49 thoughts on “You Don’t Have To Be A Feminist”

1. I mostly agree with this, although I think there’s a difference between being a feminist and doing feminist activism. I’ll be honest, I get really uncomfortable when someone announces to me that they’re not a feminist, but I don’t when they tell me that they don’t have time for/can’t do feminist activism. That doesn’t mean that every single person who tells me they’re Not A Feminist is a terrible person, of course. Many of them are very good people. But a lot of them aren’t.

2. Which means: you don’t have to be a feminist to be a good person.
   Yes.

   Honestly it’s going to take more than someone saying they are not a feminist to get my feathers ruffled but goodness some people think they have you all figured out based on that one question.

   I’ve had too many people either try to pass judgement on me because I’m not a feminist or try to somehow convince me that I’m really a feminist despite what I tell them. After a while I start wondering if the label is more important that the things that are associated with it.

   Maybe its become one of those quick checks that a lot of people run in order to decide if they are good people or not.

3. Yeah, I agree with Miri. Like how you say there’s a difference between morality and piety, there’s a difference between believing in an ideal and being an activist. A big difference. A world of difference, actually.

   And unfortunately, I’ve only read a very tiny handful of arguments as to why it’s legit to not be feminist, and those have come from womanists. Nobody else has a good reason, in my opinion.

4. I’m really bothered by the way you equate Doing Feminism with a specific kind of online social just activism. I have friends who are dedicated feminists, who volunteer at women’s shelters and go to Slut Walks or Take Back the Night rallies, who don’t really have much interest in staying actively engaged with every aspect of feminist blogsophere or participating in internet arguments. Are they really not feminists just because their feminism isn’t specifically geared towards blogging or online consciousness-raising?

   I also think, like Miri said, there’s a difference between not being a feminist and not having the time or inclination to devote yourself to a lot of feminism activism. You can be a feminist in the “believes men and women should be equal” sense and not necessarily make gender activism your life’s overriding goal; that doesn’t make you not a feminist.

   Likewise, some people say they’re “not a feminist” because they mean they don’t have time for feminism activism, but some people say it because they either explicitly think women are less than men (or explicitly believe in rigid gender roles), or because they’re ignorant of what feminism actually is. It’s one thing to be interested in dedicating yourself to feminist activism or having issues with the feminist movement, but while I don’t like jumping down someone’s throat for not knowing the precise academic definition of feminism, I’m also really uncomfortable with continuing to allow them to perpetuate or belief misinformation by just going, well, that’s their personal belief system and leaving it at that.

   I’m not trying to pick on you and I mostly agree with this post! Those were just my quibbles, is all.

5. I have friends who are dedicated feminists, who volunteer at women’s shelters and go to Slut Walks or Take Back the Night rallies,

   From Ozy’s list:

   Participating in marches, rallies, or protests.

   I mean, clearly it isn’t a comprehensive list of all possibilities, but she did at least include two out of three of your examples.

6. I wouldn’t call myself a feminist for the same reason I wouldn’t call myself any other particular ideological label. I’m an anthropologist, and have particular positions on debates within anthropology where the positions get names, but I try not to use those position-terms either. I’m a philosophical daoist to the extent that such a thing even exists, which it mostly doesn’t. I believe to be true the things I do, and generally for reasons I can at least try to articulate, but I’m not comfortable putting any particular labels on the list of things I believe to be true. I’m just interested in doing what I can to make the world a more pleasant and fun place to be, which can include activism and charity of many different kinds, and with many different groups, some of whom can hate (and I think largely misunderstand) each other.

   Labels get slippery. I can think of few positions, many of them contradictory, that I have not seen claimed in the name of some feminism or another, or some anarchism or another, and so I don’t feel the need to call myself anything.

7. Why I Don’t Call Myself A Feminist | evolte

8. L: I wrote a giant-ass comment about all the legit reasons I could think of to not call myself a feminist, but it ended up so big I felt guilty about posting it here. So I decided to make it my first ever blog post instead. Not sure if that’s a dick move or not. Oh well.

9. Volte–I read your blog post. Although it makes the case for eschewing all ideological labels, I think L’s point still kind of stands. The vast majority of people who wouldn’t call themselves feminists do not think the way you do. They simply reject the premise that there’s still a fight to be had for women’s equality (or, really, that of any other group of people). That’s why I so rarely read posts like yours, and so often read posts about how feminists are lying about everything and women just need to shut up and stop being victims already.

10. Miri: I care a lot more about a person’s *beliefs* than the language that they use. If they are anti-sexist but don’t identify as a feminist because of the history of intersectionality fail in the movement, or because they’re not active participants and don’t feel right identifying as feminists, or because they inexplicably believe the MRA caricature of feminism is correct*, then I support that.

    thornless rose: TBH it was just a handful of things off the top of my head. It’s just some examples; obviously there are many more forms of feminist activism than those listed.

