Skip to content

When A Teen Goes Green

About an eco-positive lifestyle

Menu
  • Home
    • What is an eco-positive lifestyle?
    • New? Start here!
  • How to guides
  • Reducing negative impact
    • Veganism
    • Minimalism
    • Zero Waste
    • Sustainable Traveling
    • Sustainable and Fair Fashion
    • Intersectional Feminism
    • Circular Economy
    • The 9 Planetary Boundaries
  • Increasing positive impact
  • Inspiration
    • Recipes
    • Hotspots
    • Organizations and apps
    • Books, documentaries, films, series and podcasts
    • Books, Films and Series List
  • Personal
    • My Ideal World
    • About me and this blog
Menu
An example of ethical veganism. Vegan alternative to test animals. Instead of cutting an animal open, this is a knitted vegan example that can be used in biology classes.

Ethical Veganism

Posted on November 1, 2021January 24, 2023

Today, as I am writing this post, it is my vegan anniversary. I finally looked it up and put it in my agenda yesterday. Such a coincidence! I always knew that it was a very random date since I just decided one day: I’m doing it. I’m going vegan! As I said, the day that I am writing this, it’s been 4 years! Woohoo. I thought that therefore it would be good to write about the very base of this lifestyle I’ve had ever since: ethical veganism.

How It Started

I can’t really say that I have been an ethical vegan for 4 years now. I really evolved over the years. 6 years ago I became a vegetarian. And as crazy as it sounds, at first this wasn’t really for the animals. My main reason back then was that meat is very harmful for our environment. It was only later that I really started to care for the animals. You read books, watch documentaries and talk to people. It really takes a while to come over your cognitive dissonance. And after that, reason after reason for staying a vegan keep on adding up. And I guess my thoughts therefore have become more radical too. Where at first I thought: I don’t eat meat because that’s needed to combat climate change, I slowly went to: animals are living beings and that itself has value. They’re not here for us and we should leave them alone all together.

Speciesism

I like to say things in a positive manner: I am an ethical vegan. However, this is a lifestyle that is against a very specific thing: speciesism. So yes, you could also phrase this a little different: being against speciesism. But what is speciesism?

Speciesism refers to a set of irrational beliefs and prejudices, exhibited in various forms and degrees, which reproduce political and social structures that yield power and privilege to human animals over other species of animals.

It basically means that we humans think that we’re better than non-human animals. However, we’re all animals. If you’re an anti-speciesist you are against this superiority. We treat animals in ways that we wouldn’t treat ourselves and I believe that’s morally wrong. Now, this does not mean that we should do the same things with animals as we do with humans. We would not invite them to drink tea with us or go clubbing haha. Obviously, non-humans are different from us. They can’t speak or do things that humans can. However, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t treat them morally. As an anti-speciesist I believe we should apply our morals to them like we would to ourselves. We should not hurt or use them and make sure they have a joyous life.

Ethical Veganism

So, the basis is to value their lives just as much as we value our own. Humans are not better or more value-able than non-human animals. Therefore, we could never own animals. We co-exist on this planet. We should live together in peace. And as you know, this is not the case right now. We abuse, hurt, kill, use, breed, buy and exploit non-human animals on a daily basis. And for me, the word use is very important in ethical veganism. I mean, not to kill or hurt animals is very obvious if you’d ask me. But when we use animals this becomes less apparent and so that’s the base for me. We as humans are smart enough to do things on our own without using animals for it.

Ethical veganism therefore does not stop at a plant-based diet. I mean, it’s a great start. But it’s also about boycotting circuses and zoos, being against hunting and horse-riding, not using their shit (literally) to fertilize our crops and it’s even about pets. We should never use animals for ourselves. In any way. So it goes from the base to not eating animals to not breeding dogs so that they can be our pets.

Vegan Utopia

Maybe this seems all a bit abstracts. Let me try to make this more clear by describing my utopia. In my utopia we live in a world where non-humans animals and humans live together in harmony. We don’t really have cities anymore since all of the world is created in a way that it is nature-supporting. Non-humans animals can thrive and so can humans. We live together in peace. All humans are ethical vegans. The non-human animals live on this world in peace and they are not used in any ways. Humans and non-humans only interact by seeing each other sometimes. Non-human animals are never the property of humans and so they’re always free in nature. When humans hurt non-human animals in any way, this has consequences just like it would when a human hurts another human (not in the way this is done today, like prisons and inhumane punishment, but that’s something for another time haha). But of course nobody would hurt each other because this is utopia. Non-humans would also not hurt humans because we’ve designed the world in such a way that we can only live in harmony. Seems nice, right? No suffering, just harmony.

