I had no rants for ages (sorry but I was a wee tad sick :( , but I'm grand now yah! So let the rants begin!
I wanna complain about how oblivious most people are. It just seems that most people think everything you are told is the perfect truth and they would never dare challenge it. Everything in the world (in western culture at least) is about consumer markets and everything is seen as a possible commodity that will be sold to the highest bidder. As a vegan I get so many of the clichés asked of/said to me, which astonishes me as to how backward the world still is and how not many educated minds are trying to reach above the crowd and the vicious rumors to search for honest answers. Most people walk around with a blindfold on so that they can tell themselves and other people that they are a decent human being.
As someone who burnt the socially binding blindfold a long time ago it is so frustrating to see these people.
Here are some of the questions or statements I have encountered recently as a vegan, or in the past when I was just vegetarian :
but you need calcium from milk! fact now: A high protein diet, especially derived from animal foods, causes calcium loss in the body. The higher sulphur-to-calcium ratio of meat increases calcium excretion, and a diet rich in meat can cause bone demineralisation. A report published in 1988 [1] comparing the amounts of calcium excreted in the urine of 15 subjects showed that the animal-protein diet caused greater loss of bone calcium in the urine (150mg/day) than the all-vegetable protein diet (103mg/day). These findings suggest that diets providing vegetable rather than animal protein may actually protect against bone loss and hence osteoporosis.
You will not have a lot of choices with foods! ok this one always make me laugh as with most people I meet that eat meat and dairy products their meal consists of the same main things everyday for the majority of their lives. And how many exploited animals do they consume? Probably chicken, beef, pork etc. Not a huge variety there folks. Now see if you can count how many different vegetables there are readily available...And most vegans have a more adventurous imagination when it comes to cooking, creating dishes from all over the world and experimenting with new ingredients (most meat eaters I know didn't even know what stuffed vine leaves were when I had them at a recent party! But I knew everything that they were eating, yawn!)
But drinking milk is natural! yes if you are a baby then drinking your mothers milk is natural, the same way when a adult cow produces milk it is intended for her new born calf. We are the only species on earth that drinks the milk of another species. As adults, and children, this is creepy! The dairy industry is one of the most corrupt, cruel and deceitful mass markets around. In order for you to have milk on your cereal, hundreds of cows are packed into cramped factories with no room to move and they are constantly injected with hormones to increase milk production, so yeah you're drinking those hormones too! And they are always kept pregnant to the point where their bodies become diseased and feeble from stress and malnutrition. Also, it is a well known farming fact that when a cow becomes ill that pus is flowing with their milk and this is then sold on to large supermarket food-chains. Once the cow gives birth, if the newborn is a bull, it is deemed useless, so killed in front of his mother in a horrific fashion and used for the veal market and leather. When a female calf is born she is also immediately dragged away from her mothers milk- milk that was made for her not us- and fed by a machine and she is never allowed to be nursed by or even see her mother again. This causes extreme anguish and pain for both mother and child, who will cry for each other in an attempt to find one another. This is all so you can have milk in your coffee! Does it taste as good now?
Other reaction I have now got is" oh god your not a vegan. god, that's just going too far/Its too radical/I understand vegetarians but vegans? - that's just weird" hmmm yes weird is good my darling! Yes, being vegan is not the majority thing. It is a social anarchist movement of sorts (but all vegans are different and thank fuck for that!). It is a movement that refuses to be specieist and exploit sentient beings. And when I hear the "ohhh vegans", and the air getting sucked out of the room, I am supposed to be the one who feels uncomfortable. I don't, however. For the fact is that they think it's too "radical" because it's usually them, who is subconciously thinking "shit, here is someone who thinks about where food comes from, and they will judge me because I don't"! And then. while I stand quietly by, they usually come off with the defensive bullshit immediately with such things as " well I'm just doing what humans have always done!SORRRRRRY!" (hmmm don't think they are sorry). No! Humans have not always done that, as we are crap hunters and do not have the right teeth to chew raw meat or kill with our bare hands, nor do we have the speed to chase any other animal. We are built to be quite slow and our jaws are perfect for vegetables and fruit, and we don't have to chase fruit and veg! Another defensive response is the one above about how milk is natural, which I have answered already.
Another thing I have heard from the not-so-enlightened is this: "Well if "god" didn't want us to eat meat he wouldn't have made them taste so good. Hahaha" This is usually followed a cheesy, self-satisfied grin as they are so happy with themselves. Well, by that logic, cannibals say that humans taste like chicken and if we taste so good then it should be fine to eat any old human flesh you may find lying around a morgue or something as its ok, it tastes good and its from a sentient being I never had to meet. And yes it is the same thing as animals have brains, nervous system, emotions, memories, etc too.
And now, going with the "god" excuse again that goes hand in hand with the above comment that we have always been doing it: Various religious organisations and churches say it's ok to eat meat, e.g. Catholic church says you can eat meat everyday except Fridays when apparently it's still ok to eat white meat like fish. Hmmm, last time I checked fish isn't a vegetable. However, most of these same organisations and so-called loving religious people claim that gay people are evil and deserve aids, and that women are nothing but mothers or whores. Last time I checked most intelligent people know this all to be a pile of steaming crap. One vegan I know, who is a christian, has pointed out to me that being vegan is in fact the most god-ly, since in the Bible, in the book of Genesis according to the creation story, God created animals on the 6th day and then humans on the 7th day to look after animals. I don't think God intended this in a Soprano's style "take care of them" kinda way.
Another comment I've heard is that it's traditional to eat meat. Yea, thats true, but in many countries, including most western ones, slavery was a "tradition" until not too long ago, and a lot of people came off with the same comments back then to justify it to people who believed we were all equal, saying "but it's what we have always done".
The same goes for those countries where beating women and child labour were the norm as it was what they had always done and as a society they thought that women and children where a lower class than them, same as with different races.
The fact is that animal liberation is exactly the same. It is a class war. People that have been brought up in a "traditional" fashion, to believe what the goverment and the commercials on tv and their peers say, view animals (other sentient beings) with little or no respect as they are a lower class than us, and so therefore we should consume them and use them as mere commodities and let our old fashioned beliefs blind us to the suffering that this industry dishes out every hour, whilst they thrash rain-forests for more grazing land to produce more meat to satisfy the ever so fat nation. And with the amount of dairy and meat factories releasing toxic methane gases because of the over-population of "livestock" shitting altogether in a concentrated area, they are the biggest producers of greenhouse gases than any car or nuclear plant will ever produce!
Your big mac cost a fucking lot to the planet, and especially to the living sentient being sacrificed to make it, even if it only cost you £1.fucking99!
No one likes thinking about all this and dismiss it as just another "crazy' person ranting, because they would rather trust a goverment and a mainstream society that has, and continues to, pollute the world and slaughter millions for profit (both humans and animals), and that have oppressed every minoritiy and have only ever cared about lining the inside of their own pockets.
Think people! Do yourselves good for once.
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