    *Generally, if they’re actually sensible, people of that sort will identify as a feminist as soon as you point out to them that the MRA caricature is not correct.

11. @pslaplace:

    Whoops! Sorry, I missed that. I guess I just jumped the gun because I’ve gotten tired of people equating all social justice/all feminism with Arguing On The Internet. Not that there’s anything wrong with arguing on the internet, but I feel like some people equate being a feminist with following the right blogs and being on the right side of specific arguments on tumblr, and it bugs me. Sorry for misinterpreting you, Ozy!

12. I just want a better word than feminist, something that makes it clear that it helps everyone.

13. Also, in many ways I think “personal integrity” is a better term than “personal piety.”

14. Ozy: I’d agree with you on ALL of those except believing the MRA caricature. I used to have a lot of sympathy for people who got wrapped up in that because, hey, they probably just really care about issues affecting men, but nowadays I’m not sure how people can honestly continue ignoring the violent rhetoric (not just towards women) coming from the MRM and believe what they say about anything.

    Basically, not identifying as a feminist because of its history of intersectionality fail, because you’re not active in it, because you don’t like ideological labels in general, because you’re a cis man and don’t want to co-opt the label (there are cis men who use terms like pro-feminist or feminist ally, for instance), etc.–all totally cool. Not identifying as a feminist because you believe the first thing you hear about it from some dude on the internet and don’t even bother learning what it’s really about–doesn’t make you a “bad person” necessarily (whatever that even is), but it does make you someone who’s not very skeptical and also not very concerned about what people who are actually affected by a given type of oppression have to say about it. Letting MRAs tell you about feminism is like having white people tell you about racism.

15. I should follow up though that I agree with what you say about sensible people who are shown that the MRA caricature is false. It’s just that I personally rarely feel like being the one to try to show them that lest I release a torrent of misogynist abuse.

16. I feel like the label is limiting. I would like a new “something” as well, but there are a lot of people highly invested in feminism, so I made a decision not to “join” that community by jumping in with both feet. I want to maintain my independence and have put up a couple of posts about that recently. I have been writing for quite a few years, while being overwhelmed with a variety of things like a nasty divorce, trying to figure out how to survive with two kids, then finding myself in a job that had me working 7 days/week for about 18 months. That just finally slacked off and I am exploring the blogosphere, very excited to have found you, Ozy. You’re a remarkably intelligent individual. I have been waiting years to find people that allow others to meet them from the place that they are, as long as their intentions follow the kinds of basic morality you describe. I am a novice, sporadic practitioner of the I-Ching.

17. As long as your treat others humanely, you don’t have to ID yourself as jack or shit.

    (this is just me agreeing with the original post.)

18. Miri: I only put in the effort when I already know the person isn’t a douchebag. I feel like the general culture is anti-feminist enough (and, frankly, some feminists are bad enough at outreach) that I can understand why some well-meaning but ill-informed people get that impression. (Also I didn’t mean “actually are MRAs,” most MRAs are unsalvageable. I meant “are under the impression ‘feminist’ means ‘hates men, thinks all sex is rape.’”)

    Monkey: I dunno, because to me “personal integrity” has connotations of it being a necessary thing you have to do to be a good person. I am informed however that the deontologists call it “supererogation,” and I’m perfectly willing to steal that.

19. I get so frustrated because I really, really believe that equality is a good idea. But from some feminists, when I mention some way in which men are hurt by sexism, I get the following:
    1. Don’t be silly, dear, feminism is about equality for everyone, or…
    2. Feminism is for women! Why does it always have to be about teh Menz!

    And I guess I do feel that some strains of second wave feminism really were hostile to men. Part of this was because the issues of the time involved women exclusively. Still, I get the feeling that some feminists consider men at best part of the Men’s Auxiliary of the movement.

20. @Ozy: Yep, that’s right. Obligation: You gotta do this or else it’s morally WRONG. Supererogation: If you do this, it’s morally extra-good.
    Not all deontologists believe in supererogation, but some do. It does seem to be a concept deeply embedded in everyday moral thinking. Like, suppose you’re a doctor: Respecting patient integrity and doing the best you can to diagnose and treat people – obligatory. Joining doctors without borders and going to dangerous war zones to help – supererogatory.

21. I don’t see personal integrity as on obligation except maybe to oneself.

22. Great example, Dvärghundspossen. On another front, some parents think putting a roof over a kids head and feeding them is all that is needed, while others take the time to listen, foster interests and encourage.

23. I’m not sure if I agree. I think that it’s up to every person to live a life as good as they possibly can under their particular circumstances, I don’t believe that there is a universal line where you are doing “well enough” and can be satisfied (if you are satisfied with being a decent human being). I totally understand that everyone cannot be commited to every cause, and that all people don’t have the time or energy to even commit to one. People should, as you say, stick to what interests them and where they can do the most good, but I believe that everyone should try to make the world a better place, and not feel satisfied with not making it worse.

