Vegan cafe that charged 18 per cent 'man tax' is set to close
103 replies, posted
The tripadvisor review @ignhelper posted on page 1.
This stops you from having Eggs? Or Milk? Or other Dairy products like Cheese? I can see why someone would cut out having something that comes from a Cow, but I don't see the issue with something that comes from a Chicken, there's nothing ethically wrong here, unless you get Eggs that are from farms where they keep the Chickens cooped up in close proximity to others as opposed to like Free Range shit.
Money, mostly.
I still hear about people bringing it up when it's not relevant though.
Never heard of anyone doing it before (I'm aware that just because I haven't heard of it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but I haven't heard of it before, so I wouldn't think it a thing), outside of stating how good certain foods are, like someone stating they eat Bacon because it's fucking nice, this isn't the same as if you were acting superior because you eat Bacon.
I eat meat and it's not confusing in the slightest.
Veganism is the belief that we shouldn't exploit animals for our own gain.
Thus, there is a mind-bogglingly simple rule to determine if a food is vegan:
Did it come from animals?
It's not confusing, you just haven't bothered to think about it whatsoever.
I never said I was confused by it; it's not just that it comes from animals, it's if it has anything to do with animals.
In Victoria, the state the cafe was in, it is against the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 to discriminate on the basis of sex, including in the provision of goods and services
Sex, Sexual Discrimination
In Victoria it is against the law to discriminate against you because of your sex or characteristics associated with your sex, such as carer responsibilities, pregnancy and breastfeeding.
Goods and services
What does goods and services provision cover?
Goods and services includes:
buying and selling items in shops and other outlets
going to restaurants, bars and hotels, gyms, entertainment venues and cinemas
accessing services from providers such as banks, insurance and superannuation companies, child care, medical practices, hospitals and other health services
accessing services from other kinds of service providers.
The law also covers free services.
How can discrimination in goods and services happen?
Discrimination in the provision of goods and services includes:
refusing to provide goods or services to you. For example, because you are breastfeeding
offering different terms on which goods or services are provided to you. For example, because of your religion
subjecting you to any other unfavourable treatment when providing goods or services.
Sounds to me like if someone had made a complaint while they'd been running, they would've been fucked for breaking anti-discrimination law. You don't get to just change prices of things depending on someone's sex (I use sex here even though gender would be more appropriate because the legislation seems to use "sex" to mean whether you're a man or woman, and "gender identity" to mean whether you're cis, trans, intersex, etc)
Animal product industries that don't involve meat are still generally very cruel and the animals do not live pleasant lives (Or in the case of male chicks they don't live at all because they get sexed, tossed onto a conveyor belt and dropped into a high speed blender to be obliterated instantly and turned into feed or fertilizer). The milk industry isn't all sunshine and flowers either.
People have this weird warped perception of vegans from the internet and the 'insane militant vegan' image that has been pushed forward in the same way people try to discredit legitimate feminism by pointing at the insane examples like this or videos of 3rd wave nutters having meltdowns.
I'm part of a few local vegan groups and have attended meetups and everyone has always been normal and friendly people just going about their lives, and are generally welcoming and inclusive/happy to answer peoples questions etc. A few also participate in activism but again nothing inherently wrong with that. On the other hand its kinda an in joke with a lot of vegans/vegetarians about how the subject can't come up without someone who eats meat interjecting with some stupid jokes you have heard 1000x times over and going on and on about how much they love meat and don't care about the animals, almost like your very presence makes them so incredibly uncomfortable they can't stop talking about it.
If you have ever heard the joke 'how do you know someone is a vegan? dont worry, they'll tell you', the counter to that is 'how do you know someone is vegan? don't worry everyone around them will tell you first', you have no idea how insufferable a LOT of people get and won't leave it alone if the topic is mentioned, but if you say anything back you are suddenly one of these crazy militants.
https://messyveggies.com/messyveg/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Handsome-Her-Vegan-Cafe-3-1024x768-1024x768.jpg
That is one gorgeous mural. Many kudos to the artist.
Coincidentally is this also the only positive thing I have to say about this establishment.
Read the damn story Peachy. They made a mtf person pay the male "tax", despite identifying as a woman.
Because people react more negatively to feeling like they are being penalized in comparison to having a bonus taken away, even if the end result is functionally identical.
I'll give an example from MMO games, because it's something I've seen developers try twice and realize their mistake with. Both WoW and FFXIV, during their earliest days, had characters get "tired" after long periods of gameplay, causing them to get less experience than they typically would. People didn't like this, they felt like they were being penalized for wanting to play the game. So in both cases (earlier in WoWs than the other game's), they removed this system completely...
And added in another system where spending time logged out causes you to slowly gain a buffer where you earn extra experience, and by decreasing the "baseline" experience gain. The effect is exactly the same, to discourage obsessive play and reward regular breaks from the game. But the difference is that, once it's been re-contextually, suddenly people are okay with it because they're not being punished for playing too much, they're losing the bonus for taking regular breaks. I'm sure there are psychology studies out there that probably describe this effect better than a dumb video game analogy, but it's what comes to mind at the moment.
