James LaVeck and Jenny Stein have written a long, intelligent, well-reasoned piece regarding some changes in the animal rights movement as evidenced by the speaker list from TAFA, the conference which took place this last weekend. The essay is entitled "The Project for the New American Carnivore" and compares the domination of the movement by welfare issues to the neo-con takeover of our country's government among other apt observations.
Please take a moment (or a little longer) and read this excellent essay.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
Dairy Farmers in the American Heartland
I have a really good friend who often argues with me that if everyone went vegan a lot of “Americans” would be out of work. And she isn’t the only one who says this—many people believe that taking compassion into account when we fill our plates somehow means less compassion toward our human neighbors.
I for one never really bought this argument. For one thing I’ve never been so optimistic as to think that I’d start my vegan blog and then suddenly a few days later nobody would be buying cow’s milk. But I also believe that people currently employed in industries that exploit animals could slowly but surely find work in the expanding industries replacing animal exploitation. Soy milk and veggie burgers, anyone?
But yesterday the Washington Post ran an interesting article showing a little spoken of trend in animal agriculture today. The United States is actually importing people from other nations to supply us with the steady stream of animal products consumers demand. This article covered the tensions and growing pollution in one community as Dutch dairy farmers set up huge operations in the US. We also know that many people working on battery farms for eggs or in slaughterhouses are illegal immigrants.
I’m not anti-immigrant by any means, but I believe that these trends show that rather than keeping our citizens working and productive, this huge push for more and cheaper animal products is actually just increasing a demand for cheap labor and asks immigrants to do work that many citizens are no longer willing to do.
So the next time someone accusing you of trying to put American family farmers out of business just because you order a soy latte, ask them how many of their friends currently work in animal agriculture. Remind them that the mythic small family farm is just that, a myth. Remind them that to produce all these animal products they thoughtlessly gobble we’re importing people as well as animals.
Then point them to this article and show them how dairy farming rather than keeping “Americans” employed is pushing them out of their communities and polluting their water and soil. I wonder if anyone making the “jobs before animals” argument really knows much about how our animal exploiting industries operate.
I for one never really bought this argument. For one thing I’ve never been so optimistic as to think that I’d start my vegan blog and then suddenly a few days later nobody would be buying cow’s milk. But I also believe that people currently employed in industries that exploit animals could slowly but surely find work in the expanding industries replacing animal exploitation. Soy milk and veggie burgers, anyone?
But yesterday the Washington Post ran an interesting article showing a little spoken of trend in animal agriculture today. The United States is actually importing people from other nations to supply us with the steady stream of animal products consumers demand. This article covered the tensions and growing pollution in one community as Dutch dairy farmers set up huge operations in the US. We also know that many people working on battery farms for eggs or in slaughterhouses are illegal immigrants.
I’m not anti-immigrant by any means, but I believe that these trends show that rather than keeping our citizens working and productive, this huge push for more and cheaper animal products is actually just increasing a demand for cheap labor and asks immigrants to do work that many citizens are no longer willing to do.
So the next time someone accusing you of trying to put American family farmers out of business just because you order a soy latte, ask them how many of their friends currently work in animal agriculture. Remind them that the mythic small family farm is just that, a myth. Remind them that to produce all these animal products they thoughtlessly gobble we’re importing people as well as animals.
Then point them to this article and show them how dairy farming rather than keeping “Americans” employed is pushing them out of their communities and polluting their water and soil. I wonder if anyone making the “jobs before animals” argument really knows much about how our animal exploiting industries operate.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Driving Sideways
Driving sideways, taken in by the scenery, as you’re propelled along
And your companion, refuses to navigate, for fear she may be wrong.
This song always got under my skin. Aimee Mann knows how to round up all my demons and put them in a beautiful package and stick a bow on top.
The thing about driving sideways is that there are times in life where we realize there’s so much wrong, but those demons I mentioned come out in force and keep us locked into a non-productive path. Where do the demons come from? Well, let me tell you.
Growing up was hard for me, as I’ve mentioned many times. My mother liked to be right. She liked to be right so much that she couldn’t tolerate anyone telling her otherwise, so if on the rare occasion I found my voice and said something (and it was always from fear, a wrong turn is one thing, but if it looked like a wrong turn off of a cliff then I got worried) the reaction was swift and punishing. I’ll always remember the rebukes “You don’t tell ME what to do!” or “I’m not going to let some smart-mouthed little girl dictate to me!”
In retrospect I really don’t believe that I was smart-mouthed, just now and then fear helped me find my voice. I remember once I went to school and we had health class and the entire time they put up slides of dead and disabled babies saying “all of this was caused by women drinking while they were pregnant.” I went home and at 2:30 in the afternoon my pregnant mother poured herself a glass of sherry. With tears in my eyes I said that I’d just been told at school that drinking is really bad for unborn babies. She could have lied and reassured me, she could have said she’d never heard that, instead she punished me for opening my mouth.
Years and years later I ended up in a relationship with a really unpleasant guy, this time driving sideways was really about driving, among other things. But if we were in the car and I said “ok, we need to turn right at the next light” I’d get the raging response of “I’m not a moron! Shut up! I know where to turn! Stop treating me like I’m stupid.” If I thought we’d made a wrong turn it was “I know what I’m f---ing doing!” So I learned to keep my mouth shut, though happily I did finally grow a spine and get out of that horrible relationship.
Part of being an adult and trying to put past baggage where it belongs is learning that if the driver makes a wrong turn that is going to cost us an extra forty minutes of travel time, then I should probably actually say something. Good, normal, adult people don’t rage at others for saying things like that. But when you grow up with it, it can be hard to relearn.
Recently I posted to my blog and on an email list some of my concerns about some of the larger animal charities. I was turned off by certain fundraising methods and moreover concerned that as a movement we’re “driving sideways.” The response was of course swift and punishing. I’ve been told I’m too angry. I’ve been told I must be trying to work against animals and must in fact hate animals. I’ve been told I’m just trying to tear down good people who dedicate their lives to helping animals. One person went so far as to attempt to psychoanalyze me and said that I’m projecting other issues from my life onto excellent groups because I have psychological problems I’m unwilling to deal with.
I dunno. Sometimes bad fundraising tactics are just bad fundraising tactics. Sometimes if I say “hey, where is this car going?” I really mean “hey, where is this car going?”
I’m not perfect. I’ve worked on a lot of stuff. I have more to work on. I always thought maybe at least it’s an advantage that I can often identify what’s wrong and why—it’s a start at least.
I feel like I’m back in the car being told to shut up. I don’t feel like shutting up just yet. I do make an effort not to vilify individual people. I think that the people who work for and support these groups do so out of absolute sincerity. I just think that somehow group-think has from time to time maybe resulted in a couple bad decisions, a wrong turn now and then.
Friday, July 27, 2007
I look like a vegan
Not really. This is a silly post.
I painted these pins in black and silver--they look all abstract, but then you look up close and they say vegan. Seemed like a decorative thing.
I painted these pins in black and silver--they look all abstract, but then you look up close and they say vegan. Seemed like a decorative thing.
Culture and Tradition Again
How many times have all of us working to help animals heard someone excuse inexcusable behavior because they feel that animal abuse is “part of their culture” or a family tradition?
I wrote about this before in Tradition Vs. Veganism, and again a couple days ago I touched on it by noting again that my family participated in cock fighting, a practice most people find abhorrent today.
Although culture and tradition provide comfort and identity to many people, they can also hold us back when we fail to ever question those traditions. Did my ancestors enjoy cock fights? Possibly, but remember this was also the era of public hangings. People would pack a picnic and go watch another human being die a slow agonizing death. This was a time when my great grandfather changed his name and purposefully covered up his origins because he thought his real name and his real ethnic identity would prevent him from running a successful business. Side shows flourished back then as people paid money to stare at and make fun of the disabled and ill. We’ve turned our backs on many of these old “traditions” so why not re-examine other traditions as well?
Most of us come from backgrounds where some traditions were beautiful and others were terrible. Though we rarely think of child abuse as “tradition” in many families it is taught, preserved, and passed down generation to generation the same as if it were a style of dress, or a way of praying. Likewise animal use and abuse can be a bad habit or a flawed belief as much as a tradition.
Would most of us go around kicking puppies simply because a family member had previously kicked puppies? Probably not. We would recognize that as a personal failing on that relative’s part. But we cling to things that are equally cruel because we attach an arbitrary meaning to them. Turkeys suffer terribly during their short lives, and are slaughtered under terrible conditions, yet we feel this is necessary so we can put the traditional turkey on the Thanksgiving Day table. We still go to the circus to watch enslaved elephants controlled through fear and pain perform for our amusement because “Dad used to take me as a kid.” What we need to recognize is that we have a lot more options and a lot more information than our ancestors had—we can still take our kids to a show, and there are lots of shows that don’t use animals; we can still eat a wonderful, delicious meal together without the turkey because we have so many other foods available now.
Another funny little note on Thanksgiving is that turkey and pumpkin are the two traditional foods that most people insist on for the holiday, citing that these were foods from the first Thanksgiving. There is some dispute about that story. But when we look at the other foods served, we see a lot of foods that would not have been present, like rolls and stuffing made with wheat flour, green bean casserole, many dishes containing sugar or cheese, and other ingredients that would not have been present at the first Thanksgiving. So the traditional foods are a little arbitrary.
So many times I’ve heard people lament the effect their traditional cooking has had on their health. A friend of mine from Jamaica said that she had gained a lot of weight and developed a pre-diabetic condition from eating her traditional “comfort foods” like meat pastries. Fearful she might lose her eyesight, she had to find ways to eat foods she had not been fed at home, like salads, for the sake of her health. But she found she could still honor her heritage with fruit, which had always been a part of her family meals, she just had to give up the breaded and fried items. She could also still enjoy traditional stews, but she decided to add veggies and leave out the fatty meat she used to enjoy. I can sympathize—my family apparently never ate a vegetable except one that was cooked in lard, so many of us had to learn new ways to look at food!
If we can give up traditional foods because our health demands it, we can also give up or adapt traditional foods because we want to be kinder to animals and the planet. After all it’s not just our own health that’s affected by what we eat. That was another reason my friend decided to change her diet. She remembered all the beautiful birds of her home in Jamaica and feared that climate change and pollution would drive them into extinction.
Another way we can view traditional cruelty and our decision to depart from it is by asking ourselves what our ancestors would have wanted. Veganism would have been an alien concept to most of them naturally, but all of them wanted a better and more peaceful life for us. In my family I’ve had an ancestor or more than one in every single US war, starting before we were even the US, with the American Revolution. My ancestor who fought in the revolution was a Quaker and thus must have had terrible reservations about going to war. But he wanted to fight that war with the hope that his children and their children could be free from war.
That’s not how it worked out sadly, but we keep in mind that our ancestors who fought wars, slaughtered animals, fought animals, or even stole for a living all wanted better for the future generations. They hardened their hearts hoping we would not have to. If we could talk to them today they probably wouldn’t totally get each and every decision we’ve made, but they would want us to live in peace and take care of the planet and each other. (We’ll forget for the moment that random ancestor who would hate you for not covering your hair in public, or the one that didn’t want you mixing with people of other religions, or the one that would say “You never been to prison? What you think you better’n’ me?” or the one who went on some murderous rampage before being shot down. We’ll just leave those disastrous chapters of family history shut for the time being.)
When we do cruel things just because our forbearers did, we are not really honoring their memories. Instead we are merely repeating their mistakes.
I wrote about this before in Tradition Vs. Veganism, and again a couple days ago I touched on it by noting again that my family participated in cock fighting, a practice most people find abhorrent today.
Although culture and tradition provide comfort and identity to many people, they can also hold us back when we fail to ever question those traditions. Did my ancestors enjoy cock fights? Possibly, but remember this was also the era of public hangings. People would pack a picnic and go watch another human being die a slow agonizing death. This was a time when my great grandfather changed his name and purposefully covered up his origins because he thought his real name and his real ethnic identity would prevent him from running a successful business. Side shows flourished back then as people paid money to stare at and make fun of the disabled and ill. We’ve turned our backs on many of these old “traditions” so why not re-examine other traditions as well?
Most of us come from backgrounds where some traditions were beautiful and others were terrible. Though we rarely think of child abuse as “tradition” in many families it is taught, preserved, and passed down generation to generation the same as if it were a style of dress, or a way of praying. Likewise animal use and abuse can be a bad habit or a flawed belief as much as a tradition.
Would most of us go around kicking puppies simply because a family member had previously kicked puppies? Probably not. We would recognize that as a personal failing on that relative’s part. But we cling to things that are equally cruel because we attach an arbitrary meaning to them. Turkeys suffer terribly during their short lives, and are slaughtered under terrible conditions, yet we feel this is necessary so we can put the traditional turkey on the Thanksgiving Day table. We still go to the circus to watch enslaved elephants controlled through fear and pain perform for our amusement because “Dad used to take me as a kid.” What we need to recognize is that we have a lot more options and a lot more information than our ancestors had—we can still take our kids to a show, and there are lots of shows that don’t use animals; we can still eat a wonderful, delicious meal together without the turkey because we have so many other foods available now.
Another funny little note on Thanksgiving is that turkey and pumpkin are the two traditional foods that most people insist on for the holiday, citing that these were foods from the first Thanksgiving. There is some dispute about that story. But when we look at the other foods served, we see a lot of foods that would not have been present, like rolls and stuffing made with wheat flour, green bean casserole, many dishes containing sugar or cheese, and other ingredients that would not have been present at the first Thanksgiving. So the traditional foods are a little arbitrary.
So many times I’ve heard people lament the effect their traditional cooking has had on their health. A friend of mine from Jamaica said that she had gained a lot of weight and developed a pre-diabetic condition from eating her traditional “comfort foods” like meat pastries. Fearful she might lose her eyesight, she had to find ways to eat foods she had not been fed at home, like salads, for the sake of her health. But she found she could still honor her heritage with fruit, which had always been a part of her family meals, she just had to give up the breaded and fried items. She could also still enjoy traditional stews, but she decided to add veggies and leave out the fatty meat she used to enjoy. I can sympathize—my family apparently never ate a vegetable except one that was cooked in lard, so many of us had to learn new ways to look at food!
If we can give up traditional foods because our health demands it, we can also give up or adapt traditional foods because we want to be kinder to animals and the planet. After all it’s not just our own health that’s affected by what we eat. That was another reason my friend decided to change her diet. She remembered all the beautiful birds of her home in Jamaica and feared that climate change and pollution would drive them into extinction.
Another way we can view traditional cruelty and our decision to depart from it is by asking ourselves what our ancestors would have wanted. Veganism would have been an alien concept to most of them naturally, but all of them wanted a better and more peaceful life for us. In my family I’ve had an ancestor or more than one in every single US war, starting before we were even the US, with the American Revolution. My ancestor who fought in the revolution was a Quaker and thus must have had terrible reservations about going to war. But he wanted to fight that war with the hope that his children and their children could be free from war.
That’s not how it worked out sadly, but we keep in mind that our ancestors who fought wars, slaughtered animals, fought animals, or even stole for a living all wanted better for the future generations. They hardened their hearts hoping we would not have to. If we could talk to them today they probably wouldn’t totally get each and every decision we’ve made, but they would want us to live in peace and take care of the planet and each other. (We’ll forget for the moment that random ancestor who would hate you for not covering your hair in public, or the one that didn’t want you mixing with people of other religions, or the one that would say “You never been to prison? What you think you better’n’ me?” or the one who went on some murderous rampage before being shot down. We’ll just leave those disastrous chapters of family history shut for the time being.)
When we do cruel things just because our forbearers did, we are not really honoring their memories. Instead we are merely repeating their mistakes.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Taste Better: Obesity Is Contagious
A new study has come out telling us that obesity in contagious, not physically contagious, but we’re more likely to gain weight when our friends and family do. This might also tell us something about how our friends and family can discourage veganism and actually punish people for trying to change their diet and lifestyle. We’d hope veganism would be contagious, but I fear it’s more likely that the diet of the majority of the peer group would be enforced on other members of the group.
I know that when I first decided to become vegetarian my family and my friends were very opposed to the idea. They tempted me with meat based foods and also ridiculed my efforts. When I became vegan my mother went so far as to put cheese over all of the vegetables (even though I’d cleaned and cut and prepared them) so that there would be nothing I could eat as a vegan. They were certainly fighting my efforts to break away from the pack. I know other people who have similar stories of resistance from their friends and family. Other people didn’t face such blatant sabotage but found themselves feeling left out as their friends stopped inviting them places (“we were all going for ice cream and you’re vegan now”) or felt picked on as others constantly made little jokes about their diet.
When we look at all of this, no wonder people can be a little reluctant to jump on the vegan bandwagon, and no wonder so many people abandon veganism after a while.
I’m a firm believer now in speaking honestly and openly. Instead of sulking because your friend said something derogatory about veganism, maybe you should say in a nice way “you know that actually hurts my feelings. This is important to me and it hurts to think that my friends are making fun of me for it.” Or in the case of being left out of the ice cream run one could say “I’d still like the company even if I don’t eat ice cream, besides I think that place has some fruit based sorbet.” Sometimes our friends need reassurance too, that even though we’re making a major change we still do care about them.
In families control over food can become a primary battleground naturally, as food has come to represent almost everything else other than nutrition in our culture. Food represents tradition, and so efforts to change that tradition can be met with much opposition from other family members. Feeding family members and spouse foods they like represents love to many people, and so when one family member tries to change the types of food being served, it might be seen not as an effort to save animals, but as a diminishment of affection. Further the sharing of food still means companionship and it's amazing how hurt people can get when loved ones don't eat the same foods together.
All these are reasons why eating habits, particularly the poor ones that contribute to contagious obesity, can be so hard to break away from.
There are times where some of this can cross the line into abusive behavior though. Anyone that consistently belittles your beliefs or insults you isn’t a friend. Family should be there to support us and encourage us as we learn and grow, not to make us feel terrible for doing something we believe in.
Another reason obesity might be contagious is that people might feel better about eating foods they know are bad for them if a friend does it too. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard these exact words from a friend “Dessert? I really shouldn’t… Oh, are you going to have some? I’ll get some if you do.” Gobbling candy bars in the middle of the night might strike us as disordered eating, but if you’re just having a piece of cake with a friend then that’s totally normal. I’ve seen this happen with people “cheating” on veganism as well “Sue ate one of the cookies, so I just tried one too.”
The upside of this study though is that it demonstrates that having vegan friends can probably help us stay vegan, just as having healthy friends might inspire us to be a little healthier. I also always think it’s helpful to understand some of the hidden motivators behind our eating habits. I know so many people who feel like their eating controls them, not the other way around. But if they have information about the social pressures surrounding eating it might lead to more thoughtful eating. And hopefully more thoughtful eating can lead to more vegan eating. Anyway the hope would be to move from an internal dialogue that says “must eat cookie now” to one that says “I feel like I want a cookie, but that could be only because Sue is eating one. I think I’ll wait and try to make a better decision.”
I know that when I first decided to become vegetarian my family and my friends were very opposed to the idea. They tempted me with meat based foods and also ridiculed my efforts. When I became vegan my mother went so far as to put cheese over all of the vegetables (even though I’d cleaned and cut and prepared them) so that there would be nothing I could eat as a vegan. They were certainly fighting my efforts to break away from the pack. I know other people who have similar stories of resistance from their friends and family. Other people didn’t face such blatant sabotage but found themselves feeling left out as their friends stopped inviting them places (“we were all going for ice cream and you’re vegan now”) or felt picked on as others constantly made little jokes about their diet.
When we look at all of this, no wonder people can be a little reluctant to jump on the vegan bandwagon, and no wonder so many people abandon veganism after a while.
I’m a firm believer now in speaking honestly and openly. Instead of sulking because your friend said something derogatory about veganism, maybe you should say in a nice way “you know that actually hurts my feelings. This is important to me and it hurts to think that my friends are making fun of me for it.” Or in the case of being left out of the ice cream run one could say “I’d still like the company even if I don’t eat ice cream, besides I think that place has some fruit based sorbet.” Sometimes our friends need reassurance too, that even though we’re making a major change we still do care about them.
In families control over food can become a primary battleground naturally, as food has come to represent almost everything else other than nutrition in our culture. Food represents tradition, and so efforts to change that tradition can be met with much opposition from other family members. Feeding family members and spouse foods they like represents love to many people, and so when one family member tries to change the types of food being served, it might be seen not as an effort to save animals, but as a diminishment of affection. Further the sharing of food still means companionship and it's amazing how hurt people can get when loved ones don't eat the same foods together.
All these are reasons why eating habits, particularly the poor ones that contribute to contagious obesity, can be so hard to break away from.
There are times where some of this can cross the line into abusive behavior though. Anyone that consistently belittles your beliefs or insults you isn’t a friend. Family should be there to support us and encourage us as we learn and grow, not to make us feel terrible for doing something we believe in.
Another reason obesity might be contagious is that people might feel better about eating foods they know are bad for them if a friend does it too. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard these exact words from a friend “Dessert? I really shouldn’t… Oh, are you going to have some? I’ll get some if you do.” Gobbling candy bars in the middle of the night might strike us as disordered eating, but if you’re just having a piece of cake with a friend then that’s totally normal. I’ve seen this happen with people “cheating” on veganism as well “Sue ate one of the cookies, so I just tried one too.”
The upside of this study though is that it demonstrates that having vegan friends can probably help us stay vegan, just as having healthy friends might inspire us to be a little healthier. I also always think it’s helpful to understand some of the hidden motivators behind our eating habits. I know so many people who feel like their eating controls them, not the other way around. But if they have information about the social pressures surrounding eating it might lead to more thoughtful eating. And hopefully more thoughtful eating can lead to more vegan eating. Anyway the hope would be to move from an internal dialogue that says “must eat cookie now” to one that says “I feel like I want a cookie, but that could be only because Sue is eating one. I think I’ll wait and try to make a better decision.”
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Trying Again: 8 Silly Things
Sean tells me that I did a very poor job on my eight true things meme. He says there are other aspects of my personality that are less expected than what I listed.
Around the same time it seems a lot of people were telling me I was too angry. My response was “What? Me? Angry?” So clearly the other side of my personality isn’t coming through in what I type.