24. On morality and proper amounts of stuff you do: I do see a kind of a ‘waterline’ of stuff that I definitely judge people if they can’t do, unless they have a reason, but I do believe in a greater demand toward greatness.

    On being or not being a feminist: I have different reasons for not calling myself a feminist (and I usually don’t announce that I am not a feminist.). It’s a combination of how there are just too many people I dislike who use the label (and people I do like often resist pruning the label), and that I respect the feminist movement enough to not try to control it from within the label.

25. @Volte: I accept your argument. I disagree with it to an extent, but I accept it.

26. I like what you say here, although I think I favor a looser (probably multidimensional) gradient of goods and evils. Never really sure how best to conceptualize obligation, though.

    Not sure how I feel about your classification of veganism. I don’t know how to weigh “grave disrespect toward marginalized humans” (which mostly made it on to the moral prohibition list) against “lifelong brutalization toward food animals” (which seemingly fell under the nice things to avoid if you’re into it category). They both seem like obvious harm issues, to me, and while I’ll happily prioritize people in any all-else-equal situation, this doesn’t seem like all-else-equal. It certainly makes you an unacceptable jerk if you, say, belittle me for being autistic (or refuse to hire me, accommodate me, etc.), but at least I’m not being factory-farmed, you know?

    Ultimately I still treat diet as if it were a lifestyle choice where reasonable, non-evil people can differ, so maybe at the end of the day I don’t really disagree with you. But it never sits well with me. I get the “if you’re not really into animal welfare, you will fail at changing your diet” argument, but why is it an acceptable excuse in that case, but not in the case of reasonable accommodations or learning to respect boundaries and pronouns? These things also seem inconvenient to people who don’t care about them, after all, and some amount of backsliding is probably to be expected.

    I’m certainly not arguing that any of the behaviors on your list of moral prohibitions should be considered any more acceptable than you are saying they are. If anything I’m arguing for animal cruelty issues to be upgraded to the level of moral prohibitions, but I’m not really confident that that’s the best way to go, either.

    (To be fair, I don’t know exactly where you stand on animal welfare. The only thing you specifically stated was not an obligation was veganism, which is only a fairly specific subset of the things people can do/not do on behalf of animals. You could well say that veganism was optional, but that lacto-ovo vegetarianism was a minimum requirement, or that supporting/running factory farms was unambiguously wrong, and these stances would at least partly address my concerns, while still being perfectly consistent with everything you said in your post.)

27. Lyaer: The reason I put veganism on the “nice things to do” list is that veganism is really really hard and involves a lot of label-reading, cooking at home, and not eating at restaurants. (I’ve been vegan for years and I still cheat with delicious, delicious crab rangoon.) Even beyond that, there are a lot of people– people recovering from eating disorders, people who have to eat animal products to be healthy, people who don’t have time to cook or money for processed vegan food, people who intensely dislike all vegetables and fruits– who cannot reasonably be vegan.

    OTOH, for the vast majority of people, it takes very little effort to not mispronoun people, or at least to make a good-faith effort not to do so.

28. Re veganism: It can be pretty simple depending on where you live. And re restaurants; in my experience, they’ll fix something up for you if you ask, even if they don’t have anything vegan on their menu. When it comes to label-reading, it’s really up to you whether you want to learn all E numbers and what they consist of or not (we’ve chosen not to). Reading what stuff contains milk etc – you do that at first, pretty soon you’ll know by heart what products to buy.
    And if you live at a place where it’s hard to be vegan, it’s probably still pretty simple to eat overall vegetarian (I’m a vegan since sixteen years, but a couple of years ago when I was at the university of Budapest I ate lacto-ovo-vegetarian for a while since it was hard enough to get vegetarian food there).

    I think most people make it out to be much more difficult than it is.

    Saying you can’t be expected to be vegan if you like meat but don’t like fruits and vegs is just like saying you can’t be expected to say “zie” if you dislike new words or weird trans people. Really, this is a big fucking emotional deal for lots of old-fashioned gender essentialist people. If you say it’s wrong even for those people to blurt out “she” at you because they think you’re REALLY a girl and can’t wrap their bigoted heads around the concept of non-binary, If you say these people have an obligation to rethink everything they think they know about gender, I can’t see why it wouldn’t be just as wrong to eat meat when you think “a real meal contains meat”. It’s not as if the latter would require MORE motivation or MORE emotional effort to get over.

    Seriously. I’m raised on meat and potatoes in the countryside, and wasn’t really fond of vegs (not to talk about beans), but I became vegan anyway, and learnt to like all kinds of veggie stuff I didn’t like at first. And when it comes to money – me and my husband have been fairly poor (fifteen years ago: joint income of about 8-9000 SKr a month, which is around 1300 US dollars) and then we lived a lot on beans that we bought dry. That’s super cheap, way cheaper than meat. Of course, it takes time to boil them, but you can do other stuff while they boil, like watch TV.

