All posts tagged: social justice

VIDEO – Ableism in the vegan movement. Intro to my talk at VegfestUK – Geertrui Cazaux

Why do we need to address ableism in the vegan and animal rights movement? This is an introduction to my talk at VegfestUK, in London, Oct 27 – 28: Ableism, bodyshaming and healthshaming, Geertrui Cazaux Transcript below. Transcript. Hello, I am Geertrui. Or, that’s Trudi in English. And I will be presenting a talk at the upcoming VegfestUK festival in London. And my talk will be about ableism in the movement. Now ableism is discrimination or prejudice against people with physical or mental disabilities. So against disabled people. Now, I can immediately hear some of you think: oh, ableism what does that have to do with veganism? Why should we be discussing this at a vegan festival? It should be about tackling speciesism. About fighting for animal rights. We shouldn’t be talking about ableism or other forms of discrimination like racism and sexism, but only focus on the animals, because it’s about the animals, right? yes, of course veganism is about tackling speciesism and about the animals, but how we deal with each other as …

Let’s talk animal rights

I have seen a lot of discussions lately about the use of the labels vegan, veganish and the way they are used. And other terms like semi-vegan, or flexi-vegan or even flexanist. These discussions often focus on a certain person calling themself vegan, and whether this is rightfully so, or on vegan internet celebrities calling themselves veganish, because they mainly eat plantbased, but occasionally eat pancakes with dairy or egg, or ice-cream, or fishes, or because they wear leather jackets or fur coats or go to the zoo for an afternoon of entertainment. Stop spending so much energy on discussing whether some yuppie hipster internet celebrity is vegan or not. Let’s talk animal rights. To be clear: I do believe in safeguarding the meaning of the word vegan, and subscribe to the definition of veganism: Veganism is ‘A philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose” That immediately makes clear that veganism is …

Sexism and male privelege in the movement, Lisa Kemmerer at IARC

I attended the 8th International Animal Rights Conference in Luxembourg at the beginning of September. A very inspirational weekend, being together with activists from many different countries and attending many presentations on a broad variety of topics (program here). View this post on Instagram Great vegan sandwiches (and plenty of other stuff for breakfast, lunch and dinner) at the @internationalarconference in luxembourg last weekend. 👍 🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿 #iarc #iarc2018 #vegantshirt #animalrights #animalrightstshirt #onestruggleonefight #vegan #veganfood A post shared by trudi_brugesvegan (@trudi_brugesvegan) on Sep 10, 2018 at 6:11am PDT View this post on Instagram Arrived at the International Animal Rights Conference! #luxemburg #iarc #iarc2018 #animalrights #speciesism #veganism #luxembourg @internationalarconference A post shared by trudi_brugesvegan (@trudi_brugesvegan) on Sep 6, 2018 at 11:06am PDT I found the presentation by Lisa Kemmerer on ‘Sexism and Male Pivilege among vegan activists‘ the highlight of the Conference. Lisa Kemmerer is a philosopher-activist working on behalf of nonhuman animals, the environment, and disempowered human beings. I first got to know of her work through the book ‘Sister Species. Women, animals and social justice‘. This …

Interview with Trudi

A couple of months ago, Ned from The Way of the Squirrel Books posted a call to other bloggers to do an interview. I had seen such calls for interviews before on other blogs, but had never actually done one of them. I was contemplating on editing the ‘about’ section on my blog anyway, but then thought this was also a great way of introducing readers with the person behind the blog. A good opportunity to share some insights into why I started blogging, some general thoughts on veganism (keeping in mind it is also an opportunity to reach people who may have never heard of veganism) and just some more general personal stuff. Ned sent me some questions, which I replied to, and he then edited it. It was fun doing, and thanks again Ned, for the opportunity! 🙂 The original post is up here on Ned’s blog, The Way of the Squirrel books, reposted here with permission. INTERVIEW: MEET AND GREET MONDAY – BLOGGER: BRUGESVEGAN Well, here we are again.  Another Monday and another …

Inspired by the Intersectionality Conference at VegFest, London

A couple of weeks ago, at the end of October 2016, we went to VegFest in London. This was a two day event at the Olympia Conference center, on Hammersmith Road (east London). It is not a free festival: we bought tickets in advance which were only £9 per person (buy one, get one half price). Tickets at the door were £15. We were especially interested in the Intersectionality Conference on Sunday. Arriving at the opening time of 11AM on Saturday, it became immediately clear that this is huge event! We found a long queue going round the block to get to the entrance at the west side of Olympia. We made good progress though, and after about only 10 minutes of queuing, scanning of our tickets and a security check, we could enter the venue. There were two large halls on the first floor, with dozens of stalls. The lectures were in the auditorium and conference rooms on the second floor, where there were also stalls from several NGO’s. The Olympia is a really well known venue, where …