I will write a few more posts on this. But my current, still uncertain, thoughts are:
-The main identity we promote in animal advocacy should be āanimal advocateā.
-āAnimal advocateā should be more vaguely defined and primarily refer to a political commitment similarly to āfeministā and āsocialistā.
-We should abandon veganism as an identity and stop promoting it.
-We should separately push for different norms for animal advocates. Eating plant-based, avoiding animal-tested products etc. should each be advocated as separate norms.
-Priesthood(people working in animal advocacy) and laymen(mere members of the āanimal advocateā identity) should be subject to different expectations.
-We should strongly push for norms against eating meat. Individual diet change should still be pursued.
-Consuming animal products shouldnāt disqualify someone from identifying as an animal advocate. Iām not sure what the status of meat should be. I suspect a few countries like Germany might get to 10% vegetarian within my lifetime so I believe restricting our base to vegetarians might be viable in some places.
I agree that veganism is the strongest identity in the animal movement at the moment. Itās a powerful meme, a very salient identity for many. I donāt think any other animal advocacy related identity has more mentions in Twitter bios. Plant-based people or vegetarians donāt tend to refer to that in their social media profiles.
I disagree that vegans are 2% in the US. 2% is the figure you get when you lump plant-based and vegan together. When you ask specifically for āveganā, only 1% identify as vegan in 2023 Gallup survey. I think plant-based people are also around 1% in the US. Google searches for veganism have also been globally declining since 2020. And I think the leadership of major animal advocacy organisations are amenable to the idea that we should stop mentioning veganism. So I think there is some possibility for change.