Masks and Allies

It’s weird how our consciousness works. You notice the existence of something – most of the times bumping into it; from that moment on, thanks to that persistent pain from the bumping, you start seeing, reading and smelling it everywhere. That thing has always been there, so where were you before? It’s happened to me a lot, since I became antispeciesist and vegan; and what was I before? Put in writing, it has all the ridiculousness of conversions, as if you could change the axis of your world as you change your clothes. Anyway I’m rambling; I was saying that, since I became (sic) antispeciesist and therefore vegan, it’s like I’am going down the rabbit hole, with new books to read, new thoughts to think and new lives (each one a miracle in itself) to be amazed of. 

For instance, I read a book¹written by Melanie Joy (author of the most famous Why we love dogs, eat pigs and wear cows on the psychology of eating meat). In it (chapter 3),  Joy focuses on a trigger very often pulled in communications between vegans and omnivores: for the vegan person, the omnivore is a emulator of Hannibal the Cannibal; on the other hand, the omnivore perceives the vegan as a crazy tree-hugger extremist who wants to burn Western society to the ground, beginning with their grandmother’s cappelletti.  

Joy advises a pragmatic approach (not out of cynicism, but of urgency): she recommends not to look for conversions but for allies². No one will became vegan because you tell them that also cows suffer; and no vegan will come back to eat meat just because you said them that steak is great. However, they can commit to create a relationship of authentic connection, a virtual and physical space where both can feel safe and respected. Allies (this applies to any kind of asymmetric relationship³) can put theirselves in the other’s shoes, understand their sensitivity and act accordingly. A piece of cake, isn’it?

Americans, and American psychologists in particular, sometimes make it too easy. What on earth is the problem? I’ll try to explain: to have allies you should be vulnerable, showing what makes you suffer, what moves you. You should stop wearing a mask and ask the other to stop too. You play recurring roles (son, mother, father, lover, manager, dreamer, pragmatist …) and not for nothing: you can complain about them but without you feel (and indeed you are) naked. This is the reason why change⁴, whether big or small, terrifies us. If I change, will the others (my family, my friend, my husband) recognise me? If I alter my angles, will they still fit together with the jigsaw of my affections? When I get home, will I still find someone waiting for me?⁵ And yet, if we defend our mask with our lives, to what end is that much-vaunted gift of language? If everything is all set in stone, what do we have to say to each other?

It’s probably my tendency to ramble (and my love of songwriters), a Dylan’s song comes to my mind comes to mind, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. It is the tale of this restless son, somehow a victim of his own character,  an unrepentant globetrotter. He comes back to his mother who asks him: “Where have you been, my blue-eyed son? What did you see? What did you hear? Who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?”. He saw it all. Dreadful and marvellous things, maybe more dreadful than marvellous. And he tells his stories, each one is a poem of offended life, with some occasional, poignant shred of hope. Go and listen it. Slowly, look with his eyes, hear with his ears, feel with him. Eventually the mother asks: “What’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son? What’ll you do now, my darling young one?” He, halfway out the door, answers:

I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest…
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten…
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it…

Bob Dylan, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

It seems to me that the subtext is: if not mum, what am I going to tell you next time? If I had kept the mask and had been only your son, what would I have seen? What if you were just my mother, would you have listened to me? What would we both have missed?

1. Melanie Joy, Beyond Beliefs: A Guide to Improving Relationships and Communication for Vegans, Vegetarians, and Meat Eaters. [↩]
2. https://www.veganadvocacy.org/e10-vegan-allies. Joy speaks explicitly of “vegan allies”, but the concept of alliance (which, I think, is a broadening of the concept of respect) can be applied to any relationship problem (in particular between a member of a minority group and one of a majority one. Ideally, allies should also be advocates, people who support and promote the cause, even if they are not fully committed to it.  [↩]
3. Where is, on this planet, the relationship that is not asymmetric at one point or another? [↩]
4. This is not the only reason why change scares us, but it’s definitely one of the reasons. [↩]
5. The unwillingness to change and to recognise the other is only one of the problems faced in a relationship between vegans and non-vegans. [↩]