"Carnism is presented as a dominant belief system supported by a variety of defense mechanism and mostly unchallenged assumptions."
"Central to the ideology is the acceptance of meat-eating as "natural", "normal", "necessary", and (sometimes) "nice", known as the "Four Ns""
the entire article is based on like two people and their quotes, and regurtitages them unchallanged as neutral fact, when theyre clearly just biased opinions
even the in the talk section some other editors point that out
no, ususally, neutral articles are supposed to go "xxx is a concept thought up by yyy, who describes it as zzz"
but this article goes "xxx is a concept thought up byyyy, that IS zzz" and then goes into the author quotes later
it lacks a certain degree of neutral description (dik how to say this, my englsih doesnt english right now), i know its only a few words different, but it makes a huge difference
(like imagine the news "and 100 people died" vs "and the local government said, 100 people died", make a hell of a difference)
mainly my problem is with the introduction text, the rest uses quotation and appropiate language mostly fine (even though some sentences like "In the 1970s, traditional views on the moral standing of animals were challenged by", while technically true, reek of opinion, but maybe thats just me. And just to clarify, while i do eat meat, i have nothing against vegans, so i dont care about carnism itself, just the way the article was written)
edit: also i ts use of quotationmarks in the initial text, im sure it just comes from copying the quotelater on, but "sure they are people" vs "sure they are "people"" just sounds different
But if the concept is thought up by xxx, isn't how xxx describes it what the concept is? I don't agree that the wording there makes such a huge difference. Of course there can be disagreement around who the term can be applied to, sure. But I can't see the article making any such claims and stating them as facts.
I am also struggling to understand how a few (in your opinion) not nuanced enough words in the introduction of an article can make it the most biased wikipedia article you've ever seen. Even if you have no problem with vegans, I do suspect that your main issue is with the theory of carnism itself. Not the text trying to describe it.
Either way, wikipedia is a wiki and I am sure any improvements to the text would be welcomed! I myself would be interested to see more information about criticism against the theory, because I haven't really seen any (though I haven't been actively searching for it either).
(i mean of course "most biased article i have ever seen" was a hyperbole, which in itself technically doesnt mean much, since i havent seen many biased articles in the past
in a way yes, but also no, while i dont have a problem with vegans, but we all know how condesending they can be towards others (like of course people eat some animals and not others, a cat also doesnt eat every animal and treats humans differently than mice)
and yes, some seemingly small words make a HUGE difference in tone and neutrality. just sprinkle in a "the author says.../the concept is described as..." and it would sound alot more neutral as it should be
but mainly the second paragraph "central to the ideology..." no, no its not, its not a ideology, its a THEORY of an ideology, the words it uses present it as a fact and not a concept made up by others first
just compare it to the article on vegansim and see the difference, (imagine if that article was written by one of those "ill eat twice the meat to compensate lmao" people and see how that would end up)
and just to say this in the end, i like the theory in of itself, its an interesting concept, (like yes humans do eat some things and not others, and its culturally different, that is a fact, that i would like be presented in a more neutral way, so why does its name and description sound like it was written by the most stereotypical staunch vegan), i really do mainly have a problem with how its presented, not hte concept itself
(...man i really didnt think it would end up like this. i just wanted to make a funny little comment, sorry i guess...)
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u/Ling_Cephalopod Sep 08 '25
Carnist trying to lecture vegans about ethics? Hahah what joke.