is to close down the restaurants and the markets that are serving meat so you know it's a huge problem that in many religious societies transgender people can't open a single nightclub if they try to open a nightclub it has to be underground or covert and it's you know harassed by the police what have you and people if they go to that nightclub then their boss at work finds out and they're fired for just going to this net that kind of thing is common it was much more common 50 years ago but in religious and conservative societies this is this is still an issue to this day so the goals of the transgender movement they might be satisfied if in the whole city there were one or two or five transgender nightclubs they just want to be tolerated and not oppressed for this to be normal etcetera etc these are easily attainable within 50 years at least in secular democratic societies but the goals of veganism are fundamentally much more uncompromising and the type of accepting indifference that I talked about repeatedly during that interview where I say okay transgender people can be people can be indifferent to transgender people and that acceptance itself is a victory that could be a positive conclusion to the transgender movement whereas it would mean total defeat and dissolution for the vegan movement what veganism is trying to accomplish we can't get there just through other people being indifferent to us or tolerating us or being accepting of us in the way that already the society is accepting of people who are lactose intolerant people who have food allergies or people who have religious based diets who put themselves in a minority that all those people are tolerated I mean the purpose of the kosher diet within Judaism is not to transform all society into being kosher and the purpose of veganism sorry let's face it the purpose of the transgender movement is not it's definitely not to try transform everyone into being transgender but the purpose of veganism the end goal veganism is working the wards it's very profoundly and fundamentally different because we won't be satisfied until the slaughterhouses are closed down [Music]
positive and inspirational lecture by this guy right here Kelvin new film dealing with trans activism veganism and some related and unrelated questions for me the most interesting thing to really look at are the nature and objectives of the trans movement what finally is the objective this is moving towards in our society and that is by no means a simple settled question that all trans activists would agree on yeah I think it's fair right what finally is the objective for the society of looking divorce so I really used this very evocative image during your lecture of a stack of turtles and where the turtle at the bottom is that fundamentally objecting to the hierarchy and the question I put to you is well how radical is the final end state trans activism or how different is it from the world we live in today given that we do have a few positive examples of societies on earth where you know I do think at least transgender people are accepted it may not be paradise may not be absolutely perfect but how different is the end goal trans activists are working boards in a country like Canada compared to countries like Thailand Laos Cambodia that seemed to me several steps ahead how radical is it to normalize human diversity to me that's not radical at all it's just radical because it's not necessarily the norm people who are different or often sort of kept out of the public eye or or seen as being less than others and I think we're past that point of seeing people with differences as being inferior or not the same we are all the same so I really see one of the many goals of trans activism being to just equalize all of us humans and human animals and just recognize the value of life in all of its forms and all of its expressions so one of the subtle aspects of your lecture is in the lecture itself and also in Q&A was that you see it as quite positive to regard transgender people as a third gender rather than absolutely being the gender they identify with today so I just say this is it I myself have talked to transgender people at different points on I guess the political spectrum it seems to me that's not a simpler settle point so where this conversation is happening in Canada by the way where there is and you mentioned it there is a special kind of influence of the First Nations tradition here the idea of a third gender that be positive I really liked him related deposit he said during the lecture transgender people have a unique kind of privilege and positive contribution or culture may because they're in the position of having grown up female and then at some point switch to living as a male or having grown up male and that that's a perspective that has some value I relate to that really positively I think okay great you know that that's something where you know within the diversity of society even if you regard it as eccentric which may well be I'm vegan I'm in many ways an eccentric you know I mean it's something that okay we talk about normalizing it but it's also something special it's something extraordinary it's it's a perspective that contribute contribute positively with all its eccentricities you know rolled up in it I do you feel or you know do other trans activists sometimes confront you or disagree with you where they say no there isn't a third gender like there's only two genders and they're there they're just born the wrong generative is that is that a conflict in the movement i I wouldn't say that all trans people belong to this third gender category I wouldn't say that some cuz as some cultures recognize a distinct third gender and it's been part of a long centuries and/or millennia long tradition just recognizing the diversity but gender is a spectrum so there are plenty of trans people who are let's say all the way on one end of a gender spectrum or all the way on the other end of the gender spectrum same with non trans people you can be hyper hyper hyper male or hyper hyper hyper female or you could be anywhere in between