So without further ado, Eight True and Truly Stupid Silly Things About Me
1. I like stupid humor. I liked “Austin Powers.” All someone has to say to me is “friggin’ sharks with laser beams on their heads” and I’m doubled over in laughter. I also really liked Dave Chapelle before he decided to quit. Not that that’s stupid humor, he’s actually wickedly funny, it’s just so inappropriate. But it’s just not something most people would expect of me.
2. I sing really badly but I like to sing to my companion animals while I do things. I usually like to take really dumb pop songs and rework the lyrics to be about my animals. As an example I might be playing with Kyra (the dog) with her rope tuggy toy and I’ll sing “Bite it Kyra, one more time!” Sometimes I sing better songs to them, for example there’s this Damien Rice song and the only part I really know is “Mmmm, mmmm, girl who does yoga, when we come over…” So when I give Kyra and Nikita their puppy massages (I really rub them down, they’re athletic dogs, so they get sore muscles like anyone) I’ll sing to them “mmmm, mmmm, dog who does yoga, time to turn over…”
Hmm, does the fact that I massage my dogs and call that “puppy massage” qualify as a whole separate silly thing?
3. Small stuff can make me really happy sometimes. The other day I took the dogs to the park and we found a few ripe wild raspberries the birds hadn’t gotten yet. It was something simple but really nice. It was like the trip to the park was already a big gift and the raspberries were the great big bow on top. We also saw a really cute green frog on that walk.
4. As a child I collected pin cushions. I had a pin cushion I made using some lace my great grandmother had hand tatted. I kept these pin cushions until one day while I was at work Kyra went on a rampage and tore apart all of my pin cushions, the handmade ones, the store-bought ones… But when I’d say that I was sad because my dog ruined my pin cushions nobody really understood. They’d say “huh? Pin cushions?” It was a tragic loss to me. Of course everyone wants to know if Kyra was ok. Of course she was, she didn’t eat any pins, just shredded the pin cushions.
5. Before I moved in with Sean I wasn’t sure I wanted to live with cats. Though I had companion cats as a child, I was afraid that Sean’s cats would bully my small rabbit Ivan. Instead it turned out to be the other way around and Ivan chased the cats and terrorized them. After moving in with Sean’s cats I came to adore cats. People often ask me with wonder “You have cats and rabbits? Don’t the cats try to eat the rabbits?” But I know the truth now.
6. I didn’t learn to drive really before I moved in with Sean. My parents never really taught me, and though I drove a couple times after I got my license, I then lived without a car and walked everywhere for about a decade. When I moved in with Sean I wound up in an area with less reliable public transportation, so Sean taught me how to drive. I’m still incredibly nervous about driving and it wears me out. I mostly only drive short distances.
7. I started eating really spicy foods pretty young and I love them to this day. I think many family members always liked spicy foods, but my grandparents were also stationed in Holland for a while where they were exposed to lots of Indonesian foods. It took me a long time to realize that not every spicy sauce or dip is called “sambal.” My grandparents still call every hot sauce “sambal” though, whether it really is sambal or it’s just chilli oil or if it’s Mexican salsa. When it comes down to spicy foods I far prefer my hot peppers freshly chopped to the kind of sour, oily, smelly stuff you get in a true sambal. My grandparents used to have their friends in Holland ship it to them because they couldn’t get it here. Also many sambals aren’t vegan or even vegetarian and may contain fermented fish or other gross stuff. Eet smakelijk!
8. I’m having so much trouble coming up with another one. This is hard. Sean thinks I need to repeat again for the record that I went naked for Peta before. So mea culpa!
Around the same time it seems a lot of people were telling me I was too angry. My response was “What? Me? Angry?” So clearly the other side of my personality isn’t coming through in what I type.
So without further ado, Eight True and Truly Stupid Silly Things About Me
1. I like stupid humor. I liked “Austin Powers.” All someone has to say to me is “friggin’ sharks with laser beams on their heads” and I’m doubled over in laughter. I also really liked Dave Chapelle before he decided to quit. Not that that’s stupid humor, he’s actually wickedly funny, it’s just so inappropriate. But it’s just not something most people would expect of me.
2. I sing really badly but I like to sing to my companion animals while I do things. I usually like to take really dumb pop songs and rework the lyrics to be about my animals. As an example I might be playing with Kyra (the dog) with her rope tuggy toy and I’ll sing “Bite it Kyra, one more time!” Sometimes I sing better songs to them, for example there’s this Damien Rice song and the only part I really know is “Mmmm, mmmm, girl who does yoga, when we come over…” So when I give Kyra and Nikita their puppy massages (I really rub them down, they’re athletic dogs, so they get sore muscles like anyone) I’ll sing to them “mmmm, mmmm, dog who does yoga, time to turn over…”
Hmm, does the fact that I massage my dogs and call that “puppy massage” qualify as a whole separate silly thing?
3. Small stuff can make me really happy sometimes. The other day I took the dogs to the park and we found a few ripe wild raspberries the birds hadn’t gotten yet. It was something simple but really nice. It was like the trip to the park was already a big gift and the raspberries were the great big bow on top. We also saw a really cute green frog on that walk.
4. As a child I collected pin cushions. I had a pin cushion I made using some lace my great grandmother had hand tatted. I kept these pin cushions until one day while I was at work Kyra went on a rampage and tore apart all of my pin cushions, the handmade ones, the store-bought ones… But when I’d say that I was sad because my dog ruined my pin cushions nobody really understood. They’d say “huh? Pin cushions?” It was a tragic loss to me. Of course everyone wants to know if Kyra was ok. Of course she was, she didn’t eat any pins, just shredded the pin cushions.
5. Before I moved in with Sean I wasn’t sure I wanted to live with cats. Though I had companion cats as a child, I was afraid that Sean’s cats would bully my small rabbit Ivan. Instead it turned out to be the other way around and Ivan chased the cats and terrorized them. After moving in with Sean’s cats I came to adore cats. People often ask me with wonder “You have cats and rabbits? Don’t the cats try to eat the rabbits?” But I know the truth now.
6. I didn’t learn to drive really before I moved in with Sean. My parents never really taught me, and though I drove a couple times after I got my license, I then lived without a car and walked everywhere for about a decade. When I moved in with Sean I wound up in an area with less reliable public transportation, so Sean taught me how to drive. I’m still incredibly nervous about driving and it wears me out. I mostly only drive short distances.
7. I started eating really spicy foods pretty young and I love them to this day. I think many family members always liked spicy foods, but my grandparents were also stationed in Holland for a while where they were exposed to lots of Indonesian foods. It took me a long time to realize that not every spicy sauce or dip is called “sambal.” My grandparents still call every hot sauce “sambal” though, whether it really is sambal or it’s just chilli oil or if it’s Mexican salsa. When it comes down to spicy foods I far prefer my hot peppers freshly chopped to the kind of sour, oily, smelly stuff you get in a true sambal. My grandparents used to have their friends in Holland ship it to them because they couldn’t get it here. Also many sambals aren’t vegan or even vegetarian and may contain fermented fish or other gross stuff. Eet smakelijk!
8. I’m having so much trouble coming up with another one. This is hard. Sean thinks I need to repeat again for the record that I went naked for Peta before. So mea culpa!
Monday, July 23, 2007
Think Of The Animals We Don’t Protect
With all the attention on Michael Vick and his dog fighting and dog killing activities, many of us, myself included, forgot momentarily that far worse than this goes on day after day, hour after hour, year after year, on farms and in slaughterhouses all over the country.
As a nation we tend to divide ourselves into distinct categories, and choose beliefs and traditions meant to define us culturally and ethically. I wrote before that animal fighting was a tradition in my family, and in fact my great grandfather won the seed money to open his hardware store from running cock fights. His children though distanced themselves from animal fighting, preferring the image that went along with owning and store and a house, to that of the opportunistic vagabond who blew in on the west wind to gamble, sleep in gutters, and fight animals. They only touched birds who were cooked and served on plates. They didn’t gather and place bets in dark alleys. Of course they saw nothing wrong with hunting or farming though, occupations that they saw as denoting a higher social class.
I am not proud of this family history, but I find it informative. This tangible connection from me through a generation still living, to more blood thirsty traditions. Traditions that are looked down on by most of society. It’s easy to cry out against practices done by the few, conducted underground, that smack of backwardness and open cruelty. But meanwhile we don’t often question where our food comes from. We deplore obvious blood lust, but tolerate covert cruelty done for our convenience.
As horrorific as I find dog fighting and cock fighting, I have to remember that the torture behind all those neatly packaged Styrofoam trays of flesh in the grocery store is equally terrible. That the suffering of animals kept alive to produce milk and eggs, only to be killed when their production drops, is much like the suffering of dogs bred and forced to fight, and killed when they lose. Intensive confinement, painful tail and ear docking (as well as debeaking and amputation of toes), electric shocks, open wounds, all of these are found in animal agriculture. Rape racks are not an invention of dog fighting rings, they are part of animal agriculture, designed to force reproduction on animals so traumatized and deprived that they would no longer reproduce on their own. Even on small family farms, reproduction is not the choice of the farmed animals, but is carefully planned and implemented to maximize profit for the farmers.
We don’t want to legislate dog fighting to make it more humane or less lethal. Instead we want it stopped entirely. Maybe we should start thinking about other animals, equally innocent but totally unprotected, in the same terms.
As a nation we tend to divide ourselves into distinct categories, and choose beliefs and traditions meant to define us culturally and ethically. I wrote before that animal fighting was a tradition in my family, and in fact my great grandfather won the seed money to open his hardware store from running cock fights. His children though distanced themselves from animal fighting, preferring the image that went along with owning and store and a house, to that of the opportunistic vagabond who blew in on the west wind to gamble, sleep in gutters, and fight animals. They only touched birds who were cooked and served on plates. They didn’t gather and place bets in dark alleys. Of course they saw nothing wrong with hunting or farming though, occupations that they saw as denoting a higher social class.
I am not proud of this family history, but I find it informative. This tangible connection from me through a generation still living, to more blood thirsty traditions. Traditions that are looked down on by most of society. It’s easy to cry out against practices done by the few, conducted underground, that smack of backwardness and open cruelty. But meanwhile we don’t often question where our food comes from. We deplore obvious blood lust, but tolerate covert cruelty done for our convenience.
As horrorific as I find dog fighting and cock fighting, I have to remember that the torture behind all those neatly packaged Styrofoam trays of flesh in the grocery store is equally terrible. That the suffering of animals kept alive to produce milk and eggs, only to be killed when their production drops, is much like the suffering of dogs bred and forced to fight, and killed when they lose. Intensive confinement, painful tail and ear docking (as well as debeaking and amputation of toes), electric shocks, open wounds, all of these are found in animal agriculture. Rape racks are not an invention of dog fighting rings, they are part of animal agriculture, designed to force reproduction on animals so traumatized and deprived that they would no longer reproduce on their own. Even on small family farms, reproduction is not the choice of the farmed animals, but is carefully planned and implemented to maximize profit for the farmers.
We don’t want to legislate dog fighting to make it more humane or less lethal. Instead we want it stopped entirely. Maybe we should start thinking about other animals, equally innocent but totally unprotected, in the same terms.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Discussing Donations Again
There has been a lot of blog buzz and several recent news stories about donating to non-profits. So I’m going to revisit the topic and share some more of my thoughts. This is meant to be supplemental to my prior entry “Donations as an Investment.”
I really feel like I might be unfairly picking on The Humane Society of the United States, because they are certainly not the only organization to use the kinds of fundraising tactics I want to discuss. However, I will cite them as an example of the kinds of things that worry me.
With all the news attention on Michael Vick’s involvement in dog fighting, dog killing, and dog starving, I got an email alert from HSUS asking me to make “a special donation” to provide care to the dogs rescued from Vick’s property. The email showcased a picture of a single dog with scars and cuts on his face and nose. The photo was not really “staged,” this was in fact one of Vick’s fighting dogs. However, studies have demonstrated that people donate more when shown a picture or told a story about a single animal in need, so this appeal was cleverly designed to elicit donations.
HSUS does not have a shelter and the location of the dogs is currently unknown by the public at large. However HSUS is apparently “overseeing” the care of the dogs.
Shortly after the first email alert I got a second one from HSUS. They said that their servers had crashed due to an overwhelming response to the Vick case, but now the problem was fixed. They asked me again to make a “special donation” for the care of the dogs.
Out of curiosity I clicked on the donate link. What I found there was somewhat disappointing. In fine print at the bottom of the donation page was the standard disclaimer that my donation could be used on other programs, not just to help the dogs rescued from this dog fighting ring.
I find this deceptive because I felt the words “special donation to care for these dogs” indicated that a donation made in this way would be restricted, but instead the small print told a different story. I don’t doubt HSUS will do a great deal to help these dogs, but I also believe donations will exceed the amount needed for the day to day care. I also believe that if there is an excess of money raised in this manner it should go to the actual shelters caring for the dogs, not into HSUS’s larger budget. In other words, if more money than is needed comes in, I would prefer to see it go to improving shelter facilities to better handle future cases like this, than going in Wayne Pacelle’s salary.
But to be fair, this is not just an issue with HSUS. Nearly every organization out there sends very specific fundraisers out, talking about an individual crisis situation, and in the fine print they place a disclaimer to say that they’re under no obligation to spend the donations on that specific situation.
I’ve worked at a number of non-profits through the years, animal related and human related (Please note: I’ve never worked at HSUS and none of the stories below have anything to do with HSUS). I’ve seen things that broke my heart. I’ve seen a fundraising letter go out talking about a tragic animal crisis in another state, only to see the record-breaking donations that came in from that letter go to redecorating the office, not to helping the animals whose terrible stories were told in that letter. Those animals continued to suffer and die. I’ve seen a large donation that the donor intended for direct animal care, but failed to restrict, go into fundraising materials and new computer equipment, while direct animal care was scaled back. And all of that was made possible by the fine print.
This is why when a recent story broke in my own area about a woman who left a one million dollar bequest to the Ann Arundel SPCA I was thrilled to see that the donor knew enough to restrict her donation. She specified her funds must go to direct care for animals. No doubt her bequest will free up other funds to improve the shelter facilities and send out fundraising letters. But if you’re going to leave a bunch of money to an organization, be sure to specify its use. Otherwise, that bequest could be used for anything.
There are other things that I specifically look for when making donation decisions. I don’t really like to donate to organizations whose boards don’t meet basic standards or have only advisory powers. This one is a new one for me, but after having witnessed some bad situations, I’m starting to learn the values of boards. Organizations limit the powers of their boards to make it impossible to ever remove the founders of the organization from positions like CEO or president. While I understand the sentiment behind this, I do feel it’s bad for the animals. There could be a situation where the founder is unable to keep up with the responsibilities of running the organization, or is suffering diminished mental capacity. When a board has powers to address that, they can step in and save the organization and do what’s best for the animals. When the board has no such authority some pretty terrible situations can develop.
So in conclusion: Per the prior entry, consider your donations an investment and choose to support organizations with a clear consistent message, consider salaries and compensation when you make donations. For today’s entry, always read the fine print when making a donation, when making a large donation restrict its use to programs you approve of, and finally consider board and structure of the charity. Is this a charity with all the decision making power vested in one single person? What will happen to this charity if that person is suddenly unable to perform their duties?
I really feel like I might be unfairly picking on The Humane Society of the United States, because they are certainly not the only organization to use the kinds of fundraising tactics I want to discuss. However, I will cite them as an example of the kinds of things that worry me.
With all the news attention on Michael Vick’s involvement in dog fighting, dog killing, and dog starving, I got an email alert from HSUS asking me to make “a special donation” to provide care to the dogs rescued from Vick’s property. The email showcased a picture of a single dog with scars and cuts on his face and nose. The photo was not really “staged,” this was in fact one of Vick’s fighting dogs. However, studies have demonstrated that people donate more when shown a picture or told a story about a single animal in need, so this appeal was cleverly designed to elicit donations.
HSUS does not have a shelter and the location of the dogs is currently unknown by the public at large. However HSUS is apparently “overseeing” the care of the dogs.
Shortly after the first email alert I got a second one from HSUS. They said that their servers had crashed due to an overwhelming response to the Vick case, but now the problem was fixed. They asked me again to make a “special donation” for the care of the dogs.
Out of curiosity I clicked on the donate link. What I found there was somewhat disappointing. In fine print at the bottom of the donation page was the standard disclaimer that my donation could be used on other programs, not just to help the dogs rescued from this dog fighting ring.
I find this deceptive because I felt the words “special donation to care for these dogs” indicated that a donation made in this way would be restricted, but instead the small print told a different story. I don’t doubt HSUS will do a great deal to help these dogs, but I also believe donations will exceed the amount needed for the day to day care. I also believe that if there is an excess of money raised in this manner it should go to the actual shelters caring for the dogs, not into HSUS’s larger budget. In other words, if more money than is needed comes in, I would prefer to see it go to improving shelter facilities to better handle future cases like this, than going in Wayne Pacelle’s salary.
But to be fair, this is not just an issue with HSUS. Nearly every organization out there sends very specific fundraisers out, talking about an individual crisis situation, and in the fine print they place a disclaimer to say that they’re under no obligation to spend the donations on that specific situation.
I’ve worked at a number of non-profits through the years, animal related and human related (Please note: I’ve never worked at HSUS and none of the stories below have anything to do with HSUS). I’ve seen things that broke my heart. I’ve seen a fundraising letter go out talking about a tragic animal crisis in another state, only to see the record-breaking donations that came in from that letter go to redecorating the office, not to helping the animals whose terrible stories were told in that letter. Those animals continued to suffer and die. I’ve seen a large donation that the donor intended for direct animal care, but failed to restrict, go into fundraising materials and new computer equipment, while direct animal care was scaled back. And all of that was made possible by the fine print.
This is why when a recent story broke in my own area about a woman who left a one million dollar bequest to the Ann Arundel SPCA I was thrilled to see that the donor knew enough to restrict her donation. She specified her funds must go to direct care for animals. No doubt her bequest will free up other funds to improve the shelter facilities and send out fundraising letters. But if you’re going to leave a bunch of money to an organization, be sure to specify its use. Otherwise, that bequest could be used for anything.
There are other things that I specifically look for when making donation decisions. I don’t really like to donate to organizations whose boards don’t meet basic standards or have only advisory powers. This one is a new one for me, but after having witnessed some bad situations, I’m starting to learn the values of boards. Organizations limit the powers of their boards to make it impossible to ever remove the founders of the organization from positions like CEO or president. While I understand the sentiment behind this, I do feel it’s bad for the animals. There could be a situation where the founder is unable to keep up with the responsibilities of running the organization, or is suffering diminished mental capacity. When a board has powers to address that, they can step in and save the organization and do what’s best for the animals. When the board has no such authority some pretty terrible situations can develop.
So in conclusion: Per the prior entry, consider your donations an investment and choose to support organizations with a clear consistent message, consider salaries and compensation when you make donations. For today’s entry, always read the fine print when making a donation, when making a large donation restrict its use to programs you approve of, and finally consider board and structure of the charity. Is this a charity with all the decision making power vested in one single person? What will happen to this charity if that person is suddenly unable to perform their duties?
Second Attempt at Eight True Things
I was tagged before by Pattrice, but I started feeling like I was revealing way too much information so I buried my response. Now I’ve been tagged again by Animal Rights Malta (how cool is that? Tagged twice). So I will try again.
I’m not going to post the rules or tag anyone else to complete this one. If you think it’s cool, by all means, consider yourself tagged. The goal is to write Eight True Things about yourself.
The stupid thing about this exercise is that I’m really not all that interesting, so I keep trying to write stuff and then thinking “gee, this is boring.” So then I delete it and sit around trying to think of something less dull.
1. I used to make and sell nativity sets. I stopped because I got so, so tired of making the same kind of thing over and over, even though I tried to make each set unique with tiny little details. Mainly the ones that sold best were the really small ones with just Joseph, Mary, the baby Jesus and no animals. I liked making animals... Plus it’s hard to keep up with nativity-making when you’re working full time. I only started making nativity sets because I was making small animals and human figures and people kept asking for nativity sets.
2. As a child I cooked and baked on a real honest wood stove. It’s strange to do because you check the temperature and if it’s low you add more wood, but if it’s too hot, you adjust this gadget that lets less oxygen into the fire drawer and wait. Everything always seemed to taste great from a wood stove though and bread, cakes, and pies were always fine, though you’d think they’d mess up. We didn’t have an electric coffeemaker; we made the coffee on the wood stove too, with a percolator. It was the best coffee ever—I’d grind the beans in this silly little hand grinder and then put the percolator on top of the stove. I’ve since read that coffee made like this tastes good because all the bad stuff is extra concentrated in it.
3. Speaking of coffee I began my life long coffee habit when I was about five, maybe younger. Very early I started showing a preference for strong black coffee. I’ve quit several times in my life, a few times I’ve quit for more than a year at a stretch, but just the smell of it sparks such intense cravings in me that it’s hard to stay away from it. I guess because my mother spent several years of her childhood and teens in France she just thought all kids were supposed to drink coffee.
4. When I took sculpture classes my teacher told me that at heart I was an “object maker.” I did really well in that class and in 3-D design (2-D design was my nemesis). My sculpture teacher wanted me to pursue a Masters in sculpture, but that’s ultimately not the direction I took. I liked the class because it was the only time in my life I’ve had the space and opportunity to make sculptures that were 8 feet tall. Unfortunately they wouldn’t fit out the doors of the studio and had to be scrapped after I got my grade. Not that I had space to take home an single 8 foot tall paper mache bird, much less four of them.
5. When I talk about trying to do better for animals, ending animal enslavement, and promoting a vegan lifestyle I’m speaking out about things that for the most part I once participated in or was connected to somehow. I come from a family of hunters and farmers. As a child I went fishing. As a child I probably at some point ate almost any animal imaginable, even those animals that ordinary non-vegans would find distasteful to eat. My family had roots in animal fighting and all kinds of back-woods animal abuse. So when I speak out against this kind of stuff, I’m not speaking from an ivory tower, I’m talking about ending things I know and understand first hand.
6. My absolute favorite food in the whole world are vegan burritos with guacamole and really hot salsa. It’s almost an obsession. I am in love with the avocado, but even more in love with it when it’s mixed up with tomatoes, hot peppers, lime juice, and fresh cilantro. In fact, that’s what I’m eating tonight.
