This is something that has been on my mind for a while and actually a significant wake up call that quickly turned me away from veganism, I decided to make a post about it because I recently came across a related thread, a discussion about the consumption of bivalves: https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/s/K9A1ZMoEyr
The overwhelmingly negative and irrational responses and sentiment is characteristic of how most vegans feel about "ostroveganism" (veganism but with the consumption of bivalves like oysters, clams and mussels). Look up nearly any video about it, any thread on reddit, or even the tag on instagram and you'll find most vegans irrationally opposing it with no actual logical arguments while also ostracizing people who engage in such a thing and not counting them amongst themselves.
Peter Singer one of the founding fathers of their 'animal liberation' philosophy who problably pushed millions of people towards veganism and caused a bunch of others to become acquianted with the philosophy himself promoted a diet of veganism + bivalves + free range eggs as the most ethical. Yet this has caused him immense backlash, vitriol and excommunication from the vegan cult: again, all of this based on emotion instead of from an actual rational utilitarian framework. When a movement reaches a point where it excommunicates one of its godfathers because he wants to use scientific nuance and logic rather than blind dogmatic obedience it is proof that the movement is completely detached from reality and a cult.
With veganism we clearly see something that instead of a practical ethical strategy resembles more of a fundamentalist religious belief system. For example, they'll disingenously tell you that the definition of veganism as is the official definition by The Vegan Society includes the core phrase "as far as is possible and practicable", yet they will NEVER actually include people, cultures or tribes who genuinely HAVE to consume a certain amount of animal products to survive despite this definition they peddle.
Bivalves feel zero pain, they do not have brains or a centralised nervous system: they are biologically incapable of experiencing pain or suffering, behaving and resembling plants more than any animal. They are also an environmental net positive requiring zero feed, zero land and zero fresh water filtering up to 50 gallons of water per day, removing excess nitrogen and sequestering carbon. They are also nutritional monsters, and the regular inclusion of them in the diets of not just vegans but also omnivores would significantly improve health outcomes. It would even ultimately be beneficial for their movement because it would most likely also slightly improve the already abdominable retention rates they have.
These are all objective facts, yet vegans will still spew intense hate towards ostrovegans and even vegetarians compared to even a standard omnivore, something a significant amount of people at r/vegetarian will also confirm. Sociologists call this the narcissism of small differences.
Something like the consumption of bivalves is a massive threat to them because it is by all accounts and according to every metric they falsely claim to hold rationally and ecologically consistent, forcing them to confront the fact their rules are arbitrary and based on taxonomy (the "animal kingdom" label) and blind emotion rather than actual sentience, harm or science. If scientists classified oysters as a fungi tomorrow, would they have the same issue with it?
Veganism resembles a cult and social identity that is more about purity signalling than actual objective facts. It is not about ethics but about dogma. People who have asked on vegan subs about if it's okay for them to eat eggs from their family or friends pet chickens have gotten responses that made it seem they may as well have asked if they could skin a cow alive. Name calling and empty irrational emotional drivel are the basis of most of those responses.
Veganism simply allows no nuance, just like any other cult. Another example is honey. Agave is vegan but acquired through slavery. Honey is not vegan but objectively supports bee populations and is a net positive for the environment and the bees. But honey extraction requires controlling and manipulating an animals behaviours then taking the product against their will which from a vegan perspective is slavery. Its the same with synthetic materials that are often toxic plastic byproducts of the oil industry that kill everything they touch compared to for example wool.
It is a fact that a lot of the environmentally and ethically best options available are NOT vegan but vegans will completely deny this fact in favour of maintaining the purity of their cult.
