Vegan Exclusivity

Are Vegans Snobs?

The elephant in the room: do vegans think they’re superior?

*Disclaimer: Elephants should probably be outside, not in rooms.

They won’t eat what’s on your menu. They won’t shop at your stores. They won’t wear the clothes you wear. And they look in horror at what’s on your plate. Who do vegans think they are?

Vegans are judgmental—I hear this frequently from regular folk (that means that 99% of people who are not vegan). They feel that vegans take on an attitude of superiority. So do vegans actually think they’re superior? Or are carnists projecting their own guilt about their consumer choices involving the oppression of animals?

In the recent contest by the New York Times, challenging readers to explain why it’s ethical to eat meat, the comments section was full of outrage: “why should we have to defend ourselves to a small minority of people?” I was just happy to see people considering the topic on a mass level.

I have discussed before that I feel that veganism is the path of evolution for human beings, touching on the misconception of vegan elitism. (Funny coincidence, Einstein had the same theory.) To sum it up: it’s not that vegans think they’re better than everyone else—it’s that they realize they’re not better than anyone else, hence the reason for their rejection of their ‘rank’ on the food chain.

And then there is the joke: “How do you know if someone is vegan? They’ll tell you.” (Except in all fairness they’ll have to tell you unless they want a large chunk of flesh handed to them at some point.)

So? Is it true? Are vegans happy with being a rare breed?

To make it clear: definitely not.

This is why you see vegan people standing on street corners with information about the environment and factory farming. Vegans want to make friends. The more the merrier.

Just because someone proudly claims to be vegan, it doesn’t mean that they’re putting you down for not being vegan. The vegan person may be the trigger for feelings of being judged, but vegans are just not that good – we can’t get inside your head and heart like that, as much as we might wish we could.

I used to rave out. When I was 19, I started going to electronic music events and it was such a positive experience for me in place of the bar scene where I would be ogled at and dancefloor raped. Raving is about dancing (dancing well), it’s about dressing colourfully and at times with a sense of humour, it’s about independence (it’s common for people to dance alone), and it’s about the contribution of art in its many forms.

When at rave parties, I would feel the PLUR (Peace Love Unity Respect), and have epiphany moments where I would feel at one with everyone in the room. We were all having the same experience together. There may or may not have been happy drugs involved.

I haven’t felt this since I became vegan, except at animal rights conferences.

When I became vegan 3.5 years ago, I would walk the streets and observe people acting like robots as they ate and shopped. I wondered how much they knew about animal industries. And if they knew what I knew, why they didn’t care. To be fair, I spent the first 26 years of my life relying on some form of animal product, but when I stepped into this new vegan world, it seemed that I was usually standing there alone.

BassCoast goes Vegan – 2013!

Now, for the first time in a while, I’m going to a large outdoor rave, known and loved as BassCoast, and I’m wondering if I’ll feel connected to these people or alienated. There will definitely be freaks there. I can connect with freaks. Nudists. Hippies. Music lovers. Granolas. Check. Check. Check. Check. But there will also be many carnists there. Can I PLUR with them?

In BellyFit tonight (Tantra Fitness’s amazing bellydance/cardio class with Laura BonBon), I envisioned that the entire room of women was vegan. That each one of us had made a decision to be plant-powered. And for a moment, it became real. And in this moment, I realized how realistic this reality was.

This is the path to manifesting the world you want, vegans.

If you’re vegan and feeling the urge to judge others or alienate yourself from the group/dancefloor, envision everyone as already vegan. Because it’s entirely possible that they will one day soon be. And while it may be a stretch to envision, you have to dream it before it can exist in physical form. (Not getting new agey here, this is how ideas generally manifest, isn’t it? ~Think up idea, idea happens.)

So let’s review what it means to be a snob.

A snob is someone who turns down connections. Vegans want to make connections. This is why they’re always around holding up signs and passing out leafleats and distributing food.

A snob is someone who thinks they’re superior. Vegans know they’re not. So they eat low, low, low, low, low, low, low on the food chain.

A snob is someone who wants to be exclusive, part of a subgroup, different. Vegans want a vegan world – they don’t want to do all this to simply keep witnessing atrocities happening every day. They want a nonviolent world where they can relax and garden.

Snobs are cutting edge and will always change their stripes to be ahead of the game. Vegans didn’t use animal products yesterday, and they won’t tomorrow. They’re not trying to one up you.

So, what’s that you’re saying giant elephant? That you probably shouldn’t say out loud but you can since you’re an awesome elephant? Veganism is for most people about morality. Shh! Don’t say it out loud. It’s elitist and judgy.
Vegans for the most part feel that going vegan is a form of progress for them. It’s an accomplishment. This does not necessarily mean that they judge you for not having chosen a vegan lifestyle. I want to say ‘yet’.

