A "Movement" Frozen In Time
How veganism hasn’t progressed to meet today’s standards at the expense of the animals it claims to represent.
Justice movements are called movements for a reason: they move. They make progress by progressing forward — updating their definitions and strategies as knowledge advances, and building on earlier efforts that lacked the insight available today.
Every major justice movement has done this — except veganism, where definitions remain stuck in the past, shaped more by the limits of their time than by any meaningful understanding of justice.
No movement that refuses to evolve can claim to stand for progress. When advocates cling to outdated definitions, they communicate (through inaction) that they don’t see animals as worthy of the same standards expected in justice today.
Justice in the 1950s
In the 1950s, justice was poorly understood. Activists and scholars lacked the tools and data we now rely on to recognize how social structures and belief systems sustain inequality (Fields & Fields, 2012). The disciplines that justice movements now depend on (e.g., psychology, sociology, political science, education, and law) were not focused on researching injustice in any meaningful way.
There was no evidence base for understanding racism, sexism, ableism — let alone speciesism, which hadn’t even been named yet. Most treated inequality as a personal issue, not a systemic one. Bias was also framed as a personal flaw. Allport (1954) defined prejudice as a “feeling” toward someone based on limited experience — a definition that mischaracterized bias as emotional rather than a socialized and conditioned belief system.
Discriminatory actions in the 50s were legal, normalized, and enforced through every institution. Gay people were criminalized and classified as “sociopaths” (American Psychiatric Association, 1952). Segregation, redlining, and voter suppression targeted entire marginalized communities (Rothstein, 2017; Klarman, 2004). People with disabilities or mental health conditions were institutionalized and excluded from public life with no legal protections (Shakespeare, 2006). Domesticity was idealized as a woman’s purpose in life (Friedan, 1963); reproductive rights were nearly nonexistent (Luker, 1984), and emotional distress was dismissed as “hysteria” rather than recognized as resistance to systemic constraint (Ehrenreich & English, 1978).
Even in countries considered relatively progressive for the time — like the U.S. or U.K. — understanding was still limited. Most societies were even further behind. Any definition from that era reflects those limits and should be treated accordingly.
Veganism’s Origins
Past and present definitions of veganism fail to reflect what we now know about justice — most were written during that era when socialized bias, systemic injustice, and the psychology of devaluation hadn’t even been identified, let alone studied.
In 1944, Donald Watson coined the term vegan to distinguish those who avoided all animal products, not just meat (Stepaniak, 2000). At the time, “vegetarian” typically meant abstaining from meat while continuing to consume dairy and eggs. Watson and his peers viewed excluding dairy as a logical extension of “vegetarian ethics.” He created the word vegan by combining the first and last letters of vegetarian — “the beginning and end,” as he described it. But his focus remained mostly dietary, and early Vegan Society publications read like health food pamphlets, emphasizing personal health and nutrition with minimal attention to systemic injustice (Leneman, 1999).
A few years later, Leslie Cross (then Vice President of The Vegan Society) introduced a more explicitly ethical framing, defining veganism as “the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals.” His definition expanded the focus to include all forms of animal use — food, labor, clothing, entertainment, vivisection, and more (Cross, 1954). While this marked a shift toward justice, it still centered on behavior, not the biased belief systems that justify animal exploitation or the other injustices animals endure. Cross’s framing reflected the limits of his era and the data he simply didn’t have access to — a fact he openly acknowledged.
In 1979, The Vegan Society adopted a formal definition still used today: “Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude — as far as is possible and practicable — all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose” (The Vegan Society, 1988). While broader in scope, it still centers on behavior — specifically exclusion — and frames veganism as a personal lifestyle. It also defines opposition to systemic injustice as a “philosophy.” No human justice movement is defined as a lifestyle or reduced to philosophical belief. The phrase “as far as is possible and practicable” introduces subjective ambiguity and interpretation, and the definition fails to address the socialized bias that normalizes animal exploitation in the first place.
All three definitions reveal their respective eras. None confront speciesism as a socialized belief system (unsurprising, given speciesism wasn’t coined until 1970) and none align with modern justice standards that recognize oppression as the result of bias, not just individual behavior.
Evolution of Justice
The earliest justice movements were often framed around legal equality or specific civil rights — focused on changing laws or securing formal access to institutions. For example, the U.S. Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s focused on ending segregation and gaining legal recognition under the Constitution (Klarman, 2004).
Over time, justice movements evolved beyond abolishing specific systems to address the deeper forces that sustain inequality. Scholars and activists began identifying bias as the root of systemic injustice (Powell & Menendian, 2016). Modern movements now emphasize the need to challenge not only discriminatory actions, but the underlying belief systems, sociocultural norms, and power structures that define some groups as inferior or less worthy of consideration (DiAngelo & Sensoy, 2017; Kirwan Institute, 2015). This shift redefined justice as the active unlearning of normalized bias embedded in society.
Moving Past the Past
Progress requires reexamining outdated assumptions, expanding definitions, and correcting what earlier approaches missed or didn’t yet have access to — and credible movements have always done exactly that. Just as medicine, psychology, and law revise their practices in response to new evidence, justice movements evolve with understanding (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Beauchamp & Childress, 2019; Gostin & Wiley, 2016).
Feminism, for example, evolved by directly confronting the limitations of its early framing. In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan (1963) described the widespread dissatisfaction of white, middle-class housewives as “the problem that has no name.” Activists and scholars later exposed how limited and exclusionary this perspective was, and expanded the movement to address the full scope of injustice rooted in gender bias — including reproductive rights, workplace discrimination, political exclusion, sexual violence, and systemic inequality (Crenshaw, 1991; hooks, 2000).
They didn’t reject Friedan — they recognized the limits of her era and perspective, built on her insights, and evolved the movement to reflect a more current view of injustice. That made the movement more inclusive and more effective. Had feminism remained confined to Friedan’s original framing (developed more than a decade after Cross’s definition of veganism) it would have excluded most women and failed to confront the deeper systems sustaining gender-based oppression.
Disability advocacy followed a similar path. Early efforts focused on medical and legal reforms (e.g., rehabilitation, access, and accommodation) exemplified by the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990). But by the 1990s, the movement shifted toward a social model, arguing that disability is not just a medical condition but a product of “exclusionary attitudes and inaccessible environments” (Shakespeare, 2006). In the 2000s, disability justice emerged to confront ableism directly, centering bias and challenging the sociocultural devaluation of disabled lives (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018).
Advancing Justice For Animals
Progress means moving forward — evolving, advancing, and adapting over time. That’s what makes it so ironic when those claiming to fight for progress refuse to move veganism past the past, a time when justice was barely understood.
Clinging to outdated definitions reduces veganism to a stagnant campaign that avoids confronting the root of injustice. It doesn’t just cause confusion — it signals to anyone paying attention that many advocates aren’t willing to do the work: to learn and evolve their understanding along with the cause itself.
In human justice movements, that’s expected. And while it may be easier to repeat what’s already been written, no credible justice movement stays stuck in the past. If veganism is to create progress, it has to progress — not by erasing its history, but by updating the early definitions and perspectives that no longer meet today’s standards.
Letting go of antiquated narratives means recognizing that injustice isn’t about isolated actions — it’s driven by normalized bias embedded in culture and institutions (Powell & Menendian, 2016; DiAngelo & Sensoy, 2017). It won’t be undone by recycled slogans or aggressive demands to “stop [insert behavior here].”
Animals deserve a movement aligned with current understanding — not one trapped in outdated thinking, the very thing Cross fought against. When the movement refuses to evolve, they deny animals the consideration of informed advocacy.
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