How Do I Add to Your Burnout?

REFLECTIONS OF BURNOUT ACROSS THE VEGAN MOVEMENT

Words and Illustrations by Julia Feliz Brueck

I can remember the first time I experienced activist burnout.

I was in my mid-20s, and it was a few years after going vegan. I was heavily involved in animal rights and vegan activism. I was also on my way out of Ireland, where I had experienced life as a foreigner for the first time. At the time, I wasn’t aware of how my identities intersected to compound the burnout I experienced from different communities –in this case, non-vegans, racists, and xenophobes. I left Ireland in the winter of 2011, and I think I melted into a routine of slowly watching my days go by from the guest room of my aunt’s house in Puerto Rico, as I waited for my visa to arrive so I could join my partner in our new resident country within mainland Europe. Drawing and watching an endless list of movies comes to mind when I think about that time. A few months later, my visa arrived and I boarded a flight ready to tackle the next chapter of my life; I felt recharged and prepared for whatever came my way.

Over a decade later, I can track each and every experience I had with burnout through my work as a writer and artist. As I aged, burnout turned into the frustration of not being heard by those I needed to be heard by – both non-vegans and vegans. I channelled that frustration and anger into realized ideas that, in my mind, would challenge whatever was causing my burnout. Creating resources to raise important issues, the voices of non-humans and other marginalized groups, and even attempt to fight pseudoscience became my focus.

I realize not everyone is in the position to do this though, and the idea of self-care that we hear about (spa days, social media-free days, vacations, etc.) just isn’t realistic or accessible to many. As I dug deeper into consistent anti-oppression veganism¹, I started to think more and more about how I, personally, might add to the oppression of others and how I could try to work to help prevent burnout within the vegan movement itself. See, burnout isn’t one-sided. It’s not just about the burnout we experience. The other side of the conversation is being aware of what fatigue and frustrations we may be responsible for because impact is always greater than intent regardless of how good the intention is. Just as we experience burnout for a multitude of reasons, we must be mindful that we also have a hand in the oppression of others due to privilege or some other factor that we must work against.

In addition, in order to raise the voices of non-human animals and ensure that veganism is accessible to as many people as possible, I’ve realized that I must work on root issues. However, what are those issues and just how do vegans from different communities experience burnout because of our own lack of understanding or awareness? When it comes to activist fatigue, do you know how you add to others’ burnout? Since we all experience veganism so differently, what are ways in which mainstream veganism is adding to the burnout of vegans from different walks of life?

When interacting with members of different communities, I challenge you to keep asking yourself the following:

“How do I add to your burnout?”

I dare you to push yourself beyond your own self-care mindset and learn about ways in which the vegan movement, as well as your past and current activism, might be doing more harm than good to others. Every community that we make feel unsafe, unwelcome, and misunderstood means less vegans - isn’t that the opposite of what we want?

ASKING THE QUESTION

As a marginalized person with Brown skin, I have come to understand that I still hold privileges over others. For example, I have lighter skin privilege, and so I do not experience the world exactly as a Black person does because of anti-blackness, which is something found across all human communities because of colonialism and white supremacist ideology that still form part of society. Learning about this, accepting my privilege, and continuing to educate myself helps me to ensure that I work against adding to the oppression of the Black community as much as I am able to. Anti-blackness is something that I must continue to work on within myself, and this is also true when it comes to other forms of oppression and discrimination. In this way, and in understanding root issues and interconnections, I can help fight injustice but also support Black people and ensure that I am not adding to their burnout. Clearly, Black vegans exist, and therefore, anti-blackness is something that they also have to deal with inside the vegan and animal rights movement. Anti-blackness is actually one form of bigotry that makes veganism unsafe for this specific community. Unfortunately, I would say all forms of oppression and discrimination exist within vegan spaces, and so in order to help readers make connections, such as the ones I work on myself, I decided to reach out to individuals across the movement to ask them, “Just how does the vegan movement add to your burnout?”

I hope the following raw, open, and honest reflections serve as a stepping stone into the kind of awareness that helps us all realize that it’s not just about us. If we are going to achieve liberation for non-human animals, we will have to face the interconnections between their oppression and the oppression of humans. We must let vegans from their own communities address their own, but we must also listen and raise their voices. Building upon our tolerance, understanding, and support as a community will help foster self-care in our collective work towards helping non-vegans understand why we choose to be vegan.

From my experience, the mainstream vegan community has a huge problem in making veganism an inclusive endeavour. As a Muslim, dealing with misconceptions, prejudices, and discrimination is all too common.

