Keeping an eye out for any new vegan blogs that may pop up from time to time, very few things are able to get me as excited as I am when I see an Australian one appear.
As things go when playing online, the wind can be whipped out of your sails as quick as it arrives. Which is exactly what happened when I started to read Linda McKenzie’s blog, located at lindaamckenzie.blogspot.com.au.
As the blog was only started in October this year, I wasn’t expecting anything too long winded or in depth. The first two posts I wrote for this site way back in 2007, titled Why I Am Now A Vegan Part i and Why I Am Now A Vegan Part ii definitely weren’t literary masterpieces.
What is exciting to see when looking at a new blog is the confidence that builds within the author as they find their feet and become more confident with what they are writing.
Except this isn’t the case for Linda McKenzie.
Right from the get go, she came out swinging in defense of Gary Francione with her first post titled Banned By The Vegan Society For Saying That The Vegan Society Should Be Vegan. This is a rehash of something that happened way back in February 2011. The author claims to have had first-hand experience of dealing with representatives of the Vegan Society in March 2011 regarding this matter.
So the question needs to be asked, why are you writing about it now, in October 2012, a whole 19 months later?
A few days later another post came out, this one titled An Impossible Fantasy: Think!. The title alone was enough to get me all excited, yet once again I was disappointed, as it was more stuff relating to Gary Francione.
With this being the general tone that the author has taken throughout the following five posts, a bit of a pattern appeared. So, I did what any free thinking individual would do, and headed on over to Professor Francione’s Facebook page to check things out a bit further.
Lo and behold, what did I discover?
Ms McKenzie is in fact one of the admins of the very same page.
Getting back to the topic of this article, and to some extent building on Ms McKenzie’s post linked to above, when are we going to start thinking for ourselves?
From my experience, talking to people in Australia about veganism, and the benefits of it, they don’t really give two hoots about some theory that a bloke in the US has thought of.
And neither should we.
Whilst his theories may form the basis of discussions once the individual has embraced veganism and is progressing their way through the different theories, talking to someone about it before they have gone vegan is more often than not a pointless exercise.
With an increasing number of people subscribing to the theory of WIIFM, What’s In It For Me?, we need to adapt the message to satisfying that curiosity. And that wont be achieved by mindlessly quoting things said by someone else.
Creative, non-violent vegan education is one of the mantras of those who follow Gary Francione. Yet it is one mantra that they do not follow, or seem to have conveniently forgotten about.
Maybe it is time for them to get back to their roots, and actually do something creative, rather than just copying, verbatim, things that have been said and done before.
Whilst veganism is the product that we are selling there are an untold number of ways of getting to people. It might also pay to remember that the animal agricultural industry spends a great deal of money every year coming out with new ways to sell their product. Isn’t it time that those who profess to be all about vegan education did the same thing?
This article was written by the founder of VeganPolice.com.au, Cameron Blewett.
Cameron is a long term vegan (30+yrs), and is passionate about veganism, and helping people to understand more about it and giving other animals equal consideration.
You can find Cameron’s other rants on his website, CameronBlewett.blog