animal rights

Deep Vegan Thoughts

Recently some people have been really annoying me about veganism.

I messaged someone on okcupid and he was like:

“I have to be honest. I don’t think I can date a vegan. Sorry.”

Ha.

Hope he thinks back on that when his kids are in history class one day studying animal exploitation as a shameful and horrifying piece of world history and everyone is vegan by law.

Sometimes it feels I have created a little bubble for myself on the internet. I subscribe to so many awesome vegan people. But the outside world still acts shocked when you say you are vegan. It’s sort of offputting. I feel like…doesn’t everybody get it by now?

No they don’t. There are still so many people to convince.

So many people who think they NEED meat to thrive.

I took a class the other day with one of my pole dance heroes.

She was like, You have lost weight.  I told her excitedly I had changed my diet. I was like “It’s called fruitarianism. Have you heard of it?”

She hadn’t, and when I told her it was only fruit and vegetables, she started telling me how bad that was and how I would never put on muscle and I needed protein.

I got kind of flustered, because I didn’t want to argue with her, yet I was annoyed. I was way stronger than before and yet she was telling me it was a terrible diet.

What should I do? Go back to my old diet and be stuck in my progress like I was?

She told me she used to be vegan too but once she needed to become a professional athlete she stopped and started eating meat again…for protein.

Protein.

The protein myth is so huge.

The problem is she IS the professional, incredibly fit athlete and I’m not. But I know there are a lot of incredible fruitarian and vegan athletes out there who made incredible progress in their fitness goals once they became vegan and then fruitarian. For example, Mike Arnstein, the Fruitarian who started WINNING marathons (like first place) once he became fruitarian. Serena Williams hasn’t lost a major tournament since she became a raw vegan.

Mike Arnstein, The Fruitarian

I’ve read so many articles and books explaining the research about protein, which shows we need far less than most people have been led to believe we do. But of course everyone knows we need protein.

Good job, marketers!

I know eating fresh fruits and vegetables has made the biggest improvements in my health so far over anything I have tried. I was eating a ton of cheese and yogurt and beans and common “protein” sources for years.

I’m getting so much stronger.

It is frustrating though when everyone tells you it’s terrible, even though it’s working.

I think it’s one of those things where nobody cares about your diet until you start winning marathons like Mike Arnstein, The Fruitarian on youtube, or looking like Freelea the Banana Girl or losing 100 pounds like Melissa, Get Your Fruit On.

This is working for me like nothing else ever has.

As for ethical veganism, sometimes I feel I have lost  touch with normal life. Is there really an animal holocaust going on?

Sometimes I need to double check that what I’ve seen is real.

I go to Toronto Pig Save’s Facebook and look at their photographs of pigs in the trucks and look into their eyes.

Those pigs are all dead now. Murdered. Cattle cars…still in use. It’s the holocaust out there for animals. It’s a war against them that they can’t fight.

If people would simply look at a Toronto Pig Save video, those same meat eaters would be shaking in their boots.

The problem is no one wants to look. I couldn’t even look at their last video which went viral. The caption said the pigs were screaming in the trucks.

I have heard pigs screaming once, and it was enough. It shakes you. It reminded me of a part in one of my favorite book’s The Princess Bride where the count says “Do you hear that? That is the sound of ultimate suffering.”

It’s in the movie too. But of course the scream although haunting is not the sound of ultimate suffering. That sound is something you could only hear if you listened to someone actually, in real life, experiencing ultimate suffering.

The pigs who were witnessing, hearing and smelling their friends be murdered and boiled alive….they understood ultimate suffering.

this was the mildest of pig slaughterhouse images I could find. Google image pig slaughterhouse.

Veganism is so not what people think it is.

It saddens me that people don’t truly get it.

WHY?

I think it is because they haven’t seen it with their own eyes.

But further, that they don’t understand that animals are like them in that they are conscious, have lives and families, suffer, understand, have personalities, and feel horror at being murdered.

I have heard there is this island in the bahamas where pigs live free. It’s called Pig Island.

They swim in the clear blue waters and hang out on the beach.

They have big ears that look like wings. They chill with their families. It’s an uninhabited island so no one bothers them. But I think you can visit.

Paradise.

The lucky ones.

 

 

Review of Animal Camp: Reflections on a Decade of Love, Hope, and Veganism at Catskill Animal Sanctuary

I flew through the book Animal Camp yesterday, essays about Catskill Animal Sanctuary by its founder Kathy Stevens.

Its effects lingered on all day.

I couldn’t really tell what the feeling it left me with was.

It was a mix of confusion, wonder, disbelief and thinking about my two dogs I once lived with.

I felt confused all day.

It was like I had just read Charlotte’s Web. All the animals at The Catskill Animal Farm Sanctuary, like Old Rambo the sheep, who protected the farm and all the animals, and Franklin the pig, who laughed with the volunteers and liked to sit on a hill and watch the sunrise every morning, had such storybook personalities. They even communicated with Kathy all the time, telling her what they wanted, thanking her, and sharing their joys and sorrows with her.

It was like the animals at her farm could talk.

But animals can’t talk though… right?

I thought about my dogs all day yesterday. I had two dogs growing up.

I thought about their personalities.

How unlike humans they were in their understanding of nature, how they could smell the tracks of an animal in the grass, how they could sniff the wind out of a car window and understand so much about what was passing, how they could run so fast and jump and turn on a dime, also how pure and affectionate they were, loving and befriending me for some reason, like they could just sense who loved them the most.

Also I was thinking about how like humans they were. My dog Rolfy especially had a very human personality. He was very proud and haughty. He had a lot of self respect. He demanded to be treated like an equal. Sometimes I had the uncanny feeling of forgetting he was a dog and seeing him, like how in a dream a person can be two things, as a human.

What was that? That relationship I had with two DOGS.

That was love. Real love. And real friendship.

All day it brought tears to me eyes thinking about my two dogs. Though I intensely loved my dogs and never considered them “just” dogs, I think I did later discount their love in my life. Even though I truly loved them with all my heart, they weren’t human.

It doesn’t matter.

Humans and non humans can communicate and can share real love and friendship together.

One thing Kathy Stevens says often in her book is we are all more alike than different.

Just like we do, animals befriend each other more by personality than what they look like. Those interspecies friendships that are so adorable? Quite commonplace. Animals befriend who they get along the best with, no matter the species.

We are all more alike than different.

Honestly this is a hard thing to think about.

I never really understood this till now, that once you get to know animals, whether they are chickens, sheep, goats, pigs, horses…they are all just as human and amazing as your dog or cat… they each have a distinct incredible personality.

I don’t want to think about this.

There is one part of the book where Kathy passes a pig transport truck after she has had her sanctuary for a while and knows all her animals as friends. A pig looks at her through the holes in the truck and she starts a wail…and can’t stop.

I imagined seeing the eye of my beloved dog in there.

All animals  have personalities that are more like us than not like us.

I need to go to an animal sanctuary.

Animal Camp is a beautiful peaceful storybook book, and one that will grow on you and keep you thinking about it…

It is almost like a fairy tale, but a vey dark fairytale with a happy ending.

You know how the story goes only a virgin pure of heart could summon a unicorn. They would send out this beautiful girl into a meadow and a unicorn would come out attracted by her kindness and gentleness. Then the hunters would leap out of hiding and kill the unicorn.

There are still the maidens out there and there are still the hunters out there.

Highly recommend this book.