7. I lift weights but you’d never guess it from looking at me.
8. Not so much about me, but I seem to be having this problem with my internet browser lately where I can’t seem to comment on other people’s blogs or reply to comments on my own blog. Sometimes it works but other times it just keeps giving me this “security warning” that there are both secure and not secure areas on the commenting page, and then it won’t let me type. So that’s why I haven’t responded to your comments. I’m really sorry!
I’m not going to post the rules or tag anyone else to complete this one. If you think it’s cool, by all means, consider yourself tagged. The goal is to write Eight True Things about yourself.
The stupid thing about this exercise is that I’m really not all that interesting, so I keep trying to write stuff and then thinking “gee, this is boring.” So then I delete it and sit around trying to think of something less dull.
1. I used to make and sell nativity sets. I stopped because I got so, so tired of making the same kind of thing over and over, even though I tried to make each set unique with tiny little details. Mainly the ones that sold best were the really small ones with just Joseph, Mary, the baby Jesus and no animals. I liked making animals... Plus it’s hard to keep up with nativity-making when you’re working full time. I only started making nativity sets because I was making small animals and human figures and people kept asking for nativity sets.
2. As a child I cooked and baked on a real honest wood stove. It’s strange to do because you check the temperature and if it’s low you add more wood, but if it’s too hot, you adjust this gadget that lets less oxygen into the fire drawer and wait. Everything always seemed to taste great from a wood stove though and bread, cakes, and pies were always fine, though you’d think they’d mess up. We didn’t have an electric coffeemaker; we made the coffee on the wood stove too, with a percolator. It was the best coffee ever—I’d grind the beans in this silly little hand grinder and then put the percolator on top of the stove. I’ve since read that coffee made like this tastes good because all the bad stuff is extra concentrated in it.
3. Speaking of coffee I began my life long coffee habit when I was about five, maybe younger. Very early I started showing a preference for strong black coffee. I’ve quit several times in my life, a few times I’ve quit for more than a year at a stretch, but just the smell of it sparks such intense cravings in me that it’s hard to stay away from it. I guess because my mother spent several years of her childhood and teens in France she just thought all kids were supposed to drink coffee.
4. When I took sculpture classes my teacher told me that at heart I was an “object maker.” I did really well in that class and in 3-D design (2-D design was my nemesis). My sculpture teacher wanted me to pursue a Masters in sculpture, but that’s ultimately not the direction I took. I liked the class because it was the only time in my life I’ve had the space and opportunity to make sculptures that were 8 feet tall. Unfortunately they wouldn’t fit out the doors of the studio and had to be scrapped after I got my grade. Not that I had space to take home an single 8 foot tall paper mache bird, much less four of them.
5. When I talk about trying to do better for animals, ending animal enslavement, and promoting a vegan lifestyle I’m speaking out about things that for the most part I once participated in or was connected to somehow. I come from a family of hunters and farmers. As a child I went fishing. As a child I probably at some point ate almost any animal imaginable, even those animals that ordinary non-vegans would find distasteful to eat. My family had roots in animal fighting and all kinds of back-woods animal abuse. So when I speak out against this kind of stuff, I’m not speaking from an ivory tower, I’m talking about ending things I know and understand first hand.
6. My absolute favorite food in the whole world are vegan burritos with guacamole and really hot salsa. It’s almost an obsession. I am in love with the avocado, but even more in love with it when it’s mixed up with tomatoes, hot peppers, lime juice, and fresh cilantro. In fact, that’s what I’m eating tonight.
7. I lift weights but you’d never guess it from looking at me.
8. Not so much about me, but I seem to be having this problem with my internet browser lately where I can’t seem to comment on other people’s blogs or reply to comments on my own blog. Sometimes it works but other times it just keeps giving me this “security warning” that there are both secure and not secure areas on the commenting page, and then it won’t let me type. So that’s why I haven’t responded to your comments. I’m really sorry!
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Tell Petsmart Not To Sell Rabbits
To learn more about this issue look here:
http://www.rabbit.org/hrs-info/petsmart_release.html
I have just learned that Petsmart has announced an intention to sell dwarf rabbits in their stores. I’m sick. It’s bad enough that they sell small mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. They need to stop selling animals, not start selling more.
As someone closely acquainted with abandoned rabbits I know that domestic rabbits are abandoned and turned over to shelters all the time. So many are executed simply for not having a home. Others are not given up, but lead short miserable lives, because they are one of the most commonly neglected and abused companion animals.
Over the years I’ve had people call me because they saw a domestic rabbit (you can tell they aren’t wild if they are black and white or have long fur) running loose in their neighborhoods. My friends have found abandoned rabbits in parking lots, behind grocery stores, and in parks. When I volunteered at the shelter I comforted terrified rabbits only to see their time run out without finding a forever home. My own beloved Sherman, who recently passed away, was a starved bunny homeless in NYC, at the point of giving up, when luckily a homeless man found him and brought him to me.
I’ve seen bunnies living in cages too small even for a rat, despite the fact that many bunnies are as large as cats. My husband once saw a family who kept a bunny in a Tupperware crate, so all he ever saw were opaque plastic walls. Bunnies need to eat hay almost constantly, but I’ve seen so many people deny their bunnies hay because it was messy.
Most people I’ve met who ever had a bunny as a companion animal said their bunny died very young, often after a few months. This is almost always the result of untreated illness and/or improper diet. Bunnies can live as long as 15 years, though the range of 7 to 9 is more common. But bunnies who can’t eat the hay and fresh green vegetables they need will die within a year or so.
Petsmart is going to be selling bunnies as “starter pets,” but as someone who shares my home with rescued dogs, cats, and bunnies, I have to say the bunnies are in fact the most difficult to care for. Bunnies require a variety of foods, including hay and fresh veggies. They chew (one reason why they are so often caged for life) but they need lots of exercise like any animal. They require special vet care from someone experienced with rabbits and their vet care is often more expensive than vet care for a cat or dog. Bunnies need help with their grooming, like claw clipping, and long haired bunnies need almost daily brushing.
Bunnies need to be spayed or neutered like other companion animals. Unneutered male rabbits may “mark their territory” or become aggressive. Spaying improves the health of bunnies. When we adopted Juniper (Sherman’s long time companion who died about a year after he did) we learned that she had a tumor on her uterus when the rescue group got her spayed. She lived quite a few long healthy years after that, but had she not been spayed she would have died very soon.
Another reason to get your rabbit "fixed” is because they are social animals and need the company of other rabbits. It is hard sometimes to bond adult rabbits, but they really do need companionship. Once you see bunnies sleeping flopped into a heap, or grooming each other, you will understand the heartbreak of one lonely bunny living his whole life in a tiny cage.
The three bunnies that live with my husband and me right now were all rescued. Two of them, Josephine and Jasmine were seized from cruelty situations by animal control. So many beautiful bunnies are just waiting for homes in the shelters, there’s no excuse for Petsmart to start selling purposefully bred baby bunnies from bunny mills.
This was taken from the House Rabbit Society website:
Please let PetSmart know that you are unhappy with their decision to sell rabbits in their stores, rather than reach out to more rabbit rescue groups to expand their rabbit adoption programs. Please send PetSmart a polite letter or email, or give them a call to let them know of your concerns, via the contact information below:
Email: http://www.petsmart.com/global/customerservice/contactUsForm.jsp
or corpcommunications@ssg.petsmart.com
Phone: (800) 738-1385
Fax: (623) 580-6502
Snail mail:
PetSmart, Inc.
19601 North 27th Avenue
Phoenix, AZ 85027
http://www.rabbit.org/hrs-info/petsmart_release.html
I have just learned that Petsmart has announced an intention to sell dwarf rabbits in their stores. I’m sick. It’s bad enough that they sell small mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. They need to stop selling animals, not start selling more.
As someone closely acquainted with abandoned rabbits I know that domestic rabbits are abandoned and turned over to shelters all the time. So many are executed simply for not having a home. Others are not given up, but lead short miserable lives, because they are one of the most commonly neglected and abused companion animals.
Over the years I’ve had people call me because they saw a domestic rabbit (you can tell they aren’t wild if they are black and white or have long fur) running loose in their neighborhoods. My friends have found abandoned rabbits in parking lots, behind grocery stores, and in parks. When I volunteered at the shelter I comforted terrified rabbits only to see their time run out without finding a forever home. My own beloved Sherman, who recently passed away, was a starved bunny homeless in NYC, at the point of giving up, when luckily a homeless man found him and brought him to me.
I’ve seen bunnies living in cages too small even for a rat, despite the fact that many bunnies are as large as cats. My husband once saw a family who kept a bunny in a Tupperware crate, so all he ever saw were opaque plastic walls. Bunnies need to eat hay almost constantly, but I’ve seen so many people deny their bunnies hay because it was messy.
Most people I’ve met who ever had a bunny as a companion animal said their bunny died very young, often after a few months. This is almost always the result of untreated illness and/or improper diet. Bunnies can live as long as 15 years, though the range of 7 to 9 is more common. But bunnies who can’t eat the hay and fresh green vegetables they need will die within a year or so.
Petsmart is going to be selling bunnies as “starter pets,” but as someone who shares my home with rescued dogs, cats, and bunnies, I have to say the bunnies are in fact the most difficult to care for. Bunnies require a variety of foods, including hay and fresh veggies. They chew (one reason why they are so often caged for life) but they need lots of exercise like any animal. They require special vet care from someone experienced with rabbits and their vet care is often more expensive than vet care for a cat or dog. Bunnies need help with their grooming, like claw clipping, and long haired bunnies need almost daily brushing.
Bunnies need to be spayed or neutered like other companion animals. Unneutered male rabbits may “mark their territory” or become aggressive. Spaying improves the health of bunnies. When we adopted Juniper (Sherman’s long time companion who died about a year after he did) we learned that she had a tumor on her uterus when the rescue group got her spayed. She lived quite a few long healthy years after that, but had she not been spayed she would have died very soon.
Another reason to get your rabbit "fixed” is because they are social animals and need the company of other rabbits. It is hard sometimes to bond adult rabbits, but they really do need companionship. Once you see bunnies sleeping flopped into a heap, or grooming each other, you will understand the heartbreak of one lonely bunny living his whole life in a tiny cage.
The three bunnies that live with my husband and me right now were all rescued. Two of them, Josephine and Jasmine were seized from cruelty situations by animal control. So many beautiful bunnies are just waiting for homes in the shelters, there’s no excuse for Petsmart to start selling purposefully bred baby bunnies from bunny mills.
This was taken from the House Rabbit Society website:
Please let PetSmart know that you are unhappy with their decision to sell rabbits in their stores, rather than reach out to more rabbit rescue groups to expand their rabbit adoption programs. Please send PetSmart a polite letter or email, or give them a call to let them know of your concerns, via the contact information below:
Email: http://www.petsmart.com/global/customerservice/contactUsForm.jsp
or corpcommunications@ssg.petsmart.com
Phone: (800) 738-1385
Fax: (623) 580-6502
Snail mail:
PetSmart, Inc.
19601 North 27th Avenue
Phoenix, AZ 85027
Michael Vick and 52 Abused Dogs
Yesterday I got an “urgent” alert from HSUS telling me what I already knew from the news. NFL star Michael Vick has been indicted for his participation in a terrifying dog fighting underworld most of us knew nothing about. Associates have testified that Michael Vick bred dogs for fighting, forced them to fight, ran dog fights, bet on dog fights, and personally killed dogs who lost fights in gruesome ways. He kept the dogs on his property starved to make them meaner and more aggressive in fights.
It’s hard to even find words for this. Someone who can kill dogs in this way, someone who can enjoy and bet on their suffering and agony is one thing: a sociopath. There’s no other way about it. Nobody can have the ability to feel empathy and participate in this kind of blood fest.
The news showed footage of forensic crews combing Vick’s property looking for dead dogs. The living dogs were whisked away, though one presented his battered face on the header of the email from HSUS. The email asked for donations to provide care for the living dogs.
This made me ask if the dogs are somehow in HSUS’s care. HSUS doesn’t run a shelter. Within the rescue community rumors were swirling yesterday. One woman heard that maybe the dogs were at a regular shelter in Virginia pending the outcome of Vick’s charges. Another person thought there were too many dogs for one shelter and surely they’d been split up and sent around the whole region. HSUS and shelter workers however have been tight lipped about the location and condition of the dogs, possibly out of concern for the dogs’ safety as they are sure to be key evidence in the upcoming trial.
What was not said in any of the emails or alerts was the sad truth that many of us who have volunteered or worked at shelters, or been involved in rescue already know. These dogs will be kept alive through Vick’s trial. After that, most if not all of these dogs will be killed. Dogs who have been abused in dog fighting typically fail shelters’ temperament tests, meaning they will likely be determined to be unadoptable. Some shelters will even automatically kill pit bulls (the breed of dog seized from Vick) because they believe the breed itself to be inherently dangerous. Should these dogs manage to pass the temperament tests and escape the lethal injection temporarily, there is the other issue of finding homes. 52 dogs with a history of abuse, who’ve been trained to be aggressive, have a poor chance at finding understanding homes and kind people willing to work with them.
While I’m glad there are laws against dog fighting and I’m glad that Michael Vick will be prosecuted for his astounding cruelty, I worry that on a deeper level we’ve somehow failed to reach the public.
Two stories in the news lately that are so very different share one underlying theme. The ditzy pop star buys an expensive puppy and the NFL star kills and abuses huge numbers of dogs. What do the stories have in common. The basic assumption that dogs are property, not living individuals who suffer and love and feel. In the world where dogs are things, they are accessories or proxies for their human owners.
The pop star who fears she might not really be so cute anymore re-affirms her cuteness with a designer dog. The sports star asserts his aggressive, dangerous, alpha male image by forcing dogs to fight to the death for his amusement, and killing with his own hands those dogs he felt were weak or passive. In this way he sends the message that he’s powerful, purged of anything soft, and that he’s dangerous and callous. It’s time we stopped worshipping dangerous, aggressive, cruel people. But it’s also time we stopped selling dogs as things and then acting surprised when people treat them as things.
It’s hard to even find words for this. Someone who can kill dogs in this way, someone who can enjoy and bet on their suffering and agony is one thing: a sociopath. There’s no other way about it. Nobody can have the ability to feel empathy and participate in this kind of blood fest.
The news showed footage of forensic crews combing Vick’s property looking for dead dogs. The living dogs were whisked away, though one presented his battered face on the header of the email from HSUS. The email asked for donations to provide care for the living dogs.
This made me ask if the dogs are somehow in HSUS’s care. HSUS doesn’t run a shelter. Within the rescue community rumors were swirling yesterday. One woman heard that maybe the dogs were at a regular shelter in Virginia pending the outcome of Vick’s charges. Another person thought there were too many dogs for one shelter and surely they’d been split up and sent around the whole region. HSUS and shelter workers however have been tight lipped about the location and condition of the dogs, possibly out of concern for the dogs’ safety as they are sure to be key evidence in the upcoming trial.
What was not said in any of the emails or alerts was the sad truth that many of us who have volunteered or worked at shelters, or been involved in rescue already know. These dogs will be kept alive through Vick’s trial. After that, most if not all of these dogs will be killed. Dogs who have been abused in dog fighting typically fail shelters’ temperament tests, meaning they will likely be determined to be unadoptable. Some shelters will even automatically kill pit bulls (the breed of dog seized from Vick) because they believe the breed itself to be inherently dangerous. Should these dogs manage to pass the temperament tests and escape the lethal injection temporarily, there is the other issue of finding homes. 52 dogs with a history of abuse, who’ve been trained to be aggressive, have a poor chance at finding understanding homes and kind people willing to work with them.
While I’m glad there are laws against dog fighting and I’m glad that Michael Vick will be prosecuted for his astounding cruelty, I worry that on a deeper level we’ve somehow failed to reach the public.
Two stories in the news lately that are so very different share one underlying theme. The ditzy pop star buys an expensive puppy and the NFL star kills and abuses huge numbers of dogs. What do the stories have in common. The basic assumption that dogs are property, not living individuals who suffer and love and feel. In the world where dogs are things, they are accessories or proxies for their human owners.
The pop star who fears she might not really be so cute anymore re-affirms her cuteness with a designer dog. The sports star asserts his aggressive, dangerous, alpha male image by forcing dogs to fight to the death for his amusement, and killing with his own hands those dogs he felt were weak or passive. In this way he sends the message that he’s powerful, purged of anything soft, and that he’s dangerous and callous. It’s time we stopped worshipping dangerous, aggressive, cruel people. But it’s also time we stopped selling dogs as things and then acting surprised when people treat them as things.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Britney Spears Buys a Dog
Every Single Purchase Of A Companion Animal Means Death. Should I repeat that? Did you hear me?
As many people now know Britney Spears bought a dog. A very expensive dog. This isn’t unusual, many celebrities buy “designer pets,” choosing whatever breed of dog or cat or exotic animal is hip and in style at the moment.
It’s not just celebrities either. Lots of people purchase companion animals from breeders and pet stores. Sometimes there is something in the news about the horrors of puppy mills, enough to get dog lovers riled up for a while. But the larger story seems to be missed.
For every single animal purchased from a breeder, that means that another homeless animal in a shelter dies. For every single animal purchased from a pet store, a puppy mill, or a backyard breeder, that pays more people to enslave and breed animals for profit. More animals will be bred by all kinds of breeders from puppy mills to hobby breeders, because they see a demand for the puppies. However, more will be bred than will ever find homes and the unwanted animals will be dumped into shelters, turned loose to fend for themselves, or even killed. And since many of the animals bred and sold in this manner wind up as “impulse buys” (purchased by people who haven’t fully considered the responsibilities of caring for another living being), many of these animals will wind up in the shelters, where most will die simply for the crime of not having a home.
Each and every time we spend our money is our vote for the kind of world we want to live in. When we buy products produced by child labor, we are voting for child labor. When we buy fair trade items, we are voting for a better world. When we buy and rehab used items we vote for conserving resources. When we buy animals, we are voting to treat them as disposable commodities. When we buy dogs we are sending out our vote that the convenience killing of thousands of unwanted homeless dogs in this country is acceptable to us. We vote to keep doing things the same way and keep hiding the dumpsters full of dead dogs, cats, bunnies, hamsters, guinea pigs, and every imaginable companion animal. Out of sight, out of mind.
When a celebrity spends insane amounts of money to buy a dog, even from a “conscientious breeder” it inspires the puppy mills and backyard breeders to work overtime breeding doppelgangers of the celebrity puppy. Meanwhile the unwanted and forgotten animals in shelters languish and die. So many homeless dogs could have been helped with the $3000 that Spears reportedly paid for her puppy. And that $3000 is a big paycheck to the people who profit from selling, breeding, and mistreating dogs.
There are people who honestly don’t understand the horrible situation “man’s best friend,” and other animals kept as pets and tossed out like trash, face in this country. I assume Spears is one of well-meaning but ignorant people who enable this tragedy to continue.
But I hope that all of you reading will remember: Friends don’t let friends buy dogs. If your pals don’t understand where their money goes and who pays the consequences when they buy a dog, educate them. If they think that shelter dogs are all older or un-trainable, then twist their arms and take them to the shelter to meet all the sweet, well-mannered, beautiful dogs there, literally hours away from death. If they are looking for a certain type of dog, a certain look or temperament, there is a dog in the shelter or a nearby rescue who fits that description.
Don’t tell your friends to go to a responsible breeder. That woman out in the country who only has a litter of pure bred puppies every six years might be really sweet, and she might give you cookies when you visit, but if you buy a dog from her you’re paying her to breed more dogs. That’s inexcusable when we consider all the trusting canines killed simply for being bought by the wrong family, for being banned from the new apartment building, for getting too big (even though that was always his natural adult size), for having the bad luck to come into the home before the human baby, for needing food and care, for just being a dog and loving his family and needing their company, or because the "owners" didn't spay and neuter and now have unwanted puppies to get rid of.
PS. Also try to educate your friends on adopting an adult or older dog. Many people mistakenly think that they will bond better with a puppy. However, puppies need training and extra care. An adult dog is often the best choice for a busy person who works outside of the home. And trust me, you will bond with an adult dog. No question about it.
As many people now know Britney Spears bought a dog. A very expensive dog. This isn’t unusual, many celebrities buy “designer pets,” choosing whatever breed of dog or cat or exotic animal is hip and in style at the moment.
It’s not just celebrities either. Lots of people purchase companion animals from breeders and pet stores. Sometimes there is something in the news about the horrors of puppy mills, enough to get dog lovers riled up for a while. But the larger story seems to be missed.
For every single animal purchased from a breeder, that means that another homeless animal in a shelter dies. For every single animal purchased from a pet store, a puppy mill, or a backyard breeder, that pays more people to enslave and breed animals for profit. More animals will be bred by all kinds of breeders from puppy mills to hobby breeders, because they see a demand for the puppies. However, more will be bred than will ever find homes and the unwanted animals will be dumped into shelters, turned loose to fend for themselves, or even killed. And since many of the animals bred and sold in this manner wind up as “impulse buys” (purchased by people who haven’t fully considered the responsibilities of caring for another living being), many of these animals will wind up in the shelters, where most will die simply for the crime of not having a home.
Each and every time we spend our money is our vote for the kind of world we want to live in. When we buy products produced by child labor, we are voting for child labor. When we buy fair trade items, we are voting for a better world. When we buy and rehab used items we vote for conserving resources. When we buy animals, we are voting to treat them as disposable commodities. When we buy dogs we are sending out our vote that the convenience killing of thousands of unwanted homeless dogs in this country is acceptable to us. We vote to keep doing things the same way and keep hiding the dumpsters full of dead dogs, cats, bunnies, hamsters, guinea pigs, and every imaginable companion animal. Out of sight, out of mind.
When a celebrity spends insane amounts of money to buy a dog, even from a “conscientious breeder” it inspires the puppy mills and backyard breeders to work overtime breeding doppelgangers of the celebrity puppy. Meanwhile the unwanted and forgotten animals in shelters languish and die. So many homeless dogs could have been helped with the $3000 that Spears reportedly paid for her puppy. And that $3000 is a big paycheck to the people who profit from selling, breeding, and mistreating dogs.
There are people who honestly don’t understand the horrible situation “man’s best friend,” and other animals kept as pets and tossed out like trash, face in this country. I assume Spears is one of well-meaning but ignorant people who enable this tragedy to continue.
