*please note i deeply value and respect the vegan movement. i am just critical of how humorously it precipitates in online spaces, particularly this one. :)

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[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Or maybe your opinion on what the term means is influenced by your ~~biases~~ experiences about what vegans are like and act like towards ~~carnists~~ people who eat meat?

Fixed that for you. Framed like that, the answer is yes: not all vegans are bigots, of course, that would ironically be a bigoted and untrue claim.

All proselytizing evangelical vegans I've ever been in contact with, many of which have been om Lemmy, have either used the word "carnist" as a slur or not at all. With the possible exception of you, though I'm not at all sold on that based on your denials of reality so far.

If you interact with vegans on a friendly basis rather than assuming that they're trying to insult you or that they're calling your choices morally repugnant

I never assume in advance. As I said, not all vegans are bigots. None of the few I know IRL are. A LOT of the ones here on Lemmy are, though, and they're always the ones to initiate conflict since I frankly have better things to do with my life than go actively looking for things to be offended by. Unlike said evangelical vegans.

you may find that it'soften used descriptively rather than to pass judgement.

Even if that was the case, that's still misleading as, like I've already explained, not being vegan isn't any more of an ism than being atheist is a religion.

I have personally seen the term used neutrally more often than I've seen it used insultingly

Even if not used deliberately as an insult, it's inherently non-neutral as it infers a belief system that isn't there in 99% of cases and simultaneously lumps everyone who's not vegan together in one group like a fundamentalist religious person would lump everyone who's not a follower of their religion together as "heathens" and "apostates".

It was also not coined as a slur

It was coined by a vegan activist to generalize about a lot of people who don't themselves consider their lack of veganism a belief system. That Wikipedia article is about as biased towards support for the topic as the one about Israel 🙄

It's a slur coined to lump people who have nothing meaningful in common together in order to make them easier to attack. It's the equivalent of calling undocumented immigrants "illegal aliens".

[–] door_in_the_face@feddit.nl 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

That's the tricky thing with biases, right? They're formed by our experiences. My experience interacting with vegans has clearly been different from yours, so that may explain why you would think I'm denying reality. Anyway, I hope you can keep an open mind when talking to vegans who use the word carnist. Not all of them are bigots :)

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

That's the tricky thing with biases, right? They're formed by our experiences

And also by believing unreliable sources like Melissa May and not questioning loaded terms coined to inspire and reinforce biases. Such as "illegal alien" and "carnist".

My experience interacting with vegans has clearly been different from yours

Probably because you are one yourself and thus aren't the target of their slurs and other bigotry towards people who don't follow their extremist version of vegetarism.

that may explain why you would think I'm denying reality.

The fact that you blatantly are is another big motivator as well.