Please disregard my mod status for this post. This isn’t a comm wide opinion and fellow vegans are welcome to disagree.

Every time a obviously decent PETA post is shared on social media, maybe about fur or pet breeding, people come out of the woodwork to comment “wow one good opinion of PETA” or “broken clock is right twice a day”. A very easy way for content creators to get views is to make yet another anti-PETA video. I needed to unfollow one YouTuber I liked, Call Me Kevin, because he played all the PETA video games, did the snarky thing, and had nothing to say about animals consumed for food.

Sure PETA isn’t perfect. They’re an NGO and have most of the problems of the NGO-industrial-complex. They don’t have anything to say about non animal issues. Arguably they’re not intersectional. Their campaigns can be a be weird or cringe by Hexbear standards. The objectifying people’s bodies thing is very debatable, although in PETA’s defense, all the naked people in their campaigns are volunteers. It’s questionable if someone who’s eagerly signing up for a cause is being “objectified”. I’ve had mates, better looking than me, passionately strip to their underwear for the cause of hurting less animals. But I’m not a woman nor an expert, and there may be some real space for critique, if you’re a vegan.

The number of times I’ve had to hear non-vegans, even left wing non-vegans, repeat corporate talking points is embarrassing af for non vegans. On multiple occasions I’ve been banned from non-vegan pages for pushing back against this, politely and without insults. The amount of times I’ve been treated worse than racists get treated on social media and banned for gently pointing out animal abuse is at least a dozen. So some PETA Twitter post made some carnist sad/angry for ten seconds. Non-vegans feel stress from getting called out on their contribution to animals abuse. To this I say: good, I hope you feel stressed about what you do.

I can’t stress enough. PETA isn’t perfect. But I have worked with them for animal-rights campaigns, and they’re very helpful with resources and funding. In regards to the animal euthanasia thing, they could easily be liberals and give it up for marketing purposes. But their attitude is basically “we don’t give a damn about what non-vegans think on the issue”, which is kinda based. And I hope carnists continue to get cry about what PETA and other vegans are saying.