In the United Kingdom (U.K.), where Islamophobia is unavoidable, the issue of halal slaughter comes up a lot among vegans and non-vegans alike. Naturally, one would assume that vegans consider all forms of exploitation against non-human animals by humans to be violent. However, halal slaughter is portrayed by mainstream vegans as something significantly more harmful. The emphasis of halal slaughter, even if the non-human animal is stunned, is meant to conjure the image of cruel Brown men who mercilessly take the life of nonhuman animals among white people, which leads white non-vegans to believe that their methods are “humane”, and thus, validates the violence committed against non-human animals by white British farmers. Earlier this year, I did in fact burnout; I left or muted all U.K. vegan groups on Facebook because of rampant discrimination and have not bothered with attending any local vegan activist event because of the unwillingness to change approaches to activism. It is extremely frustrating, as there is a large Muslim community in my town, who are being further convinced that veganism is incompatible with Islam, which is untrue. It is exhausting to combat the unnecessary Orientalism and Islamophobia within the vegan community, which serves no purpose but to instill some sort of reaction from orientalists and islamophobes.

- Shahada Chowdhury

As a white trans non-binary vegan, the most exhausting thing is my dawning realization of just how little work we as white vegans have done, or seem prepared to do, on owning and dismantling our inner and collective white supremacy and anti-Blackness.

We talk extensively about how non-vegans “do not care about animals" and how we are "compassionate" and “doing all that we can", yet we are willfully ignorant of how we are not one iota less racist than non-vegan white people, collectively. I am insulated from the transphobia by my whiteness, so I cannot imagine how exhausted Black vegans, as well as Black trans and non-binary vegans, must feel.

- A.C. Baker

As a Black woman who's been vegan for 24 years and working in environmental, social justice, and animal liberation movements for over 28 years, I have felt consistently disenfranchised by the new"mainstream" vegan culture for being vocal about animal liberation issues, saying that Black folks are and need veganism too, and for noting the erasure of those that pick our food.

This happy, happy, joy, joy capitalist approach that says we're all in it for our health without acknowledging the privilege that comes with that and the fact that health is not a measure of how correct we are and our right to be here is tiring. It is tiring to constantly be confronted with these seemingly well-meaning all white spaces which abstractly talk about veganism being a liberation of all and mention People of Colour only as a validation of their statement, but not a reason for their practice in real life.

I am also tired of Black spaces that are so self-serving in their veganism that they forget that doing it for the animals is doing it for the culture too and that our culture includes every way to be Black, including Black dykes. However, the litany of queer and trans antagonism from these spaces and the all around misogyny beat me down.

The constant checking of these issues, which is often met with disdain and loss of opportunities, is beyond disappointing. I'm tired of walking into spaces that have no vision beyond the box that they've checked in their heads or the fortitude to listen when a mirror is held up to them from the margin.

I. Am. Tired.

All of this has led me out of activist spaces and into major depression repeatedly. What keeps me coming back is the fact that there are those of us out here thinking and growing in ways that combat the overwhelming colonization.

- Lorikim Alexander

As a Black and Brown Indigenous transgender vegan, my burnout comes in the means of not being able to choose easily where my focus should be as an activist because I am simply trying to survive.

Part of my day-to-day life as a transgender person is working a 9-5 job to maintain my health care, and I don’t have the privilege of choosing what environment that is in, which means I do face discrimination for who I am. I’d love a space that supports my dietary lifestyle, but also my disabilities and is at least 70% Black. Outside of the burnout I experience because I cannot dedicate my time to my true passions, there is the burnout of explaining ourselves to others as queer and trans People of Colour. The mainstream vegan movement adds to this because many vegan spaces are not aware of the oppressions experienced by a Black and Brown Indigenous Transgender vegan and often times, add to them.

- Kalisto Zenda Nanen

Causes of burnout for me primarily stem from the fact that the vegan community is rarely a welcoming space for vegans with disabilities.

I had really severe bulimia for 10 years and being around the diet talk and good food/bad food dichotomies triggers me. It is hard to get away from vegans who make a lot of food judgments. This tends to give me anxiety about going to vegan events because I don’t want to be triggered. Often times, vegan events aren’t accessible physically and food-wise. I can’t go on marches or other physically active protests or events. With celiac disease, I often can’t participate in food-related vegan events because the food isn’t accessible/accommodating. The majority of my life is centred around my medical treatments, yet if I go to a vegan event and mention that I am on medications, I will, without a doubt, get a comment about how medications aren’t vegan. In addition, because I have no income and money is tight, I can't financially go to vegan social events that are at restaurants because I can’t regularly buy meals that cost $10-$20. All of these things leave me isolated from vegans in my area. I don’t go to vegan events. My best friend is vegan, so she helps prevent burnout for me, but I think because the vegan community is so unwelcoming to disabled vegans, many disabled vegans burnout because they are so isolated.

- Keisha Marie, The Disabled Vegan

Since my son came, and since my illness got worse, I haven’t felt much support anywhere, especially not in the vegan parenting community. Vegan parents only want to know about healthy chubby babies, so they can"prove" that vegan kids are always perfect to the world.

