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

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." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.

We discuss:

0:00 Welcome

1:10 Cat's Intro

- Founding Vietnam Animal Aid & Rescue

- Growing up in Virginia, USA

- Studying International Relations in Washington DC

- A political/military family

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?"

...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube.

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.

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Thanks for the post-prod Graham.