*The picture you see on top of this post is an embroidered inside of a mouse for a biology practical. I think this is a great example of we don’t need to use animals. I found it via this Instagram page.

Yours sincerely,
Romee

4 thoughts on “Ethical Veganism”

  1. Pingback: Finding Vegan Restaurants: HappyCow | When A Teen Goes Green
  2. Pingback: Why biomass is not a sustainable fuel | When A Teen Goes Green
  3. Pingback: Documentary: Miss Americana | When A Teen Goes Green
  4. Pingback: 4 Podcast Tips - November 2021 | When A Teen Goes Green

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Search for anything

Want to get an update every time I post something?

Enter your email address to subscribe to my blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 269 other subscribers.

ABOUT ME

 

Hi! My name is Romee Hoeksma and I am on a journey to an eco-positive life. An eco-positive lifestyle is a lifestyle in which I have a more positive than negative impact on the beautiful planet earth. On this blog you can follow my journey to a life with only positive impact. At this blog you can find all sorts of things, from tips to recipes to personal experiences, but most of all fun (I hope!). I write about how I want to change the world, but don’t look at it as if I’m judging you. If anything, I like responses from my dear readers the most, so don’t hesitate to contact me or respond to any of my posts!

Yours sincerely,
Romee

Here’s what I posted most recently

  • Documentary: I am Greta
  • 5 things I don’t buy
  • My positive impact in 2022
  • All my new purchases in 2022
  • Eco-positive toilet paper: The Good Roll

Translate this site

Follow me on Instagram

Ik ga dit jaar weer de challenge aan om de winter door te komen zonder de warming aan te zetten. Hiervoor ging mijn essential, een warmwaterkruik 💦, kapot. In deze reel laat ik je zien hoe ik een ‘nieuwe’ tweedehands kruik kocht. Vandaag te lezen op whenateengoesgreen.com: een inspirerende documentary over Greta Thunberg: I am Greta. Een documentaire over hoop, maar vooral over doorzettingsvermogen 🔥. Lees het nu via de link in mijn bio. Meer vegan producten in de schappen, yay! Gisteren probeerde ik voor het eerst de vegan lentil tikki masala saus van Patak’s 🧑🏼‍🍳. Zie in deze reel wat ik ervan vond. Vandaag verscheen er een nieuw artikel op mijn blog over: 5 dingen die ik niet koop. Want we denken vaak dat we dingen écht nodig hebben, maar vaak is dat niet zo 🧠. Check het artikel via de link in miijn bio. Vorige week verscheen er een artikel op mijn blog over alles wat ik nieuw kocht in 2022. Dat is een groot deel van mijn negatieve impact. Deze week was het tijd om te kijken naar de andere kant van de medaille. Vandaag lees je op mijn blog een artikel over al mijn positive impact in 2022 🌞. Je vind de link naar het artikel in de link in mijn bio. Afgelopen week verscheen er op mijn blog een artikel over alles wat ik nieuw heb gekocht in 2022. Eén ding op de lijst waren deze onderbroeken (een stuk of 20). En nu denk je misschien: waarom zou je in één keer zoveel onderbroeken kopen? Op 31 december, nog net op de valreep in 2022, kwam er een video online op mijn Youtube-kanaal over voedselcoöperaties. Ik denk namelijk dat voedselcoöperaties ons voedselsysteem democratischer en eerlijker kunnen maken 🥦. Elk jaar stel ik mezelf als doel om geen nieuwe spullen te kopen. Er is weer een jaar voorbij, dus het was tijd om te evalueren. Is het me gelukt om in 2022 geen nieuwe spullen te kopen? 🛒 Je leest het vandaag op m’n blog. Ook tijdens het gourmetten kan je heel makkelijk vegan eten 🌱. Zie hier wat ik at als vegan op de tweede kerstdag 🎄. Gourmetten is een topoplossing als je niet uren in de keuken wilt staan. Lekkere snacks kopen, even snijden en alles neerzetten en bakken maar!

Read my latest posts

  • Documentary: I am Greta
  • 5 things I don’t buy
  • My positive impact in 2022
  • All my new purchases in 2022
  • Eco-positive toilet paper: The Good Roll

Subscribe by e-mail

©2023 When A Teen Goes Green | WordPress Theme by Superbthemes.com