I couldn't share my birth story as that would apparently upset them. My son, Karl, is just never going to be a chubby boy. He has Hypoxic Eschemic Encephalopathy (HIE), cerebral palsy, epilepsy, a vision impairment, and can’t talk or walk. At the same time, I don't fully belong in the special needs parenting groups as they tend to be very non-vegan or even anti-vegan, and I don't feel it's an appropriate place to preach. People have enough on their plates, and I just don't have the spoons². I don't think many people can understand the kind of exhaustion I am experiencing, let alone in the vegan community. I do think a vegan diet is helping me, and it's helping Karl with his digestion. He's actually pretty healthy, despite his conditions. But, yeah, coming back to the parenting groups, I mostly avoid them because they just don't get it, and when I tried to post, I was mostly ignored as nobody wants to see a disabled vegan baby, right? So out of every group, I found a couple of people in a similar situation that I connected with, but mostly I feel like a minority – a pro-intersectional, neurodivergent, chronically ill vegan mum with a special needs child. You know what though? I'm OK on my own now. I'm a solitary person, and Karl is my universe.

- Martina Piantina

Mainstream veganism loves to use the Holocaust (as well as other human tragedies) to push their agenda forward. Images of dying Jewish children are plastered next to images of dying factory farmed animals.

A website dedicated to “ethical veganism” even has an article in which they say the following words: “The WWII Holocaust is barely a drip in the bucket when compared to what we do to animals each, and every year.” On top of this, comparing Jews to nonhuman animals was one of the methods of dehumanizing us to make systematic extermination possible. While it is worth noting that it is the oppression of nonhuman animals that makes this possible, it is still propagating the same animal comparisons that were used to oppress Jews. Not only does this contribute to my own burnout as an activist, but it makes me resistant to introducing other Jews (or any non-white members of my social groups) to veganism when the mainstream movement has no problem using our death and pain as means to their ends, but then is silent when tragedy strikes in our community.

- Diana Lee

Mainstream veganism is frustrating for many reasons, and it definitely contributes to my burnout.

I understand completely that the animals are central to veganism, but I also consider myself a vegan that is consistent anti-oppression, which means I consider oppression full circle, not just the animals. When I see Holocaust comparisons, rape comparisons, anger towards slaughter house workers, etc., it really makes me feel frustrated and upset. As a woman of colour who is neurodivergent, being active in the vegan community can be very overwhelming, especially when it comes to speaking my mind. I feel like a lot of the time I'm not allowed to truly say how I feel about things because I try to consider all aspects of oppression, and according to mainstream veganism, the most oppressed beings on this planet are the animals. I agree, the animals are going through hell every day, but when we say things like this while people are dying and being tortured in war torn countries, we're erasing them and their situations. Saying things like that in my community would cite me as a speciesist and would mean I care more about humans than animals, which is so untrue. Dealing with people who aren’t neurodivergent, who also aren’t consistent anti-oppression, in itself, is a task. I feel it’s hard to do activism in my own community because finding people who think like I do is not easy, and I'm truly hoping to find more people on the same page to do equal, fair, and full circle anti-oppression activism together.

- Jasmine Metcaf

Clearly, the above experiences are examples of issues that we need to address within the vegan movement in order to ensure that veganism is effective towards its goals as a movement centred, not on us, but on non-human animal liberation from human supremacy. With this note, I’d like to also ask you to consider that if we could communicate clearly with the billions of non-humans exploited and killed under human supremacy, how would our activism add to their struggles and burnout? Would they feel empowered and safe being represented in a movement dedicated to advocating for larger cages or would they choose a movement firmly grounded in their absolute liberation? As a marginalized person, I like to think that they’d prefer my having an anti-speciesist stance aware of the interconnections of how they are unwilling victims, but also used as tools to otherize and oppress human groups. Without this understanding, we are merely working towards a movement that lacks the awareness and understanding to raise the voices of non-humans. Due to this, it is vital that each and every one of us understands that when we refuse to listen and practice consistent anti-oppression, we exclude marginalized communities from including non-human rights in their own fight for justice.

Apart from educating ourselves with resources, such as the Vegan Bill of Consistent Anti-Oppression (consistentantioppression.com), Veganism in an Oppressive World, Food Justice: A Primer, the Vegans of Color Conference Talks (veganismofcolor.com), and numerous other works that are widely available to help you continue to make connections, you can begin with also learning to listen with intent and working against our discomfort of unlearning oppressions.

With that in mind, Steven Saranga, M.Sc. in Counselling Psychology has provided the following advice to help us understand these concepts and why they matter as someone coming from a place of privilege.