    I’m not saying that exactly EVERYONE has a reasonable option to go vegan or even vegetarian, but I seriously don’t think it’s true of “lots” of people in today’s western society that they have an honest excuse not to be.

29. Shit, that came out as an angry rant… I totally understand why one puts veganism on the “extra nice” list. In praxis, I do that too. I don’t cut people off or consider them douches because they’re not vegan or vegetarian. But that’s just because meat-eating is so common so one couldn’t really live a normal life if one refused to associate with meat-eaters, although it’s possible to live a normal life and not have overtly racist friends for instance. That’s the difference. So I understand why one puts veganism on the “extra nice list”, but I don’t think it can be defended by going “it’s SO HARD for most people!”.

30. Okay I’m sorry but, eating meat (let alone being vegan!) should not fucking be on the list of “how to be an extra good person”. Seriously, fuck that. It’s such a self-righteous and illogical position that I don’t even know where to begin.

31. L – I can only speak for myself, but I don’t make a point to be vegan because I think it makes me “a better person” let alone “better than all those practicing omnivores.” It’s about harm avoidence. I’m inevitably going to contribute to and benefit from the hurting and killing and exploitation of things that in one sense or another do not want to be hurt or killed or exploited (of course you can make a pretty good argument that animals don’t care about the latter two, at least directly, but at least some of them certainly don’t seem to enjoy pain). That doesn’t mean that there is nothing I can do lessen the quantity. Refraining from purchasing products in the making of which things were hurt does not strike me as a particularly illogical method of trying to reduce the overall quantity of that product being produced. Sure it’s not a one-for-one thing. They measure this stuff in averages and thresholds, but my understanding is that it’s generally considered bad practice to spend money and energy creating more of a product than people are going to buy.

    But that comes from reading your comment as saying that veganism is inadequate or ineffective. If you are trying to say that there is no logical (?) reason to care about animal suffering, you’re going to need a pretty strong argument, because this is in no way obvious.

32. Ozy – There does seem to be an asymetry between a requirement for, for instance, strict veganism (which can take a fair mount of self-education and will power that is pretty daunting when you don’t care that much and haven’t done it before) and one for putting in a good faith effort to try to use a person’s preferred pronouns. I’m not convinced the asymmetry is as huge as some people make it out to be, or that it necessarilly undermines a moral obligation, but it’s certainly there. Would a looser requirement like “a good faith effort to minimize consumption of products for which animals were harmed” fix that asymmetry, though?

    I know for me it doesn’t quite solve the issue, since there are lots of people I associate with, like, refrain from criticizing or conceiving of as “bad people” who nonetheless put no effort whatsoever into reducing harm to food animals. But then, the same is probably true of my relations with gender essentialists and the like. Maybe the point isn’t how I personally treat/feel about the violators. But if that’s not it, I’m not sure what the hard distinction is supposed to be between “okay” and “not okay” when both can have negative consequences.

    In any case, I think I’m with Dvärghundspossen, that the biggest distinction I make is in praxis, because widespread norms I’m butting up against, and if I fight too hard I’ll exhaust myself, accomplish nothing, and everyone will hate me. As it were. Which itself is a dynamic, or at least a fear, which is by no means confined to animal welfare issues.

33. My concept of the division is that basic morality “not going out of your way to cause pain or prevent happiness,” while personal piety things are “deliberately trying to cause happiness or prevent pain.” So in the Hypothetical Country Where Everyone Is Vegan And There’s Only Like One Store In The Entire Country Where You Can Buy Meat, veganism can be basic morality. And in the Very Not Hypothetical Places Where The Gender Binary Is Considered To Be About As Real And Factual As The Sun, using “zie” would be personal piety. (Although I will probably not choose to spend time with people who mispronouned me anyway.)

34. American-style veganism is a less moral lifestyle — both in terms of animal death and in terms of environmental impact — than the meat-eating lifestyles of most countries without industrialized agriculture. The moral difference between a industrial-agriculture vegan and an industrial-agriculture meat-eater is comparatively minor, and mostly a measure of social class.

    Industrial agriculture is really, really bad, but most people in industrial agriculture societies don’t have the opportunity to opt out of it, and thus fighting to not participate in or (even better) change the system is a matter of personal piety, not universal morality. Participating in industrial agricultural systems while shaming others for not being vegan is specifically counterproductive, and trending towards the “seeking to do harm to others in order to make yourself feel better” category.

35. That’s a nice thought, but when everyone around you is getting Bonus Points left and right, you stand out — negatively — by not getting any.

    It’s like how any full time job that does not mandate breaks de facto doesn’ permit them.

    Miri: I actually started calling myself a “pro-feminist” because I don’t do activism. I’m a pro-feminist and a Rangers fan, but I can’t skate a lick.

36. Ozy – Thanks. That makes sense to me.

    Benlehman – Are you sure you want to go with a “the difference is relatively minor” argument? Most things an individual can have an impact on are relatively minor when compared to huge systemic problems. That said, I don’t necessarily disagree with what you say.