But I hope that all of you reading will remember: Friends don’t let friends buy dogs. If your pals don’t understand where their money goes and who pays the consequences when they buy a dog, educate them. If they think that shelter dogs are all older or un-trainable, then twist their arms and take them to the shelter to meet all the sweet, well-mannered, beautiful dogs there, literally hours away from death. If they are looking for a certain type of dog, a certain look or temperament, there is a dog in the shelter or a nearby rescue who fits that description.
Don’t tell your friends to go to a responsible breeder. That woman out in the country who only has a litter of pure bred puppies every six years might be really sweet, and she might give you cookies when you visit, but if you buy a dog from her you’re paying her to breed more dogs. That’s inexcusable when we consider all the trusting canines killed simply for being bought by the wrong family, for being banned from the new apartment building, for getting too big (even though that was always his natural adult size), for having the bad luck to come into the home before the human baby, for needing food and care, for just being a dog and loving his family and needing their company, or because the "owners" didn't spay and neuter and now have unwanted puppies to get rid of.
PS. Also try to educate your friends on adopting an adult or older dog. Many people mistakenly think that they will bond better with a puppy. However, puppies need training and extra care. An adult dog is often the best choice for a busy person who works outside of the home. And trust me, you will bond with an adult dog. No question about it.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
I'm Walking On Sunshine
A brief break from real blogging to talk about some good stuff.
Obi (a cat) had to go to the vet to find out why he had a lump in his back, and now I've learned he does not have cancer. I'm so relieved. I'd like to say Obi is relieved, but he was never worried. Instead he has some deep scarring (like under the skin). It seems this is from playing way too rough with his brother Liam, but Obi initiates wrestling, so I don't feel like I should stop it. Such good news that he isn't sick though.
Next Isa Chandra Moskowitz put in me in a list of "People Who Deserve Cupcakes."
Obi (a cat) had to go to the vet to find out why he had a lump in his back, and now I've learned he does not have cancer. I'm so relieved. I'd like to say Obi is relieved, but he was never worried. Instead he has some deep scarring (like under the skin). It seems this is from playing way too rough with his brother Liam, but Obi initiates wrestling, so I don't feel like I should stop it. Such good news that he isn't sick though.
Next Isa Chandra Moskowitz put in me in a list of "People Who Deserve Cupcakes."
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Is It All About Fear?
But why would people be so afraid to give veganism a try? Is it the fear that if they start they might not be able to stop? Is it the fear that they’re going to turn into me and cook elaborate vegan creations, blog on veganism, rescue cats, and have bad hair? Naturally there are no requirements like those. There are lazy vegans (I might be one of them), but anyway, no obligation to blog, no obligation to do anything except adjust one’s eating and buying habits to match one’s ethics.
I think one fear I had, which proved unfounded, was the fear that I was a great cook as an omni, but I thought I’d lose all that praise and gratitude as a vegan. Actually veganism forced me to be a little creative, which is kind of good actually, I like creative. But I get praise from other vegans and omnis alike for my cooking.
I suppose there’s always the fear that if we open our eyes we can’t ever shut them again. It’s true that once you start thinking about the horrors animals face, it’s very hard to put on the blinders again. And that can be very upsetting. But at the same time many vegans find ways to take care of themselves emotionally. Yes, they know there’s a lot of suffering and injustice out there, but they also celebrate rescues, visit sanctuaries, eat good vegan food, and just like everyone else they watch movies, listen to music, hang out with their friends, and participate in a million other satisfying and joyful activities.
What is the fear? Except maybe fear of change. Of course we all have to face change, one way or another. We change and adjust all the time, or else we get stagnant. So all I’m saying is there’s nothing to be scared of. C’mon in, the waters fine.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Celebrity Culture Lets Us Down
It's Friday. I’ve been reading and reading and learning all kinds of interesting things that haven’t managed to make it into blog entries just yet.
One thing that has been on my mind is the topic of “crazy celebrities.” I guess we’ve all observed this at some point. Individuals who act so out of control, so clearly not mentally ok, still go on to work more, star in more TV shows and films, direct, host TV specials, get hounded by the paparazzi and otherwise keep living their lives at the top. They get to do this because they are set aside as somehow better than the rest of us. They can do no wrong and so hitting assistants, wandering into someone else’s house as if it were their own, charges of domestic violence, drunk driving, racist or sexist statements is all water under the bridge. Brushed aside, forgotten, as people still clamor for an autograph and pay money to go to the movies.
I know what you might be thinking in reaction to this, because it kind of represents my feelings too. “Sure, that’s all really unfortunate, but it’s Hollywood, it’s nuts, you can’t draw any conclusions about human nature from what goes on there.”
Yeah, the same standards don’t apply to you or me, or Joe Schmoe down the street. But they might apply in some ways to other celebrities, the ones closer to our own lives than movie stars are.
As an example, a friend of mine who will remain unnamed went to work for a scientific research organization, working under a woman who had multiple degrees and publications and was in essence a star in this particular type of research. Instead of an ivory tower of learning though, my friend found a terrorized crew of researchers trying to cling to their jobs. “The star” henceforth known as Ms. RE, played favorites, allowing some extremely good-looking but unqualified men in the department to slack off, while demanding 80 hour weeks out of the other peons. She raged at her employees and threw things. She falsified data. She padded the resumes of her favorites, giving them credit for work done by others. If anyone spoke out they were fired and also blacklisted within the tight knit research community.
My friend was miserable. She had no time for herself, she worked impossible hours but saw the credit given to others. She started trying to save her life by planning an exit strategy. But everyone she talked to gave her the same answers. You can’t speak out against someone so well-known. You can’t keep working in this field if the “big people” don’t like you. You have to expect a certain amount of abuse from a genius, it just goes with the territory.
My friend finally did get out, but she did find herself blacklisted with other similar research outfits—Ms. RE was not above slander to take her revenge on an employee for jumping off the sinking ship. My friend remained depressed, and had to second guess herself all the time. She went on job interviews in unrelated fields, all the while trying to look for signs of a bad boss.
You’d think this might just be an isolated incident, but this kind of “celebrity,” where fame is used to cover up abuse and fraudulent behavior is actually more likely to happen in certain types of work. It happens in academia and the research community because publication and speaking engagements make minor stars. You might never ever hear of these people outside of their particular field, but inside “their world” they exercise a lot of power and influence. You also see this happen in the non-profit world where people with questionable credentials and shaky ethics might rise to the top because they’re inspirational speakers or become associated with a groundbreaking case or incident.
Bully online cites non-profits as one of the primary areas where workplace abuse occurs.
But back to the culture of celebrity.
Recently there’s been yet another scandal involving the head of an animal sanctuary. This seems to happen on a continuing basis. This “animal-person celebrity” has been in trouble for similar things in the past, misusing funds, putting the animals last, mistreating employees and volunteers. We saw another animal sanctuary scandal in the past where the bodies of animals who’d died from neglect and mistreatment were stacked up in the nearby woods as the people in charge of the sanctuary continued to collect donations for their care.
We let this happen because we don’t hold stars to the same standards as everyone else. These people, who give speeches and sign autographs, may rally the troops with their charisma and stage presence, but those aren’t necessarily the qualities that make them ideal to care for sick and vulnerable animals, to resist the temptation of easy money. Charisma doesn’t make them hold themselves accountable for their own action, and it blinds their followers, who as if stunned by the bright lights, keep defending the indefensible.
We hear about this more with sanctuaries because at some point, as it all falls apart, the mistreatment of the animals in sanctuaries becomes obvious. The bodies are found and photographed, the starving animals and the ones with open sores are spotted and talked about. But make no mistake, stardom obscures poor behavior all over, it’s just harder to prove in other cases.
Looking at this from the outside there is no real payoff to doing things the right way if you want to excel in the animal charity world. You can put in your hours, do your best, and then observe something that bothers you ethically. You can speak up and maybe lose your job and get blacklisted, or you can swallow down your ethics and keep your head low. If you’re a boss in the animal charity world you have everything to gain by bullying your employees and engaging in unethical behavior—you know nobody will ever question it and if someone unimportant ever should you can easily get rid of them.
All this is sold to us as being good for the movement. We’ve been told it’s bad to be divisive (translation: if something bothers you just keep it to yourself), we’re told we need to be a family and all get along (translation: if someone else’s ethics, philosophy or tactics aren’t making sense to you, that’s your problem, so you need to stay quiet and not upset anyone), and that there are so few of us we can’t afford to disagree (translation: the star in charge gets to tell everyone else how to think, act, and speak). When people are pushed out of the movement and marginalized because they disagree, again we’re told this is good for the movement, because they were disruptive, crazy, or agitators.
Um, by the way, since when was being an agitator a bad thing? I don’t think we should stir up trouble just for the sake of stirring it up, but did anything significant ever change without a few people standing up and making a lot of noise for their ethics?
Anyway, it’s interesting to see that this philosophy doesn’t actually hold up in research studies. Instead the studies tell us that poor management and workplace bullying cost companies money, and reduce both productivity and creativity.
In addition, allowing bullying and unethical practices to continue in our midst gives our opposition ammunition against us. We need to avoid, to whatever extent possible, even the appearance that we're unethical, deceptive, or callous to the needs and concerns of human employees and volunteers. When we allow our stars to do whatever they like, unchecked, it fuels a stereotype of animal advocates that we're all a little crazy.
It’s time we stopped supporting people just because they happen to be stars. All of these policies purport to be “what’s good for the organization.” In many cases they are merely what’s best for the founder/CEO of the organization, but we need to be talking about what’s best for the animals and what’s best for long term strategic goals.
More info, understanding workplace bullying
http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/bully.htm
http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/psychosocial/bullying.html
More articles on the effects of workplace bullying
http://www.livescience.com/health/070402_workplace_bully.html
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/061031_office_bully.html
One thing that has been on my mind is the topic of “crazy celebrities.” I guess we’ve all observed this at some point. Individuals who act so out of control, so clearly not mentally ok, still go on to work more, star in more TV shows and films, direct, host TV specials, get hounded by the paparazzi and otherwise keep living their lives at the top. They get to do this because they are set aside as somehow better than the rest of us. They can do no wrong and so hitting assistants, wandering into someone else’s house as if it were their own, charges of domestic violence, drunk driving, racist or sexist statements is all water under the bridge. Brushed aside, forgotten, as people still clamor for an autograph and pay money to go to the movies.
I know what you might be thinking in reaction to this, because it kind of represents my feelings too. “Sure, that’s all really unfortunate, but it’s Hollywood, it’s nuts, you can’t draw any conclusions about human nature from what goes on there.”
Yeah, the same standards don’t apply to you or me, or Joe Schmoe down the street. But they might apply in some ways to other celebrities, the ones closer to our own lives than movie stars are.
As an example, a friend of mine who will remain unnamed went to work for a scientific research organization, working under a woman who had multiple degrees and publications and was in essence a star in this particular type of research. Instead of an ivory tower of learning though, my friend found a terrorized crew of researchers trying to cling to their jobs. “The star” henceforth known as Ms. RE, played favorites, allowing some extremely good-looking but unqualified men in the department to slack off, while demanding 80 hour weeks out of the other peons. She raged at her employees and threw things. She falsified data. She padded the resumes of her favorites, giving them credit for work done by others. If anyone spoke out they were fired and also blacklisted within the tight knit research community.
My friend was miserable. She had no time for herself, she worked impossible hours but saw the credit given to others. She started trying to save her life by planning an exit strategy. But everyone she talked to gave her the same answers. You can’t speak out against someone so well-known. You can’t keep working in this field if the “big people” don’t like you. You have to expect a certain amount of abuse from a genius, it just goes with the territory.
My friend finally did get out, but she did find herself blacklisted with other similar research outfits—Ms. RE was not above slander to take her revenge on an employee for jumping off the sinking ship. My friend remained depressed, and had to second guess herself all the time. She went on job interviews in unrelated fields, all the while trying to look for signs of a bad boss.
You’d think this might just be an isolated incident, but this kind of “celebrity,” where fame is used to cover up abuse and fraudulent behavior is actually more likely to happen in certain types of work. It happens in academia and the research community because publication and speaking engagements make minor stars. You might never ever hear of these people outside of their particular field, but inside “their world” they exercise a lot of power and influence. You also see this happen in the non-profit world where people with questionable credentials and shaky ethics might rise to the top because they’re inspirational speakers or become associated with a groundbreaking case or incident.
Bully online cites non-profits as one of the primary areas where workplace abuse occurs.
But back to the culture of celebrity.
Recently there’s been yet another scandal involving the head of an animal sanctuary. This seems to happen on a continuing basis. This “animal-person celebrity” has been in trouble for similar things in the past, misusing funds, putting the animals last, mistreating employees and volunteers. We saw another animal sanctuary scandal in the past where the bodies of animals who’d died from neglect and mistreatment were stacked up in the nearby woods as the people in charge of the sanctuary continued to collect donations for their care.
We let this happen because we don’t hold stars to the same standards as everyone else. These people, who give speeches and sign autographs, may rally the troops with their charisma and stage presence, but those aren’t necessarily the qualities that make them ideal to care for sick and vulnerable animals, to resist the temptation of easy money. Charisma doesn’t make them hold themselves accountable for their own action, and it blinds their followers, who as if stunned by the bright lights, keep defending the indefensible.
We hear about this more with sanctuaries because at some point, as it all falls apart, the mistreatment of the animals in sanctuaries becomes obvious. The bodies are found and photographed, the starving animals and the ones with open sores are spotted and talked about. But make no mistake, stardom obscures poor behavior all over, it’s just harder to prove in other cases.
Looking at this from the outside there is no real payoff to doing things the right way if you want to excel in the animal charity world. You can put in your hours, do your best, and then observe something that bothers you ethically. You can speak up and maybe lose your job and get blacklisted, or you can swallow down your ethics and keep your head low. If you’re a boss in the animal charity world you have everything to gain by bullying your employees and engaging in unethical behavior—you know nobody will ever question it and if someone unimportant ever should you can easily get rid of them.
All this is sold to us as being good for the movement. We’ve been told it’s bad to be divisive (translation: if something bothers you just keep it to yourself), we’re told we need to be a family and all get along (translation: if someone else’s ethics, philosophy or tactics aren’t making sense to you, that’s your problem, so you need to stay quiet and not upset anyone), and that there are so few of us we can’t afford to disagree (translation: the star in charge gets to tell everyone else how to think, act, and speak). When people are pushed out of the movement and marginalized because they disagree, again we’re told this is good for the movement, because they were disruptive, crazy, or agitators.
Um, by the way, since when was being an agitator a bad thing? I don’t think we should stir up trouble just for the sake of stirring it up, but did anything significant ever change without a few people standing up and making a lot of noise for their ethics?
Anyway, it’s interesting to see that this philosophy doesn’t actually hold up in research studies. Instead the studies tell us that poor management and workplace bullying cost companies money, and reduce both productivity and creativity.
In addition, allowing bullying and unethical practices to continue in our midst gives our opposition ammunition against us. We need to avoid, to whatever extent possible, even the appearance that we're unethical, deceptive, or callous to the needs and concerns of human employees and volunteers. When we allow our stars to do whatever they like, unchecked, it fuels a stereotype of animal advocates that we're all a little crazy.
It’s time we stopped supporting people just because they happen to be stars. All of these policies purport to be “what’s good for the organization.” In many cases they are merely what’s best for the founder/CEO of the organization, but we need to be talking about what’s best for the animals and what’s best for long term strategic goals.
More info, understanding workplace bullying
http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/bully.htm
http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/psychosocial/bullying.html
More articles on the effects of workplace bullying
http://www.livescience.com/health/070402_workplace_bully.html
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/061031_office_bully.html
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Realigning Values
Another blogger I read made a post recently about how to react when people fall off the vegan wagon and why eating animal products might be really tempting to some people. She said that some vegans say that all animal products are disgusting to them, but some of us still might like the taste and smell of meat and cheese, or the look of fur and leather.
In my experience there are far more vegans who love the taste of animal products than don’t. That’s probably why there are so many fake meat and soy cheese products out there. We gave them up because we realized they represented suffering and death to creatures who felt pain, had emotions, and were more like us than most care to admit.
I’ve been vegan a long time now. I always say that, like it’s an excuse I guess. I love fake meats, but I’m not all about the fake meats, I like vegetable dishes too. I like to enjoy lots of flavors, textures, and colors in my meals.
When I see the entire dead carcass of an animal it does disgust and upset me, for example the entire pigs hanging in windows in China Town, or an entire turkey on the table for Thanksgiving. But the thing I see mainly when I look at those things is not something that turns my stomach because of a bad smell or the look of decay, but I see the dead body of a tortured living creature and it makes me sad.
I’ve also found after all these years that I’m far less squeamish than the average meat eater. I’ve cleaned up the dead bodies of so many animals killed by cars in my neighborhood because nobody else would do it. I’ve held and comforted animals with open oozing sores or obvious disease. I’ve held the hands of sick people as they struggled to breathe. I’ve cleaned up vomit and blood and diarrhea. I can do those things because my life isn’t ruled by disgust, so clearly nausea wasn’t the reason I became vegan.
What I did was give up something I wanted because I had an ethical problem with it. It was a decision that at first I made grudgingly, thinking mainly of what I was giving up. But on the other side of that decision I found that what I had given up never meant to me what I thought it did. I thought my life would feel somehow less, that I would feel deprived, and I did go through an adjustment period where I sadly turned my back on my favorite foods. But ultimately I found that my life is just as good if not better without animal products in it.
Some of the things we give up we simply replace with reasonable analogs—there are veggie burgers, fake chicken nuggets, superb vegan sausage, and lunch “meats” galore. For the woman who always wanted a fur coat, it’s really hard to tell the fake from the real now. Vegan shoes can look like leather, as can vegan jackets. For some stuff there’s no good substitute. There isn’t a rare, bloody, grilled vegan steak as far as I know. There’s decent vegan cheese, but not wonderful vegan cheese.
So we go without those things because our ethics take precedence over our taste buds in those cases.
What is not replicated in vegan products is the prestige associated with certain animal products. People who choose real fur over fake fur likely do it because real fur is a luxury product, seen as something possessed only by the rich and important. No matter how great your homestyle tofu tastes, it doesn’t give the “I’m at the top” feel that ordering lobster or one of those new “designer” steaks gives. These products tell others that we not only have money to burn but we feel we’re important enough to indulge every luxury for ourselves. The message of vegan foods is that we care, and some people don’t find that message appealing.
Food is all tied up emotionally with self image, our concepts of masculinity and femininity, and our concepts of what defines rank and value in our culture. Think of how movies and tv shows rely on the stereotypes surrounding food to define character. Open with the restaurant scene and we think we already know a lot about the characters by what they order. Here’s the guy who orders the steak, there’s the woman who only orders salad, compare her with the woman who gets the cheeseburger and chocolate cake. Who is fun? Who is alive? Who is sexual? Who has power and authority in this scene?
For many people these concepts operate on a subconscious level and they follow certain scripts for reasons they don’t understand. Maybe they think it’s ok for a woman to be vegetarian but think it’s kind of un-masculine. Maybe they accept the vegan guy, but expect him to be sensitive, a good listener, and into emo rock, so they’re shocked when he’s vegan, but plays football on the weekends, is kind of abrupt in conversation, and listens to country music. When we don’t understand the reasons why we believe these things they hold us back from seeing the whole picture.
The whole picture is that vegans are just like everyone else. They work all types of jobs. Some vegans are assertive go-getters, some are quiet and work at the library. Some are glamorous, some are sci-fi geeks. Some are rude and some are sweet. Some are athletic, some aren’t. Vegans come from every culture, every race, every background. They are like everyone else, except that once their eyes were opened to where the flesh on their plates came from, they changed their actions to fit their ethics.
In a more general way when we hang onto expectations and stereotypes that we picked up in childhood they can hurt us in ways we don’t even understand. Perhaps it’s helpful to talk about this outside the realm of veganism.
I knew a young woman who said that she always expected, mainly because of tv, movies, and her parents’ expectations, that she would grow up and marry a wealthy man, probably a doctor, in a big elaborate wedding and move into a large suburban house. Instead she fell in love with a skinny, scraggly, starving artist who worked at a bakery for his day job. So she made a choice between childhood expectations based on the happiness she thought material things would bring, and the person she loved. Naturally she chose love. Not that it’s always easy or smooth, but when we allow experience to realign our values to the things that matter we increase our chances of happiness. By that I don’t mean making the tough choice and then resenting the path you take because you can’t “have it all.” I mean we realize that having a loving and understanding mate is important, while having a big house was some kind of foggy dream. Sure we might like that house, might even dream of it when we’re living in a tiny apartment, but we also understand that there are people living in huge houses who feel trapped and depressed. Because things are enjoyable and nice, and at the same time they tie us down, and don’t solve the other problems in our lives. In other words, which makes you happier: the size of the house or the person you share it with?
Likewise we might decide against the huge house for ethical reasons. Maybe the builders drained a wetland and killed or displaced all the wildlife there to build huge energy-guzzling homes. Maybe we don’t want to support that. We might decide against a diamond ring because we don’t like the exploitation of African workers in most diamond mining operations, and because we fear we might wind up with a conflict diamond that cost children and maybe entire villages their lives. So we weigh the thing we think we want with our ethics and in the process hopefully come to understand that diamonds or houses don’t bring happiness. Despite all the marketing that says diamonds are forever, half of all marriages fail anyway—the stone isn’t the magical formula for love after all. That doesn’t mean you won’t still think diamonds are pretty or won’t think big houses look impressive. It just means you find the path that works for you and understand that there is peace in making the ethical decision.
Likewise, steak won’t make you happy. Well ok, maybe it will while you’re eating it. So would a vegan brownie though. But in the long run, what do you remember more: the meals you ate or the people you shared them with. Which do you remember more: the exact ingredients you put in your cooking or the love and care you invested in it. You might still love the smell of cooking meat, you might miss it from time to time. But you aren’t just denying yourself something you want, you are also getting so many things back in return for your effort.
It’s difficult to realign our values. Our society tells us to have, to consume, to own. It’s hard to step back from the things we were told we needed, the things we were told would measure our worth in the world. But if we know ourselves we know our worth is not in the clothing we wear, the jewelry or the designer names. We know we are not measured by the car we drive. We also can’t be diminished by our efforts to do good, and giving up foods that we associate with status or comfort because they conflict with our ethics means we are living our own values, not someone else’s.
