What Does "Imperfect Vegan" Mean?

I don't like labels

I've been thinking about how often we change the words we use because different words make us feel more comfortable.

The reality stays exactly the same; only the language changes.

Lately I've seen more and more people calling themselves imperfect vegans, and every time I read those words I find myself asking the same question.

What does that actually mean?

I don't ask because I believe anyone should be perfect, I certainly don't think I am.

I make mistakes like everyone else and living in a non vegan world means mistakes are almost inevitable.

About a year ago I was at IKEA, I was starving, grabbed something to eat without even checking the ingredients, then halfway through I happened to look at the packaging and realised it contained milk. I stopped eating it immediately, not because I wanted to prove a point, but because I had made a mistake and once I realised it I no longer wanted to contribute to something that went against my values.

That experience never made me question whether I was vegan, it simply reminded me that mistakes happen.

If, on the other hand, I had read the ingredients before buying it, known perfectly well that it contained milk and decided to eat it anyway because I was hungry, that would have been something completely different; not because someone else would have taken my vegan card away, but because it would have been my choice.

That's the part I struggle to understand.

A mistake and a choice are not the same thing, yet we increasingly use the same words to describe both.

I don't think this only happens with veganism.

Imagine saying, "I'm an honest person, but sometimes I choose to lie. I'm just an imperfectly honest person."

Or saying, "I believe in non violence, except when I consciously decide to kill a mosquito."

Nobody speaks like that, we recognise immediately that honesty isn't measured by never making a mistake: it's measured by the decisions we make when we know exactly what we're doing.

To me veganism works in exactly the same way.

It's an ethical principle and ethical principles are expressed through choices.

That's why I've never really understood the argument that people "don't like labels".

Being vegan has never felt like a label to me, it's simply a word that describes one of the principles I try to live by, just like honesty, respect or compassion describe other principles that guide my decisions.

If one day I decided those principles no longer mattered to me, I would be free to make different choices.

People change, values change, lives change, there would be nothing wrong with admitting that.

What feels strange to me is pretending nothing has changed simply because we've found a more comfortable way to describe it.

Maybe that's what the expression imperfect vegan really does: it doesn't describe an imperfect person, but it describes our growing tendency to blur the line between an accident and a conscious decision.

I think that's a distinction worth protecting, not only because of veganism, but because once we stop recognising the difference between mistakes and choices, we also stop taking responsibility for the values we claim to hold.