    In any case. My intention wasn’t to derail. Apologies if that was the effect.

    On what seems to be the present topic of the thread, I sometimes identify as a feminist, and I certainly am in the minimal “proponent of gender equality” sense. I follow some (mostly internet) feminists and there are plenty of positions/sentiments generally associated with the label that I agree with (thought often I still prefer to reserve judgement). Sometimes I even try to be socially responsible and share the feminist concepts I feel like a grasp well enough to talk about, or I call people out for particularly egregious bits of sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, etc (though often this is sort of anxiety inducing, my ability to articulate my thoughts diminishes, and I end up staying quiet). I think personally I would rather let other people who are more invested in the term and who know better what they are talking about decide for themselves if I qualify as a feminist in any relevant sense.

37. @Lyaer: You lot are operating from an assumption that I’m not making (like trying to argue with Christians who make the assumption that “the Bible is right” that forms the basis for everything they’re ever going to say): that killing or using an animal in any way and under any circumstances is capital b Bad and unethical. Which is an ideological standpoint that makes zero sense to me, is supported by zero science, and really does just belong in the category that “religion” is relegated to in these discussions. That is, being intrinsically “amoral”.

38. I deeply loathe the assumption that anyone who doesn’t call themselves a feminist is either a misogynist or ignorant of what feminism is really about. I was raised to be a feminist, spent years educating myself on feminist theory and calling myself a feminist, and participated in countless dialogues on feminism, but ultimately found that I did not agree with much of what was being done in its name and rejected the label for two reasons:

    1) Sketchy methodology. Feminism as a movement is fond of claiming causal relationships without definitive evidence – essentially fitting facts to theories instead of theories to facts. The final straw for me was a philosophy paper I wrote on “The Second Sex,” a classic feminist text if there ever was one. I wanted to look at whether or not the premises de Beauvoir proposed led logically to her conclusions, and ended up finding a number of gaps where she was missing necessary premises. That’s fine – while she was a philosopher, it’s not at all uncommon for philosophers to be sloppy with their logic. What really bowled me over, though, was that I could find no papers whatsoever that had done what I was doing. All of the feminist “critiques” I found were about how well her conclusions applied in later decades. I was shocked that no one (or at least no one I could find) had done the basic work of writing out her arguments in a formal logic format. Don’t you need to know whether your argument holds together logically before you can look at whether it’s factually incorrect?

    When I sat back and thought about some of the core assumptions in current feminist discourse I found that they lacked explanatory power. Most oppressor/oppressed situations involve the oppressor having a disproportionate amount of both power *and* numbers, because numbers are a great way of generating power, and they tend to assign unambiguously negative traits and roles to the oppressed while reserving unambiguously positive traits and roles for themselves. (Obviously there are exceptions to both rules: a small number of colonizers can control a large populations, and some oppressed groups are assigned a limited number of positive traits, like the stereotype of gay men being fashion geniuses.)

    The dynamic between men and women, however, does not play by either of those rules. First, women are normally slightly more numerous than men; second, and far more damning, they are not assigned the bulk of negative traits while men are assigned the bulk of positive ones. Feminism has spent a great deal of time talking about the side-effects of the stereotypes that women deal with without really considering that those stereotypes are only situationally negative. If you’re dying to become a CEO then it sucks when no one thinks you’re capable of being one…but the other side of that coin is increased accommodation if you prefer a life that approximates a role you *were* assumed to be good at.

    Male/female advantages and disadvantages are better understood as an attempt to create a complimentary relationship than one where one group – possibly with the collaboration of the other, depending on who you’re listening to – deliberately or even accidentally keeps the other one down. Does that make it right? Absolutely not. I deal with the stereotypes of me as a man every single day, and work to demolish any and all gendered advantages and disadvantages. But the “why” does matter, because the wrong explanation leads to the wrong solutions, like the ones below…

    2) “Straw feminists” absolutely do exist, and they have had a powerful influence on the movement. No, I don’t think that all feminists are man-hating she-demons, or anything ridiculous like that; rather, I think that an especially nasty strain of bully has been enabled and encouraged by the way that online feminists conceptualize activism. The focus on ideological purity produces a culture in which anyone who can appear as an authority on said purity gains an inordinate amount of power. Unsurprisingly, this attracts power seekers.

    None of this is really new. Every movement is going to have its share of assholes, and I would have no problem with feminism’s share if it weren’t for the ways that the movement has embraced them.

    When your starting premise, as it is in some schools of feminist thought, is that men are responsible in some way for women being disadvantaged, it’s not much of a stretch to become concerned with how much men are involved in your movement. If they are the oppressors, and the oppressors can never really understand the oppressed, then they’re less likely to have valuable contributions; and if they drown women out just by being there, or traumatize women because they remind them of oppression, then their presence is actively toxic. It just makes sense to minimize the role of men.