In my experience there are far more vegans who love the taste of animal products than don’t. That’s probably why there are so many fake meat and soy cheese products out there. We gave them up because we realized they represented suffering and death to creatures who felt pain, had emotions, and were more like us than most care to admit.
I’ve been vegan a long time now. I always say that, like it’s an excuse I guess. I love fake meats, but I’m not all about the fake meats, I like vegetable dishes too. I like to enjoy lots of flavors, textures, and colors in my meals.
When I see the entire dead carcass of an animal it does disgust and upset me, for example the entire pigs hanging in windows in China Town, or an entire turkey on the table for Thanksgiving. But the thing I see mainly when I look at those things is not something that turns my stomach because of a bad smell or the look of decay, but I see the dead body of a tortured living creature and it makes me sad.
I’ve also found after all these years that I’m far less squeamish than the average meat eater. I’ve cleaned up the dead bodies of so many animals killed by cars in my neighborhood because nobody else would do it. I’ve held and comforted animals with open oozing sores or obvious disease. I’ve held the hands of sick people as they struggled to breathe. I’ve cleaned up vomit and blood and diarrhea. I can do those things because my life isn’t ruled by disgust, so clearly nausea wasn’t the reason I became vegan.
What I did was give up something I wanted because I had an ethical problem with it. It was a decision that at first I made grudgingly, thinking mainly of what I was giving up. But on the other side of that decision I found that what I had given up never meant to me what I thought it did. I thought my life would feel somehow less, that I would feel deprived, and I did go through an adjustment period where I sadly turned my back on my favorite foods. But ultimately I found that my life is just as good if not better without animal products in it.
Some of the things we give up we simply replace with reasonable analogs—there are veggie burgers, fake chicken nuggets, superb vegan sausage, and lunch “meats” galore. For the woman who always wanted a fur coat, it’s really hard to tell the fake from the real now. Vegan shoes can look like leather, as can vegan jackets. For some stuff there’s no good substitute. There isn’t a rare, bloody, grilled vegan steak as far as I know. There’s decent vegan cheese, but not wonderful vegan cheese.
So we go without those things because our ethics take precedence over our taste buds in those cases.
What is not replicated in vegan products is the prestige associated with certain animal products. People who choose real fur over fake fur likely do it because real fur is a luxury product, seen as something possessed only by the rich and important. No matter how great your homestyle tofu tastes, it doesn’t give the “I’m at the top” feel that ordering lobster or one of those new “designer” steaks gives. These products tell others that we not only have money to burn but we feel we’re important enough to indulge every luxury for ourselves. The message of vegan foods is that we care, and some people don’t find that message appealing.
Food is all tied up emotionally with self image, our concepts of masculinity and femininity, and our concepts of what defines rank and value in our culture. Think of how movies and tv shows rely on the stereotypes surrounding food to define character. Open with the restaurant scene and we think we already know a lot about the characters by what they order. Here’s the guy who orders the steak, there’s the woman who only orders salad, compare her with the woman who gets the cheeseburger and chocolate cake. Who is fun? Who is alive? Who is sexual? Who has power and authority in this scene?
For many people these concepts operate on a subconscious level and they follow certain scripts for reasons they don’t understand. Maybe they think it’s ok for a woman to be vegetarian but think it’s kind of un-masculine. Maybe they accept the vegan guy, but expect him to be sensitive, a good listener, and into emo rock, so they’re shocked when he’s vegan, but plays football on the weekends, is kind of abrupt in conversation, and listens to country music. When we don’t understand the reasons why we believe these things they hold us back from seeing the whole picture.
The whole picture is that vegans are just like everyone else. They work all types of jobs. Some vegans are assertive go-getters, some are quiet and work at the library. Some are glamorous, some are sci-fi geeks. Some are rude and some are sweet. Some are athletic, some aren’t. Vegans come from every culture, every race, every background. They are like everyone else, except that once their eyes were opened to where the flesh on their plates came from, they changed their actions to fit their ethics.
In a more general way when we hang onto expectations and stereotypes that we picked up in childhood they can hurt us in ways we don’t even understand. Perhaps it’s helpful to talk about this outside the realm of veganism.
I knew a young woman who said that she always expected, mainly because of tv, movies, and her parents’ expectations, that she would grow up and marry a wealthy man, probably a doctor, in a big elaborate wedding and move into a large suburban house. Instead she fell in love with a skinny, scraggly, starving artist who worked at a bakery for his day job. So she made a choice between childhood expectations based on the happiness she thought material things would bring, and the person she loved. Naturally she chose love. Not that it’s always easy or smooth, but when we allow experience to realign our values to the things that matter we increase our chances of happiness. By that I don’t mean making the tough choice and then resenting the path you take because you can’t “have it all.” I mean we realize that having a loving and understanding mate is important, while having a big house was some kind of foggy dream. Sure we might like that house, might even dream of it when we’re living in a tiny apartment, but we also understand that there are people living in huge houses who feel trapped and depressed. Because things are enjoyable and nice, and at the same time they tie us down, and don’t solve the other problems in our lives. In other words, which makes you happier: the size of the house or the person you share it with?
Likewise we might decide against the huge house for ethical reasons. Maybe the builders drained a wetland and killed or displaced all the wildlife there to build huge energy-guzzling homes. Maybe we don’t want to support that. We might decide against a diamond ring because we don’t like the exploitation of African workers in most diamond mining operations, and because we fear we might wind up with a conflict diamond that cost children and maybe entire villages their lives. So we weigh the thing we think we want with our ethics and in the process hopefully come to understand that diamonds or houses don’t bring happiness. Despite all the marketing that says diamonds are forever, half of all marriages fail anyway—the stone isn’t the magical formula for love after all. That doesn’t mean you won’t still think diamonds are pretty or won’t think big houses look impressive. It just means you find the path that works for you and understand that there is peace in making the ethical decision.
Likewise, steak won’t make you happy. Well ok, maybe it will while you’re eating it. So would a vegan brownie though. But in the long run, what do you remember more: the meals you ate or the people you shared them with. Which do you remember more: the exact ingredients you put in your cooking or the love and care you invested in it. You might still love the smell of cooking meat, you might miss it from time to time. But you aren’t just denying yourself something you want, you are also getting so many things back in return for your effort.
It’s difficult to realign our values. Our society tells us to have, to consume, to own. It’s hard to step back from the things we were told we needed, the things we were told would measure our worth in the world. But if we know ourselves we know our worth is not in the clothing we wear, the jewelry or the designer names. We know we are not measured by the car we drive. We also can’t be diminished by our efforts to do good, and giving up foods that we associate with status or comfort because they conflict with our ethics means we are living our own values, not someone else’s.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
In Progress
I'm totally cross-posting, but I'm excited. It's not quite finished, but getting close.
This is all cut paper, mostly from magazines, a couple other things and some gift wrap in there. It's 8 inches by 10.
This is all cut paper, mostly from magazines, a couple other things and some gift wrap in there. It's 8 inches by 10.
HSUS, Veganism, and Cutting Back on Meat
Wayne Pacelle of HSUS just wrote an entry on his blog about his personal veganism, HSUS’s commitment to farmed animals, and his advice to others on the issue.
I think it's great that Wayne has come out and said the dreaded "v-word," vegan on his blog. I think it's wonderful that he emphasized that he, himself is vegan.
But then he proceeds to only discuss animal agriculture as a welfare issue and talks about cutting back on meat consumption as a valid option. While he doesn't specifically speak to "cage-free" or "free range" animal products in this blog entry, he provides embedded links that go to pages that promote these things as a better option.
What I would love to see Wayne talk about is why he personally is vegan. Why, when he tells others it's acceptable, does he not just eat vegan 3 days a week and eat dead animals the other days? Why isn't he eating free-range eggs and grass fed beef? This must mean something to him beyond the thing he emphasizes, the worst aspects of cruelty in intensive factory farming.
If all factory farms were eliminated and meat became an expensive delicacy because all farmed animals were raised outside in sunlight on a nutritious diet, do any of us believe that if that were the case that Wayne himself would then start eating lamb with some veal on the side. Would he serve his guests bacon, cheese, and goose liver pate?
Of course not. But is the issue that he holds himself personally to standards he believes are not attainable for others? Or does he simply think that speaking honestly and from his heart regarding his own personal beliefs and choices is just too threatening somehow?
I’ve had many people in the movement tell me that they feel asking people to cut back on meat is a positive step. For those who will never become vegan, it’s a reduction in the animals that suffer and die to go on their plates. For others they hope cutting back on gnawing the corpses of animals will be a first step toward vegetarianism which would hopefully be a step toward veganism.
I personally know people that slowly became vegan by cutting back. For example some quit eating beef, then chicken, then finally fish, and then eggs and so on. Does this mean that cutting back on animal products leads to veganism? In some cases it probably does. But one thing was consistent in these cases. These people decided to cut back on animal products on their own as they were bombarded with mailings from Peta and FARM telling them that the only way to be kind to animals was to become vegan. They read it and doubted their ability to be vegan, so they decided to cut back. Then the next mailing came and their guilt was triggered again, so they cut back a little more. Nobody was telling them that simply cutting back was an acceptable goal. The message was always for veganism as the goal.
The counter argument is that too many people believe veganism is an all or nothing endeavor and therefore will do nothing. I’m not sure of the accuracy of this without any actual research on the topic. My personal experience in chatting with friends is that if we keep pushing veganism, many people decide to cut back on their own, and may decide to cut back even further in the future. But there’s also the idea that I always refer back to on this blog—it’s still better to convince one person to go vegan than to convince two others to cut back on meat consumption, because the vegan becomes another ambassador for veganism, another living example that veganism is simple and fulfilling and very livable for ordinary people. That is more powerful than the guy who gave up bacon except for on Sundays.
My next issue with asking people to cut back on the animal products is that in my experience very few people are aware enough of what they’re eating to make a successful judgment of how to cut back. That sounds a little weird, but let me put it this way: with a few notable exceptions almost everyone I meet who learns I’m vegan says “I actually don’t eat very much meat myself.” Then they pretty much always proceed to eat really huge amounts of meat right in front of me, because they are poor judges of amount.
When we ask people to cut back on meat, many will feel that they already eat very little, so they’re already doing what we ask and they’ll see no reason to change. I’m not sure who these people are comparing themselves to when they say they don’t eat much meat (competitive hot dog eaters maybe?), but they do seem to eat a fairly large portion of animal products with every meal.
This is probably just human nature to some extent. I find myself saying from time to time “How could I possibly have gained weight? I don’t eat that much!” Apparently my standards for the volume of food I should consume are based on someone either much larger or a lot a more active. I must think myself a six foot tall marathon runner.
Asking people to eat vegan meals from time to time might help with this tendency to misjudge food volume. At least they’ll see that vegan food can be tasty and satisfying. I support that idea. But when we ask people to simply eat less meat, they often still view a dead animal as the focal point of their meal. Also, without fairly clear instruction that eggs and dairy are just as bad as meat, many people make cheese the new main dish of their “meatless meals.” They’re probably also more likely to abandon the effort since rather than enjoying a delicious vegan main dish, they merely feel deprived with what they feel is a skimpy portion of meat.
To HSUS’s credit they do hand out information including vegan recipes, so if someone follows up on the suggestion to cut their meat consumption with further reading on the website or sending in a request for recipes, they will wind up with vegan suggestions. But why the cloak and dagger? Why can’t we all just say outright: Even in “humane farming” there is immense suffering for the animals and all are eventually slaughtered. If you care about animals the best way to help them is to go vegan. Here are some recipes to try, here are some tips, here is further reading.
I think it's great that Wayne has come out and said the dreaded "v-word," vegan on his blog. I think it's wonderful that he emphasized that he, himself is vegan.
But then he proceeds to only discuss animal agriculture as a welfare issue and talks about cutting back on meat consumption as a valid option. While he doesn't specifically speak to "cage-free" or "free range" animal products in this blog entry, he provides embedded links that go to pages that promote these things as a better option.
What I would love to see Wayne talk about is why he personally is vegan. Why, when he tells others it's acceptable, does he not just eat vegan 3 days a week and eat dead animals the other days? Why isn't he eating free-range eggs and grass fed beef? This must mean something to him beyond the thing he emphasizes, the worst aspects of cruelty in intensive factory farming.
If all factory farms were eliminated and meat became an expensive delicacy because all farmed animals were raised outside in sunlight on a nutritious diet, do any of us believe that if that were the case that Wayne himself would then start eating lamb with some veal on the side. Would he serve his guests bacon, cheese, and goose liver pate?
Of course not. But is the issue that he holds himself personally to standards he believes are not attainable for others? Or does he simply think that speaking honestly and from his heart regarding his own personal beliefs and choices is just too threatening somehow?
I’ve had many people in the movement tell me that they feel asking people to cut back on meat is a positive step. For those who will never become vegan, it’s a reduction in the animals that suffer and die to go on their plates. For others they hope cutting back on gnawing the corpses of animals will be a first step toward vegetarianism which would hopefully be a step toward veganism.
I personally know people that slowly became vegan by cutting back. For example some quit eating beef, then chicken, then finally fish, and then eggs and so on. Does this mean that cutting back on animal products leads to veganism? In some cases it probably does. But one thing was consistent in these cases. These people decided to cut back on animal products on their own as they were bombarded with mailings from Peta and FARM telling them that the only way to be kind to animals was to become vegan. They read it and doubted their ability to be vegan, so they decided to cut back. Then the next mailing came and their guilt was triggered again, so they cut back a little more. Nobody was telling them that simply cutting back was an acceptable goal. The message was always for veganism as the goal.
The counter argument is that too many people believe veganism is an all or nothing endeavor and therefore will do nothing. I’m not sure of the accuracy of this without any actual research on the topic. My personal experience in chatting with friends is that if we keep pushing veganism, many people decide to cut back on their own, and may decide to cut back even further in the future. But there’s also the idea that I always refer back to on this blog—it’s still better to convince one person to go vegan than to convince two others to cut back on meat consumption, because the vegan becomes another ambassador for veganism, another living example that veganism is simple and fulfilling and very livable for ordinary people. That is more powerful than the guy who gave up bacon except for on Sundays.
My next issue with asking people to cut back on the animal products is that in my experience very few people are aware enough of what they’re eating to make a successful judgment of how to cut back. That sounds a little weird, but let me put it this way: with a few notable exceptions almost everyone I meet who learns I’m vegan says “I actually don’t eat very much meat myself.” Then they pretty much always proceed to eat really huge amounts of meat right in front of me, because they are poor judges of amount.
When we ask people to cut back on meat, many will feel that they already eat very little, so they’re already doing what we ask and they’ll see no reason to change. I’m not sure who these people are comparing themselves to when they say they don’t eat much meat (competitive hot dog eaters maybe?), but they do seem to eat a fairly large portion of animal products with every meal.
This is probably just human nature to some extent. I find myself saying from time to time “How could I possibly have gained weight? I don’t eat that much!” Apparently my standards for the volume of food I should consume are based on someone either much larger or a lot a more active. I must think myself a six foot tall marathon runner.
Asking people to eat vegan meals from time to time might help with this tendency to misjudge food volume. At least they’ll see that vegan food can be tasty and satisfying. I support that idea. But when we ask people to simply eat less meat, they often still view a dead animal as the focal point of their meal. Also, without fairly clear instruction that eggs and dairy are just as bad as meat, many people make cheese the new main dish of their “meatless meals.” They’re probably also more likely to abandon the effort since rather than enjoying a delicious vegan main dish, they merely feel deprived with what they feel is a skimpy portion of meat.
To HSUS’s credit they do hand out information including vegan recipes, so if someone follows up on the suggestion to cut their meat consumption with further reading on the website or sending in a request for recipes, they will wind up with vegan suggestions. But why the cloak and dagger? Why can’t we all just say outright: Even in “humane farming” there is immense suffering for the animals and all are eventually slaughtered. If you care about animals the best way to help them is to go vegan. Here are some recipes to try, here are some tips, here is further reading.
Donations as an Investment
I seem to have gotten into multiple discussions lately about donations to non-profit groups, so it seems only natural to blog some of my thoughts on the topic.
I want to say right up front that this is a contentious issue and when it comes up people’s feelings do get hurt. What follows are just my thoughts on donations, not some ethical playbook. I don’t judge others for donating wherever their conscience dictates. If we’re going to talk about donations I’m going to put it right out there and tell you where I would donate and where I wouldn’t. I might say it strongly; I might say it with emotion. But that doesn’t mean I’m disappointed in anyone or think any less of them should they decide their own opinion is the opposite of mine.
Make any sense?
I once believed that making donations was a moral obligation on my part. I donated to some fairly prominent groups through the years. One I donated to significantly before they even had their non-profit status because I believed so strongly in their stated mission. I didn’t feel it was my place to ask too many questions. I donated the way I volunteered. They asked me to jump, I asked how high.
I no longer feel this way. I now believe that donations are our investment in our world, our investment in how things should be, the culture we want to live in. Because I want to live in a world where animals are not ours to use, I don’t want to support organizations that send a message that it is ok to kill or use animals under certain circumstances. For this reason alone I can’t support Peta because they have given awards to slaughterhouse designers and put out a fact sheet on controlled atmosphere killing (an alternative slaughter method being promoted for chickens) in which they detailed how CAK would increase “product quality” (read that as better dead chickens for people to eat) and would save the slaughterhouses money. I can’t support HSUS because during their effort to promote a ban on dove hunting they included language that seemed to encourage the hunting of other birds instead of doves. Also HSUS seems to put more effort to promote cage-free eggs (the hens are still debeaked, live crowded in dark filthy sheds, and are slaughtered when their egg production drops) than they put into promoting veganism. And those are just examples. You will see this kind of thing with these larger groups over and over.
Does that mean I think everyone at HSUS and Peta are sell-outs or don’t care about animals? Quite the opposite. I think they are sincere, dedicated and caring. I know most work long hours and most believe the very same basic principals that I believe. But we differ on strategy. I think they believe what they are doing is the right thing. I just don’t agree with that path. So I don’t donate to them. Because I don’t give money as penance to atone for my sins, I give it as an investment in the world I want to see.
I would not invest in a poor performing for-profit company because it was run by nice people. I wouldn’t buy defective products because they’re made by nice people. I wouldn’t buy veggie burgers that taste like old underwear because the company is staffed by hard working dedicated employees. Likewise I don’t donate to groups that aren’t doing the work I want to see done, or that do and publish things I find distasteful or counterproductive.
Non-profits don’t have investors meetings where they have to justify their actions to the shareholders. The only way we have to show them we aren’t happy with their direction is to not donate and let them know why. That is our only power as the “little people” in the AR movement.
I have tried, as a donor and supporter of more than a decade to let an organization know I was not happy with some of their recent changes. I felt my questions were met with hostility and condescension, so I won’t be donating anymore. I felt cheated and deceived actually, because the only reason I gave to them through years when I slept on a piece of foam on the floor of an enclosed porch in a shared house, as I ate rice and beans most meals, was because they claimed to have an abolitionist message. When they changed to a welfarist message I had to ask why I had been supporting them. So in essence when they were abolitionist I had been “voting” for them with my donations. When they abandoned that message I felt I had to stop “voting” for them, as much as it broke my heart.
My next issue, and yet another reason I won’t donate to HSUS is the compensation issue. Most HSUS employees make very little money, and still put in long hours. But the top people at HSUS make a lot of money. Here are some salaries listed in Animal People for FY2005. More updated information was not available. Keep in mind that we are now in FY2008, for most organizations (depending on how they arrange their IRS paperwork) and so the below individuals have likely gotten significant increases since this listing.
WAYNE PACELLE President HSUS $223,328
Andrew Rowan ExecVP of Ops HSUS $213,770
Patricia Forkan EtrnAffrs HSUS $206,199
Thomas Waite III CFO HSUS $195,307
Roger Kindler GeneralCnsl HSUS $186,490
Paul Irwin FormerPresident HSUS $176,440
John Grandy SrVP wildlife HSUS $163,930
Mike Markarian VP extrnlaff HSUS $161,668
Mary Bege AsstTreasurer HSUS $135,919
Theresa Reese AsstTreas HSUS $107,162
Janet Frake Secretary HSUS $ 95,634
Patricia Gatons AsstSecty HSUS $ 73,187
I don’t believe that people who want to help animals necessarily need to take a vow of poverty. However, I think we also need to be aware that the average donor is an older woman, living alone on a fixed income. We need to be respectful that people send in donations because they want to help animals, not pay huge salaries.
When I’ve brought this up before I always run into one major objection: we need to pay competitive salaries to attract talent to these organizations. We’d rather pay higher salaries for people who can become rainmakers for the organization. They pay for themselves in the donations they bring in and the inspiration and hard work they bring to the organizations campaigns.
We also hear this to excuse the out of control executive compensation in the for-profit world. I don’t mean to compare the above salaries to other executive salaries, because they are still lower. I just don’t believe this statement. Wayne Pacelle may be well qualified and dedicated, but he’s also a lifer with HSUS. He’s been there a long time and as far as I know has not had much experience outside of the realm of animal charities. If he were paid $175, 000 instead of a quarter of a million dollars every year, are we really saying he’d quit because of the lower compensation? Would he leave and go to the American Red Cross? Likewise Mike Markarian. I knew him way back when, at that time he worked at the Fund for Animals. He’s another lifer. I don’t think he’s held much of a career except in animal rights. Where else would he go if HSUS only paid him $90,000. Would he go work at the NRA if they offered him more money? And are we honestly saying that these people would leave at the drop of a hat for a bigger paycheck?
Given all of this I can’t imagine why anyone who makes less than a quarter of a million dollars a year would ever give to HSUS. But who does give to HSUS? For one thing the grocery store cashier I run into all the time. She loves cats and sends her meager earnings in because HSUS keeps sending her fundraising mail with cats on it. I could scream, really. I could give to a smaller organization and help them achieve some wonderful goals or I can give to HSUS and pay 5 minutes of Wayne Pacelle’s salary. My choice? You already know.
And again, it goes back to investing? Am I investing in a vegan world or am I investing in bigger cages and a bigger house for Wayne Pacelle? What does the smart investor do?
