I am the Great Oppressor of the Broccoli
31 March 2005

Oh yeah, that’s right, I hurt poor little innocent broccoli. My violent vegan ways put an end to the happy continued existence of your average broccoli plant, denying it the warmth of sunshine, the moisture of the soil, its continued existence. I’m the Great Plant Oppressor, here to end the lives of the earth’s harvestable vegetables, fruits, and grains. I’m evil.

Or so meat-eaters would have you believe.

Some vegans that I talk to tell me that they still hear from defensive meat eaters that they’re violating the basic rights of plants to exist. Of course, this is patent absurdity. If meat eaters really feel for plants, they should quit eating meat, since meat production requires much more grain for the production of a k-calorie than does simply eating the grain yourself.

What is this about then? How can ruthless carnivores, the “mmmm I love steak” people give a shit about plants? The simple answer is that they don’t. What they’re doing is trying to kill you with a thousand tiny blows. They are perhaps uncomfortable with your choice, and in their effort to muddy the ethical terrain of ethical veganism, they try to illustrate that your choices are absurd. They’re trying to break you down, trying to dismiss your ethics, trying to support their own decision to keep on eatin’ away—the earth and its animals be damned. If they can show themselves that you’re making an absurd choice by respecting the right of animals to live, they can dismiss their own conscience about what they’re eating. The “plant rights” line is about this and absolutely nothing more.

Does anyone seriously believe that broccoli feels pain? Granted, in a real sense, we can never truly know if another entity besides ourselves feels pain (I think the professional philosophers relate this to the problem of “other minds,”) but there are indicators that are pretty clear. For example, if a hostile meat eater shoves me at a protest and I fall and hit my head, I’ll likely cry out in pain, and move away. If the hostile meat eater also shoved, say, a kale plant, there’d be few visible indicators of pain. It wouldn’t yell. It wouldn’t pull away in pain. It wouldn’t do much of anything at all—because it is kale and it has no central nervous system or pain receptors.

The point here is that this “plant rights” crap is just bluster. This is the repressive denial machinery of the meat-eater who’s trying to convince himself that there’s nothing wrong with killing sentient beings who are capable of suffering for your food, even when there’s absolutely no reason to do so. Or at least that’s what I, vegenaise, the great oppressor of the broccoli has to say on the matter.

  Posted by Bob Torres    Permalink    Filed under:
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