To quote Dr. Casey Taft of Vegan Publishers, who is also a renowned domestic violence psychologist: “People try to mock vegans because they don't like to be reminded of the harm they do to animals.” It’s really that simple. As he points out, it's the same strategy that's been used to counter every social justice movement – propagating negative stereotypes in an attempt to try to silence people.



So maybe vegans could take a joke if non-vegans could take the truth. These videos and articles sensationalize or make a joke out of vegans, but they never coherently address veganism or animal use.



Because most people refuse to agree to become informed about animal use – or they fixate on selected, seemingly pleasant aspects they may have witnessed or grown up with while ignoring the many other inherently dreadful aspects – and they like it that way. They won’t look into the issue beyond a surface level or push past the typical stale justifications. They just simply flat-out refuse. I once did it, too. It is the very epitome of putting one's head in the sand and fingers is the ears while singing la-la-la-la.



Many of these very same people, however, are all too happy to do things like share anti-vegan content, tease vegans, brush off or trivialize them, and have an opinion about why veganism isn't an option for them and/or humanity and list a multitude of absurd justifications for this. (They are also the first to be vocal when a member of a comparably privileged species such as dogs is abused.)



Yet once we open the door to discovering how animal use is connected to so many of the urgent problems we face today, it's astounding – and it's freaking scary.



As one example of many, our Earth is currently in the middle of its sixth mass extinction, and scientific research shows that meat production is "likely the leading cause of modern species extinctions."



Most recently, findings published in PNAS by researchers from University of Oxford showed that if the world went vegan, food-related emissions would be slashed by 70%, trillions of dollars in healthcare saved, and 8.1 million human deaths avoided by 2050 (along with trillions more animals, of course).



Oh, and Newsweek specifies meat consumption as a leading factor driving the global water crisis that has already destabilized the Middle East, sparked civil wars in Syria and Yemen, and is now spreading to the US, which "could spark unrest across the world, and dire consequences." (They also discuss a leaked 2009 Nestle report warning the US government that our meat habit is draining the planet dry and will cause catastrophic consequences if nothing changes. This isn't PETA, this is a giant corporation which itself sells animal products.)



Worth talking about? Or "Dear vegans, shut up?"



When we actually allow ourselves to peel back the layers that normalize animal agriculture – which, in all its forms, requires doing mean, gross, and unnatural sh*t to animals at which still-sensitized people would instinctively recoil – we see it's not really what we thought it was. It's not a matter of some annoying person's extreme and personal "belief.” It's a matter of facts we either deny or accept.



Breeding, feeding, watering, and slaughtering tens of billions of animals each year and removing trillions of them from the oceans in a seemingly endless yet totally unsustainable, nightmarish cycle is counterproductive to our own interest in keeping the planet inhabitable – and also counterintuitive to our basic desire to love and protect animals. Having “dominion” over someone doesn’t involve systemically destroying them.



We are being made part of something we would never agree to – and deep down, we know it. Animal agriculture is an ethical, environmental, and human health catastrophe of epic proportions.



"Dear vegans, shut up" really means, "Dear veganism, go away. I preferred when you were an obscure fringe movement rarely mentioned by the mainstream. I don't want to change. I'm scared to change. You can't make me learn about this if I don't want to know."



Yet, no matter how strongly we try to convince ourselves we’re cool with it because "mmm, bacon," or how vehemently we try to absolve ourselves of responsibility, we continue to use embarrassing amounts of the planet’s increasingly scarce natural resources, much of which are turned into waste and pollution, to feed selectively-bred animals – each of whom enters a slaughterhouse as a very young, complex, sensitive creature and comes out chopped into bits.



I know, la-la-la-la-la. Please push through this with me!



Veganism is a real and rapidly-growing social justice solution for people, planet, and animals. In reality, vegans are an extremely diverse group of people of various ages, races, professions, and temperaments, including well-known social justice figures like MLK Jr.’s oldest son and late wife, a US senator and congressman, hip-hop artists, physicians, scientists, record-breaking athletes and many more.