The Denial of others!

May 15, 2004

Samantha

Enjoyed your story.

I think we, as vegetarians, stir up the conscious in others, whether they are conscious of it or not and they react in *weird* ways. Sometimes one of those ways is complete denial.

I'll give you an example. I have an New York friend. She is a high powered lawyer, highly educated and smart, lives in Manhattan etc. Somehow we got on this topic and I never encountered so much denial in my life. She said, in regards to the suffering of animals all of these things:

*there are laws on the books preventing this

*it's only exceptional cases

*we need the meat industry for our economy

*I don't agree that that (debeaking) is really suffering

*Some of us "need" meat

*The photos, videos etc could be doctored

*If we didn't kill them, they'd be overpopulating.

I couldn't believe it when she rattled of ALL of these ideas. And she is smart...but obviously there is a resistance to learning the truth. I guess, for now, I'll just respect that resisitance.

Kristina

In a message dated 5/15/04 4:24:26 AM Pacific Daylight Time, writes:

Message: 17 Fri, 14 May 2004 10:35:30 -0700 (PDT) Samantha Demers <SamADemersRe: Re: "Veganism got old"I can understand what you mean about leaving your vegan family and going into the world who choose to turn away from the truth. I am 18 years old and live with one of my sisters and my mother and father. Whenever my sister gets mad at me now, the 21 year old girl insults me by calling me a vegan. It always brings a smile on my face and I can't help but laugh. My father doesn't believe anything I say about what happens to animals or what has animal products in it and how they are processed. He says to me that I can't believe everything I hear or read. However, for the past month my mother has been eating mostly a vegan diet. She still consumes wines that definitely have animal products in them, and she refuses to believe me that most restaurant's have eggs in their pasta. I have even called the places and know for a fact that they do, and she still decides to deny it, because my parent's go out to eat a lot, and she knows that it cuts out even that more places to go to. Butwhen I am with my boyfriend it's great! He isn't vegan or even vegetarian, but he likes so many different kinds of foods, and we are always together, so we aren't going to make food that isn't vegan, so he has been eating mostly vegan food, and he is loosing those extra pounds he didn't want, and feels better! My friends from time to time will still ask me, "So, are you still doing that vegan thing?" They think it is just a phase I am going through, and think that nobody really can do that forever. Living on the east coast with all the seafood and lots and lots of meat based restaurants, they aren't used to someone "giving up" all this. Last night my friend was asking me some stuff about veganism, and then gave her opinion, and wouldn't even let me say what I wanted to say because she didn't want to get into it. People always say the same things..."what do you eat?" "I could never do that." "Can you eat this, or that?" And then when I say that I had something that isn'tregularly vegan, but I can buy it that way, for instance, ice cream or something like that, they gasp loudly, and they are like THAT'S NOT VEGAN! (what is the point of putting the word vegan in front of every kind of food I talk about it, they know I am vegan...my mother does that to me and it is really annoying.) wherever we go, they have to tell everyone that I am vegan as if I am from another planet. None of this stuff really bothers me that much, I is just getting old, and I have only been vegan for 7 months. I'm sure it will all die down after awhile, but then again...probably not. I'm sure you have all heard all of this and much more, of course if I were to list all of the things then this would be even longer than it is...is that possible? on that note, I should save all of you and stop babbling.-Samantha

May 15, 2004

I have recently found the best response to these silly thoughts from meat-eaters to have a strange pitying smile, as though you think they are mad or simple. It seems to speak a thousand words.

Jo

Re: The Denial of others!