What's some better vegan/vegetarian/plant based communities that aren't militant and rude?

Ie not vegan@lemmy.world.

Edit: I am going to try to start my own for now here https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/plantbased

112 comments

What do you mean by "militant and rude?"
- Not accepting that people need time to adjust and maybe go vegan in smaller steps. There is even hostility towards people who look for fake meat or dare to say they like the taste of meat even though they still want to avoid eating it. Just generally being assholes and gatekeepers.
  
  That's been my experience too. I'm trying to eat less meat and find alternatives that work for me, but it apparently has to be all or fuck you for some. I know it's not everyone, but somehow they seem the loudest and it's not very helpful.
  
  This is a natural consequence of always being attacked by non-vegans, patience is thin and communities are maintained by the ones who remain. Unlike, say, gaming, veganism is constantly attacked, so it's harder for them to be more inclusive than a gaming community would be.
- Previously I found that they were staunchly anti-anything but vegan and carried over said rudeness from the reddit communities. As a vegan myself it was a big turn off. I asked about this and they banned me. Reminiscent of lemmygrad on anything but their specific MLM ideology.
  
  Lemmygrad aren't MLM, they are ML with Dengist sympathies and are anti-Gonzaloist, but regardless most Vegans on the fediverse are Vegan because of strict ethical and moral reasons and believe in full animal liberation. It's hard to take a half-way stance on that matter with that frame of mind, which can manifest itself in "rudeness." Additionally, most Vegans experience tons of hostility, making them more defensive by default.
  
  fuck 'em
- I always wonder where people are going that this seems so common. I've been relatively low meat for a while, what's called half-vegetarian/flexatarian. My experience is that most vegans/vegetarians just want to share their favorite recipe.
  
  In my experience, this usually comes from people defending half-measures, which is fundamentally wrong from the vegan point of view, and thus the claws come out. If you aren't going against the "correct" stance, vegans are very chill, as someone who is low meat as well I am working on eradicating that (which at this point is more of a social problem than individual).
- This attitude is the entire problem. You know exactly what OP means, but you pretend like the reputation the vegan community has nothing to do with the community itself.

most people with values will be pretty stringent about them
not sure you're gonna find anything

Right now, nowhere on lemmy that I've found.
Mind you, it isn't every person, but all the vegan communities and instances are currently run by militants of some degree. The .world one is the least militant that I've run across.
They aren't all rude, but definitely have the kind of thinking that leads to rudeness eventually.
Which really sucks because there's plenty of really chill vegans on lemmy. But you can't talk to them in vegan spaces without it being a problem unless you're parroting the scripture of vegan to their satisfaction.
Being real, I kinda wish someone would start a decent relaxed community.
- I will try now at https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/plantbased
  
  Is vegan cat food allowed?
- Wasn't .world the only one where an admin decided to go on a rampage?
  
  Nah, just the most egregious incident. And even that only got attention because it's such a big instance.
- Thanks for taking the rudeness claim seriously! :) I fully agree with you.
  Previously I started a plant based community on Lemmy.world maybe I will try to actually be active. You’ve inspired me

Not being useful to your question at all, but if you find or start a community, I'll join. I've been various stages of vegetarian and vegan over the last 6 years. Never felt like I needed to talk about my specific, contextual exceptions, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be well accepted among hardline vegans.
- I will try to start it here: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/plantbased :)
  
  Joined!
- That is useful :) I would love to be able to discuss this freely as well. I’ve been doing it for about the same time as you! Thanks for sharing!
  
  I've also found that the vegans I know in my personal life are mostly nonjudgmental. Militant veganism feels like a stereotype or an anomaly of online spaces. Get to know some vegans at work/school/mural aid groups/activist orgs and you'll probably find some friends who don't need you to be 100% vegan all the time. Personally, I allow myself to slip into a vegetarian diet on my birthday, my partner's birthday, and our anniversary. I've never received criticism for this, but I'd understand if other vegans had a problem with it.

I just want to say I love militant vegans, so long as militant means they are organized and actively creating the world they want to live in. if they are just preaching, I would not say they are militant, just evangelical.
and, to be clear, I'm neither. I just find militancy admirable.
- How do you see vegans organizing and creating this world without preaching? How do you spread an ethical diet? Like that one dude saying struggle sessions and party line… for a diet, what
  
  they can organize among themselves. affinity groups that practice direct action are like my favorite political orgs.
  
