There are some perennial debates in online communities so let me just get ahead of a few and state the editorial position of this lemmunity. I don’t see my position changing a great deal but you’re welcome to share yours.

• Veganism is about animal rights and animal exploitation. If those things cannot be shown relevant, it’s not about veganism. A plant-based diet intended to lose weight and save the climate doesn’t especially have anything to do with veganism.

• “Exploitation” is taken to mean to use for any benefit, without additional connotations, such as in: “She exploited her superior knowledge of the rules to outperform her opponents.” If you’re getting something out of it, it’s exploitation. The negative connotations of the word only come up when it involves unconsenting, sentient creatures.

• “Animals” are taken to mean non-human animals. Vegan philosophy does not concern human-human interactions. Humans may sometimes exploit one another, because humans have the capacity to consent when it is mutually beneficial. Veganism assumes that an animal does not have the capacity to consent to exploitation, in the same way that mainstream moral philosophy assumes that children do not have the capacity to consent. It is an assumption we make for the protection of the vulnerable, even though there is no hard line between adult and child, or animal and human.

• Owning an animal for companionship is exploitation.

• Attempting to make another creature unnecessarily dependent on you is abuse, whether it’s an animal or a human.

• All the intelligent creatures we create are our children and are all owed unconditional love from their creators.

• No one is perfect. We all have blood on our hands.