Palm Oil (video transcript)

Hello ladies, enbies and gentlemen.

Palm oil is a type of fat found in the pulp of oil palm trees.

It is a common ingredient in food products such as cookies, crackers, certain sweets etc.

Palm oil is not an animal product in the sense that it isn’t a by-product of slaughter or something milked out of the teets of animals or anything similar, but its production, when done on an industrial scale, can destroy the habitats of animals such as orang-utans.

Bornean orang-utans are listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources as an endangered species, numbering only 55,000 with around 5000 being killed every year.

Sumatran orang-utans are not merely an endangered species, they are listed as Critically Endangered, numbering only 6,300 with 1000 being killed every year.

As such, the responsible sourcing of palm oil should be a matter of concern for vegetarians, vegans and others concerned with animal welfare and environmentalism.

Deforestation of course also contributes heavily to anthropocentric climate change.

Palm oil is also a human rights issue with a number of companies employing child labour in its production and forcibly remove native peoples from their land.

Below are some links providing information on palm oil as well as the Rainforest Action Network’s petition.

RAN petition: http://www.ran.org/call_on_the_conflict_palm_oil_laggards_twt
Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil: http://www.rspo.org
The Orangutan Project: http://www.orangutan.org.au/palm-oil

Why Your Tolerance Of Bigots Is Not Noble (video transcript)

Hello ladies, enbies and gentlemen.

This video is about people who claim not to be bigots, but still seem to keep the company of bigots.

It’s not escaped my notice that certain people who profess to support social justice seem to compromise their principles heavily when it comes to certain friends of theirs who are either obviously or subtly bigoted in their political views.

Such people will often try to frame their friendship with bigots as somehow being tolerant, presumably attempting (badly) to appeal to the social justice principle of tolerance.

Whenever someone attempts to mount a defence like this, I feel compelled to question whether they even know the first thing about privilege and power, and further, whether they understand what social justice actually is.

Treating bigots as though they are a disenfranchised demographic is nonsense for two main reasons:

1. Bigots are not a disenfranchised demographic. On the contrary, they are a privileged psychographic.

2. Tolerance has an aim, specifically EQUALITY. Since bigotry is completely incompatible with equality, it cannot be tolerated.

Another argument runs along the lines of, “How can we change people’s minds if we aren’t welcoming to them?”

This prompts me to ask, what efforts are you making to change the minds of your bigoted friends?

Like most people, I have friends who from time to time will use language that I consider to be bigoted or express political views that are bigoted, however, being bigoted is not a comfortable experience when you’re in my company.

I do not “agree to disagree”, at least not on matters of social justice.

Friends of mine who are bigoted get CALLED OUT.

I should add as well that I have enough sense to gauge whether or not a friend of mine is a decent person who happens to have a privilege blindspot or if they’re just an outright hate monger.

In the latter case, their friendship with me is likely to be short-lived for reasons which should be, but apparently aren’t obvious.

In a lot of cases, I don’t see such efforts being put in by people who claim to support social justice yet befriend bigots.

It’s also very VERY important to note that an environment that is friendly to bigots is, by default, hostile to those they are bigoted against.

One of the aims of social justice, especially online, is to create safe spaces for members of disenfranchised groups.

Welcoming bigots into what are supposed to be social justice groups violates that safety.

Bigots are already welcome in our society. You can readily hear bigoted jokes, bigoted political views and bigoted slurs being expressed in public spaces and they go UNCHECKED.

Bigots already have their space. They don’t need to be welcomed into other people’s.

As such, your tolerance of bigots is not noble… it is spineless.

Thanks for watching.