and so for me for example on that spectrum I would place myself on the Mae side of middle I'm not on one extreme or on another extreme and how trans people identify there's absolutely no Universal way to describe it there are as many ways of being trans as there are trans people but it's lovely to see how different societies and cultures have recognized the kind of diversity that occurs within every human population and just exploring that and not being threatened by by terminology so much people are very very sensitive about labels and terms and I just see it all as many different ways of describing human experience another kind of subtle question that was on my mind was this - the lecture is the kind of tension between normalization and radicalization so the lecture dealt with veganism animal rights and so on also actually prison politics as well as I mean oh it's a weird contrary situation where I kind of agree with both you know on the one hand okay yes you want to normalize the position of transgender people in society but there's also a call here to radicalize the role of transgender people in transforming society yeah I know everyone just comment on that it's kind of simultaneous impulse to say that it's completely normal it's completely not extraordinary and also hey this is an extraordinary opportunity to transform society and challenge so that yeah you know one of the things one of the things I absolutely love about being trans is that a minute somebody knows that you're trans they don't know what to think about anything anymore right Mizzou off and so all of your assumptions we are constantly imposing assumptions on everybody we meet so the minute somebody has that blank I don't know what to think right now that's when a real conversation can begin and that's that radical approach that we can take to everything you know we've talked somebody after my talk today he's a cisgender non trans tall good-looking white man and he says it's hard for me to talk about some of these things and the interconnectedness of oppression for example because people say oh you're just a privileged white man what do you know and I said but somebody like me I can say it because nobody knows what to think about anything and I can say there's femininity in me without thinking that that makes me less of a guy or we can compare human and animal suffering without humans getting all defensive saying what you're comparing me to an animal that's inferior to me it's hard for a cisgender privileged white man to make those comparisons right but someone like me I'm free because nobody knows what to think about anything anymore and I just love being in that position where I can just turn things up upside down and and have people just listen with an open mind and an open heart so I'm gonna tell a really brief anecdote that I think for me illustrates all the points from the lecture and the questions I'm asking now cuz I mean these are just broad questions about the final destination for transgender activism when I was living in Thailand and Laos so it's back and forth cross the border so is living in both places I was out doing research I was out doing humanitarian work I wasn't living there as a tourist but you know I encountered a group of high school students who were out in a camping trip and one of them was transgender and the other high school students treated hearse is a male to female transgender person completely normally like it was absolutely no awkwardness or stiffness like not even if you can cast your mind back I'm 40 years old I can remember a time when in a lot of situations like oh there's a black person coming to dinner it's it's just a little bit of special decorum or something we will stiffen up a little bit or a little bit more there was absolutely none of that you know like one of the one of the cysts hetero teenagers was tuning his guitar and the transgender teenage care was like no no no you're doing it wrong everything about this scenario where you know you could see they they don't care it actually doesn't matter this is so in a positive sense this is a different this is indifference it's an indifference of inclusion not an indifference of oppression or excellence you know before when I was female bodied when I looked like a girl that people treated me like a girl all nothing made sense nothing made sense to me right and honestly even if people were uncomfortable with with being lesbian gay bi or trans and stuff like that I didn't really make sense to them either so even people who were have had a hard time accepting me as trans when I came out once that initial confusion and shock wore off all of a sudden they realized actually a lot of things make sense now our gender is not our body our gender is in our mind so they say you know genders in between your ears and your sex is between your legs so there's a difference between your sex and your gender so your biological sex versus your your sense of your own self as male or female and you know what makes somebody male or female is is a whole complex set of factors and a lot of the time when somebody finally comes out as trans says this is who I am and if you're willing to do not have a fear-based response to them you're gonna realize it all makes sense mm-hmm I am a guy just like that person journalist teenagers was a girl you know regardless of what sex they were assigned at birth right so as long as we're open to that and not have a fear base to phobic response to people right we realize that this is their truth and it just makes sense and you know you're hanging out with a guy right now just like those people were hanging out with a girl and I'm terrified look you know so some people all right I I have maybe 2,000 regular viewers I would say five of them are trans people to my knowledge maybe a lot of you are you haven't and then it's big but both about five people and the last time I talked about transgender politics I would say one out of five really reacted negatively maybe three or four wrote to me positively said they see where I was coming from and you know some people react to what I what I