Grumpy Old Vegans Facebook page

In episode 43, I want to share an incident I found quite disturbing a few days ago and expand on it.

A few weeks ago, I did an episode on Gary L. Francione’s attempt to “own” aspects of vegan advocacy. I highlighted his actions in claiming the Be Fair Be Vegan campaign was “ripping him off” and “appropriating” his work. In my podcast episode 41, I pointed out that all the key ideas of veganism existed before Francione, including the term “abolitionist”. I also noted that when Francione doesn’t find any substantive issues to raise, he will attack any abolitionist vegan as “ripping him off” and being “confused”, unless that person continually not only references Francione’s work, but specifically links to his Facebook page.

This week, an abolitionist advocate who runs the “Queer Vegan” Facebook page and WordPress site, put up a poster showing a non-human animal, with the caption “Someone, Not Something”. (Please note all the unfortunate comments by Francione moderators have been removed possibly by moderators themselves). No apologies or retractions for their false claims have been made. Queer Vegan has been attacked by moderators from Gary Francione’s page, for “failing to attribute it to Gary Francione”.

Here’s a screenshot of their response:

With kind permission of Queer Vegan, I speak about this attack and their vulnerability at the time of this attack. And I speak about the historical pattern of Francione’s advocates claiming virtually any commonly used meme, phrase or idea as Francione’s personal property.

I go back to similar attacks on Joan Dunayer who too, was accused of stealing the ideas behind “Someone not something”, despite the fact that Dunayer had written about this and had written this phrase in 1990 in an article and Tom Regan had said this phrase in a famous speech in 1989 in the UK.

Although I address the disgraceful attack against Dunayer who is an academic, and an established animal rights theorist, I also would really like to point out that they kind of attack made against “Queer Vegan” is not even a dispute about theoretic property, it’s an attack on an advocate, simply putting up a poster on Facebook that is a three word phrase that is in common use.

Screen shot of my reference on Grumpy Old Vegans Facebook page

Thanks to Dede River for her research on the issue of copyright and Dunayer’s response to Perz.