vegan

My wife used to be vegan but went carnist again before I met her so there was some understanding but after a few years of being together and having a kid i went rather abruptly vegan in the anti-speciesist sense (you know how it is with sharpening contradictions and quantitative changes) so now I feel like I have to be the conscience of the whole family. She has been trying her best as she says to replace or circumvent animal products and I believe her. The issue is that we do have to make compromises (like e.g. my medication has no vegan alternative) and she has been more willing to make compromises than me (like e.g. kids shoes are really bad for their feet except this one style of shoe that somehow only gets produced with leather. I would have said barefeet or the least bad of the terrible options but she was adamant). But being the conscience seems to work, I can be uncompromising in my stance in how it affects me, voice my opinion in how we raise our kid and every now and again this gives me the opportunity to point at some contadiction.

Like for example when my sons kindergarten went to an aquarium I would have liked to kept him home, but I had to go to university so my wife would have had to take care of him for the entire day, which she didn't feel like she could. So he went there and had a lovely time according to the teachers. Because the fallout of the decision would have fallen on her and not me, of course she had the last say.

But when they planned a trip to a zoo, I could stay home and even though my wife would have liked him to go, his teachers wanted him to go I made my position clear. Now the ball was in my wifes court and it opened up quite the discussion about veganism. Especially since this particular zoo has had human exhibits in the past, the question of "what if they were humans" wasn't such a big hypothetical. This forced my wife to actually spell out that she values humans over other animals because that's ultimately what is required to find the one ok but not the other. This gave me the opportunity to say why I do think the suffering of animals and humans are comparable and we left in a agree to disagree way and ultimately agreed that he wouldn't go but we would make it up to him with a trip to a swimming pool and a trip to an animal sanctuary that has exotic animals.

Then we had to tell the teachers and of course that opened up a dialogue and my wife now was on my side defending this decision, because we had made it together. So we talked about how we think the majority of the animals in the zoo have complex social structures, their own will, wants, needs and how the commodification of them to us is just an abhorrent thing that our son is too young to understand. He would just have a nice day in the zoo and have it normalized.

Then we had to explain it to our son, who just took it in a matter-of-fact way that the other kids are going and he isn't, because he is that small and my wife actually took charge and did a really great job explaining the why. So I don't know where she actually lands on the vegan spectrum currently. It could have radicalized her further but I don't wanna poke at it myself, lest she get defensive about it, but let the contradictions mount on their own. I think that's the best strategy really, have others defend their non-vegan choices when they have to, i. e. when they do something that affects you or something you have a say in, but don't force them in theoretical discussion. Facts and logic never convinced anyone.