just raised about indifference they actually regard that as transphobic you know what I mean now okay interesting point it's who currently in Thailand there are some transgender politicians they run in elections the last elections there were several that we're talked about um they probably have a slight disadvantage in elections there's probably just a question of like okay well you know what was your career what did you really do with you life there's maybe a little bit more scrutiny but they're not at us if they're not disqualified or they're not regard as a laughingstock in that society and by contrast I'd say by the way you know in Italy it's very very hard there have been some transgender politicians but you know it's really kind of a freak show for the press reacts in a very different way but you know I don't see the end goal of transgender activism as being heterosexual society being ruled by people is something I totally see great you know okay however many you know I totally could have a transgender a prime minister or as it happens but I don't think they'd be elected for that reason and so on so yeah you know I'm sorry that's really all I have to say on the topic but it's deficit I can understand it's difficult to see a word like indifference as a as a positive value but if you look over the border from Thailand to Malaysia or Thailand Indonesia to Muslim majority countries look wow what an amazing accomplishment it would be if transgender people or homosexual people could could be regarded with indifference it'd be an unbelievable step forward absolutely and I think we're well on our way no I think indifference is wonderful wonderful I keep telling people it's no big whoop right and it's a naturally occurring morally benign phenomenon and it just has always existed and we're just coming to recognize it more today because we live in a world where it's uh we can you know express our truths a bit more and we're heading in the right direction but it's simply no big whoop and honestly like i i've been FLETC up geez 12 years ago I transitioned so 12 years ago at first it was big it was huge most people didn't had never met a trans person in their life or at least four they didn't know that exactly exactly and so that was kind of like part of me was like oh that's kind of neat because it's neat to see people surprised and that kind of reaction sometimes not always in a good way but at the same time the novelty of it was kind of interesting to observe today right it's nothing and it's always like man and this is nothing now this is within one lifetime yeah everything has changed and you you tell someone you're trans now and okay but yeah and that is progress because it never was anything big it's never was anything shocking so I think to end this interview that I'm gonna ask you to contrast that to veganism I mean they're totally different in so many ways don't get me wrong but you know obviously discussed also the ways in which for him these are intersection intersecting and overlapping you know interests interests or movements would I be one things that occurred to me while I listen to your lecture is you know what nobody really enjoys opressing trans people and this is to extend that also the gays and bisexuals and lesbians most people don't really enjoy being homophobic or hating or oppressing and one of the stark contrasts is people really enjoy eating meat or eating cheese or dairy products or eggs so I mean now look some people are so warped with religion Christianity Judaism and Islam primarily that they are highly motivated to be transphobic or homophobic so I there's some kind but to me I mean that really seemed a very strange thing where the pleasure the pleasure principle if you want is really fundamentally against veganism this huge obstacle whereas I think it's I would think it's not with with transphobia or with with you know take that any from the trans angle you know when I came out you know I come from a conservative Christian family and but very loving compassionate intelligent parents and at first they didn't know what to think of it they didn't know how to fit it into all of everything they never believed and their belief structures and to today my mother you know in her they were never anything but loving and supportive but they couldn't be as celebratory of who I was as they would have liked to have been and today you know she experiences a certain degree of grief over that and she thinks if only if only if only I had known and you know what she also wrote the book suffering eyes a chronicle of awakening about her awakening to the suffering of animals and the response to that is if only I had known sooner I spent forty nine years my life not understanding learn how I was contributing to such enormous suffering in this world people who have had their eyes open to the suffering of animals and people who have I had their eyes opened to the diverse human diversity and the suffering of our fellow humans would never go back right so anybody who thinks no this is what I like this I'm just gonna stick as a meter and I'm gonna stick as a transphobic or a homophobic person and they think that that is their comfort zone they have no idea what they're missing and they have no idea how they're going to regret that once they open their eyes and their hearts and how they would never go back to that position that they thought they would never leave okay oh well thank you I mean look you guys know I'm cynical as hell this is one of the only people I've met who has a degree in philosophy that's putting it to good use it was a genuinely uplifting and genuinely inspirational lecture unfortunately makes me want to go back into prison activism I was yeah I mean here's the sense in which I'm jealous I think trans rights transsexual activism I think it's gonna achieve all its goals within 50 years except Saudi Arabia except a few places like that and you know veganism I think it's gonna be 500 years okay thank you very much for appearing on the show Calvin Newman I'll give links to his book so Colleen ooh felt gonna provide links to his book and his