With all due respect to those of you who mention that Peta turned you vegan... please understand that the reason some of us don't support Peta isn't (of course) because they have helped some people go vegan. They do that - too, and that's of course great.
Both based on the experience I've had with running this site and from other situations, I've often noticed that people who have an opinion or disagree with someone tend to look at whatever they have an opinion about, isolated, somehow - or at least without looking at possible alternative options. In the case of Peta, it doesn't make much sense to look at Peta and imagine two situations: a world with Peta as it is today. vs. a world without a large pro-veg, pro-animal profile and many members.
If we include some degree of imagination, some visionary perspective to any pro/con dilemma, we shouldn't look at 'something' vs 'nothing'. We shouldn't look at 'Peta' vs 'not Peta', but look at what would have happened if the many people who have supported a similar. but better organization, or if Peta wouldn't have those links to eg. ALF, Pamela Anderson/Paris Hilton type of squezzing some promotive value out of already over-exposed 'celebrities', without their IMO far to wide*profile... and so on.
By the way: By 'wide' profile I mean that they IMO have decided to have an opinion about way too many things - things that would be better off supported by separate groups. If they want to 'shock' people with nudity (is nudity really that shocking nowadays anyway?) - do it in a separate activist group. If they really want to help people from ELF and ALF with money? Isolate it from promoting veganism and vegetarianism, out of respect for the veg*n movement. Do these people want to be actively involved in killing a lot of pets? Do it within a organizational frame that's dedicated to that kind of work.
Do they want to provide reliable, in-depth information about plant based nutrition the way some other groups are trying to do? Well.... it seems that they aren't even interested. They are probably the only pro-veg organization on the earth that could put a lot of money into that kind of research, but they don't.
Maybe they (or their leader) simply see things differently than many of us do. Ingrid Newkirk apparently have said that she would have eaten roadkill if she could:
Maybe she actually looks at animals and meat as desirable food, but is capable of holding back. I have no idea, and maybe all this isn't really relevant either."I loved meat, liver above all,'' she told me. If liver were somehow morally permissible, I asked her, would she eat it again? "My God, I would eat it tomorrow. Now. I would eat roadkill if I could. "I'd eat burgers, steak, anything. I love car racing and meat."
If the topic is 'do I support this group or not', it isn't relevant if they made you vegan or not. It's relevant on a personal level, of course, but the really relevant part is that whatever Peta did that made you go vegan was good for you. This could be done by someone else than Peta if peta didn't exist, or it could be done by a different Peta.
If I was a politician, and saved someone from drowning in a river this morning, I don't expect them to vote for my political party tomorrow, and even if Peta would have saved my life, I wouldn't have seen that as a reason to necessarily support them or everything they do - or enough of what they do to actually donate money to them.
Of course Peta has made a lot of people vegetarian and vegan, but that doesn't mean that Peta in 2009 wouldn't benefit from undergoing major changes in order to make even more people go vegan - and to reduce the number of people of have increased skepticism against veganism after having learned about Peta. It's also to make people go vegan in ways that will ake them vegan for longer than it takes to get over the shock you get after having seen some undercover video from a slaughterhouse.
However - it may be too late 'reform' Peta. The link to Newkirk and what seems to be a firm belief in the old myth about 'all publicity being goof publicity' may be so strong that even if Peta would undergo a revolution tomorrow, it would take decades before people would stop thinking of Peta they way it is today. In worst case, the skepticism against Peta wouldn't decrease until one of her eyes already was "removed, mounted, and delivered to the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a reminder that PETA will continue to be watching the agency until it stops poisoning and torturing animals in useless and cruel experiments" and "that the other is to be used as PETA sees fit", as stated in her will.
What if she isn't the leader of Peta when she dies? Have they really made a long-term contract about what to with the body of a person after she's dead... a person who may be replaced by someone else next year? How deep is the tie between Newkirk and Peta... anyone?
I'm often surprised to see comments from vegans here who tend to get very negative feedback from friends and family when they go vegan. That seem to be very rare where I live. Maybe this actually is because Peta isn't represented here, so very few people have been 'shocked' by their 'shock tactics' yet?
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