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| Really? I think these kind of vegans are like unicorns. Non-existent |
About being vegan. I'm lucky that although probably about 90% of my best friends and close family are meat eaters it doesn't cause much hostility or inconvenience. I generally like to focus on the many other things I have in common with people (there's a lot more to me than veganism!) and enjoy myself. I like to change people's perceptions about veganism by making vegan food enjoyable and indulgent and just by being a cool person.
More about this on my blog
http://samanthathesanevegan.blogspot.co.uk
More about this on my blog
http://samanthathesanevegan.blogspot.co.uk
But some things about the treatment and portrayal of vegans that seriously get on my nerves. Firstly there's:
The 'Sense of humour' thing
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| this is an exaggeration but yet it's still more realistic than the meme above! |
Recently a video came out called 'if meat eaters acted like vegans' that was supposedly hilarious and had millions of views. I only watched a tiny bit of it but it portrayed vegans as being judgemental, self-righteous and making unreasonable difficult demands in restaurants. I have been to vegan meet ups (albeit sporadically) but over a good few years and I have yet to meet a vegan who behaves anything like this. It's a stereotype that just really comes from nowhere. Vegans are less than 1% of the population and it's an even smaller percentage who are actually self-righteous about it so I find it hard to understand why some meat eaters would feel threatened by such a tiny minority.
It sparked a lot of heated debate between vegans being annoyed at being depicted that way and meat eaters accusing them of having no sense of humour and not being able to take a joke. I mentioned in my earlier blog http://samanthathesanevegan.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/more-about-peace-settling-battles.html that I do have a sense of humour (don't see why I need to prove this to strangers when those who know me well are already aware of this!) but certain jokes about vegans really bother me. Why is this?
Being a sensitive person with low self-esteem makes it hard to be different from other people. When meeting new people I want to make a good impression and like any normal person I like to find common ground and make polite conversation in order to be pleasant and sociable. When you're someone who never fitted in at primary school, secondary school or university, drawing attention to something that makes you different from other people is really not what you want to do. I feel like mentioning being vegan or even just vegetarian creates a barrier and so I avoid mentioning it unless necessary. A few years back there was a work Christmas 'do and the vegetarian option on the set menu was full of cheese and other dairy products and when people asked me why I wasn't going I just said 'I don't really like the menu'. This is why it's especially annoying to say that vegans can't shut up about it when people like me just feel really awkward about mentioning it. 
I've had difficulty sticking to veganism sometimes and one of the reasons is that I can be too unassertive sometimes and I've ended up eating non-vegan foods to be polite when eating at someone else's house. When I'm reminded of how animals are abused in the egg and dairy industries I get annoyed with myself for having strayed away from it and in awe of the vegans who have stuck with it for years. As I'm getting older I'm slowly becoming more confident in my own choices and I don't see why I should have to apologise for it.Non-vegans are perfectly entitled to be difficult out of fussiness or trying fad-diets but a vegan who likes Chinese, Thai, Indian, Latin American, Caribbean, Italian, Spanish & Middle Eastern style food must apologise for inconveniencing people with their morals! You wouldn't want to be one of the 'bad' vegans!
and secondly:
Constant Duty to Prove....
That you can be healthy. Most people were raised to believe that we need to eat animal products to be healthy and thrive and so the idea of not eating any still seems controversial. Even prior to doing my nutrition diploma I read very widely around the subject of vegan nutrition and so I'm quite clued up about what I need to do to be healthy and nourished. Yet still, people, including those who are obese, who smoke or binge drink think it's okay to criticise vegans for their diet and tell them they are malnourished!
Do I feel in perfect health all the time? No. Does anyone? Other than depressive episodes I'm pretty symptomless and hadn't been off sick from my job in about 5 or 6 years but yet I felt the need to write a blog to prove that my depression wasn't related to my diet (See http://samanthathesanevegan.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/depression-part-2-food-mood and.html). The first time I saw a student nutritional therapist I was eating quite a good diet and but I said that my energy could be a bit better and she suggested that I might be anaemic. Totally nothing to do with the fact that I'd started studying for the science access course (equivalent to 2 A levels) whilst working full time!
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| Thank you Vegan Sidekick! |
& meat eaters sometimes act like they're the victim? P-lease...............
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ReplyDeleteOne of the unfortunate things about being in the minority is that your behaviour appears odd to people, and even though you don't want to make an issue of it, other people will. They want to know why you're 'odd'. Then, when you answer them, that confirms their preconception that you're obsessive and preachy. You constantly have to justify your position (which, frankly, is none of their business), so you're seen as the person who's always going on about the subject and preaching it to others.
ReplyDeleteOne of my support workers is a vegetarian. I've never had any disagreement with him over it, he's never complained about my food, but he has people complaining about what he eats.
The problem is, the term 'vegetarian' seems to cover a lot of different diets. As soon as you exclude some form of meat from your diet, you can be called some sort of vegetarian. For my support worker, as with a lot of vegetarians I presume, it's easier to say 'I'm a vegetarian' than list all the foods he doesn't eat. So, these meat-eaters approach him and tell him that as a vegetarian, he can't eat the food he's eating. He usually replies, 'it's a lifestyle choice not a bloody religion I've joined.'
Segue into religion. I'm an atheist. I was raised Christian, I converted to a form of Paganism in my teens, and finally arrived at atheism in early adulthood. Both as a Pagan and an atheist I have been subject to some pretty bad stereotypes and misconceptions, and I've been in situations where my religious orientation has made me feel like an outsider.
Initially, my reaction to this was to hit back. Religious people would bash me, so I'd bash them. Luckily, I've changed my ways in that regard. I know that I'm not going to agree with a Creationist in how the universe came into existence. I know that I'm not going to agree with any theist about the existence of the divine. What I do share with most of them is that I am trying to live my life the best way I can.
I'm not a vegan, but I understand why someone would choose that lifestyle and it's admirable. As a meat-eater, I suffer from the occasional bouts of paranoia that vegans think I'm immoral for being a meat-eater, but I know it comes from the same place as those Christians who think I'm arrogant for being an atheist. It's ironic that the fear of being judged can transform someone into judgemental dick.
Hopefully, reading your post will enlighten some people with misconceptions of vegans. No matter what our stance we take in life, generally, we're just people trying to do what we feel is right, and rather than admiring that about each other, we pass judgement because the way in which we're trying to do the right thing is different to someone else's.
Thanks for that. Spot on. Obviously there is a reason why I'm vegan and I am against the way that animals are treated but I understand that it's not always the first thing on people's minds and it's human nature to have sentimental feelings towards the foods you were raised on. Anyone who knows me well knows how bad my low self-esteem is and so it's so annoying when people say that vegans are all self-righteous, I couldn't be more the opposite. If, for example, I see a program about a doctor performing a siamese twin-separating operation that takes hours and hours with no break and afterwards that doctor eats a ham sandwich, it's not like I think 'oh what a bastard, why didn't he eat a tofu stir-fry?' I admire a lot of other people who are not vegans. we all have different things that we feel strongly about
ReplyDelete