"'I love what you do for me' - isn't love!" - Cat Besch - Vietnam Animal Aid & Rescue Founder - Sentientist Conversation - EP:79

Cat (@CatBeschVN) founded and leads Vietnam Animal Aid & Rescue. She is also a writer & activist addressing many non-human animal issues.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”

Sentientism is “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” In addition to the video above, the audio is on our Podcast here on Apple and all on the other platforms too.

We discuss:
0:00 Welcome

1:10 Cat’s Intro

3:10 What’s Real?

Growing up as a liberal Lutheran with very religious parents
The church as social fabric
Figuring out that “I just don’t really believe in any of that crap”
High school & Baptist society in Alabama
The church seeing all sex as shameful… “holding virginity in such high esteem”
Feminism & Islam. “Headscarves & Hymens” by Mona Eltahawy.
“The way the institutions look at sex & sexuality just makes you want to put your fist through a wall”
“A whole bunch of girls that think they’re going to hell”
That was the turning point. Everything started to crumble
Not picking at the church too hard as it was the social fabric. “Life is hard enough at 16.” I left it silently on my own
The hypocrisy of religious compassion & judgementalism
Atheists & agnostics are not immoral people
“I attended church… I took communion… my sins are flushed… now I can go back to being a dickhead”
Religious compassion is often conditional & constrained
The immorality of even “moderate” religious worldviews (e.g. hell, sexism, homophobia)
“Women are not emotionally stable enough to be leaders in the Catholic church”!
“I found it oppressive.” Leaving the church was a moment of liberation
Travelling & living in many religious cultures
Starting the “Let’s not be an asshole” religion
Being wrong. “I used to hate vegans”, now I’m “on the side of all sentient beings”
Everybody has a chance to change
“I just don’t know” as a strong naturalistic stance

25:09 What (& Who) Matters?

An early empathy for animals “they were my best friends”, but living in an environment where killing sentient beings was normal
I never met a vegan in the horse riding world
“I love what you do for me” isn’t love
Being angry at our previous selves for not seeing
Thinking all vegans must be “dirty hippies”
Meeting first vegans hosting couch-surfers in Mongolia
Being challenged “You love animals but who are you eating?”
“I looked at dairy & was appalled”
Going vegan at 34
Advocating for fishes after diving
Living with Louise the chicken
We can philosophise, but compassion can also come from lived experience
Jonathan Balcombe’s “What a Fish Knows”
Humanity to Sentientity
Animal ethics in Vietnam. Dog meat & chicken meat
Rejecting dog meat is not a gateway to veganism
Millions more likes for resisting dog farming vs. chicken farming
Being worshipped for saving a dog by the “gods of bunny-hugging dumb-assness” but don’t talk about veganism
There’s no philosophical grounding to rejecting dog farming then having chicken for lunch
Generous funding available for resisting dog funding but not for other animals
The racism that underpins much single-issue activism against dog farming
Bio/ecocentrism
How non-human & human animals are seen in disasters
Psychedelics & experiencing everything as connected

57:45 The Future

Sentiocentrism, naturalism leaves space for broad pluralism
So many un-founded beliefs: MLMs, Goop, Anti-Vaxx, Flat Earth, Religion, Cults…
Telling the RSPB “You know chickens are birds, right?”
Social indoctrination re: religion & animal ethics
Rebels are too rare
Welfarism vs. abolition
Welfarism gets all the money
“I lost 60 grand [of charitable funding] by being an outspoken vegan”
“If all those big organisations finally just stood up for animals, period!”
They take so much money from people diametrically opposed to the idea that they have to stop or change anything
Ban dog meat but “humane” farming of other sentients is fine
“Vegan is not a dirty word” – It’s a moral baseline!
Gary Francione
#JustTransition paths
Oregon’s IP13 https://www.yesonip13.org/
Driving change in different cultures. Going local & getting out of the way.
“I suffer from delusional optimism”
“Even the worst people can change”
“People are assholes & people are amazing”

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info.

Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on Facebook.

Thanks Graham for the post-production.

Jamie Woodhouse