Honestly, vegans do believe that at some point, you will at least ponder the decision. Maybe not in this lifetime, but eventually. But for vegans who think like this, it’s no different than an adult looking at a child without judgment—they know that eventually, the child will grow up and become a better communicator with more refined ways of getting what they want. This is a nice way of explaining how vegans see carnists: the decision to consume animal products is NOT valid and equal, but is a decision based on an entirely different set of life experiences for each person, and people will face the decision at their own pace.

Some might find this inside info. offensive. “See! This is exactly why I hate vegans!” you might be thinking. But the metaphor of old vs young souls is a gentle way to put it.

What does a toddler do to get what it wants? Has a tantrum.

What does an adult do to get what it wants? Something less violent.

Maturity, it seems, usually takes on the less violent form.

In comparison, what does a carnist do to nourish themselves? Pays someone to kill an animal for them, or spills the blood of an animal.

What does a vegan do to nourish themselves? Picks vegetation from the ground or a tree, or pays someone to do it.

To be fair, I think vegans do sometimes enjoy being outcasts and forget that the division between them and carnists is not a permanent one, a division that could change any day.

Vegans are, after all, totally imperfect humans. Not saints or nuns or goodie 2 shoes, and not aspiring to be. We may have grown past relying on animal products, but there are quadrillions of other ways left to grow.

Vegan Romance

Should Vegans Only Date Vegans?

In my last relationship, there was naturally some conflict at meal time, although surprisingly not that much. He’s a meateater; I’m vegan. For the most part, he would love the dishes I served, because of course they were small vegan masterpieces, some with the same comfort tastes of animal products. We would dine places that had vegan options. And he would listen when I would explain to him my reasons for being vegan. His reasoning for not wanting to go there himself was that he believed the myth that he could only keep his hot bod by eating meat. #sountrue

But then there was an unnamed vegan pizza place. We hadn’t eaten all day. It was 2:00. I’d been wanting to go there and he agreed to come with me. We got there, our pizza was soggy – temper tantrum in 5,4,3,2… He freaked the f out. Said he HATED vegan food, which wasn’t accurate because there were a ton of vegan things he liked. That he’d been more than accommodating of my vegan needs (I pointed out that I had likewise been accommodating of his.) And then he drove to a deli and bought a sandwich with nothing but 3 inches of meat. “I know what I like,” he said. I will spare you the juicy details, but it led to a discussion of what what I found attractive, and clearly it was not that.

So can vegans only be happy in relationships with other vegans? Let’s face it: less than 1% of the population is vegan and most of them are women. I don’t have the stats on this latter fact, but judging by attendance to vegan events, women are representing veganism more than men. The vegan guys I know are amazing, and for men there are issues that come up with going vegan that require redefining masculinity. In that case, I direct men to The Discerning Brute, a great website that defines what the new age gentleman is all about.

I hear mainstream single women complaining that there ‘aren’t any men out there’. Well can you imagine what a single vegan woman might experience if she considered her selection from a fraction of that (less than) 1%? Depressing. So why look at it this way?

The best solution for single vegan women is to not have too specific of a dietary checklist. What’s important is making sure that the guy a) likes eating healthy, b) is active, and c) is open minded. You have to make sure that he doesn’t still eat a diet off the kids menu, that he can appreciate the new foods you’re experimenting with in the kitchen, and that he respects his body enough to pay attention to what he’s putting into it.

You don’t need to expect a guy to have a knowledge of the state of animal rights, to know how to cook vegan, or to even be convinced of the lifestyle. (Although, bonus!) I know of a few friends whose partners have become vegan during the relationship. It’s entirely possible.

For those who feel that vegansexual describes them best, there are many veg dating sites:

Veggie Connection, Ethical Singles, & Veggie Fishing, and did you know that the owner of OKCupid is vegetarian? Also there is Volentia, a veg*n social networking site.

I have never had the luxury of dating a vegetarian or even a pescatarian. I went on one date with a guy who was almost vegan, but he turned out to predominantly be a flake-atarian.

But there are also downsides to a vegan dating another vegan:

• He judges you for not being vegan enough (eg. wearing faux fur)
• He’s a raw food snob who refers to anything other than raw food as ‘junk food’
• He doesn’t want kids because he thinks they ‘aren’t vegan’ (ie. use up too many of the resources he’s already using).
• He goes to jail for getting caught liberating animals.
• And of course, he’s already vegan so there’s no challenge to turn him (mostly kidding)

So the clear answer to whether vegans should only date vegans is: no.

Being vegan is an attractive quality because it shows that a person cares on many levels, but just as others inspired us to go vegan, we can inspire others to learn the lifestyle.

Go for sex appeal, manners, and integrity. Do your vegan thing. And cupid will strike.

Cupid is vegan, clearly, since he only hunts humans.