Nobody likes feeling like they're being punished for shit that they personally didn't do, but most people would probably be fine with seeing a company with noticeable hiring disparities correct their ways. Which of these headlines would cause more of a freak out: "new workplace equality laws go into effect" or "national tax on all white men announced"?
Actually shit, why didn't I think of this sooner, why the hell didn't the restaurant just offer a discount to women dining at their establishment and raise prices otherwise to compensate where need be? Or would that not be edgy and woke enough?
Because that would be actually illegal.
Optional tax isn't illegal.
Discount you can't get because you have a dick is.
Unless I'm somehow overlooking it, that was only mentioned in a review in the thread; not the article or anywhere else online, which seemed to indicate the opposite (with multiple places claiming it to be lgbt friendly, and none calling it transphobic)
Yeesh, it's shit like this that give the gay rights movement a bad name. This is just so overly toxic and awful.
I don't want this to be misconstrued here- I am all for gay rights and equality, but this is simply not the way to do it. This just makes you look like an asshole, and that's exactly what happened.
Why double down. What the fuck.
Imagine being this ignorant where you think a review is less of evidence than the article
How is making men charge 18% more for their food "equality" and "supportive of gay rights"?
Peachy doesn't seem to have done anything actually wrong here.
In response to "I didn't see anything about them discriminating against trans people", Peachy was told to "read the article", yet this wasn't in the article and they said that.
It seems like you're being very unnecessarily antagonistic here.
Octane's post, to me, seems to be very clear that they don't believe this is "equality" and "supportive of gay rights".
I understand their point but the execution is poor, if women on average X% less then the solution isn't to make everything X% more expensive for men. You bring "equality" (not exactly as not every man will make X% more) at the cost of bringing everyone down.
A better solution would be to bring the salary of women up by that difference, which would mean in this case just paying your workers more. However I doubt this cafe would do this, it's hard spin for PR and doesn't bring you media attention and controversy like this did.
I'm literally not doubling down on anything.
Someone made a claim. I asked what the source was, and then people said I didn't read the article, which I did.
Please point out where I said that the review was not good evidence or where I had any personal stance on this at all
I was literally asking for the source of a claim, and then simply stating the fact that the article doesn't say anything about it.
Wars have been started over less.
I... Don't think you read my post. The reviews another poster posted shows them not caring about men at all, even gay or trans ones. This is sexism dressed up with glitter and lipstick.
Well I guess you can say getting woke wasn't the greatest business strategy after all.
Pink tax isn't real with the exception of sanitary products, which there do exist reusable alternatives for, i.e. menstrual cups.
Why do people keep saying vegan food is more expensive? It certainly isn't more expensive to make. Meat costs a lot more than veggies, unless you're using weird, specific veggies that come from the other side of the world (and are thus terrible for the environment).
Seems to me that vegan restaurants being pricier just comes down to offer and demand, with the urban vegan population typically having more disposable income. That, plus the rent which I assume is pretty expensive downtown.
Vegan food is more expensive if you're eating simulated meat stuff instead of just shifting what you eat.
I mean, I can sort of understand where they're coming from when it appears at a bit more than a casual glance that you're moving goal posts to excuse bigotry against trans people. That was the imprssion I got on a casual read of the thread. Of course I know you weren't trying to do that after I put a bit of thought into it, but I can see where the confusion comes from.
This restaurant is controversial enough where I would not personally trust reviews to be legitimate.
I just don't see how, even if I was doubting whether or not it happened (which I'm not), that would be excusing bigotry. I'd just be questioning if it even is bigotry in the first place.
I'm pretty vocally pro-trans-rights and anti trans discrimination in just about every relevant thread, because I am trans.
I think it's the "(with multiple places claiming it to be lgbt friendly, and none calling it transphobic)" which on first read got me a bit too but I re-read the sentence and got what you meant. I think if I were more heated/invested in the conversation I'd probably miss it. That or they're expecting you to have read literally the entire thread and every link in said thread? Idk. I kind of get where they came from but I think maybe we're all reading too much into things from only a casual skim's worth of reading these days. Bit of a community wide problem imo.
If that were the case, then vegans would eat honey, milk, or eggs- products of animals that benefit from being raised and cared for by humans, a symbiotic relationship.
Bees in particular benefit massively from the work of beekeepers. The idea of avoiding honey on account of 'exploiting animals' is absolutely ridiculous.
If you don't want to support the exploitation of animals, then eat honey, milk, and eggs that come from responsible, sustainable farms. Avoiding animal products for its own sake isn't an ethical choice, it's an arbitrary rule.
And most vegans agree with you.
But milk and eggs are not produced from symbiotic relationships, and most responsible farms are actually far worse than most people realize; and if all farms used the truly cruelty free methods of farming, we wouldn't have nearly enough product for the kind of consumption we do now, so it ultimately does make sense to cut those out if those ethical concerns are your driving decision maker.
It's not enough for me to go vegan but i don't think it's particularly hard to see why people view it that way.
I've seen and look through the reviews, while what you say may be a possibility, there is an overwhelming negative response from a diverse set of people, and rather, the people who are giving it 5 stars seem to be people who may possibly on their side.
When it comes to reviews you really gotta check both parties.
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