Plantite

Since transitioning to a vegan lifestyle, one thing I've noticed is that non-vegans really want to find all the ways in which you must be a hypocrite for being vegan. I have to admit that I did this too before I switched to being vegan. I would grill vegans to find the loophole or inconsistency in their belief system.  I think it makes people feel better about their own choice to harm animals if they can point out all the little ways in which the vegan is somehow inconsistent in their attempts to be cruelty-free.  They think that if they can prove the vegan is a hypocrite in some way, it makes their use and consumption of animals ok. Certainly as vegans we are used to people making "Appeals to extremes" in their arguments against veganism (Would you eat meat if you were stranded on a desert island? etc).  After all, you have to go to great lengths to deny the simple fact that hurting animals for pleasure and convenience is wrong. But the hypocrisy arguments are differ...

"Doubling Down" describes a certain kind of behaviour I have seen a lot of since becoming vegan.  Basically, it's when a non-vegan, confronted with someone who is vegan, feels the need to assert their commitment to animal cruelty in an exaggerated way.  It manifests itself in a number of ways, which I'll try to describe. The first (and possibly worst) is when you tell someone you're vegan, or you are eating with them and you order a vegan meal, and they say something to the effect of "I'll guess I'll have to eat even more meat",  or, "I'll have to have extra bacon then!"  I think non-vegans think it's funny to say stuff like this, but if you dig a little deeper, it's pretty sick. If I told a non-vegan that I'd rescued a dog from a fire, they would never say "Well I guess I'll have to go burn two dogs then!" Similarly, if you told someone you had adopted a cat from a shelter, they wouldn't tell you t...