    But the things that make men a harmful presence aren’t necessarily exclusive to men. If you can oppress someone with accidental turns of phrase, then you have to be really careful what you say, regardless of who you are. Implementing basic codes of speech in your community is just common sense there.

    Obviously, the feelings of the oppressed are more important than the oppressor’s. Oppressors are validated all the damn day, and have plenty of privileged shielding from experiencing the worst of verbal abuse. Anyone who oppresses with their language, then, can’t be catered to because they have deeply damaged those around them, and it wouldn’t hurt nearly as much for them to be bombarded anyway. Any blows from the oppressed are a righteous expression of their own personal pain, and you can’t tell a survivor of abuse how to process that abuse. Besides, how will anyone learn their lesson if they aren’t promptly corrected?

    *This* is precisely the toxic dynamic I’ve seen in so many online and offline feminist communities. It offers and ideal environment to abusers and control freaks who get a kick out of being king shit on turn mountain. By being more vicious than those around them they gain status and a sense of satisfaction, while those below them either have to conform or endure vicious abuse and the knowledge that they are terrible oppressors. In addition to all of the pain it causes, it’s also terrible for critical thinking and making actual progress.

    There are plenty of communities and sites that do not spiral into an out-of-control hell pit, of course, but many of the assumptions I’ve listed above are prevalent to a lesser degree in most communities I’ve found. They’re taken as self-evident Gospel, and if you don’t come from the right demographic then heaven help you if you challenge them.

    The reason I lurk here is you will frequently examine the assumptions instead of taking them for granted and building your conclusions off them. That’s why it’s so irritating when you do take dogma for granted, as in the “you’re either a feminist or you haven’t met the right feminism for you” dichotomy that you and your commentors seem to believe.

    I have met feminism and would never have left it if it weren’t for the actions of feminists. Please consider that next time.

39. (Trigger warning for brief descriptions of hypothetical animal cruelty)

    L – I am specifically not operating from that assumption. I acknowledged in my first reply to you that killing and exploitation of animals is not wrong in the same sense that it is for humans, though perhaps I was too brief on that point. Without having strong concepts of either, it is hard to see how animals could be particularly troubled by their own deaths or the thought of being used in some Kantian sense. This doesn’t solve every ethical problem around these issues on a practical level, but it does mean that if we talk about death and exploitation of animals without releasing all the baggage that comes attached to these concepts in a human context, we are making a mistake.

    I will tell you the assumptions that I am making.

    1. Something matters if and only if it matters to someone or something. This is maybe a step away from a pure tautology (trivial, definitional truth). It does rule out the possibility that anything matters objectively except inasmuch as objective importance consists of subjective importance. Even then, it is consistent with God or the universe somehow subjectively caring about things, though I also assume neither of those is the case. I mean “mattering,” “importance,” and “caring” to stand in for a loose class of desires, values, interests, conscious motivations, likings and dislikings, and so on. These admit of degrees (intensity/priority, duration, spread over number of individuals) but also qualitative differences that can make them hard to weigh against each other. Difficulties in determining and communicating degrees of intensity/priority also exacerbates the problem of weighing, but some cases are still relatively clear cut or at least allow for a reasonable best guess.

    2. Morality consists in acting, or at least attempting to act, with the concerns of other entities in mind in addition to your own self-directed interests. Obviously this requires some kind of subjective caring/motivation on the part of the individual. This can take a limited form (e.g. only acting in the interests of your family, peer group, nation, species) but the ultimate consequence of taking this conception of morality seriously is going to be striving for some sort of universal altruism, general point of view, or other sort of utilitarian or proto-utilitarian value set. There, are of course, other concepts of what morality is. I make no comment on their validity or, should they be accepted alongside this concept, how they should interact or be prioritized. It is certainly the case that this conception of morality is not practical in the sense of being easily practicable, or providing simple answers to most real world ethical dilemmas, It is also, specifically, not rooted in notions of reciprocity, social contract, or rational self-interest. Some would call these things flaws. I don’t care.

    3. Animal neurology and behavior is enough to establish that, at minimum, some non-human animals are capable of experiencing pleasure, which they desire, and pain, which they desire to avoid. There may be cases in which this does not apply. In ambiguous cases I am happy to err on the side of caution, but mileage may vary. There may also be other animal capacities that warrant attention in this context – empathy and so on.

    4. Many practices – especially but not exclusively industrial ones – that use animals for labor or food/raw materials cause significant amounts of pain and suffering to animals.

    5. The pleasure and other forms of human desire fulfillment that occurs as a result of the above practices more often than not do not unambiguously outweigh the animal suffering involved, especially when alternative humane means of accomplishing the same or adequately similar goals or taken into consideration.

    6. Refraining from helping to fund the above practices has at least some chance of lowering the number of animals subjected to them (even if only because fewer will be bred), especially if I am not the only one doing this.

    From these assumptions I draw the conclusion that it is morally better to, among other things, avoid purchasing (though not without exception) animal products.