Does this mean I’m a hypocrite to donate to a local animal rescue group when I say I’m not happy with HSUS’s direction? Maybe. But this to me wasn’t an issue of saying that I would only support groups that are strictly abolitionist. My donation to the local all-volunteer no-kill rescue group was specifically because they were helping me by taking in the abandoned kittens from my neighborhood who need a round of antibiotics, de-worming, disease testing, and neutering. Plus they need exposure: their pictures on the website and visits to adoption fairs. Because the group is all volunteer, my entire donation goes directly for care for homeless companion animals. Since the group is No-Kill, supporting them supports a philosophy that emphasizes the value of the lives of animals, rather than focusing on efficiency and minimizing suffering alone.
All of those reasons apparently also apply to the new rural vets program being promoted and run by HSUS. I’ve been told all the vets will be volunteers and donations restricted to that program will go directly toward care for animals. I think it’s a wonderful, necessary program, but I won’t be donating because I believe that HSUS has enough cash reserves to float the program and then some without my donation. I also know from past experience that restricting donations just means that money is shifted around elsewhere in the budget, which means that donating directly to the rural vet program might not result in any net increase in the rural vet budget. Besides which, if this program is important to HSUS should they be asking the cashier at the grocery store to donate to it, or should Wayne Pacelle and Mike Markarian chip in and demonstrate to us that the program can and will work?
Again, totally up to you, of course. I know we need mobile vets to sterilize animals, it’s vital. My quibble is who should pay for it and how.
To summarize: I view my donations as an investment in either improving my community (through local rescue and vet care) or as an investment in the world I want to see. I don't believe I should give blindly. I don't believe I am obligated to keep supporting organizations that I supported in the past if their mission changes (or for that matter if I change). I don't believe that I am obligated to give to groups where employees being paid out of donations make more than I will ever make in my entire life and then some and then multiplied... I don't think I'm obligated to donate to groups because they have one good program either.
I want to say right up front that this is a contentious issue and when it comes up people’s feelings do get hurt. What follows are just my thoughts on donations, not some ethical playbook. I don’t judge others for donating wherever their conscience dictates. If we’re going to talk about donations I’m going to put it right out there and tell you where I would donate and where I wouldn’t. I might say it strongly; I might say it with emotion. But that doesn’t mean I’m disappointed in anyone or think any less of them should they decide their own opinion is the opposite of mine.
Make any sense?
I once believed that making donations was a moral obligation on my part. I donated to some fairly prominent groups through the years. One I donated to significantly before they even had their non-profit status because I believed so strongly in their stated mission. I didn’t feel it was my place to ask too many questions. I donated the way I volunteered. They asked me to jump, I asked how high.
I no longer feel this way. I now believe that donations are our investment in our world, our investment in how things should be, the culture we want to live in. Because I want to live in a world where animals are not ours to use, I don’t want to support organizations that send a message that it is ok to kill or use animals under certain circumstances. For this reason alone I can’t support Peta because they have given awards to slaughterhouse designers and put out a fact sheet on controlled atmosphere killing (an alternative slaughter method being promoted for chickens) in which they detailed how CAK would increase “product quality” (read that as better dead chickens for people to eat) and would save the slaughterhouses money. I can’t support HSUS because during their effort to promote a ban on dove hunting they included language that seemed to encourage the hunting of other birds instead of doves. Also HSUS seems to put more effort to promote cage-free eggs (the hens are still debeaked, live crowded in dark filthy sheds, and are slaughtered when their egg production drops) than they put into promoting veganism. And those are just examples. You will see this kind of thing with these larger groups over and over.
Does that mean I think everyone at HSUS and Peta are sell-outs or don’t care about animals? Quite the opposite. I think they are sincere, dedicated and caring. I know most work long hours and most believe the very same basic principals that I believe. But we differ on strategy. I think they believe what they are doing is the right thing. I just don’t agree with that path. So I don’t donate to them. Because I don’t give money as penance to atone for my sins, I give it as an investment in the world I want to see.
I would not invest in a poor performing for-profit company because it was run by nice people. I wouldn’t buy defective products because they’re made by nice people. I wouldn’t buy veggie burgers that taste like old underwear because the company is staffed by hard working dedicated employees. Likewise I don’t donate to groups that aren’t doing the work I want to see done, or that do and publish things I find distasteful or counterproductive.
Non-profits don’t have investors meetings where they have to justify their actions to the shareholders. The only way we have to show them we aren’t happy with their direction is to not donate and let them know why. That is our only power as the “little people” in the AR movement.
I have tried, as a donor and supporter of more than a decade to let an organization know I was not happy with some of their recent changes. I felt my questions were met with hostility and condescension, so I won’t be donating anymore. I felt cheated and deceived actually, because the only reason I gave to them through years when I slept on a piece of foam on the floor of an enclosed porch in a shared house, as I ate rice and beans most meals, was because they claimed to have an abolitionist message. When they changed to a welfarist message I had to ask why I had been supporting them. So in essence when they were abolitionist I had been “voting” for them with my donations. When they abandoned that message I felt I had to stop “voting” for them, as much as it broke my heart.
My next issue, and yet another reason I won’t donate to HSUS is the compensation issue. Most HSUS employees make very little money, and still put in long hours. But the top people at HSUS make a lot of money. Here are some salaries listed in Animal People for FY2005. More updated information was not available. Keep in mind that we are now in FY2008, for most organizations (depending on how they arrange their IRS paperwork) and so the below individuals have likely gotten significant increases since this listing.
WAYNE PACELLE President HSUS $223,328
Andrew Rowan ExecVP of Ops HSUS $213,770
Patricia Forkan EtrnAffrs HSUS $206,199
Thomas Waite III CFO HSUS $195,307
Roger Kindler GeneralCnsl HSUS $186,490
Paul Irwin FormerPresident HSUS $176,440
John Grandy SrVP wildlife HSUS $163,930
Mike Markarian VP extrnlaff HSUS $161,668
Mary Bege AsstTreasurer HSUS $135,919
Theresa Reese AsstTreas HSUS $107,162
Janet Frake Secretary HSUS $ 95,634
Patricia Gatons AsstSecty HSUS $ 73,187
I don’t believe that people who want to help animals necessarily need to take a vow of poverty. However, I think we also need to be aware that the average donor is an older woman, living alone on a fixed income. We need to be respectful that people send in donations because they want to help animals, not pay huge salaries.
When I’ve brought this up before I always run into one major objection: we need to pay competitive salaries to attract talent to these organizations. We’d rather pay higher salaries for people who can become rainmakers for the organization. They pay for themselves in the donations they bring in and the inspiration and hard work they bring to the organizations campaigns.
We also hear this to excuse the out of control executive compensation in the for-profit world. I don’t mean to compare the above salaries to other executive salaries, because they are still lower. I just don’t believe this statement. Wayne Pacelle may be well qualified and dedicated, but he’s also a lifer with HSUS. He’s been there a long time and as far as I know has not had much experience outside of the realm of animal charities. If he were paid $175, 000 instead of a quarter of a million dollars every year, are we really saying he’d quit because of the lower compensation? Would he leave and go to the American Red Cross? Likewise Mike Markarian. I knew him way back when, at that time he worked at the Fund for Animals. He’s another lifer. I don’t think he’s held much of a career except in animal rights. Where else would he go if HSUS only paid him $90,000. Would he go work at the NRA if they offered him more money? And are we honestly saying that these people would leave at the drop of a hat for a bigger paycheck?
Given all of this I can’t imagine why anyone who makes less than a quarter of a million dollars a year would ever give to HSUS. But who does give to HSUS? For one thing the grocery store cashier I run into all the time. She loves cats and sends her meager earnings in because HSUS keeps sending her fundraising mail with cats on it. I could scream, really. I could give to a smaller organization and help them achieve some wonderful goals or I can give to HSUS and pay 5 minutes of Wayne Pacelle’s salary. My choice? You already know.
And again, it goes back to investing? Am I investing in a vegan world or am I investing in bigger cages and a bigger house for Wayne Pacelle? What does the smart investor do?
Does this mean I’m a hypocrite to donate to a local animal rescue group when I say I’m not happy with HSUS’s direction? Maybe. But this to me wasn’t an issue of saying that I would only support groups that are strictly abolitionist. My donation to the local all-volunteer no-kill rescue group was specifically because they were helping me by taking in the abandoned kittens from my neighborhood who need a round of antibiotics, de-worming, disease testing, and neutering. Plus they need exposure: their pictures on the website and visits to adoption fairs. Because the group is all volunteer, my entire donation goes directly for care for homeless companion animals. Since the group is No-Kill, supporting them supports a philosophy that emphasizes the value of the lives of animals, rather than focusing on efficiency and minimizing suffering alone.
All of those reasons apparently also apply to the new rural vets program being promoted and run by HSUS. I’ve been told all the vets will be volunteers and donations restricted to that program will go directly toward care for animals. I think it’s a wonderful, necessary program, but I won’t be donating because I believe that HSUS has enough cash reserves to float the program and then some without my donation. I also know from past experience that restricting donations just means that money is shifted around elsewhere in the budget, which means that donating directly to the rural vet program might not result in any net increase in the rural vet budget. Besides which, if this program is important to HSUS should they be asking the cashier at the grocery store to donate to it, or should Wayne Pacelle and Mike Markarian chip in and demonstrate to us that the program can and will work?
Again, totally up to you, of course. I know we need mobile vets to sterilize animals, it’s vital. My quibble is who should pay for it and how.
To summarize: I view my donations as an investment in either improving my community (through local rescue and vet care) or as an investment in the world I want to see. I don't believe I should give blindly. I don't believe I am obligated to keep supporting organizations that I supported in the past if their mission changes (or for that matter if I change). I don't believe that I am obligated to give to groups where employees being paid out of donations make more than I will ever make in my entire life and then some and then multiplied... I don't think I'm obligated to donate to groups because they have one good program either.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Ferals and kittens, oh my
Here's what happened this weekend.
We had agreed to trap a feral cat who'd recently had kittens. Our neighbor had taken the kittens to a shelter in Annapolis (where he works) and was trying to get the mother cat in to the shelter as well. He told us the shelter had said the kittens would probably find homes but the mother cat would be killed as a feral on arrival.
We had tried to find someplace for the kittens, but he'd only told us 24 hours before he took them to the shelter. So sadly that all happened too fast.
We then told him we'd trap the mother and take her to the feral clinic. It seemed the best option since having him kill her sounded bad, and the other alternative, that he'd never catch her and she'd keep having kittens also sounded bad.
I made an appointment at the feral clinic and Saturday evening she was in the trap in our tiny 1/2 bath in the basement. Then I decided to walk the dogs.
As I went past the main area where most of the ferals congregate, which is also where the poisonings have occurred, I saw an orange kitten just sitting in the sidewalk. Then nearby I saw two other orange tabby kittens just like him. He didn't move out of the sidewalk as the dogs and I approached. In fact he just lay there. I was worried he'd been poisoned too.
When I got closer I was able to just scoop him up and carry him in my shirt while still holding the dogs. I took him home. Luckily once he was back at the house he ate some food and drank some water. He still seemed awfully weak.
Then I went back to check on the other kittens. They were stronger, but still totally friendly, not feral, so I scooped them up too. They were so tame I could carry the two of them home with me, about 2 long blocks. So then we had an adult feral in a trap and 3 kittens in the tiny bathroom.
The kittens kept jumping in my lap, but they also had URI and needed some antibiotics. We're so crowded in our home that keeping infected cats separate is very difficult. Plus, not being with any official rescue group, it's really hard for us to adopt out kittens. Because of the feral situation Sean said I might really have to take the kittens to the shelter. We felt we could not put them back out, since they were very tame and trusting, and we have a bad person hurting cats in our neighborhood. Also they needed treatment. I cleaned their ears and flea combed them. I found not one flea, and no flea dirt. To me that indicated that they'd been dumped outside that day--it doesn't take very long for fleas to get started.
It was a terrible night. Crying over the kittens, furious at our stupid neighborhood, and furious at people who dump kittens outside, and furious at myself for thinking I had no options except the shelter. I did some searching online and found that the kittens would have a much better chance at the DC shelter than at our county shelter. So I planned to transport them to the DC shelter when I took the feral in to the feral clinic.
Then I didn't sleep.
The next morning we all went off to the feral clinic, Sean and I, and four cats. Quite luckily at the feral clinic many of the cat caretakers there wanted to help us. A young man from Homeless Animal Rescue Team was helping with the clinic and made a quick phone call. To our joy HART would take the kittens, so I gave them a donation to help out (yeah, the money I was going to give to Second Chance, but maybe this will force me to sell some art for Second Chance).
So that was a very nice thing.
The downside was that we trapped the feral cat in a brand new, deluxe, really beautiful trap that we'd just bought and someone stole our trap from the clinic, even though we'd attached Sean's business card to it. I guess the temptation was just too much for someone. Still we really saved no money going to the clinic since it cost us a $100 trap. The clinic said they thought they knew who took it and they'd call him and ask him to give it back. But they wouldn't give us his information and we still haven't heard anything. So that was a downer. We bought the nice trap because we thought we might be rescuing a lot of cats. Between that and the donation to HART it was a really expensive day.
Low quality kitten pictures to follow.
We had agreed to trap a feral cat who'd recently had kittens. Our neighbor had taken the kittens to a shelter in Annapolis (where he works) and was trying to get the mother cat in to the shelter as well. He told us the shelter had said the kittens would probably find homes but the mother cat would be killed as a feral on arrival.
We had tried to find someplace for the kittens, but he'd only told us 24 hours before he took them to the shelter. So sadly that all happened too fast.
We then told him we'd trap the mother and take her to the feral clinic. It seemed the best option since having him kill her sounded bad, and the other alternative, that he'd never catch her and she'd keep having kittens also sounded bad.
I made an appointment at the feral clinic and Saturday evening she was in the trap in our tiny 1/2 bath in the basement. Then I decided to walk the dogs.
As I went past the main area where most of the ferals congregate, which is also where the poisonings have occurred, I saw an orange kitten just sitting in the sidewalk. Then nearby I saw two other orange tabby kittens just like him. He didn't move out of the sidewalk as the dogs and I approached. In fact he just lay there. I was worried he'd been poisoned too.
When I got closer I was able to just scoop him up and carry him in my shirt while still holding the dogs. I took him home. Luckily once he was back at the house he ate some food and drank some water. He still seemed awfully weak.
Then I went back to check on the other kittens. They were stronger, but still totally friendly, not feral, so I scooped them up too. They were so tame I could carry the two of them home with me, about 2 long blocks. So then we had an adult feral in a trap and 3 kittens in the tiny bathroom.
The kittens kept jumping in my lap, but they also had URI and needed some antibiotics. We're so crowded in our home that keeping infected cats separate is very difficult. Plus, not being with any official rescue group, it's really hard for us to adopt out kittens. Because of the feral situation Sean said I might really have to take the kittens to the shelter. We felt we could not put them back out, since they were very tame and trusting, and we have a bad person hurting cats in our neighborhood. Also they needed treatment. I cleaned their ears and flea combed them. I found not one flea, and no flea dirt. To me that indicated that they'd been dumped outside that day--it doesn't take very long for fleas to get started.
It was a terrible night. Crying over the kittens, furious at our stupid neighborhood, and furious at people who dump kittens outside, and furious at myself for thinking I had no options except the shelter. I did some searching online and found that the kittens would have a much better chance at the DC shelter than at our county shelter. So I planned to transport them to the DC shelter when I took the feral in to the feral clinic.
Then I didn't sleep.
The next morning we all went off to the feral clinic, Sean and I, and four cats. Quite luckily at the feral clinic many of the cat caretakers there wanted to help us. A young man from Homeless Animal Rescue Team was helping with the clinic and made a quick phone call. To our joy HART would take the kittens, so I gave them a donation to help out (yeah, the money I was going to give to Second Chance, but maybe this will force me to sell some art for Second Chance).
So that was a very nice thing.
The downside was that we trapped the feral cat in a brand new, deluxe, really beautiful trap that we'd just bought and someone stole our trap from the clinic, even though we'd attached Sean's business card to it. I guess the temptation was just too much for someone. Still we really saved no money going to the clinic since it cost us a $100 trap. The clinic said they thought they knew who took it and they'd call him and ask him to give it back. But they wouldn't give us his information and we still haven't heard anything. So that was a downer. We bought the nice trap because we thought we might be rescuing a lot of cats. Between that and the donation to HART it was a really expensive day.
Low quality kitten pictures to follow.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Trusting Our Instincts
This week’s Survivors’ writing exercise was to discuss how we’ve encountered and also internalized victim-blaming attitudes. In relation to that I brought up a kind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation in regard to trusting our instincts. Many of us had some kind of stirring on a subconscious level that let us know something wasn’t right, and many of us pushed it aside because we didn’t want to over-react, we didn’t want to seem bitchy, or even because people around us thought we were being paranoid. Later, after something bad happens, people will ask “why didn’t you listen to your gut?” But for those of us who have on other occasions in fact listened to our gut and gotten out of situations that made us feel unsafe, there’s always a second-guessing to follow. “Are you sure you aren’t over-reacting?” people will ask.
When I say people are communicating in disrespectful and inappropriate ways, I really mean it. There are ways that respectful adult human beings talk to each other and ways they just don’t. There are always reasons for disrespectful communication. Sometimes it is just a matter of someone not controlling their temper, though I find it interesting that these same people seem to never, ever lose their tempers with bosses, major donors, reporters or anyone who falls into the category of “important.” They seem only unable to reign in the temper tantrums when they’re around volunteers, little people, or people that are otherwise safe to explode at.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
"My Doctor Told Me I Can’t Be Vegan"
The first time I considered becoming vegan my doctor talked me out of it. I was a young vegetarian and at constant war with my mother over it. I was not getting enough calories in general since my mother “wouldn’t prepare any special meals” and sabotaged things like vegetables and rice and potatoes by adding broth or bacon. I was considering transitioning into veganism, without a real understanding of what that meant. My mother marched me off to the doctor so he would tell me I couldn’t be vegetarian. Instead he told me it was perfectly healthy to be vegetarian, but because of my special health considerations I would have to eat an egg and some dairy every single day. I completely believed him.
I’m actually allergic to milk and eggs, but because my allergy isn’t life-threatening (just itchy and annoying) he encouraged me to consume them anyway, but that’s another story for another time. I’ve been vegan now for more than 13 years and it hasn’t killed me yet!
A lot of times my vegetarian friends will tell me that their doctors have told them they can’t be vegan. Some have even quit being vegetarian because their doctors have told them that their specific health conditions require them to eat meat.
I think I’ve heard them all at this point. “The doctor says people with rheumatoid arthritis need red meat every day.” “My doctor said it isn’t safe for women with fibroids to be vegetarian.” “Because I have lupus all the experts agree I can never be vegan.” And so on. I’m waiting for “The doctor said that because I have big feet I need to eat eggs.”
I don’t mean to make light of chronic health conditions. Obviously that’s a lot to deal with, and I can’t blame people for being frightened and depending on the advice of experts. The problem is that even if those doctors are experts on arthritis or auto-immune disorders, most aren’t experts on nutrition. They might not even understand veganism. They might picture you subsisting on a diet of white rice and iceberg lettuce. There are actually ways to get the nutrients you need on a vegan diet, the trick is figuring out what you need, and what foods work best for you.
In my case I was born with a minor heart defect that at times during my life has appeared to doctors to be better or to be worse. At one point they felt it was quite severe. Most experts agree that my type of heart defect, mitral valve prolapse, can cause changes in the nervous system as the body attempts to deal with the less efficient workings of the heart. This creates a kind of syndrome. For me I have a tendency to develop anemia, I have fatigue, and some other weird symptoms. My doctor felt that I would not get the iron or other nutrients I needed on a vegan diet and this might worsen the heart problems. Worsening the heart problems could lead to sudden cardiac arrest. Better not take any chances, he told me.
I admit that when I finally did throw caution to the wind and become vegan, I was not the most careful vegan. I didn’t really take my vitamins, I ate the same foods day after day. The truth was that I was sick of listening to doctors. I was sick of heart sonograms and various restrictions. I was sick of doctors making that “oooh” noise when they listened to the clicking sound my heart made, but never offering me any real guidance of how to live with it. When I began having chest pains in junior high school during gym class the doctor diagnosed a worsening of my prolapse and a note was sent to school that I shouldn’t run, since putting too much pressure on my heart might have disastrous results. I hated feeling singled out in that way as much as I hated the chest pains. As a new vegan I went running whenever I felt like it. I loved to run. I loved my vegan food. I felt ok because I didn’t suddenly get worse as a vegan. But I also wanted to do what was right for the animals no matter what. I wish someone had been able to reassure me then, during that uncertain time.
But there was another reason I decided to just go ahead and become vegan and just go ahead and run. Both of my cousins who I’d grown up with (I have another much younger cousin, different story) died as a result of their minor heart defects. They didn’t run. They weren’t vegetarian, much less vegan. They’d gone to the doctor. Then one day Patti fell over dead. A couple years later, at a convention for her work, right in the lobby of a fancy hotel, Chrissy fell onto the floor and was dead before anyone could even dial 911. This is what I’d always been warned about, sudden heart failure. Now, seeing both of my cousins felled by it, I couldn’t help but think it was somehow unavoidable. Why not just live my conscience and celebrate the time I had? So I did.
Every now and then over the next few years a little nagging voice would pop up in my head and remind me that it’s foolish to disregard doctors’ advice. So I didn’t go to the doctor. Nah nah, nah nah, I can’t hear you!
Fast forward many years later. I started having some health issues, related actually to years of ignoring my asthma, so off I went to the doctor. After going through everything else and getting a new inhaler, I asked about the heart thing. The doctor observed that she couldn’t even hear it (my murmur used to be so audible that doctors got panicky, hence the sonograms), my heart seemed to be doing fine. At every check since then they’ve sort of marveled “I can barely hear it now.” I know that just not hearing the little click doesn’t mean it’s gone, but I do know the doctors worry more when it’s more pronounced.
I’m now older than either one of my cousins were when they died.
I try to take my iron now. I try to eat sensibly and eat enough (ok, I like some foods that really aren’t sensible and I eat a little too much). I try to exercise and take care of myself. I know that this thing might come back and cause me problems some day, but I find a certain comfort in knowing all those dire predictions didn’t come true for me and they probably won’t come true for others.