WHEN YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM

By Steven Saranga

As I navigate the world of veganism, I’m saddened by encounters with every other form of oppression that exists. I’ve come to terms with the fact that veganism does not, by default, absolve one of being racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, ableist, transphobic, classist, anti-semitic, sizeist, etc. Unfortunately, it doesn’t even mean that a vegan isn’t speciesist.

The reality that we must understand is that unchecked oppressions cause great amounts of stress, suffering, pain, and, of course, burnout for those who are members of any of the given marginalized groups. We must also recognize that regardless of the marginalized group(s) we may be members of, we are also likely in at least another group that is privileged. Therefore, I’d like to offer some ways in which we, as vegans, can become a more supportive, inclusive, and ultimately, effective group through awareness and work.

As a Licensed Mental Health Counsellor, I can affirm that, nothing works for everyone, and what works for me, may not work for you. Since each individual must find what works for them, I’m going to focus on those of us in privileged groups and how we can work to reduce, and hopefully avoid, creating stress for those who would be our comrades, if we weren’t building walls and pushing them away.

The first step towards accomplishing this is becoming aware of the difference between intent and impact. Most of us view ourselves as good people who do not purposefully harm others, yet we sometimes do just that. In these times, our intent may actually have even been to do something with the hope of harm reduction/elimination. However, the impact of our action was harmful. An example I often use with my clients is that every morning across the globe millions of people get into their vehicles with the intention of getting to work. Nevertheless, accidents happen and the responsible party has to make the situation right by paying for the damage done (or having adequate insurance to do so). They can’t say “I’m not responsible because I was intending to get to work.” I suppose one could say that, but we all know this would be unacceptable. So, how do we, in a privileged position, now manage the discomfort with the knowledge that we have inadvertently caused harm?

One choice, that I see being used way too often, is to become defensive and deny that we’ve done anything wrong. This goes hand in hand with blaming the offended for being too sensitive, taking it the wrong way, not understanding our point, and other gaslighting tactics. It’s vital that you work towards REJECTING this option! Instead, take a moment to calm your mind (mindfulness meditation can be helpful here, if you’re into it!). Try that or maybe take a few deep breaths. Basically, try whatever it takes to put some space between the stimulus that upset you (in this case, being told you have caused harm to someone) and your response.

Remember, regardless of intention, you’ve harmed someone else so focusing on your discomfort is not the right thing to do. Learn to be uncomfortable and sit with that discomfort for a while. Next, listen to what the person has said. Do not interrupt the explanation of the harm you’ve done with a non-apology, an “oh, I get it now so you can stop explaining”, “I’m sorry if you feel I upset you, but…”, or anything of the sort. Listen to all of it, and then do your best to reflect back what you just heard, making sure to specifically acknowledge the take away parts that you need to work on yourself. However, we must remember that we cannot feel entitled to a full lesson at the person’s expense. If someone does take the time to explain something to you, listen, and then continue learning from the myriad of resources available online. If possible, treating this person from a marginalized group to a virtual coffee or paying for their labour is the right thing to do. These conversations and experiences can be emotionally taxing to those that have these interactions constantly.

Regardless, even if you disagree, if you’ve offended someone over an experience or form of oppression that you have no direct experience with, your opinion on this matter is not important. I know, I know…now I’m offending you by negating your opinion. It hurts, doesn’t it? Now sit with that and realize this is exactly what you’re doing when you engage in defensive behaviours when called out on something you’ve done. It’s important to note that being called out is not shaming either. Writing it off to claiming you have been shamed is defensiveness and an inaccurate perception due to the discomfort that you are experiencing.

Once we’re able to truly listen to others about how we affect them, we can begin to dismantle systems of oppression and root issues. Putting in the work, becoming aware, educating ourselves, and being committed to learning will mean that we can be more efficient allies (a title given to us by others) and help members within the vegan community and beyond to avoid burnout. Along with this, the more we work towards taking down other forms of oppression that we have a hand in because of our privileges, the more effective our movement will be.

ABOUT

Julia Feliz Brueck is a decade long vegan, mother of two, scientist, and published author and illustrator. She is also the founder of Sanctuary Publishers, a vegan book publisher that gives back to marginalized communities with every book sold. Published under the Sanctuary Publishers label, sales from Julia’s most recent books, The Baby and Toddler Vegan Feeding Guide and Veganism in an Oppressive World, help support the work of Chilis on Wheels and the Food Empowerment Project. Julia is also the founder of VeganismOfColor.com and co-writer of the Vegan Bill for Consistent Anti-Oppression, ConsistentAntiOppression.com.

w: juliafeliz.com & sanctuarypublishers.com fb: sanctuarypublishers ig: sanctuary_publishers

REFERENCES

1. Consistent Anti-Oppression. Retrieved 29 November 2018 from http://www.consistentantioppression.com

2. Spoon Theory. Retrieved 29 November 2018 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Spoon_theory

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