It is said by many that a picture is worth a thousand words!
I mean, why describe something when you can show something!
As stated in my final paper for my internship report
http://media.wix.com/ugd/c8d67a_956c39e745ee45e7841d2172c04e8eec.docx?dn=LIS%20690%20Final%20Report.docx
A written description can indirectly clue the person on what a building
looks like, but the image itself directly shows the person what a building
looks like. Also, images have an advantage over words in that words require
knowing a specific language.
That said, a picture maybe worth a thousand words, but some issues are so complex that they require a million or billion words.
Here's that I posted yesterday on facebook
On the right, some activists over-simplify the issue of abortion with the use of gruesome images and shaming tactics.
On the left, some activists over-simplify the issue of eating meat with the use of gruesome images and shaming tactics.
I'm not trying to ridicule those of you who sincerely want to protect the unborn or to protect the animals. I understand there's a protective quality to those stances which are admirable to a certain extent.
However, the issue of abortion and eating meat is much more complex than most propaganda using gruesome images. There's so many different sides of the issue that just can't fit into a facebook post, so maybe I might write a blog post on it if I have extra free time!
======
Let's start with abortion!
Yes, abortion ends the life of a fetus, a life of somebody that could be born and have the potential to be a great person!
At the same time, a fetus is still a body part! A fetus isn't a separate living being! A born baby is!
Some anti-abortion activists have sincere feelings about saving the fetus, and some have set up orphanages and other social services for struggling mothers!
Other anti-abortion activists are just trolls who are more about slut-shaming women, morality fascism and projecting an aura of self-righteousness!
Either way, many of them use pictures of bloody fetuses to promote their anti-abortion propaganda!
But as I said earlier, gruesome images don't tell the whole story!
Many who were raised in pro-life families and churches received a mostly one-sided depiction of abortion.
What happens when they see the other side.
I did have a blog post about pro-life protesters who end up getting an abortion
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2009/11/even-anti-abortion-protesters-have.html
Also, some links about former pro-life protesters in desperate situations getting an abortion
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a53809/pro-life-to-pro-choice/
About how
common it is for abortion doctors have clients who used to protest against their clinics
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/30/our_protesters_came_in_for_abortions_fear_slut_shaming_planned_parenthood_and_the_truth_about_right_wing_religious_hypocrisy/
but I'll just take it from the following article (because I just saw it yesterday)
from someone raised in a pro-life family and church who late became a pro-choice activists
"How I Moved From Being A Pro-life Evangelical to Become a Pro-choice Feminist" by Tucker Fitzgerald
https://medium.com/@tuckerfitzgerald/how-i-moved-from-being-a-pro-life-evangelical-to-become-a-pro-choice-feminist-e211a2d3c4b0#.e0t1gcg86
The article mentioned about his environment growing up, his early support of Republicans,and his later disillusionment with Republicans when it came to military policy, and his confusion when those who shared his concerns over the US military policy killing family overseas happen to be the same ones who supported abortion.
What if the embryo has a medical condition that will only allow it to live in extreme pain for a short time? What if the mother might die by carrying the embryo to term? What if the mother will certainly die by carrying it to term? I personally don’t know anyone so conservative (although they are certainly out there) that they would deny a mother an abortion that would keep her alive.
Which is to say that the vast majority of us, even enthusiastically pro-life folks, have made peace with abortion having some healthy role in our lives. Have made some peace with an adult woman’s life being more important than an unknown embryo years away from self-awareness.
And even the most pro-choice among us have made with peace with it being better to place a newborn child for adoption rather than discard them in a dumpster (although child abandonment does happen for complex reasons).
(skipped paragraphs)
These were thin threads. And in retrospect, my complete inability to imagine why anyone would have an abortion was one of my big clues that I didn’t actually understand what was happening.
(skipped paragraphs)
Most middle class people can’t wrap their minds around the plain and simple economics of much of America. It’s not that it’s too expensive to have a baby. It’s that there’s no way to pay for it at all. You see, the challenges facing a single mother with children when facing an unexpected pregnancy are primarily about being able to feed her current child or children.