So how do we know what we should be eating if our doctors don’t know?
Some general guidelines I use, though mileage might vary are:
1. If your doctor is saying that your medical condition requires a certain nutrient that a vegan diet won’t provide, do a little research on your own. A vegan diet really can provide enough protein, enough iron, and many other nutrients. If you need extra B12, try fortified soymilk or supplements.
2. Go to forums and discuss diet with other people with your condition. Some of them will be as uninformed as your doctor, but you might find some that are vegan themselves who can give you tips. Or go on a vegan forum and ask if anyone else has the same condition and wants to form a support group. After meeting a lot of vegans I’ve found that for every friend who told me his or her medical condition made it impossible to be vegan, I seem to have met a vegan who had the same condition and swore that symptoms improved after becoming vegan.
3. Concentrate on being healthy overall, which means exercise, and not just being vegan, but eating healthy foods and avoiding junk food. Try to stay away from transfats for example. Being as healthy as possible will help your body deal with other health conditions. Oh, and keep hydrated--my chest pains might have been the result of dehydration rather than physical exertion. It's strange how we forget that one.
4. Look at the effect of stress. Many chronic health problems are exacerbated by stress. We can’t eliminate all stress from our lives, but we can try to find ways to lessen it and handle it a little better.
5. Keep expectations realistic. Many people with chronic health conditions do feel better on vegan diets. However, it’s not an instant cure for everything. It’s hard to judge how you would feel at any given time if you weren’t vegan. You might have good days and bad days which seem completely unconnected to your diet. I’m not promising being vegan will cure everything. I’m just saying that if you want to live your ethics but are worried about your health, it will be ok. Lot's of us are navigating it too and we're all ok. I think sometimes when people expect that going vegan will immediately cure a chronic condition they get frustrated and give up too soon. I can’t say I felt better the day I became vegan, or even in that first year. I do however believe that all things considered I’m far healthier today than I would have been if I’d never gone vegan.
6. Eat a wide variety of foods. You might think that veganism is a very limited diet, but I eat more varied foods now than I ever did as an omnivore or even as an ovo-lacto vegetarian. It’s not uncommon for someone (cough, cough, my father) to fall into a pattern of eating a piece of dead cow, a side of rice, and a side of broccoli every single night. As a vegan I found and enjoyed a wider variety of fruits and vegetables than I ever knew existed. I’ve also learned about how different substances in these fruits and vegetables help my body and how they aren’t easy to duplicate in supplements.
7. Find a doctor that understands and supports your decision to be vegan. It might take a bunch of phone calls, but it’s really worth it. When I found a supportive doctor (he isn’t vegan himself sadly, but he also thinks it’s ok that I am) he made some suggestions for me like trying to get some flax seed oil into my diet, and herbs that ease inflammation. If your conversation with your doctor just shuts down because he/she doesn’t think you should be vegan then that’s going to rule out a lot of open and important discussion. Seriously, you’re paying for your medical care, so try to find someone who can help you get the support and information you need.
I’m actually allergic to milk and eggs, but because my allergy isn’t life-threatening (just itchy and annoying) he encouraged me to consume them anyway, but that’s another story for another time. I’ve been vegan now for more than 13 years and it hasn’t killed me yet!
A lot of times my vegetarian friends will tell me that their doctors have told them they can’t be vegan. Some have even quit being vegetarian because their doctors have told them that their specific health conditions require them to eat meat.
I think I’ve heard them all at this point. “The doctor says people with rheumatoid arthritis need red meat every day.” “My doctor said it isn’t safe for women with fibroids to be vegetarian.” “Because I have lupus all the experts agree I can never be vegan.” And so on. I’m waiting for “The doctor said that because I have big feet I need to eat eggs.”
I don’t mean to make light of chronic health conditions. Obviously that’s a lot to deal with, and I can’t blame people for being frightened and depending on the advice of experts. The problem is that even if those doctors are experts on arthritis or auto-immune disorders, most aren’t experts on nutrition. They might not even understand veganism. They might picture you subsisting on a diet of white rice and iceberg lettuce. There are actually ways to get the nutrients you need on a vegan diet, the trick is figuring out what you need, and what foods work best for you.
In my case I was born with a minor heart defect that at times during my life has appeared to doctors to be better or to be worse. At one point they felt it was quite severe. Most experts agree that my type of heart defect, mitral valve prolapse, can cause changes in the nervous system as the body attempts to deal with the less efficient workings of the heart. This creates a kind of syndrome. For me I have a tendency to develop anemia, I have fatigue, and some other weird symptoms. My doctor felt that I would not get the iron or other nutrients I needed on a vegan diet and this might worsen the heart problems. Worsening the heart problems could lead to sudden cardiac arrest. Better not take any chances, he told me.
I admit that when I finally did throw caution to the wind and become vegan, I was not the most careful vegan. I didn’t really take my vitamins, I ate the same foods day after day. The truth was that I was sick of listening to doctors. I was sick of heart sonograms and various restrictions. I was sick of doctors making that “oooh” noise when they listened to the clicking sound my heart made, but never offering me any real guidance of how to live with it. When I began having chest pains in junior high school during gym class the doctor diagnosed a worsening of my prolapse and a note was sent to school that I shouldn’t run, since putting too much pressure on my heart might have disastrous results. I hated feeling singled out in that way as much as I hated the chest pains. As a new vegan I went running whenever I felt like it. I loved to run. I loved my vegan food. I felt ok because I didn’t suddenly get worse as a vegan. But I also wanted to do what was right for the animals no matter what. I wish someone had been able to reassure me then, during that uncertain time.
But there was another reason I decided to just go ahead and become vegan and just go ahead and run. Both of my cousins who I’d grown up with (I have another much younger cousin, different story) died as a result of their minor heart defects. They didn’t run. They weren’t vegetarian, much less vegan. They’d gone to the doctor. Then one day Patti fell over dead. A couple years later, at a convention for her work, right in the lobby of a fancy hotel, Chrissy fell onto the floor and was dead before anyone could even dial 911. This is what I’d always been warned about, sudden heart failure. Now, seeing both of my cousins felled by it, I couldn’t help but think it was somehow unavoidable. Why not just live my conscience and celebrate the time I had? So I did.
Every now and then over the next few years a little nagging voice would pop up in my head and remind me that it’s foolish to disregard doctors’ advice. So I didn’t go to the doctor. Nah nah, nah nah, I can’t hear you!
Fast forward many years later. I started having some health issues, related actually to years of ignoring my asthma, so off I went to the doctor. After going through everything else and getting a new inhaler, I asked about the heart thing. The doctor observed that she couldn’t even hear it (my murmur used to be so audible that doctors got panicky, hence the sonograms), my heart seemed to be doing fine. At every check since then they’ve sort of marveled “I can barely hear it now.” I know that just not hearing the little click doesn’t mean it’s gone, but I do know the doctors worry more when it’s more pronounced.
I’m now older than either one of my cousins were when they died.
I try to take my iron now. I try to eat sensibly and eat enough (ok, I like some foods that really aren’t sensible and I eat a little too much). I try to exercise and take care of myself. I know that this thing might come back and cause me problems some day, but I find a certain comfort in knowing all those dire predictions didn’t come true for me and they probably won’t come true for others.
So how do we know what we should be eating if our doctors don’t know?
Some general guidelines I use, though mileage might vary are:
1. If your doctor is saying that your medical condition requires a certain nutrient that a vegan diet won’t provide, do a little research on your own. A vegan diet really can provide enough protein, enough iron, and many other nutrients. If you need extra B12, try fortified soymilk or supplements.
2. Go to forums and discuss diet with other people with your condition. Some of them will be as uninformed as your doctor, but you might find some that are vegan themselves who can give you tips. Or go on a vegan forum and ask if anyone else has the same condition and wants to form a support group. After meeting a lot of vegans I’ve found that for every friend who told me his or her medical condition made it impossible to be vegan, I seem to have met a vegan who had the same condition and swore that symptoms improved after becoming vegan.
3. Concentrate on being healthy overall, which means exercise, and not just being vegan, but eating healthy foods and avoiding junk food. Try to stay away from transfats for example. Being as healthy as possible will help your body deal with other health conditions. Oh, and keep hydrated--my chest pains might have been the result of dehydration rather than physical exertion. It's strange how we forget that one.
4. Look at the effect of stress. Many chronic health problems are exacerbated by stress. We can’t eliminate all stress from our lives, but we can try to find ways to lessen it and handle it a little better.
5. Keep expectations realistic. Many people with chronic health conditions do feel better on vegan diets. However, it’s not an instant cure for everything. It’s hard to judge how you would feel at any given time if you weren’t vegan. You might have good days and bad days which seem completely unconnected to your diet. I’m not promising being vegan will cure everything. I’m just saying that if you want to live your ethics but are worried about your health, it will be ok. Lot's of us are navigating it too and we're all ok. I think sometimes when people expect that going vegan will immediately cure a chronic condition they get frustrated and give up too soon. I can’t say I felt better the day I became vegan, or even in that first year. I do however believe that all things considered I’m far healthier today than I would have been if I’d never gone vegan.
6. Eat a wide variety of foods. You might think that veganism is a very limited diet, but I eat more varied foods now than I ever did as an omnivore or even as an ovo-lacto vegetarian. It’s not uncommon for someone (cough, cough, my father) to fall into a pattern of eating a piece of dead cow, a side of rice, and a side of broccoli every single night. As a vegan I found and enjoyed a wider variety of fruits and vegetables than I ever knew existed. I’ve also learned about how different substances in these fruits and vegetables help my body and how they aren’t easy to duplicate in supplements.
7. Find a doctor that understands and supports your decision to be vegan. It might take a bunch of phone calls, but it’s really worth it. When I found a supportive doctor (he isn’t vegan himself sadly, but he also thinks it’s ok that I am) he made some suggestions for me like trying to get some flax seed oil into my diet, and herbs that ease inflammation. If your conversation with your doctor just shuts down because he/she doesn’t think you should be vegan then that’s going to rule out a lot of open and important discussion. Seriously, you’re paying for your medical care, so try to find someone who can help you get the support and information you need.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
How do we get serious about stalking?
Recently the Washington Post did an article in the health section about a woman who felt she was being stalked at the gym. I really felt for her situation. It’s hard for women to get out and be active and get into shape without feeling threatened. You start to appreciate the concept of someplace like Curves where men aren’t allowed, though that’s just not a good workout and if you want to use free weights or design your own fitness program, you’re back to mixing in with the opposite sex at the regular gym.
I blogged a little while ago about how often I get harassed when I’m walking my dogs or just going to the grocery store. Because I go to the gym with my husband I don’t really get bothered except very occasionally at the gym. Also sometimes if Sean sees someone talking to me for what seems to be an extended period of time he’ll come over. It’s not threatening or anything, but it’s enough to get the way too persistent males to back off.
But I feel terrible for other women at the gym. Recently one woman had headphones on and was lifting some free weights. A man kept trying to talk to her and she kept ignoring him and lifting her weights, so then he grabbed her arm in the middle of a lift to force her to look at him and speak to him. First, that’s not safe with weights, and secondly if a woman doesn’t want to speak to a guy at the gym, that’s her right, and thirdly can you imagine the explosive reaction if a guy grabbed the arm another guy while he was lifting and interrupted his set for any other reason than that the gym was on fire… Yeah, you would never try that with a guy, so why would anyone think it’s ok to try that with a woman?
I read Hugo Schwyzer’s blog from time to time and he touched on the issue of women not wanting male attention from both sides. He said men are offended that women just won’t be friendly, but when they feel that way they aren’t really considering how the women feel and they aren’t considering how they might contribute to a world where women don’t feel safe.
Maybe it’s the rotten mood I’m in today (very tired) but I have to say it goes beyond that. I’ve had men make a lot of accusations against me when I wouldn’t stop to talk to them, and they kept persisting. I’ve been accused of being racist because I didn’t want to have a conversation with a large man (who just happened to be African American) who was standing between me and my front door after dark when I came home. I came up to the house to find this strange man inside my fenced yard peering in my front window and when I told him he had to leave he accused me of being racist (because had it been a white man peering in my windows after dark I would have given him a hug and invited him in, had some tea and scones and watched PBS..). I’ve had men follow me telling me that I don’t need to be scared of them because they’re really nice guys. Um, you just disproved that by chasing me in your truck after I told you to leave me alone and tried to walk away from you. I’ve had guys tell me I have something wrong with me to be so unfriendly…
And what’s the common theme here: I wasn’t a person to any of them. I wasn’t a human being who had a right to feel frightened and want to protect myself. I was an object and to a person like that it’s really annoying when an object tries to stick up for itself and get away from them.
I have to add that this kind of stuff doesn’t really happen when you’re in groups. These men decide to pick on you if you’re jogging by yourself. If you’re in a large group of women, or a small group that includes another male, they really don’t run up to you saying you shouldn’t be scared of them. So that just says something to me.
At the same time there probably is an aspect where a nice guy might feel like he had a moment of connection with a woman he doesn’t know, like their coffee orders got mixed up and they laughed about it or she dropped her water bottle and he handed it back, or whatever. And it probably is frustrating to the nice guy that he might want to continue the conversation but the woman is afraid of him and so won’t talk to him. Of course, in that instance, see above, if he really is a nice guy he does not leap into his truck and chase her.
It probably is true that most males have no concept of just how frightening and intimidating they can be to women. But the main emotion I see expressed isn’t empathy: “Wow, I feel terrible that she’s so scared, that must feel terrible” but merely frustration that the other person, this woman isn’t giving them what they want.
I’m not sure anyone can understand this unless they’ve been there. I was stalked when I was younger in a really terrible incident, and seemingly throughout my adult life I seem to pick up stalkers from time to time. I’m not sure why, my dad thinks I give off push-over vibes that attract bad people. I think it’s maybe that I’m short and therefore seem less intimidating. I have long-ish hair… I don’t know. I wonder if I’m just more attuned to it at this point, maybe tons of women are stalked all the time without even knowing it. The first time I had no idea until someone confronted me with details of my life he couldn’t have known except by making following me around his chief hobby. But a person who hasn’t been through this just doesn’t get the kind of terror it invokes.
In the last place I lived I was stalked by my neighbor. I was scared so much of the time, and while Sean is definitely on my side, he just didn’t get how deep my fears were. He laughed it off and said “Wow, he sure has a crush on you.” My response was “laugh it up now because one day you’ll come home and find me cut up in little pieces in the living room.” Whenever I bring up this story Sean points out that in fact this neighbor didn’t physically attack me and my dead body was not found in little bits in the living room. So maybe I misjudged the level of the threat. But does anyone deserve to spend time fearing that outcome? Is it right that I altered my schedule and my dog walking route to avoid a person who was always showing up wherever I happened to be.
Anyway, perhaps I should tell the story of the stalking so you can draw your own conclusions on how badly I misjudged.
Shortly after we moved in I went in the backyard to clean up. The yard had been taken over by vines and underbrush, and beneath those were several years of trash. Apparently at some point the trash service had stopped in that neighborhood, so the previous residents had simply dumped all their trash in the back yard. From the smell and the suspicious mounds back there I joked that I was afraid of discovering a body. Anyway, it was the middle of summer, very hot, and I was doing all this hard work. My neighbor would watch me over the fence and remarked several times that I worked very hard. Then he said he wanted to marry a woman like me who would work so hard. I told him I was married, he talked to Sean a few times. I figured that was that, but it wasn’t.
He kept talking to me, insisting that I was the perfect woman for him, asking me what I liked to do for fun. If Sean was around he’d wax very eloquent on how lucky Sean was to have a wife like me, pretty and hard-working, and the way he went on and on made me very uncomfortable.
I finished the back yard and moved on to working on the front lawn, which involved pulling out a lot of dead and dying bushes. In one single day of working on the front lawn he drove back and forth in front of our house at least ten times, each time slowing way down for a really long stare. Some of the drive-bys were only minutes apart giving me the impression he hadn’t gone anywhere except around the block.
Then he started coming over to ask about things or saying he needed to talk to Sean, but he’d grab my hands and arms when trying to talk to me. Then we adopted the first dog, Kyra. He followed me in his car while I walked her.
Sean built a tall privacy fence all around our yard for Kyra. Then our neighbor decided to have a party, he kept inviting me and I kept making excuses. Then he went to Sean and said he’d be offended if we didn’t come to his party. So Sean said we’d better just stop by. We went to his party and aside from his grabbing my arms and hands, there was something else that made me uncomfortable. He’d built a raised deck, not attached to his house like a normal person, but right next to our privacy fence. When I sat down on the built in bench on his deck I realized that I was looking directly into our bedroom window. We’d built a privacy fence—he built a viewing platform.
After that I really had no peace of mind until we moved. I’d come home from work and rush around closing all the curtains and shades. Then I’d get paranoid that maybe even with the curtains shut he could still see my shadow, so I wouldn’t change in the bedroom, I’d go change in the bathroom. I started walking my dog on a long course that avoided going near his house or the places where I’d encountered him driving before.
Then we moved and that was it. Nothing happened. He never hurt me. He never kicked in my door. He never threatened me with a weapon. I just lived in constant fear of those things. That’s the insidious thing about it—it can destroy your feeling of safety without the other person doing anything really *all that bad.* If confronted they’d just claim they were friendly. “After all, I didn’t hurt her.”
What can we do to move away from a culture where this kind of stuff is allowed to continue? I went to the magistrate’s office to try to press charges in the hit and run and ahead of me was a young woman. She was crying. She explained that her ex had abused her and threatened her and she’d moved away and tried to hide her location from him. Now she was getting threatening emails where he told her he knew where she lived, he knew where she worked. She held out a sheaf of email messages to the magistrate. The magistrate said “We’ll do something if he shows up in person and threatens you.” “I want a protective order now,” she insisted. “But this is just email. Dial 911 if he comes to your house.” the magistrate replied. “But don’t you see,” she said, her voice starting to fail, he must be following me to know where I live and where I work.” No protective order. She left in tears, her face buried in her friend’s shoulder.
EDIT: Oooops I wrote all of this out from my point of view and only afterwards did I happen to think that not just women are victims of stalkers. Some men have stalkers too, and children do as well. I think it's more women than men that experience this, but we need to stop all stalking obviously.
I blogged a little while ago about how often I get harassed when I’m walking my dogs or just going to the grocery store. Because I go to the gym with my husband I don’t really get bothered except very occasionally at the gym. Also sometimes if Sean sees someone talking to me for what seems to be an extended period of time he’ll come over. It’s not threatening or anything, but it’s enough to get the way too persistent males to back off.
But I feel terrible for other women at the gym. Recently one woman had headphones on and was lifting some free weights. A man kept trying to talk to her and she kept ignoring him and lifting her weights, so then he grabbed her arm in the middle of a lift to force her to look at him and speak to him. First, that’s not safe with weights, and secondly if a woman doesn’t want to speak to a guy at the gym, that’s her right, and thirdly can you imagine the explosive reaction if a guy grabbed the arm another guy while he was lifting and interrupted his set for any other reason than that the gym was on fire… Yeah, you would never try that with a guy, so why would anyone think it’s ok to try that with a woman?
I read Hugo Schwyzer’s blog from time to time and he touched on the issue of women not wanting male attention from both sides. He said men are offended that women just won’t be friendly, but when they feel that way they aren’t really considering how the women feel and they aren’t considering how they might contribute to a world where women don’t feel safe.
Maybe it’s the rotten mood I’m in today (very tired) but I have to say it goes beyond that. I’ve had men make a lot of accusations against me when I wouldn’t stop to talk to them, and they kept persisting. I’ve been accused of being racist because I didn’t want to have a conversation with a large man (who just happened to be African American) who was standing between me and my front door after dark when I came home. I came up to the house to find this strange man inside my fenced yard peering in my front window and when I told him he had to leave he accused me of being racist (because had it been a white man peering in my windows after dark I would have given him a hug and invited him in, had some tea and scones and watched PBS..). I’ve had men follow me telling me that I don’t need to be scared of them because they’re really nice guys. Um, you just disproved that by chasing me in your truck after I told you to leave me alone and tried to walk away from you. I’ve had guys tell me I have something wrong with me to be so unfriendly…
And what’s the common theme here: I wasn’t a person to any of them. I wasn’t a human being who had a right to feel frightened and want to protect myself. I was an object and to a person like that it’s really annoying when an object tries to stick up for itself and get away from them.
I have to add that this kind of stuff doesn’t really happen when you’re in groups. These men decide to pick on you if you’re jogging by yourself. If you’re in a large group of women, or a small group that includes another male, they really don’t run up to you saying you shouldn’t be scared of them. So that just says something to me.
At the same time there probably is an aspect where a nice guy might feel like he had a moment of connection with a woman he doesn’t know, like their coffee orders got mixed up and they laughed about it or she dropped her water bottle and he handed it back, or whatever. And it probably is frustrating to the nice guy that he might want to continue the conversation but the woman is afraid of him and so won’t talk to him. Of course, in that instance, see above, if he really is a nice guy he does not leap into his truck and chase her.
It probably is true that most males have no concept of just how frightening and intimidating they can be to women. But the main emotion I see expressed isn’t empathy: “Wow, I feel terrible that she’s so scared, that must feel terrible” but merely frustration that the other person, this woman isn’t giving them what they want.
I’m not sure anyone can understand this unless they’ve been there. I was stalked when I was younger in a really terrible incident, and seemingly throughout my adult life I seem to pick up stalkers from time to time. I’m not sure why, my dad thinks I give off push-over vibes that attract bad people. I think it’s maybe that I’m short and therefore seem less intimidating. I have long-ish hair… I don’t know. I wonder if I’m just more attuned to it at this point, maybe tons of women are stalked all the time without even knowing it. The first time I had no idea until someone confronted me with details of my life he couldn’t have known except by making following me around his chief hobby. But a person who hasn’t been through this just doesn’t get the kind of terror it invokes.
In the last place I lived I was stalked by my neighbor. I was scared so much of the time, and while Sean is definitely on my side, he just didn’t get how deep my fears were. He laughed it off and said “Wow, he sure has a crush on you.” My response was “laugh it up now because one day you’ll come home and find me cut up in little pieces in the living room.” Whenever I bring up this story Sean points out that in fact this neighbor didn’t physically attack me and my dead body was not found in little bits in the living room. So maybe I misjudged the level of the threat. But does anyone deserve to spend time fearing that outcome? Is it right that I altered my schedule and my dog walking route to avoid a person who was always showing up wherever I happened to be.
