The Dorky Vegan

I have internet again. For, you know, the next two weeks until something else breaks.

But until then… lots to do!

Comments are turned off right now because I’ve been getting almost all spam, so… yeah.

My internet’s down at my apartment. I’m currently at the library using their incredibly slow wifi. What’s better, no internet or painfully slow internet? Grr. Anyway, to tide you over until my internet works (either getting a new DSL modem or getting new internet service in general because I hate AT&T), check out the Vegan Death Squad’s MySpace page! Yeah, we rock, you know it.

And… I’m out. Hopefully I’ll be back relatively soon!

Today at work, the subject of me only dating other vegans came up (I won’t get into the specifics of how this conversation came about). I’d like to explain here, keeping in mind that I’ve never actually dated a vegan, only omnis, so a lot of my preferences are formed by those experiences, as well as my own ideals.

Basically, veganism is a huge part of my life, it’s not only the way I eat but what I do with my spare time (protests, research, “fun” reading, etc). I surround myself with people who “get it” because, first of all, it’s exhausting to constantly be explaining myself and second, it’s tiring to have to battle someone (especially someone very close to you) constantly about veganism. Take, for instance, while I was home for Christmas. I love my family, but I got extremely frustrated with them. I don’t want to have to deal with that every day. Even if we don’t get into a discussion on veganism, it drains my energy to know that they’re completely resistant to something that’s so important to me.

Second, I don’t want to be around dead animals. Meat, leather, toothpaste… I don’t want to see it and I certainly don’t want to touch that. I know “mixed” couples who have a veg*n household and their significant others are omni outside of the house, and it seems to work for them. But it wouldn’t for me. Maybe I just have a very sensitive nose, but I can smell when someone’s eaten meat. And even if I couldn’t smell it, I’d know it and it grosses me out.

Third, it’s an extremely important thing to me. Being on the side of animal rights is, to me, a moral and ethical standpoint. If someone doesn’t agree with me on one of the biggest issues in my life, does anything else really matter? If they can’t see the logic of animal liberation, I don’t think anything else we may have in common will really matter. For an analogy, would someone who fought for racial equality in the 60s be comfortable dating a white supremacist, just because they have the same taste in music and movies and s/he can make them laugh? I doubt it.

Fourth, at least from my experience, all the guys I’ve dated have been extremely resistant to me being veg*n (I haven’t dated anyone since I became vegan… all entirely my own doing). One ex-boyfriend gave me a lot of crap about it. Another guy I dated for about a month told me that being vegetarian was why I was fat, because of all the sugar and carbs in fruit (first: Huh? Second: Way to insult me! I was about 15 pounds overweight at the time and had lost 50 already and he knew this!). So, from personal experience (and I’m not saying all non-vegan guys are like this, but apparently the ones I seem to find are), they’re just not supportive of me and my choices.

Basically, the way I explained it (because I didn’t have the time to explain all of this, and these are people who can’t grasp the concept that I eat stuff other than salads every day) was that it’s like the very religious. To certain religious people, they would never consider marrying outside of their religion. Excluding those who just don’t want to break the rule of outside marriages, it means a lot of them to have that faith, and they can’t relate as intimately with people who don’t have that faith. To an extent, that’s how it is with me (especially since my veganism is part of my semi-Buddhist faith, but more that being vegan led me to Buddhism than the other way around). But it encompasses a lot more than that.

I’ve had so much to write, but haven’t gotten around to it. I wanted to write this all out before I forgot. Maybe this weekend I’ll write the other stuff.