A small, unforgiving club won't get us there

On ex-vegans and bigger tents

Renctly I suggested that vegans behave charitably towards Gaz Oakley, the ex-vegan celebrity, and still consider him part of the team that can help animals - at least as long as he’s not going back to being a full-fledged meat eater, speaks up against factory farming, and remains largely plant-based.

First of all, if ex-vegans spout misinformation in public, or turn vehemently against veganism, we are right to explain our point of view and give counterarguments. I wouldn’t be surprised if part of the ex-vegan stories are amplified - sometimes even invented - by pro-meat campaigners. And if an ex-vegan (or anyone) becomes a die-hard carnivore influencer, I don’t think I mind much that they are mobbed and shamed.

Celebrities are a special case, and many people love to hate them. In this article, I make abstraction of Gaz Oakley and other celebrities and influencers, and merely look at how our movement sometimes deals with ex-vegans in general. I’m talking about people who, for sincere reasons, stop being vegan (and don’t brag about it). Celebrities or not, they are often treated quite harshley.

Black sheep effect

Part of what explains this, like I wrote in my previous article, is the black sheep effect: someone who defects from a norm/leaves a group is treated much more negatively than someone who never followed the norm or was never part of the group in the first place.

I understand that. I’m often disappointed when I hear about ex-vegans. Like other commenters, my first reaction may be: you knew everything, you knew about the problems with animal products, you knew how to replace them, you’ve done it for years… and now you turn your back to it all? How could you? And also: you were one of us, and you left us.

Out of this disappointment comes anger. Outrage even. I’ve seen many vegans making comparisons with child molestation, murder, racism etc. They’re using language that (I hope) they wouldn’t use towards their non vegan parents, children, spouses or friends. It’s thwarted expectations (among other things) that make us do this. Note that something like the reverse is also true: we’re all the happier if a person from whom we didn’t really expect it, has a change of heart. How happy we are with the stories of animal farmers turning vegan!

We need to realize that while understandable, this behavior (anchored in evolutionary psychology) is not entirely rational and that it doesn’t help us, nor the animals. How we behave towards the black sheep is important for our movement in several ways.

There are still more ex-vegans than vegans

I wrote about vegans falling off the wagon before. There are more ex-vegans than vegans (same for vegetarians). Many people seem to have problems continuing a vegan lifestyle. Now the reaction of many (present) vegans is interesting: these people were never vegan in the first place, they didn’t do it for the animals, they saw it as a diet…

That’s clearly not always the case. There are people who go vegan for the animals and then give up. We can then say they were never vegan at all, believe that are hypocrites or driven by profit… but how does it help us or the animals if we don’t take ex-vegans seriously?

I don’t find being vegan in this world hard, but I’m surrounded by vegans and animal people, I can find and afford all the plant-based products I want. I don’t have kids or a spouse who want to eat animal products… But for other people, taking into account all the pro-meat advertisements that are being thrown at them, and all the pro-meat nutritional information… I don’t doubt that it can be hard at times to keep it up.

Giving ex-vegans the cold shoulder will make things worse

Imagine a vegan who is struggling. There’s a lot of pressure from the outside. There may be health issues they are dealing with. Maybe their “faith” is wavering. Who can these people turn to? Will they be able to find support, or will they be wary of telling anyone about their doubts, then perhaps fail, and fall off the wagon?

Another problem is this: anyone who sees how ex-vegans are sometimes punished might become less likely to ever go vegan in the first place. We obviously need it to be more normal, fashionable even, to not eat animal products. There are probably quite a few celebrities around (artists, politicians, public intellectuals) who haven’t outed themselves as animal-friendly, or vegan/vegan curious. But if they’ve ever seen the treatment of ex-vegans, their reasoning might be: if I ever have to turn back, for whatever reason, I’ll be destroyed. So either I won’t go vegan, or, if I do, I’ll never say so in public. This would be a shame.

More generally, when we’re posting our reactions and criticisms, we should think about who else is watching. Around every public shaming there can be many people who are silently checking what is going on. What if the lesson they take from this spectacle is not “I should be more committed” but “these are not my people”? While we think we’re punishing a defector, we’re showing anyone still on the fence what awaits them if they ever fall short.

Finally, even people who self-identify as vegan but who, because of criticism from their own side, might choose to no longer do so. Again, that won’t help normalize being vegan.

Tackling the biggest challenge in the world

At the heart of these issues lies how our pro-animal ideology, our compassion, our anti-speciesism often translates to a pretty much all-or-nothing normative behavior. If you’re pro-animal, you should not consume any animal products (otherwise you’re not pro-animal).

Given how little success we are having in convincing people to go vegan (including the fact that so many people can’t even *stay* vegan), this is clearly not the ideal strategy for success. If we treat anyone who’s not aligning their behavior a 100% with the vegan ideal as not part of our team, we are bound to remain a very small club (and we make it very easy to fall off the wagon).

A very small club will not be able to tackle the biggest challenge in the world: to change the diet of eight billion people. So we have to be able to work together with all kinds of people who don’t think exactly the same as us, who make mistakes, who backtrack, who sometimes say the wrong things even. We should be charitable towards them - not just because that shows the compassion we want other people to show towards animals, but also because it’s what’s better for animals. So who is on “the team”? Everyone who intentionally or not contributes to a better situation for the animals on this planet.

In case a black-and-white ideology prevents us from seeing things like this, and keeps insisting that murder is murder and that eating animals is the same as child abuse, we need to remember that there are very different social norms at work in these different spheres. Eating meat is not just acceptable but actively celebrated by 95% of the population, while child abuse is illegal. While what is generally thought does not equal what is actually right, we need to accept that these different norms mean people have different ideas of wrong-doing in these various cases. For most people it’s hard to consider something as wrong when 95% of the people are participating in it.

This understanding alone can help us create a bigger tent - something which I remain convinced is the number one thing our movement needs to do in the years and decades to come.