    Say what you will about these assumptions and the conclusion I draw, but I fail to see that I am accepting any grand or improbable metaphysical claims, or taking any matter of fact on faith, so whether or not the religious analogy applied to the position you seemed to think I was arguing for earlier, I don’t see how it applies here.

    Of course, you always have the out of saying that you don’t care about animal interests. In my opinion that is probably the best way to oppose my view while staying internally consistent and not adopting iffy factual claims. The caveat is that it’s also the best way treat human suffering as an amoral variable while remaining internally consistent and not accepting iffy factual claims. You can always justify the difference between humans and animals with one of the above alluded to moral systems based on reciprocity, social contract, rational self-interest, etc. Though in my mind, egoism (though this might be a bit loose a use of the term) will always be compatible with immorality, or at least with “being a moral opponent.” Before leaving this as the “easy option,” I will say though, that if you really don’t care at all about animal interests, it seems to follow that any act of cruelty performed for any reason against a non-human species should be acceptable to you. Is it cool if I starve my pets, pull the wings off of insects to watch their pitiful failures at flight, light cats on fire because I’m bored (assuming I never do similar to a fellow human)? Should animal well-being take priority over human sadism? If so, I fail to see how this issue is really morally neutral to you, even if you do ultimately land on the side of meat consumption being okay, etc.

    The other out I see for you is taking a deontological route (duty ethics often privileges humans over animals for Kant reasons), though I have to say that if any modern moral system looks self-righteous and religious to -me,- it’s deontology. (Please take that jab in the spirit in which it was intended – as a good-natured tease with a bit of a turnabout’s fair play justification. I don’t hate you and I’m not taking this exchange personally. All I’m really saying here is that I don’t -get- deontology.) Again, though, taking an opposing view on morality usually means that on their own view your opponents get to consider immoral some behavior that you do not consider immoral. There are lots of assumptions embedded in feminism that someone could simply reject in order to justify sexism, and fine, we disagree. It doesn’t mean we can’t pass judgement on them.

40. Actually, my “out” is that I wasn’t specifically referring to you, and making it look like I was, rather than the concept of “veganism as moral good”, was lazy on my part.

    I appreciate the essay, though I’m still quite unsure of how you drew the conclusion that being against the aforementioned concept makes me indifferent to, or more likely, according to you, a proponent of animal cruelty. Seems like sloppy thinking too.

41. L – Fair enough

    Not sure if the thinking was sloppy, but clearly I didn’t articulate what I was saying very well. I suspect that the way that I specifically think about moral issues in terms of a type of caring leads me to look at animal cruelty for the sake of, say, sadistic pleasure, and animal cruelty for the sake of, say, pleasure from food, as essentially moral equivalents. I tend to see the pleasure of the human in each scenario, sadistic or otherwise, as essentially good, while the suffering of the animal is essentially bad (and to me clearly outweighs the pleasure); I brought it up mainly as an intuition pump, in counter point to the possible position that animals have no moral worth whatsoever, which is what I tend to think someone is saying when they frame meat consumption as a morally neutral issues. I think most people are against animal cruelty in the more uncontroversially senseless and sadistic cases, and if someone is, it seems to me to follow that animal cruelty in other cases should at least be a little bit morally problematic, even if it doesn’t overturn anyone’s opinion that some practice that hurts animals is okay.

    I certainly didn’t mean to imply that you were or should be okay with animal cruelty. I also am aware that some people would think that my characterization of sadistic pleasure as basically good is a bad way to look at things, and that it shouldn’t be equated with pleasure from food, which is less directly related to suffering. From that sort of perspective, you could argue that animal cruelty is wrong because sadism is problematic, for instance. And of course there are other ways to look at these issues. If I framed this in a way that brushed them under the carpet, I apologize.

42. Where that line of thinking breaks down for me is here: eating meat does not inherently require the suffering of any animal. Of course I’m operating from within the belief that there is such thing as humane slaughter, and if you disagree with that premise then… this discussion can’t really happen. I am a big fan of true animal husbandry, from both an ethical and religious standpoint, and wish that that, coupled with a drastic decrease in meat consumption, could make up the entirety of the meat and dairy industries. I consider that approach “morally good”. Industrialized animal processing, on the other hand, I would most definitely consider to be “immoral” on many levels, treatment of livestock just being part of that.

    Personally, that’s where I’m coming from.

43. Couldn’t check the board out yesterday, although the discussion seemed to have moved along fine without me.

    Just a short add: Re veganism making you a better person – well, IF you agree with the claim that eating animal products is wrong (and one can agree with that for several reasons – including thinking that a humane animal industry is possible in theory, only we don’t have one, and for various capitalist reasons are unlikely to have one unless our entire society drastically changes), and IF you act on that belief, then obviously you’re gonna believe that you’re doing morally better food-wise than a person who’s eating animal products. (The animal-eating person might, of course, still do morally better than you overall.) Even if you don’t go around smugly thinking about what a great person being a vegan makes you, the belief that you’re doing morally better food-wise than someone who eats animal products sort of follows from a) the belief that eating animal products is wrong, and b) the fact that you’re a vegan and zie’s not.

