Racialized Ethical Veganism

"This systemic discrimination and harassment that silences marginalized minority peoples' voices, such as me as a Racialized Ethical Vegan, is a serious threat towards freedom of speech and freedom of belief. I entered the [master's] program with good intentions, and instead, I was attacked and treated unfairly because of my belief in ethical veganism and because I am a member of a marginalized community, vegan animal rights activists."

Spare us from the righteous. They so lovingly celebrate their choices, and heartily enjoy the opportunity to criticize those of everyone else. Environmentalists, animal rightists, food faddists, religious evangelicals, human-rights-defenders. As though no one else in society other than those who proudly take fundamentalist positions on these and other issues is concerned, albeit in a more moderate, reasonable manner.

Here's a student at Ryerson, working on her master's degree in social work. And she has a little dispute with her academic supervisors over her choice of thesis material. Some senior professors can be so unreasonable, thinking they know everything, feeling that their guidance must be taken seriously, without question, unwilling to permit their academic wards to strike out in new directions....

Sinem Ketenci is a Canadian of Turkish extraction. Permitting her to celebrate herself as someone who is at a societal disadvantage in a country such as Canada with its multitudes from elsewhere in a largely immigrant population, rather than as a fully-fledged Canadian. She does not represent as a 'visible' minority, and even if she did, no one would really care. But it is handy for dining out on.

Because of Ryerson's faculty's unwillingness to permit her to proceed as she wishes, to embark on a thesis of explicating how 'racialized' it is to consume animal flesh rather than become fully moral in one's eating habits and embracing veganism, Ms. Ketenci claims to have lost friendship among fellow students, destroying her personal life, leaving her "traumatized".

To prove the righteousness of her campaign for justified acknowledgement of her noble position she has approached the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario to decide whether ethical veganism could be thought of as a creed, and thus protected by anti-discrimination laws. She is upset over the College's instructions to select a thesis that reflects social work, denying her her chosen topic.

"If you would like to proceed with a [research project] at this time, you must select a topic that is clearly related to social work practice and/or policy. Your topic must not be related in any way - directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly - to animal rights." That's the impertinent, impossible message received from the interim director of Ryerson's School of Social Work.

Ms. Ketenci seeks $15,000 compensation from Ryerson for hurt feelings.

"I believe that the faculty's reaction has its basis in the strict religious belief of 'men's domination over animals' that racialized people's suffering should not be spoken about in the same context of animal suffering and that sympathy for animal suffering is not as important as sympathy for racialized peoples' suffering", reads her complaint.

She has been a vegan for three years, and takes it seriously. She wears shoes with leather detailing. An insignificant, meaningless detail, evidently. She has been victimized repeatedly; that she is not 'white', that she is a woman, that she is a vegan, that she is not being taken seriously. Poor thing.

She does appears to enjoy the public attention, however.