Anyway, perhaps I should tell the story of the stalking so you can draw your own conclusions on how badly I misjudged.
Shortly after we moved in I went in the backyard to clean up. The yard had been taken over by vines and underbrush, and beneath those were several years of trash. Apparently at some point the trash service had stopped in that neighborhood, so the previous residents had simply dumped all their trash in the back yard. From the smell and the suspicious mounds back there I joked that I was afraid of discovering a body. Anyway, it was the middle of summer, very hot, and I was doing all this hard work. My neighbor would watch me over the fence and remarked several times that I worked very hard. Then he said he wanted to marry a woman like me who would work so hard. I told him I was married, he talked to Sean a few times. I figured that was that, but it wasn’t.
He kept talking to me, insisting that I was the perfect woman for him, asking me what I liked to do for fun. If Sean was around he’d wax very eloquent on how lucky Sean was to have a wife like me, pretty and hard-working, and the way he went on and on made me very uncomfortable.
I finished the back yard and moved on to working on the front lawn, which involved pulling out a lot of dead and dying bushes. In one single day of working on the front lawn he drove back and forth in front of our house at least ten times, each time slowing way down for a really long stare. Some of the drive-bys were only minutes apart giving me the impression he hadn’t gone anywhere except around the block.
Then he started coming over to ask about things or saying he needed to talk to Sean, but he’d grab my hands and arms when trying to talk to me. Then we adopted the first dog, Kyra. He followed me in his car while I walked her.
Sean built a tall privacy fence all around our yard for Kyra. Then our neighbor decided to have a party, he kept inviting me and I kept making excuses. Then he went to Sean and said he’d be offended if we didn’t come to his party. So Sean said we’d better just stop by. We went to his party and aside from his grabbing my arms and hands, there was something else that made me uncomfortable. He’d built a raised deck, not attached to his house like a normal person, but right next to our privacy fence. When I sat down on the built in bench on his deck I realized that I was looking directly into our bedroom window. We’d built a privacy fence—he built a viewing platform.
After that I really had no peace of mind until we moved. I’d come home from work and rush around closing all the curtains and shades. Then I’d get paranoid that maybe even with the curtains shut he could still see my shadow, so I wouldn’t change in the bedroom, I’d go change in the bathroom. I started walking my dog on a long course that avoided going near his house or the places where I’d encountered him driving before.
Then we moved and that was it. Nothing happened. He never hurt me. He never kicked in my door. He never threatened me with a weapon. I just lived in constant fear of those things. That’s the insidious thing about it—it can destroy your feeling of safety without the other person doing anything really *all that bad.* If confronted they’d just claim they were friendly. “After all, I didn’t hurt her.”
What can we do to move away from a culture where this kind of stuff is allowed to continue? I went to the magistrate’s office to try to press charges in the hit and run and ahead of me was a young woman. She was crying. She explained that her ex had abused her and threatened her and she’d moved away and tried to hide her location from him. Now she was getting threatening emails where he told her he knew where she lived, he knew where she worked. She held out a sheaf of email messages to the magistrate. The magistrate said “We’ll do something if he shows up in person and threatens you.” “I want a protective order now,” she insisted. “But this is just email. Dial 911 if he comes to your house.” the magistrate replied. “But don’t you see,” she said, her voice starting to fail, he must be following me to know where I live and where I work.” No protective order. She left in tears, her face buried in her friend’s shoulder.
EDIT: Oooops I wrote all of this out from my point of view and only afterwards did I happen to think that not just women are victims of stalkers. Some men have stalkers too, and children do as well. I think it's more women than men that experience this, but we need to stop all stalking obviously.
"Animals Are Not Ours To Use"
I’ve written on this blog that I first became interested in vegetarianism out of concern for the environment. Many people might think that this experience on my part would mean I advocate only vegan outreach from an environmental perspective. But this is not the case at all.
I understand that most of the big decisions we make in our lives are influenced by thousands of little factors. We might have that one awesome moment of realization when we suddenly see things in a different way and the change in perspective practically knocks us over. But before the moment of truth kicks us to the curb, there are so many little things, little nagging thoughts on the outskirts of our awareness that influence us.
I had one moment of realization when I read about the destruction of the rainforests and resolved to stop eating beef—that was the big moment, which allowed me to understand a few weeks later that all industrialized meat production caused environmental damage, which led me to stop eating chicken and fish as well. Later I had yet another knock me over with a vegan imitation feather moment when I read the Alice Walker quote “The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.”
That resonated with me so deeply and changed my thinking on so many levels. Nobody owns me and I don’t own the chicken whose eggs I steal, I don’t own the cow whose milk I take or the calf deprived of that milk. Something so simple, so eloquent, which just changed everything.
Before that moment of realization there were a thousand little things, tiny sparks of thought floating around waiting to be formed. There were moments of watching chicken trucks with exposed cages of miserable chickens barreling down the highway. There were moments of feeding cows over fences and rescuing stray kittens. There was sitting on the kitchen floor as a child holding and petting the beautiful head of the deer my father had killed, believing that this perfect deer was only sleeping, only to finally understand that he was dead. There were all these moments that showed me that animals are individuals with personalities and value of their own. And all those things allowed me to feel the full truth of that Alice Walker quote and to know all the way down in my bones that she was right. I own myself, no one else, that’s all. Nobody, no animal was brought into this world to serve me.
Because this meant so much to me personally I sometimes have trouble understanding the view that veganism is just a tool to reduce suffering. Sure veganism reduces suffering. Veganism directly reduces the suffering of farmed animals, veganism reduces our impact on the planet and thus reduces the suffering of wildlife and other people. But veganism is also a powerful statement that we recognize and respect the life in others and we know we have no right to extinguish that life. It’s a statement that we know and understand that enslaving others is always wrong, even if their bodies look different from ours, even if they have fur or feathers or scales. It is that fundamental value: Animals are not ours to use. They don’t owe us their bodies for our dinner tables, they don’t owe us their spirits to entertain us, they don’t owe us their skins to wear or their bones and horns as decoration. The accident of their birth does not mean we have any right to destroy them, break their spirits, steal the excretions of their bodies, or keep them in cages no matter what size those cages might be.
Sure it is not really possible in this world for us to do no harm, but veganism is the effort toward that goal. Should we throw away the goal, the value that animals are not ours to use, just because we are imperfect beings in an imperfect world and at times we might fall short of our ideals? Of course not.
We recognize in other ways that our faults don’t mean that values are irrelevant. None of us will get through our lives without hurting another person’s feelings. In fact, I’ll put money on it that all of us will hurt someone’s feelings by saying something incredibly insensitive, stupid and inconsiderate even. It happens. But does that mean that we should throw away all concept of kindness and just insult and verbally abuse everyone that crosses our path? No we hold to this idea that we should be considerate and kind, while recognizing that we might fall short and might find ourselves needing to apologize on occasion.
I’m all for reducing suffering, but for me there is something more. This basic respect we apply to other living things, a resolve to not destroy others for selfish reasons, a value placed on life. Animals are not ours to use sums it up so well for me.
I understand that most of the big decisions we make in our lives are influenced by thousands of little factors. We might have that one awesome moment of realization when we suddenly see things in a different way and the change in perspective practically knocks us over. But before the moment of truth kicks us to the curb, there are so many little things, little nagging thoughts on the outskirts of our awareness that influence us.
I had one moment of realization when I read about the destruction of the rainforests and resolved to stop eating beef—that was the big moment, which allowed me to understand a few weeks later that all industrialized meat production caused environmental damage, which led me to stop eating chicken and fish as well. Later I had yet another knock me over with a vegan imitation feather moment when I read the Alice Walker quote “The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.”
That resonated with me so deeply and changed my thinking on so many levels. Nobody owns me and I don’t own the chicken whose eggs I steal, I don’t own the cow whose milk I take or the calf deprived of that milk. Something so simple, so eloquent, which just changed everything.
Before that moment of realization there were a thousand little things, tiny sparks of thought floating around waiting to be formed. There were moments of watching chicken trucks with exposed cages of miserable chickens barreling down the highway. There were moments of feeding cows over fences and rescuing stray kittens. There was sitting on the kitchen floor as a child holding and petting the beautiful head of the deer my father had killed, believing that this perfect deer was only sleeping, only to finally understand that he was dead. There were all these moments that showed me that animals are individuals with personalities and value of their own. And all those things allowed me to feel the full truth of that Alice Walker quote and to know all the way down in my bones that she was right. I own myself, no one else, that’s all. Nobody, no animal was brought into this world to serve me.
Because this meant so much to me personally I sometimes have trouble understanding the view that veganism is just a tool to reduce suffering. Sure veganism reduces suffering. Veganism directly reduces the suffering of farmed animals, veganism reduces our impact on the planet and thus reduces the suffering of wildlife and other people. But veganism is also a powerful statement that we recognize and respect the life in others and we know we have no right to extinguish that life. It’s a statement that we know and understand that enslaving others is always wrong, even if their bodies look different from ours, even if they have fur or feathers or scales. It is that fundamental value: Animals are not ours to use. They don’t owe us their bodies for our dinner tables, they don’t owe us their spirits to entertain us, they don’t owe us their skins to wear or their bones and horns as decoration. The accident of their birth does not mean we have any right to destroy them, break their spirits, steal the excretions of their bodies, or keep them in cages no matter what size those cages might be.
Sure it is not really possible in this world for us to do no harm, but veganism is the effort toward that goal. Should we throw away the goal, the value that animals are not ours to use, just because we are imperfect beings in an imperfect world and at times we might fall short of our ideals? Of course not.
We recognize in other ways that our faults don’t mean that values are irrelevant. None of us will get through our lives without hurting another person’s feelings. In fact, I’ll put money on it that all of us will hurt someone’s feelings by saying something incredibly insensitive, stupid and inconsiderate even. It happens. But does that mean that we should throw away all concept of kindness and just insult and verbally abuse everyone that crosses our path? No we hold to this idea that we should be considerate and kind, while recognizing that we might fall short and might find ourselves needing to apologize on occasion.
I’m all for reducing suffering, but for me there is something more. This basic respect we apply to other living things, a resolve to not destroy others for selfish reasons, a value placed on life. Animals are not ours to use sums it up so well for me.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Anger has a place too
Invisible Voices posted a blog entry the other day about how other people might be very uncomfortable witnessing our emotions. Particularly she applied this to animal advocacy, where people would say she was angry when she felt she was just pushing for compassion, justice, and fairness to non-human animals.
There is always this risk, when we do the hard work and we face those things most people turn away from, that bitterness over this heartbreak, this awfulness, will start to define us. Still, the bitterest people I’ve known in my life weren’t vegans; they weren’t animal advocates.
I do think we need to realistically define and keep an eye on our emotions, if for no other reason than that our message can get lost in a sea of undirected anger. But at the same time we don’t need to apologize for having emotions when we see animals killed, used, mutilated in such horrible ways.
In fact there seems to me to be something defective about someone who can look at immense suffering, who can look at hens crammed into battery cages next to their dead sisters, and just see dollar signs, just see loss or profit. There is being in control of our emotions, and then there’s just being deadened to all empathy.
But the fact remains that many people are uncomfortable with other people’s emotions. Often these people who can’t handle the emotions of others aren’t necessarily unemotional themselves, but they subscribe to certain myths about emotion. Perhaps they feel that emotions like anger or disgust are always wrong. Conversely some people might view anger as “strong” but grief as “weak.” Others might feel we have some obligation to those around us to only express “good” emotions like happiness.
The truth is that all of our emotions are part of who we are. We don’t have the right to take those emotions out on others. We shouldn’t be passive-aggressive in handling our emotions. But sometimes anger is simply the sanest response possible to a given situation.
I recently got a copy of UPC’s latest Poultry Press and in it was a picture of a battery hen who was too weak to stand or walk and some college students at KSU had thrown her onto their basketball court from 30 feet up in the stands. Other hens were painted red and blue and tossed onto the court. Two of the hens died.
The only possible response to instances like this, where the strong purposefully hurt the weak, is to get angry. Bullies thrive because nobody ever stands up to them, nobody confronts them. We can get angry, but we need to use that anger toward a measured response, a thoughtful strategy. We don’t need to just lash out wildly, without thought, but our emotional response, our outrage is justified and necessary.
If we think about all the millions of battery hens who suffer and die hidden from sight, then the anger and the grief is almost incomprehensible.
Gender stereotypes work against us as well. Many people will tolerate a certain level of anger from men, but adhere to a myth that women should be gentle, quiet and sweet at all times. Women aren’t supposed to get angry. But of course we do, we get angry about injustice against ourselves, just as any human being does. Some of us get angry about injustice directed toward others, because our compassion leads us to care what happens to them.
As always our anger doesn’t give us license to hurt others, but it can give us energy if properly directed. If we keep an eye on our mental state as well, perhaps we can know when the anger crosses some line and moves away from energizing and more into exhausting and consuming. That’s when we know we need to take a step back, visit a sanctuary, hug a dog, find something happy and cling to it for a while.
Still some of the people who’ve told me in my life that they think I’m too angry, were themselves among the angriest people I’ve ever met. People who deny and suppress their anger aren’t necessarily diffusing it. Instead it might be waiting, boiling right below the surface, waiting to leap out at the first opportunity. It’s much better to harness it to good work.
There is always this risk, when we do the hard work and we face those things most people turn away from, that bitterness over this heartbreak, this awfulness, will start to define us. Still, the bitterest people I’ve known in my life weren’t vegans; they weren’t animal advocates.
I do think we need to realistically define and keep an eye on our emotions, if for no other reason than that our message can get lost in a sea of undirected anger. But at the same time we don’t need to apologize for having emotions when we see animals killed, used, mutilated in such horrible ways.
In fact there seems to me to be something defective about someone who can look at immense suffering, who can look at hens crammed into battery cages next to their dead sisters, and just see dollar signs, just see loss or profit. There is being in control of our emotions, and then there’s just being deadened to all empathy.
But the fact remains that many people are uncomfortable with other people’s emotions. Often these people who can’t handle the emotions of others aren’t necessarily unemotional themselves, but they subscribe to certain myths about emotion. Perhaps they feel that emotions like anger or disgust are always wrong. Conversely some people might view anger as “strong” but grief as “weak.” Others might feel we have some obligation to those around us to only express “good” emotions like happiness.
The truth is that all of our emotions are part of who we are. We don’t have the right to take those emotions out on others. We shouldn’t be passive-aggressive in handling our emotions. But sometimes anger is simply the sanest response possible to a given situation.
I recently got a copy of UPC’s latest Poultry Press and in it was a picture of a battery hen who was too weak to stand or walk and some college students at KSU had thrown her onto their basketball court from 30 feet up in the stands. Other hens were painted red and blue and tossed onto the court. Two of the hens died.
The only possible response to instances like this, where the strong purposefully hurt the weak, is to get angry. Bullies thrive because nobody ever stands up to them, nobody confronts them. We can get angry, but we need to use that anger toward a measured response, a thoughtful strategy. We don’t need to just lash out wildly, without thought, but our emotional response, our outrage is justified and necessary.
If we think about all the millions of battery hens who suffer and die hidden from sight, then the anger and the grief is almost incomprehensible.
Gender stereotypes work against us as well. Many people will tolerate a certain level of anger from men, but adhere to a myth that women should be gentle, quiet and sweet at all times. Women aren’t supposed to get angry. But of course we do, we get angry about injustice against ourselves, just as any human being does. Some of us get angry about injustice directed toward others, because our compassion leads us to care what happens to them.
As always our anger doesn’t give us license to hurt others, but it can give us energy if properly directed. If we keep an eye on our mental state as well, perhaps we can know when the anger crosses some line and moves away from energizing and more into exhausting and consuming. That’s when we know we need to take a step back, visit a sanctuary, hug a dog, find something happy and cling to it for a while.
Still some of the people who’ve told me in my life that they think I’m too angry, were themselves among the angriest people I’ve ever met. People who deny and suppress their anger aren’t necessarily diffusing it. Instead it might be waiting, boiling right below the surface, waiting to leap out at the first opportunity. It’s much better to harness it to good work.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Strange Thoughts Stirring
Today I spent about five hours on the phone with an old friend. Time is generally short in my world. I talk fast, I walk fast, I type fast. But today was a day to slow down and go back over ground we left behind long ago.
I talked to a very old friend about the attack and she was shocked because I never told her this before. She said "You told me something really bad happened but you were ok, then whatever I asked you didn't really say much. You dropped off the planet for a while. But I never knew any of this." That was strange to me, because I could have sworn I told her, but then thinking it over I knew I hadn't.
I never told my family because I knew they couldn't be there for me and would likely just make me feel worse about something I could barely cope with as it was. It was a given that I couldn't turn to my family because I knew I couldn't carry myself and them. I told a couple of close friends after it happened, and though I didn't give details, nothing gorey at all, I watched their faces go blank on me. They stopped calling. They replied with things like "Ok, I gotta go, but you're really strong anyway, so I know you'll be able to deal with this and be back to your old self in no time." So I stopped telling people.
Sometimes I take certain things for granted and sometimes I'm totally wrong. I act based on faulty assumptions. I said that this blog was a form of coming out of the closet. Just putting everything out there and being really honest. The thought was that I'm vegan and I'm trying to do good things and find more ways to do better things and maybe other people are dealing with the same issues and it might be helpful to read that they're not the only ones. So that's why I put all this potentially hurtful stuff out here.
It's strange to feel like something is central to my life almost to the point that I'm embarassed by how much I talk about it and how much I focus on it. And even more strange to realize later that I don't talk about things sometimes.
I tell too much to people who don't know me well, which might be something like a test. I guess I'd rather know early in a friendship if someone just can't handle it. Not that it makes them a bad person or takes away at all from the good they do. It's just that I'm not sure I want to move beyond an occassional lunch or museum trip if someone just can't live with something that for better or worse has become a part of who I am. A tiny part, this little fracture of broken glass. But it isn't going away.
If people don't want to know, the reason of course is likely fear. People want to live in a world where bad things won't happen to them, so it's frightening to hear about. Or people might falsely think that knowing something puts some requirement on them to fix it and naturally they can't fix it. Which is silly. It's not their problem to fix, but I do sympathize with the impulse. Some of us were raised to be "repairpeople" and there's something terrifying in that with sitting face to face with something that just can't be fixed. Also maybe there is also an element of empathy fatigue--people who feel they have so much on their plates already they just don't want to have to think about anyone else's baggage.
I still don't know how I feel about all of this. My friend did say "I can't believe this. If anything like that had ever happened to me I'd never get over it. I'd be a sobbing wreck for the rest of my life."
I know it's kindly meant. But offerings of sympathy seem odd to me sometimes. What can you say? Is this a compliment or is it something else? Should it make me feel weak in some way? We all heal or we don't. I know it's never that simple. Healing isn't one straight line from here to there. But we either start to get better and keep striving in that direction or we don't.
It's weird sharing information, and knowing that it hits everyone differently. After starting this blog I got a couple of threatening messages--apparently someone didn't like that I was writing about violence and recovery, or they didn't like that I slammed hunting. I don't know. It's not that I don't care any longer what people think. I do care, more than I should. I'm just starting to understand that I don't control their reactions, only they do. We take the information and what we do with it is our own.
I talked to a very old friend about the attack and she was shocked because I never told her this before. She said "You told me something really bad happened but you were ok, then whatever I asked you didn't really say much. You dropped off the planet for a while. But I never knew any of this." That was strange to me, because I could have sworn I told her, but then thinking it over I knew I hadn't.
I never told my family because I knew they couldn't be there for me and would likely just make me feel worse about something I could barely cope with as it was. It was a given that I couldn't turn to my family because I knew I couldn't carry myself and them. I told a couple of close friends after it happened, and though I didn't give details, nothing gorey at all, I watched their faces go blank on me. They stopped calling. They replied with things like "Ok, I gotta go, but you're really strong anyway, so I know you'll be able to deal with this and be back to your old self in no time." So I stopped telling people.
Sometimes I take certain things for granted and sometimes I'm totally wrong. I act based on faulty assumptions. I said that this blog was a form of coming out of the closet. Just putting everything out there and being really honest. The thought was that I'm vegan and I'm trying to do good things and find more ways to do better things and maybe other people are dealing with the same issues and it might be helpful to read that they're not the only ones. So that's why I put all this potentially hurtful stuff out here.
It's strange to feel like something is central to my life almost to the point that I'm embarassed by how much I talk about it and how much I focus on it. And even more strange to realize later that I don't talk about things sometimes.
I tell too much to people who don't know me well, which might be something like a test. I guess I'd rather know early in a friendship if someone just can't handle it. Not that it makes them a bad person or takes away at all from the good they do. It's just that I'm not sure I want to move beyond an occassional lunch or museum trip if someone just can't live with something that for better or worse has become a part of who I am. A tiny part, this little fracture of broken glass. But it isn't going away.
If people don't want to know, the reason of course is likely fear. People want to live in a world where bad things won't happen to them, so it's frightening to hear about. Or people might falsely think that knowing something puts some requirement on them to fix it and naturally they can't fix it. Which is silly. It's not their problem to fix, but I do sympathize with the impulse. Some of us were raised to be "repairpeople" and there's something terrifying in that with sitting face to face with something that just can't be fixed. Also maybe there is also an element of empathy fatigue--people who feel they have so much on their plates already they just don't want to have to think about anyone else's baggage.
I still don't know how I feel about all of this. My friend did say "I can't believe this. If anything like that had ever happened to me I'd never get over it. I'd be a sobbing wreck for the rest of my life."
I know it's kindly meant. But offerings of sympathy seem odd to me sometimes. What can you say? Is this a compliment or is it something else? Should it make me feel weak in some way? We all heal or we don't. I know it's never that simple. Healing isn't one straight line from here to there. But we either start to get better and keep striving in that direction or we don't.
It's weird sharing information, and knowing that it hits everyone differently. After starting this blog I got a couple of threatening messages--apparently someone didn't like that I was writing about violence and recovery, or they didn't like that I slammed hunting. I don't know. It's not that I don't care any longer what people think. I do care, more than I should. I'm just starting to understand that I don't control their reactions, only they do. We take the information and what we do with it is our own.
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