    And that goes for everything, not just food. If I think doing X is morally bad, and I don’t do X for that reason, and then meet another person who does X, I’ll believe I’m doing morally better X-wise than this other person (which doesn’t imply that I spend time wallowing in thoughts about what a great person I am).

    That’s not being smug, just logical.

44. L – That makes sense to me. I think I read your talk about moral neutrality as a different stance than you are in fact taking. I’m not closed to the possibility of humane slaughter, but I am somewhat skeptical of it.

    Non human animals as far as I know have no way of contemplating their own death, and therefore it would seem are incapable of consciously desiring to avoid death. It seems to follow from that and from my ethical framework (detailed above) that animal death has no intrinsic negative value.

    My concerns are a little sketchy, and mostly conceptual, or at least armchair. I know that putatively humane farming of food animals is practiced, but I don’t know the facts on the ground (on average, and certainly not in all instances). If they are less humane than advertized, that’s bad, otherwise… The following concerns mostly assume, for the sake of argument, ideal conditions.

    1. Counterfactually, if animals could contemplate their own deaths, it seems as though they might well prefer not to die, all else being equal. That’s a huge counterfactual, though. I don’t really think it’s morally relevant, though I sometimes feel like there might be a legitimate objection somewhere in its conceptual vicinity.

    2. Inasmuch as animals desire certain pleasures, death deprives them of the further opportunity to pursue those pleasures, in much the same sense that I might say that I want to remain alive to pursue some goal or another, only less conscious. The pleasure deprivation that results from death will not be distressing as is living pleasure deprivation, but it still seems to me a loss that shift’s the animal’s death away from moral irrelevance. The flipside of this concern is that an animal that can only expect suffering (even assuming intervention) is better off dead. This seems to be a pretty common sentiment, anyway.

    3. A painful death, even if sudden and brief, is still painful. I don’t know that this weighs very much. Everyone endures brief pains periodically. It doesn’t seem that bad. This point is mooted if an animal can be killed completely painlessly (complete prevention of emotional distress and physical discomfort). Does that ever happen? It seems like most ways of dying are at least momentarilly painful, with the exception of some types of drugging, but I would think you wouldn’t want to drug a meat animal. Am I wrong?

    4. Social animals form attachments. Depriving an animal of its children, parents, or “friends” could cause a good deal of distress to that animal. I suppose this applies to separation in general, and not just death. I’ve heard some sad stories about this type of thing with farm animals. I don’t know if there are ways to work around this problem. I imagine it depends on the species. I don’t know how how to quantify the issue, but it seems like a non-zero negative.

    5. I’ve heard arguments about the psychological effects of the normalization of killing animals on humans, and that this can be bad on one level or another. I’m not a psychologist, so while I see some plausibility to these arguments, I can’t really properly evaluate or defend them.

    6. I am a person who is biased toward human interests. I do not know what it is like to be an animal, and the fact that I am missing information (along with the above considerations) inclines me to err on the side of caution, at least when some less ambiguous evil is not the only alternative. After all, I and many others (I can’t speak for everyone) can live relatively happy lives without eating meat, wearing leather, etc., and it would not do to be too hasty and cause greater harm than I anticipate as a result. I don’t want to underestimate the somewhat mysterious emotional lives of farm animals. (Of course I also have biases that come from identifying as a vegan and animal welfare advocate. It may be that I am imprudently cautious, for that reason, but it’s a judgment call I am personnaly happy with, and one I don’t see why others should regret inordinately either, should they folow my example.)

    I don’t expect these concerns to be very convincing to anyone who isn’t already an animal welfare proponent, though they make someone think, all the better. Certainly an ideally run, putatively humane meat farm is not anywhere near the level of awfulness that is a factory farm. Skepticism aside, my gripe is not with you. Indeed, even if meat consumption never decreases, any shift toward (even sub-optimal) humane slaughtering practices is an improvement from the current situation, as far as I’m concerned. Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the less bad, as it were. (That was a semi quote. I forget who from.)

45. This seems just strictly inferior to thinking about morals from a utilitarian perspective. What’sthe advantage to thinking in these virtue ethics terms instead of consequentialist terms?

46. bgaesop: If I attempt to maximize utility, I will probably get burned out and not want to be moral at all, which is suboptimal. This is an attempt to implement a version of morality human beings can actually *do*.

47. Couldn’t it be Givewell instead of Giving What We Can? Much more rigorous.
    I’d love a compare-and-contrast.

48. Couldn’t it be Givewell instead of Giving What We Can? Much more rigorous.
    I’d love a compare-and-contrast.

49. I’m pretty sure they recommend most of the same charities, anyway.