And when a mother has to chose between her current child that she is attached to, and a potential child growing inside her, she’ll choose her current child.
This is first and main thing anti-choice activists misunderstand about who gets abortions. The majority aren’t looking to avoid having children. Because the majority of women who get abortions in the United States are already mothers. And the decisions that they are making are about being able to feed and house current children.
The author goes on to acknowledge that there are social services to help struggling mothers, but not only do they only provide limited services, but that many "pro-life" conservatives want to cut funding to such services! (
note: discussions about whether such services should be done by government or by the private sector is a topic for a different blog post)
Another group on the ground that turned out to be so different that my church described them is the activists, the clinic workers, and the doctors that keep abortion access hanging by a thread in this country. The image of murderous doctors gleefully funding their sports cars by tricking naive women into abortions so they could sell the body parts to radical feminists who stuff them like big game trophies to hang over their fireplaces turned out to be a bit… off.
Rather the people on the front line of providing abortions tend to be passionate, financially sacrificial, down-to-earth, and deeply committed to serving poor women who have the least access to the education and contraceptives that would have allowed them to avoid an abortion. And like George Tiller, the doctor (who provided abortions) who was shot to death at his church, it turns out they can be religious. Devout even.
Unlike the church of my youth, which fantasized about being in a deeply sacrificial battle on behalf of their neighbors, I’ve continually experienced abortion providers as willing to sacrifice lucrative medical careers, risk incredible social ostracization, and literally risk their lives (in a way Evangelical Christians can only pretend that they are) in order to make the world a better place. And rather than being smug or condescending about the deep complexities of abortion, they seem to be more aware of the terrible balancing act that the women they serve must navigate than their critics.
===========
Now to segway from abortion to eating meet, here's some paragraphs from the same article by a former pro-lifer turned pro-choicer
And then there was the more fuzzy question, the one I’d had about animals. What about potential life? What about all of the years that a pig missed out on so I could enjoy a little bacon? How do we weigh or account for missed years of life?
And then another thought, something I hadn’t considered with the pig, what about the suffering to others in their death? What about the other pigs that would certainly miss the companionship, warmth, and snuggles of the lost pig (if they were lucky enough to be raised in a situation that allowed animal contact)? What about their grief in the loss of another animal who was known and enjoyed (loved?) by them. We tear up at stories of dogs waiting for their dead master’s trains, or lying on their dead master’s graves… animals grieving.
The reason I put that in this blog post is because one of my vegan friends who post a lot of gruesome videos from slaughterhouses was also the same person who got an abortion after she was raped by an abusive boyfriend. She was then shamed by an anti-abortion vegan activist who called her a "fake vegan" and a "murderer". Yikes!
Anyways, I'm not against showing those gruesome videos because they do shine a light on what it is going on!
I do not condone much the abusive treatment that goes on in some of the slaughterhouses and animal farms. Some of those videos are heart-breaking.
At the same time, those videos give the false impression that all slaughterhouses and animal farms operate in the same manner.
Temple Grandin has shown videos of animals farms with much more humane conditions and where the only harm comes at slaughter time where the animals take a quick electric shock to the head.
Temple Grandin on beef operations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqYYXswono&feature=youtu.be
lamb operations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoB3tf9Q2AA
turkey operations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=852zxDEAR-Q
pork operations (being that pigs are more senstive and squeal a lot, this video isn't comfortable viewing, but still, PETA won't share it because it's not gruesome enough)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsEbvwMipJI
Also, in some religions, (for example: Islam and Judaism), animals can only be slaughtered in a certain way to minimize pain.
But even with that, even with relatively humane slaughter methods, it is understandable that vegans are sickened by all killing of animals!
One even admitted that she was uncomfortable watching how lions kill their prey!
I do not want to mock such sensitivities, nor will I ever want to pressure vegans to eat meat.
However, the shaming tactics (ie. "you corpse munchers") is just so similar to the way anti-abortion activists call women at abortion clinics "murderers", "sluts" and "whores"
Also, calling animal farms "concentration camps" and "slavery" is a bad way to promote a vegan philosophy to historically oppressed communities.