  You can spread an ethical diet by making the ethical choices more affordable, and more available, today, in capitalism.
  Just like anarchists who build things like: community gardens/farms, neighborhood affinity groups, etc etc.

There are a couple vegan specific instances that you could try searching for, I can't point them out for you right now. But in my experience at least, they seem to be pretty reasonable.
- Oh yeah good point! I’ve run into them too but can’t remember their names.
  
  Vegantheoryclub.org is one, and while technically not Vegan focused, Hexbear.net is explicitly pro-Veganism.

I have a deep desire to resurrect the vegan struggle session every time I see people tone policing us on this website, but we live in 1984 and I know the mods would remove it smh-ing my head
- I don’t need a struggle session for how I ethically eat. If you think not wanting people to be rude is tone policing then you’re probably not nice.

Joined/subscribed, but not vegan. I enjoy cooking and have started adding some vegan dishes to the rotation to learn some new cooking techniques on foods that I'm not familiar with cooking, like soy. I enjoy the new challenge. Also, I feel like there are probably health benefits. I'm particularly interested in awhile food based cheese substitutions. I found a fantastic vegan queso dip with 3 ingredients. The other stuff is good, too, but not really on my mind.
- You're exactly the type of person that I welcome that I believe other communities would be rude to! :) I eat soy daily based on my cuisine so I will try to share some recipes. Can you share the vegan queso dip in a post maybe? Sounds good!

The vegan community on lemmy.ml is technically larger, but I don't know if it's any less "militant and rude." (I put that in quotes because I have no personal experience with that community)

The entire "problem" with veganism is that almost anything which starts with such an inflexible moral imperative ends up becoming militant, specifically because that rigidity quickly becomes at odds with more practical and functional versions of the idea.
Like so many similar ethics, veganism doesn't really concern itself with creating a practical or actionable roadmap for how food supply chains can be iteratively modified towards the goal of reducing animal suffering. Militant moralists, in fact, tend to avoid such things specifically because they demand a framework of accountable progress. Demanding radical and unrealistic measures be taken, and then condemning those who express skepticism or hostility of this idea is much easier. Like a religion.
- Eh, veganism is quite clear in that it doesn’t support the use of any animal products. If one doesn’t live by that fully everyday there is still benefit to doing it in part.
  You’re also wrong about vegans not being concerned about supply chain ie how people get there food and how it affects people and animals.
  There’s no problems with morals lol. Are you going to argue that not killing is like a religion?
  
  You can't think of any valid reason to kill?
  
  There's a lot of ideas that I agree with, but that are made into a religion. I think it's because abstract ideals aren't very motivating on their own.
- the entire problem with your comment is that you are using vague language and not defining your terms. as a result, you have presented unfalsifiable theory.
  no one should believe anything you've written here.
  
  Poor people are adversely affected by green washing because the prices of meat and dairy free alternatives force their families out of the price range. The of introducing plant based alternatives to grocery stores with gentrification in poor areas has been a significant issue that is downplayed because tech-WASPs want to buy out the neighborhoods anyway.
  Silicon valley is radiating out of the city and families that have been living in Oakland and Richmond have been getting priced out of the area. It's not that veganism is the problem, it's that veganism is expensive and isn't subsidized while also making traditional food harder to acquire. Since the price has risen for luxury products and the stores are higher scale, prices for basic products also rise. It's happening in Portland and Eugene too, and I'm sure wherever tech is booming.
  Again, it's not specifically veganism. It's a bit of a byproduct of the type of people. The traditional families that are being priced out are also vegans and non-dietary restricted families. It's the green washing to force poor families out of areas rich people choose to live, literally weaponizing veganism. Also yt veganism, as if minority families haven't been living vegan for decades already.
  Finally, I also don't entirely agree with the other user but a point I think they may have been trying to make is the difference between factory farmed and locally sourced. For some it is about harm to the animals full stop, to which point not all local farms that sell dairy harm their livestock. The goal should be harm reduction so anyone moving away from factory farms to local farms should be encouraged, but it's common to get responses that reject even that, which in turn only bolsters factory farmings position as local farms get further eroded from lack of local support.
  All in all, don't let yt veganism replace actual vegan philosophy and please respect indigenous traditional practices. We should be aiming to move back to these practices in the industry to scale it down, not replacing them with soy/almond/oat milk that's 4x more expensive and pricing families out of neighborhoods