{"id":856,"date":"2016-02-29T23:02:36","date_gmt":"2016-02-29T23:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teachingblogs.history.qmul.ac.uk\/hst6347\/?p=849"},"modified":"2016-08-21T09:10:33","modified_gmt":"2016-08-21T09:10:33","slug":"veganism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.history.qmul.ac.uk\/philosophy\/2016\/02\/29\/veganism\/","title":{"rendered":"Veganism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Connie Thomas\u00a0took the \u2018Philosophical Britain\u2018 module at Queen Mary in 2016. In this post she writes about \u2018veganism\u2019 as a keyword in philosophy, ethics, and celebrity culture.<\/em><\/p>\n

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It was the day after the 2013 Super Bowl when my 26-year-old steak-loving, Mulberry-wearing sister declared she was embracing Veganism at the family dinner table. To say we were all shocked would certainly be an understatement. \u00a0While she has never shown any particular dislike of animals, it seemed unlikely to me that she\u2019d ever be willing to give up her leather handbag collection in their cause. Unsurprisingly, she wasn\u2019t. Instead, when I asked her what her motivations were for undertaking such a massive change, expecting a barrage of moral and ethical arguments in return, her response was simply, \u201cbecause, Beyonc\u00e9!\u201d. Indeed, it was not an adoration of animals, but a 15-minute\u00a0Super Bowl half-time performance by her favourite \u00a0vegan celebrity which\u00a0drew my sister to Veganism. Though this example of Veganism seems somewhat unconventional, it is certainly not exceptional in modern society. Indeed, despite most -isms existing primarily\u00a0within the realms of philosophy and ethics, Veganism has made an interesting transition through to popular culture and lifestyle, greatly influencing its perception as both a word and a concept.<\/p>\n

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Two examples of self confessed “Beygans”: Twitter users who converted to Veganism solely to imitate\u00a0Beyonce.<\/p><\/div>\n

Originally, the\u00a0term Veganism was first created in 1944 by Donald Watson, an English animal rights activist, to make the distinction\u00a0between normal vegetarians and non-dairy vegetarians. Following a lengthy discussion of other possible words to describe this, Watson settled on the word Veganism as a contraction of the term Vegetarianism. Using solely the first and last letters of Vegetarianism, according to Watson, the syntax of Veganism matched its definition, \u201cthe beginning and end of vegetarianism\u201d. [1] The first written use of the word was in Watson\u2019s newsletter, \u2018The Vegan News\u2019, also published in 1944, in conjunction with the creation of the Vegan Society in England. However, the initial definition of the word, simply a concise form of \u2018non-dairy vegetarian\u2019, was revised in 1949 by the Vegan society into a more explicit form. It rejected the definition of Veganism as just an abstinence of animal produce within food, but instead, \u201cto seek an end to\u00a0the use of animals by man for food, commodities,\u00a0work, hunting, vivisection, and by all other uses\u00a0involving exploitation of animal life by man\u201d. [2] This distinction is very significant as it sees the initial use of Veganism to define a philosophical principle. From this point, Veganism became more than just avoiding types of food and instead about animal conservation and protection as a concept.<\/p>\n

Whilst this definition of Veganism provided by the Vegan Society in 1949 remains the sole \u2018official\u2019 one, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term has since been interpreted in several different ways, both in theory\u00a0and in practice. One of the most notable philosophers to wade in on the debate is Peter Singer, an Australian moral philosopher. Though\u00a0Singer specializes in applied ethics across a broad spectrum of social issues, his written work on animal rights\u00a0in the 1970’s is off particular note, and has been widely regarded as the central ideology\u00a0behind Veganism. In\u00a0his\u00a0renowned book, Animal Liberation<\/p>\n

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Animal Liberation (1975)<\/p><\/div>\n

(1975), Singer bases his philosophy\u00a0of Veganism upon the concept of ‘speciesism’; human prejudice and\u00a0discrimination of an animal due to it’s species. [3] As a species who often fall foul of this, humans frequently criticize and treat\u00a0other animals based solely on intelligence, according to Singer, which acts as an arbitrary scale and initiates\u00a0inequality. Thus, in this case, Veganism denotes more than just avoidance of animal produce,\u00a0considering the entire ethos surrounding human interaction with other animals.<\/p>\n

Whilst these uses\u00a0of the term Veganism seem relatively moderate, not all interpretations of the word\u00a0are quite so peaceful. Radical animal rights activist Gary Yourofsky has more recently acted as a proponent of Veganism,\u00a0working frequently with PETA to give\u00a0lectures promoting the cause, such as his viral “Best Speech You Will Ever Hear”. [4] Although Yourofsky shares similar sentiments of Veganism with Singer, particularly that of speciesism, he places far more emphasis of Veganism on active protest,\u00a0controversially linking the term\u00a0to ‘eco-terrorism’. [5] Despite\u00a0the vast majority of philosophers and activists undertake Veganism as a means of passively protesting animal rights, violent action is deemed a necessary connotation of the term according to Yourofsky.\u00a0In his mission to promote Veganism, he has famously expressed ‘unequivocal support’ for the\u00a0deaths of medical researchers via arson attacks, and\u00a0once declared that, “Every woman ensconced in fur deserves a rape so vicious that it scars her forever”.[6] Such radical opinions, whilst only existing in a tiny minority of Vegan activists, have generated a significant discussion surrounding Veganism, attaching several negative connotations to it.<\/p>\n