The Vegan Learning Process

What I Thought about Vegans

Before I Became One

I started eating a vegetarian diet when I was 17 while working at a summer camp. It was all or nothing there depending on which team you signed up for and I wanted the healthier options. {I had stopped eating red meat when I was 14 because I recognized that I didn’t need to.}

Eating mainly vegetarian and continually relapsing back to eating chicken for about 3 years until I was 21, I stopped eating all meat for good after watching Baraka, an amazing art film in which they show the inside of a factory chicken farm. (At this point, I didn’t connect that egg-laying chickens were treated the same way.)

The phrase ‘smug vegetarian’ would have somewhat described me, because I felt that I was doing enough (ie. more than the other people I knew). I remember being more comfortable with the phrase ‘animal welfare’ than ‘animal rights’.

I loved being vegetarian because it introduced more vegetables into my diet. I wore the badge proudly, and clung to dairy in various ‘comfort’ foods under the notion that I had already given up the foods that harmed the animals directly.

During this time, I had a few people in my life who were vegan. One was a waitress I worked with. I didn’t particularly like her because I found her condescending. I remember her telling me when hearing that I was vegetarian that I ‘should be vegan’. I couldn’t figure out why she would care about what I ate. We weren’t friends. The comment seemed intrusive.

Now, being vegan, I understand that she was suggesting I go vegan based on her knowledge of the remaining harm my vegetarian diet was causing. If she had explained this to me, I might have been more open to the idea. Now when I think back to her, I automatically like her, knowing she’s vegan because she cares.

The other person in my life who was vegan didn’t talk much about his reasons for going vegan – it wasn’t his style. I felt that everything about him was ‘extreme’. And didn’t necessarily want to be like him. I preferred to be ‘nomal’. When I put milk in my tea around him, I remember feeling guilty and wishing I was around someone who wouldn’t notice this choice. It’s interesting to me now, because my guilt had nothing to do with him and everything to do with my own knowledge that maybe I didn’t need the dairy.

These two people were the ONLY vegan people I knew for the first 28 years of my life (!) My general idea of both of them was that they were ‘kind of a drag’. People who lived purely and judged you for not doing so. So I do understand why meateaters label vegans as ‘almost religious’.

It was wanting to participate in animal rights activism that spurred me to go vegan. I met a small group of people in Vancouver who lived without the use of any animal products. I didn’t even know it was possible before I met them. I would list this as the main reason that it took me so long to become vegan: I didn’t know it was a realistic option.

These new friends simply chose to wear alternative materials, and eat different foods. They’d been doing it for years. I shared my experience with them of cutting down on dairy (which I now recognize they were very patient about, knowing deep down that I didn’t need to cut down, I needed to cut it out). And I did become vegan after a few months of transition. It was a learning process of beginning to crave new foods. This would be my main definition of veganism:

Vegansim: a process of learning to crave new, non-animal foods in the place of animal-based foods.

There was all this food out there that I’d been blind to before and I only needed to create the space for it. It was truly a matter of emptying the ricebowl.

This group of vegan people presented their knowledge to me in flat out facts. Take it or leave it. They allowed me to ask stupid questions (ie. how do you get your protein, etc.). And instead of seeing them as ‘a drag’, I saw them as inspiration to keep learning. They were some of the most active people I knew. They were on to something.

I’m now aware, being vegan, that other people may see me as a drag, an elitist, bossy – all the things I thought of those few vegan people in my former life. I’m pretty vocal about the things I’ve learned, but mainly in a positive way because becoming vegan is something that gives me eternal joy.

I would say vegans in general are not as judgmental as others might assume. Most vegans were not born that way so they know they have no right to judge, and it takes too much energy to judge 99% of the human race. That energy is better spent creating strategies to save the world that actually have results.

I think more than ‘annoying’, the people around me see me as healthy, happy, and as a leader. But I don’t kid myself: I know they also see me as the dreaded interventionist to their inner meatahoilc. They don’t want to be seen as they expect I see them: as someone who harms animals. No one wants to be seen this way.

The bottom line: it’s not my responsibility to take on their guilt. Living a vegan lifestyle is the largest gesture of kindness a person can make and living within this kindness, you become impervious to other’s judgments on you for allegedly judging them.

I don't want to be harmed & I don't want to be the reason they're harmed. That simple.

I have lost friends since going vegan, jobs, family relationships, probably other opportunities I don’t even know of. But I also meet new, amazing people every day who I then have time for when expired relationships die out. Not necessarily vegan people, but people who are open, risk-taking, growing. Being progressive and embracing change is at the core of who I am, and living according to these values naturally attracts similar people.

I acknowledge that people have to make changes at their own pace, but the more they are reminded of the detriments of their choices, the faster they might put two and two together (and not take 28 years to figure it out like me.)

These reminders don’t have to be negative, they can come in the form of vegan baking and dropping the ‘v’ word until it becomes a household word.

It’s not my role to police the universe, but it is my role to protect animals. This is the zone I try to live within.