Out wandering our neighbourhood late Saturday evening, we stopped in to the Topanga Cafe for a spontaneous pitcher of margaritas. Never having ordered a pitcher of margaritas in my life, nobody knows why I did then; certainly not because I wanted the smell of tequila to linger into bed with me. At the waiter’s suggestion, we also ended up ordering the eggplant-stuffed burrito, which was likely the best burrito I’ve ever had.
I. and I have experienced outstanding service lately. Last week we went to Steamworks, and when I asked about vegan food, our server was knowledgeable and accommodating. He offered us a stir fry with vegetables, something off the menu. It sounded interesting, but we finished our beers and left, finding ourselves a few blocks East at Six Acres. Once again, our server was helpful and we enjoyed some tasty bean fajitas; but all in all, even hippie-loving Vancouver is slow on the vegan menu courtesy.
I’ve ranted about this before but must mention it again: if a restaurant wanted to increase its sales, it would expand its menu to accommodate all customers. This seems like the most logical thing in the world to me. I’m not talking about changing over entire menus, but adding two or three entrées isn’t going to ruin the business. Most restaurants already stock the ingredients used in vegan cooking, it’s just a willingness to offer it that’s missing. Veganism is a growing trend, and the lack of vegan choices in restaurants is not a reflection of veganism itself, but a reflection of the society it exists within. It is a society that has historically opposed differences, it is a society that is often slow to change. But I understand that this process takes time, given how many different mechanisms of oppression are still ongoing today. We can only counter this oppression with patience and understanding.
That’s the hard part.
Then she mentioned how her doctor had initially prescribed her Premarin following her oophorectomy, but she’d chosen natural sources of estrogen instead. It wasn’t out of place in our conversation of animal abuses in society. A vegetarian and animal lover, she was put off by what Premarin was; a compound drug derived from pregnant mare urine. The horses involved in the drug’s manufacturing are kept artificially pregnant and restrained against their will while their urine is collected and used by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and because of this lack of movement, they develop many physical disabilities that drastically shorten their lifespan. She told us that she couldn’t allow herself to use this product while there was an alternative that did not harm animals.
And while she told us this, I chuckled sadly and ironically to myself, looking at the three different cheeses sitting half-eaten on the coffee table. Continued…
Yesterday afternoon I put on a shirt I hadn’t worn in a while. I was startled. So I went to the bathroom, pulled out the scale, and stood on it. This was when I became worried. It read 138.7 pounds.
I began to reduce my consumption of animals about three years ago. Much of this transition had to do with physical problems I was going through, specifically with my stomach, and since then my diet has fluctuated with a few instances of animals and continued consumption of dairy. It wasn’t until this past summer that I understood that, in line with my ethics, I had to become vegan. To my own detriment, I didn’t weigh myself when I did that, nor had I weighed myself months or years before that. I have little basis for comparison now. Continued…
Prose, posted on August 31, 2009 at 11h26
tags used: on vegetarianism
In the beginning, the human animal was hungry. It ate plants that provided all the nutrients for its survival. Then the human animal began to keep other animals for their entire lives, born into slavery for their savoury skin. The other animals ate the plants and the human animal got whatever nutrients remained after they had been digested and processed. Disease followed in the animal’s captivity, so the human animal devised medicines to cure the diseases. But the cures were imperfect. Eating other animals made the human animal unhealthy. Its blood was thicker, its body slow and cumbersome. So it devised other medicines, like adding tubes and displacing organs and connecting mechanical parts. And these cures too were imperfect, so the human animal lumbered on, searching for new ways to fix the problem it created for itself. An endless effort to artificially attain the nutrients for survival.
Some of the human animals suggested that they eat the plants instead. But of course, that’s silly. We’re much too accustomed to doing things the difficult way.
Mmm. Went to Gorilla Food yesterday, a raw food vegan restaurant in downtown Vancouver. Amazing. One of the dishes we ordered was the zucchini fettucini and cashew cream sauce. Amazing. The salad had an avocado dressing, and guess what? Amazing. Overall, we were quite amazed.
Earlier in the previous day, we were honked and cursed at by some grumpy driver. To think about how quickly that one elderly man turned our day sour is itself upsetting. I wondered how long a man like that can live his life with such hostility, addressing even the most harmless circumstance with aggression. All stereotypes aside, I wondered what his diet was like, if he ate animals. It occurred to me how difficult it must be to live in harmony when you’ve consumed death your entire life.
At the vegan restaurant, our table was near a loud woman. She bored through a conversation with a gentleman, lauding her magnificence in spirituality. Their voices became hostile towards one another. She attacked him with accusations and he defended himself until she huffed out of the restaurant.
All stereotypes aside, I suppose the root of hostility isn’t completely in one’s stomach.
It’s been fiercely frustrating having conversations about animal rights lately. I have been offering myself to answer questions that friends might have, expecting to be asked about protein sources and such. But what I’ve found is that most of my otherwise rational and compassionate friends simply do not get it. While there are some genuine questions, the most frequent are ridiculous. What about insects, are they animals? What about plants, aren’t they alive? What’s wrong with eggs, and cheese, and milk, animals aren’t killed for that?
Vegans are scary. We must be, people treat us with such hostility. Continued…
The beliefs of omnivores have been so carefully constructed that despite how obvious its flaws, we do not question them. In elementary school, you learn about the four required food groups. You learn that protein comes from the muscle tissue of animals, but for one reason or another, they don’t mention broccoli, or bananas, or beans. We are taught not to inflict pain on other living creatures, and so we don’t. We let anyone else do it for us. And so there is a disassociation between the product and the cruelty. A child that tortures a dog is sent to therapy, as would be a child that tortures a cow. But if we move that cow into a factory it becomes a product, and despite there being no difference in suffering, we do not question that this conflict arises. If we did, we might wonder why we value certain living animals more than others. We might see the extent of our selective compassion for life. Continued…
Any restaurant owner that doesn’t have at least one vegetarian entrée on their menu does not know how to run a restaurant. It’s happened three times in the past months that I’ve left a restaurant because of this. Three different salads just don’t cut it; neither does having a main dish with a vegetarian option, which is basically leave out the meat and replace it with nothing. Vegetarianism isn’t a passing fancy; it’s a movement that is gaining popularity. And a business that doesn’t take this into consideration is out of touch with reality.
For me, the decision to be vegetarian came after a long flood of memory. There were three instances that stand out most.
When I was around eleven years old, I went fishing with a friend. My father and I had gone fishing many times before, so I knew the procedure. Bait the hook, dangle it in the water, pull the fish out. But after that came the part that neither my friend or I could do; hit the fish on the head and kill it. I remember trying a few times while it remained alive, flopping around on the ground trying desperately to live. Each hit was softer than the time before. I just couldn’t do it. Continued…
From the liner notes of Propagandhi‘s Supporting Caste.
Effective Advocacy 101 by Jesus H. Chris
Everyone knows that the first rule of effective advocacy is to not insult people. This rule is especially important in terms of advocating on behalf of animals, mostly due to the fact that meat-eaters tend to cry and whine like a bunch of fuckin’ shitty babies when you pull down the diapers of their revolting lifestyle. Haha, just kidding. Calm down babies. Continued…