related websites in the description this is a brief follow-up recorded right after the interview a few meters away with a slightly different view of the park in the background very often right when you hit the stop button on a discussion like that you have a little bit more chitchat back and forth that clarifies and would clarify for the audience what the purpose the conversation was all about so what you guys didn't hear is that before that conversation he used this very evocative image that I challenged him on he repeatedly said in his lecture he talked about a hierarchy and oppression in society as being like a stack of Turtles and then the turtle at the bottom manages to bring the whole stack down and then all the turtles are equal hung lying in a pond together and the reason why I challenged him with these examples of Cambodia Laos and Thailand was that it seems to me very fundamentally that the objectives of trans activism and you could also say gay rights activism you could include them in one category or both movements they are not in this sense radical revolutionary anti hierarchical they're not anarchist I was asking him to consider well in a country like Thailand or even a country like Cambodia you still literally have a king along with all the other elements of hierarchy so isn't it isn't it rather the case that the objectives of Trance of the trans movement trans rights movement wouldn't you say that these objectives really can be accomplished without this fundamental challenge to hierarchy in society then he gave a very interesting answer during the lecture and then we continue this conversation afterwards recorded and shared it with you guys what I said just now when I hit the stop button was look you know in a country like Canada it's very easy for me to imagine that the trans movement will have accomplished all of its goals within 50 years and then at that point it can start to become invisible you know and he agreed with me he said yeah it's fairies he was talking to me about just how much progress has happened in the last ten years and he really feels that the goals of that movement are finite and attainable within the society we already have again it doesn't require tearing down this society we're currently living in not in Canada now there was an interesting footnote where I said well obviously in Saudi Arabia very different situation in Saudi Arabia how much really will change within 50 years and how much will change within 200 years it's really worth talking about as a separate topic I said my my profound apprehension about this issue is as follows I currently live in a small town in Taiwan where there are many many vegan restaurants within a short walk of me I think there about 50 vegan restaurants in the city as a whole and it's not enough for me that when I walk out my door there are four different vegan restaurants within a city block let's say okay that there were four vegan restaurants I could walk past on my way to the grocery store depending I'd have to take a bit of a zigzag route on a slate across all four but there were several vegan restaurants right around my home and then probably about 30 in the downtown core area 50 in the city's old it's not enough on a fundamental level my problem is that when I walk past one of those vegan restaurants right next to it there's a meat market which is hanging the corpses of chickens with their skulls crushed in they crushed the skulls there with like a metal peg it looks like caved in skulls there are you know dismembered corpses of pigs hanging that often the pigs face the pig skull the pigs the whole leg is hanging there with gay-rights it's enough if there were just a couple of gay clubs gay nightclubs in the whole city the gay rights is not trying to close down heterosexual nightclubs you see it will never be enough for veganism to merely open a few more vegan restaurants the objective of our form of activism ultimately is to close down the slaughterhouses is to close down the restaurants and the markets that are serving meat so you know it's a huge problem that in many religious societies transgender people can't open a single nightclub if they try to open a nightclub it has to be underground or covert and it's you know harassed by the police what have you and people if they go to that nightclub then their boss at work finds out and they're fired for just going to this net that kind of thing is common it was much more common 50 years ago but in religious and conservative societies this is this is still an issue to this day so the goals of the transgender movement they might be satisfied if in the whole city there were one or two or five transgender nightclubs they just want to be tolerated and not oppressed for this to be normal etcetera etc these are easily attainable within 50 years at least in secular democratic societies but the goals of veganism are fundamentally much more uncompromising and the type of accepting indifference that I talked about repeatedly during that interview where I say okay transgender people can be people can be indifferent to transgender people and that acceptance itself is a victory that could be a positive conclusion to the transgender movement whereas it would mean total defeat and dissolution for the vegan movement what veganism is trying to accomplish we can't get there just through other people being indifferent to us or tolerating us or being accepting of us in the way that already the society is accepting of people who are lactose intolerant people who have food allergies or people who have religious based diets who put themselves in a minority that all those people are tolerated I mean the purpose of the kosher diet within Judaism is not to transform all society into being kosher and the purpose of veganism sorry let's face it the purpose of the transgender movement is not it's definitely not to try transform everyone into being transgender but the purpose of veganism the end goal veganism is working the wards it's very profoundly and fundamentally different because we won't be satisfied until the slaughterhouses are closed down [Music]