Just one example of why that is was a well-written article by Melissa Harris-Perry (a former MSNBC host). The article started off by mentioning the Micheal Vick case, then about how animal rights activists alienating some African-American students by their posters comparing the meat industry to slavery & lynching,
Given this history we might think that African Americans would be particularly strident animal rights activists, seeing their interests as profoundly linked. But the relationship between race, rights, and animals is more complicated. Dogs, for example, were used by enslavers to catch, trap and return those who were trying to escape to freedom. Dogs were used to terrorize Civil Rights demonstrators. In short, animals have been weapons used against black bodies and black interests in ways that have deep historical resonace.
Not only have animals been used as weapons against black people, but
many African Americans feel that the suffering of animals evokes more empathy and concern among whites than does the suffering of black people. For example, in the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina dozens of people sent me a link to an image of
pets being evacuated on an air conditioned bus. This image was a sickening juxtaposition to the conditions faced by tens of thousands of black residents trapped by the storm and it provoked great anger and pain for those who sent it to me.
(note: Yes, I understand that most "white" vegan activists are offended by Micheal Vick's action and not by the color of his skin, though some of the outrage by right-wing pundits had more to do with Vick's skin color than with animal cruelty. My blog post on the topic: http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2007/08/more-on-michael-vick.html)
---------
But let's get back to why the shaming tactics by vegan activists alienate potential allies.
Let's put it this way: if the shame tactics doesn't work with me a blogger who occasionally writes about abusive policing as well as racial/gender justice, then how do you expect to reach those who voted for a guy like Donald Trump?
People gotta eat what they can! You just can't just shame people to follow a politically correct diet. It doesn't work that way! It doesn't work with me.
But more importantly, the shame tactics don't work, basically because humans are biologically omnivores.
Vegan activists claim that humans weren't meant to eat meat. However, humans were evolved to gather plants and hunt animals for food. We eventually evolved to farm so that humans don't have to spend so much time in tough terrain searching for food. Even though most of us no longer hunt/gather/farm, we still eat a diet based on thousands of years of evolution.
Granted, the current meat consumption by many in the 1st & 2nd world countries is probably way above what humans were meant to eat. There are negative health conditions that come with excessive meat consumption. Colon cancer and heart disease are just two of them!
As a precaution, I am having several meat-less meals a week. This is new to me!
At the same time, going vegan would be hard for me because I grew up as a picky eater, as I mentioned on a recent blog post titled "Picky Eater"
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2017/01/picky-eater.html
The post also mentioned "cultured meat" which uses animal cells but doesn't slaughter the animals to make the meat!
some videos
https://www.facebook.com/garytvcom/videos/938772706177978/?hc_ref=SEARCH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsjKIIz6CCI
From the Wall Street Journal
"Sizzling Steaks May Soon Be Lab-Grown"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/sizzling-steaks-may-soon-be-lab-grown-1454302862
Several startups are racing to be the first to fill U.S. consumers’ plates with laboratory-developed hamburgers and sausages that taste just as good as the kind from cattle and pigs.
Memphis Meats Inc., a San Francisco company founded by three scientists, aims in three to four years to be the first to sell meat grown from animal cells in steel tanks. Rivals including Mosa Meat and Modern Meadow Inc. also aim to bring such “cultured meat” to market in the next several years.
and
The startups’ lofty goal is to remake modern animal agriculture, which the United Nations estimates consumes one-third of the world’s grains, with about a quarter of all land used for grazing. The companies say that growing meat with cells and bioreactors—similar to fermentors used to brew beer—consumes a fraction of the nutrients, creates far less waste and avoids the need for antibiotics and additives commonly used in meat production.
“The meat industry knows their products aren’t sustainable,” said Memphis Meats Chief Executive Uma Valeti, a cardiologist and medical professor at the University of Minnesota. “We believe that in 20 years, a majority of meat sold in stores will be cultured.”
I like to see that happen!
People can still have their favorite meat dishes, but also less animals tortured!
