Should Vegans Watch Graphic Footage?
“When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to he who suffers, and try to help him.”
–Leo Tolstoy
Was I Even Vegan?
I'm hoping this post brings some honesty and depth to my online "vegan blogger" persona. When I write, I sometimes wonder if I sound too extreme or blasé or if the things I'm saying would resonate with a nonvegan. However, this is my place to write about my experiences and ideas regarding veganism and animal rights. Even so, I was still nervous for this post to be published. And that’s because I needed someone to tell me these things that I'll share today. It’s because I was a “vegan” that refused to watch slaughterhouse and factory farm footage. And my stubbornness led to me doing many regretful things. In this post, I will be sharing some tales of woe from my first three years as a “vegan,” along with my advice on how to easily avoid my mistakes.
I LOVE Animals
You should know that I am the biggest animal lover I know. I’ve always been obsessed with them, all of them. I would shout with joy anytime I passed by a pasture of cows grazing (more like a scream, actually...my dad did not appreciate that), watch with admiration as squirrels ran and hopped across the grass and through trees, open the window in my bedroom to listen to the music of birds singing. I cried one time I accidentally killed a bumblebee, mourned for days after going fishing on vacation and ate the poor fish we caught, and was haunted by a little kitten I fostered that died right on my bathroom floor. In middle school, I was intent on watching every single episode of the various Animal Cops shows on Animal Planet, enjoying seeing the rescue of various creatures, grieving over the ones that didn’t make it, and rejoicing when the abusers were sent to jail. This was all before going vegan, and that love has only grown since.
The Day That Changed My Life
Even though I haven’t personally been around many animals in my life, I’ve always found comfort with them in the ways I could. In all honesty, I care more about animals than humans, and I did even before I was vegan. Maybe that seems weird. My point is that I care so deeply for all animals, and when I watched Earthlings on August 5, 2015, the world suddenly came into focus: veganism was my future, the most important thing to me then, and I knew nothing could ever sway me on that. And yet, I still wasn’t fully there.
After that day, I only saw small clips of graphic footage from PETA or Mercy for Animals, as I never had the heart to watch more. I knew it would only make me depressed and angry with the world, and not knowing any other vegans, I would have no one to talk to about it. During those first few months, I watched a few documentaries, including Cowspiracy and Vegucated, but that was the most I educated myself on the topic. Soon, I forgot about the gruesome images I saw (except for one particular moment in Earthlings that I still think about to this day). Even now, I haven’t re-watched the film, and I don’t remember anything else from it. Maybe I blocked it from my mind as a coping mechanism or it just disappeared with time, but that was a heavy influence on my regrettable subsequent actions.
Is It PTSD?
I don't use this term lightly, for we all know how serious PTSD is and how harmful it can be to the human mind. However, many vegans and animal rights activists suffer from a variation of the condition known as secondary trauma. We've seen so many horrible things done to animals, some have even witnessed it firsthand or participated in it themselves, and knowing how to deal with that is challenging. For instance, now when I see those funny videos online of goats yelling like humans, all I can think about are the goats in Dominion screaming - human screams - in a slaughterhouse as their heads are almost entirely sawed off. Sometimes I'll see a bacon commercial and something in me just snaps. All I can think about are terrified pigs huddling together as they are each picked out for slaughter; I hear their screams as they're being sent into the gas chamber, burning from the inside out. My theory is that, as a person so sensitive to animals, when I watched Earthlings and "woke up," some part of me couldn't cope with all those terrible images. So I just forgot them; I didn't forget the feeling or the hatred or the terror I felt watching them, but I wasn't mentally prepared to deal with remembering those images on a daily basis.
I Was Completely Clueless
It was until 2018 that I actually learned how healthy it is to be vegan. Because of my lack of knowledge, I was incredibly unconfident as a vegan. I went out of my way to not talk about it, and if it did come up, I would try to drop the subject as quickly as possible. I knew I didn’t have the answers people would want if they asked pointed questions intended to catch me off-guard, as some carnists like to do. My only reasoning was that I loved animals, but I thought that would sound foolish to most other adults. When I was at restaurants with my family (the only time I ever went out to eat), I never asked what or if anything was vegan, and I was embarrassed if my mom or dad brought it up with the waiter. I would just order a simple pasta dish, hoping it was vegan and wasn’t served with cheese. If there was some parmesan on it (which, by the way, should always be listed on the menu, right? What if I was super lactose intolerant or something? Plus, it usually contains rennet, which isn't even vegetarian), I would just eat it because I figured the damage was already done. I didn’t want to make a fuss.
Honey Isn't Vegan?!
About six months in, I was confronted with the honey dilemma. In my speciesist, ignorant mind, I had never even thought of honey as an animal product. (And I really hope documentaries and other vegans will discuss the honey industry in the future.) I began to read what other vegans were saying online to see if I should or shouldn’t eat honey. Some said it was ok, and some said it wasn’t. Wanting to affirm my own beliefs, I decided to believe the people that said it was a grey area in veganism. I continued to eat honey for a while, but eventually the guilt that I was a bad vegan got to me and I gave it up. (You can read this post to learn more about the honey industry. There is nothing vegan or ethical about it.)
Don't Take My Candy, Please!
One of my favorite snacks in the whole world was Brach's Indian corn (candy corn with chocolate on the bottom instead of the yellow stuff). I ate bags and bags of it around Halloween time; for me, that starts on September 1, because I love Halloween (which you'll learn come October). I read the ingredients on the bag for my first vegan Halloween, and I determined that, thankfully, it was vegan. Come to find out the next year, after buying about six bags in preparation, that gelatin is actually made of weird animal body parts that no human should ever want to consume. I emailed the company, praying that their gelatin was one of the few made of plant ingredients, but they confirmed that theirs comes from pigs. It’s hard for me now to believe just how ignorant I was.
I Was Addicted to Milk Chocolate
But the worst of it was that I was still consuming dairy on a semi-regular basis. Intentionally. I have very few regrets about how I lived in the past since I had no idea what was going on, but I am ashamed of this. Because I was in college when I went vegan, I was living away from home most of the time. When I visited my parents, my mom would always stock up on nonvegan chocolates (which I should've told her not to buy for me, but, again, I didn't know how to talk about veganism). I would try to resist them, but my willpower was not strong and I gave in to my sweet tooth. She even started buying them for me and bringing them whenever she visited. And my dad always had (and still has, unfortunately, even though he claims to be vegan to his friends) giant party size bags of peanut M&M’s. It’s like chocolate and peanuts were created to be paired together, and they called out to me, beckoning me to just try one. Well, one turned into several handfuls pretty quick, and I was hooked.
I rationalized that I wasn’t actually the one buying these items, so I was still technically vegan. But if you have to put a “technically” in front of vegan, you’re definitely not a real vegan. Now when I see those M&M's or anything containing animal products, it makes me feel sick to ever think that I consumed them (especially when Unreal's vegan chocolate peanut gems are so good). It’s regretful that I did any of these things, but I can’t do anything to change them now. I have to live with these errors and move on.
WARNING: Ignorance May Lead to Death
But the point of this post isn’t to talk about a few of the many mistakes I’ve made. (You can read my "Vegan for Dummies" post to hopefully avoid some of the mistakes I made.) It’s to show you how someone like me, who loves animals more than anything else in the world, was led astray by her stubbornness and ignorance. And while these mistakes were relatively small, a few small drops in an ocean of misery, and in every other way I was wholeheartedly vegan, I was still contributing to the industry. But it's done now, and my only hope is to help prevent others from making mistakes and slipping back into carnism. If you’re like me and you don’t think you’re ready to jump head-first into all this, let me share with you some tips to get started.
1. Do Research
Obviously, from what I’ve just said, education is important so you know how to live your life. I had no idea what I was doing, and even though I thought I was an ethical vegan, I didn’t fully understand it all. Do your research, find other vegans, and stay committed. If you need help with this, check out last week's post, "A Guide to Vegan Education & Activism." The reason why we have so many "ex-vegans" right now is because they refuse to properly educate themselves on the topic. And since we live in a carnist world, they choose to believe their nonvegan doctors (who have little to no nutrition education) that tell them eating meat or dairy or eggs will fix all their problems. (Which, obviously, that will make you feel better if you've been starving yourself or eating an absurdly restrictive diet. But I digress.) If I hadn't been so committed to the animals, I very well could have been another "ex-vegan."
2. Reconnect With the Animals
At the end of the day, veganism is an ethical decision and lifestyle. When I started to watch activism videos, vigils in particular, it was like going vegan all over again. I had that same realization that this isn’t about me – it’s always been about the animals. As I saw more animals suffering, the more ingrained my already-held beliefs became. It helped me remember why I made the change to veganism in the first place. And now, when it becomes difficult or frustrating to be vegan, I think of them over myself. My fears and worries are nothing compared to what they endure. Having this core set of values makes me a better person, a better vegan, and a better activist. My entire life has led to this point, and even if I don’t have everything figured out, I will always feel strong and confident in my unwavering dedication to all animals.
3. It's Not as Hard as You Think
To all who are still questioning this, doubting that they could ever watch graphic footage as a part of their vegan education: I know it seems too painful to bear, watching animals being tortured and murdered in almost every way imaginable. Though most people will tell you that you eventually get used to it, I disagree. You will never be able to understand how we as a species could commit such atrocities on so many living beings, and there will always be some things you see and hear that will never leave you. It’s more like you become more prepared for the shocking images you see and can tolerate watching the abuse more easily. “Getting used to it” indicates some level of acceptance of the brutality as a normal part of life, which clearly it is not.
4. You Aren't Hurting Them Anymore - You're Saving Them
But the more you see it, you come to a realization that you are doing everything you can to help the animals. Though there’s nothing you can do for those individuals you see in the videos, there are countless others that have not been born, tortured, and executed for you since going vegan. Remember those in the footage – their suffering has already ended. They are not in pain anymore, and there’s nothing you could have possibly done for them. Hold back your anger for the humans you may see participating in the violence and the killing. Though they sometimes are particularly cruel or disrespectful to the animals, most are there to fulfill consumer demand – not because they enjoy brutalizing animals for a living; that’s just the job they’ve likely been forced to take. (Would you want to work in a slaughterhouse?) It’s natural to feel the need to lash out and blame them, but they are victims too. The faster they can control these animals, the faster they can be done for the day so they can hopefully go home and try to forget that they just murdered countless innocent beings today.
*Check out the Vegan Calculator. Every day as a vegan, you save 1,100 gallons of water, 40 pounds of grain, 30 square feet of forest, 20 pounds of CO2, and one animal's life (though it's probably hundreds more if you consider the 2.7 trillion sea animals we kill every year). It may not feel like it, but you really are making a difference!
5. Don't Watch Too Much
Even though I do believe it is essential to watch graphic footage, it should only be a very small part of your veganism. (For me, this is mostly just going on Instagram for a few minutes every day. I almost always see something from PETA, Unparalleled Suffering [though their posts are sometimes pretty intense], or the Save Movement.) While most people don't want to see it at all, there is a group of vegans, mostly new vegans, who feel that they have to watch it all the time. It's like a form of punishment for their past ignorance. This is not healthy! Please don't do that to yourself. There's no use feeling guilty over things before you knew the truth. What's done is done, and you can live peacefully knowing that you will never again kill anyone to live.
Be Strong For Them
I hope I haven't scared you with talk of PTSD and the thought of potentially being traumatized by watching graphic footage. In all sincerity, I'm the happiest I've ever felt in my whole life because I know that my purpose in the world is to help animals and I know I no longer contribute (and never again will) to their suffering. Hopefully some of the words I’ve shared today have made you rethink veganism and education. These are things I needed to know, things I needed someone to talk to about when I didn’t know what I was doing. In a carnist world, having the knowledge of what’s actually occurring - and who is paying the ultimate price - behind the curtain is your most powerful asset. If we are ever to create change, we have a duty to our planet and all its inhabitants to do whatever we can to protect everyone and everything.
be conscious, be kind, be vegan