I’m so gay (allegedly)

2009-09-11T09:18:00.000-07:00

It’s not the first time i’ve been accused of homosexuality. I’ve never really been one for all those big bloke-ish macho things like football, rugby, snooker, cricket, in fact anything that involves having a ball speeding towards your head at high speed or getting kicked.

I was always drawn to to the girls table at school, their conversations were much more interesting and I learnt a great deal of useful stuff by listening to their complaints about the boys.

I seem to confuse even hardened homosexuals seasoned Gaydar – I’ve lost count of the times a good looking guy has interrogated “are you sure you're not Gay?”

My sexuality is complicated. I’ve always maintained I’m a lesbian fire fighter trapped in a gay Pâtissier’s body .

Despite the cliches about real men that don’t eat quiche, the fact that vegan men have been shown to be more ‘sexually robust’ and virile than meat eaters has left me never considering that my veganism was something that casted question marks on my sexuality. I think like that without any recognition of the irony, that in reality, the love of men results in homosexual men often being more virile and ‘sexualy robust’ than most straight, heterosexual men.

A professor of law at Cornell however also noticed that delusions of vegan robustness are clearly naive of me despite my general dislike of mankind, penises (apart from my own) and hairy, smelly testosterone scented bodies. The Professor says vegans are so gay.

She draws similarities between Gay Rights and Vegan Rights (as opposed to animal rights) and their right to choose a lifestyle that they feel comfortable with.

Estimations of numbers of gay people in the UK and USA is 3-10% depending on how you ask the question (have you ever? are you currently?)

That figure is similar to estimations of vegetarianism, although you can get the figure up to about 45% if you ask “have you ever?” or “do you occassionally?”

The highest estimations of pure vegans is only around 1% in France it’s much much lower, so then no surprise to discover that VeggiePride originated in France, which is exactly what Sherry F Colb the Law professor suggests.

Sherry says “Once we recognize that it is the vegan – rather than the nonhuman animal – who occupies the space parallel to that of the gay rights advocate, we immediately see some important commonalities. One is that, unlike race and sex, gay identity and vegan identity are, in part, chosen.”

Sherry argues that part of what makes the gay rights movement distinctive is that it is possible for a gay man or a lesbian to live, albeit unhappily, as though he or she is straight.

She continues “Like a gay man or a lesbian, a vegan can choose from a variety of ways of being a vegan. Some stay in the closet. One woman I know, for example, purchases only vegan foods for her home, but when she is out and about, she either eats what others are eating or claims that she is not hungry, so that people will not know her true identity. She explains that once she knows someone well, she will confide in him or her that she is a vegan.”

“By living as we do, we implicitly communicate to others a critique of the status quo and, necessarily, a critique of the behaviour of those who follow it.”

But Sherry doesn’t adequately answer her own opening question “What lessons might the struggle for gay rights have to teach those who seek to end the systematic torture and slaughter of animals?”

Giant Parrots and Jedi Knights Spotted In London

2009-08-16T07:25:00.000-07:00

Early start in London today and as I climbed out from underground I was confronted with what at first glance seemed to be the latest in a long line of genetic mutations and Frankenstein style cloning.

First Dolly the sheep, pigs with human hearts, mice with human ears – now a flock of 6ft mutant Parrots had descended on Victoria station’s defenceless commuters, ready to peck my ears off and steal my nuts.

Then I noticed they all had buckets…

Turns out they were volunteers collecting for APA – money to save the Parrots apparently.

I naively thought that was the excitement for the day over and done with. However when I opened my emails I found I’d managed to unwittingly walk into a Japanese steamed bun fight.

It seems the whole idea of vegan living has enjoyed a bit of resurgence since LUSH cosmetics moved in and fired up the enthusiasm of all their staff and hoards of Japanese customers about animal rights.

Some guy has nobly started up a Vegan Society over in Japan but he seems to have run into a bit of bother with a businessman, a megalomaniac al Japanese version of Vegetarian Guides UK Alex Bourke, who runs a Japanese vegan guide business. The guides are apparently very good but the author seems to think he has copyright over the word vegan in Japan and is having kittens and a few rude blue hedgehogs about anyone who seems to think otherwise.

Sadly for the author and his plans to take over the Eastern World, he seems to have overlooked the need to look into the ins and outs of registration of any kind of trademark. In any case I’m sure the Japanese legal regulations are similar to ours and you can’t trademark words that are in common usage such as ‘Japan’ and ’Vegan’.

Anyway having blogged on http://www.news.for-vegans.co.uk about the founding of The Japanese Vegan Society I’ve now ended up in the middle of this typically vegan cat fight.

What is it with Vegans? They always seem to spend more energy fighting with each other to protect their cultish little covens than focussing on what it’s going to take to Vegducate the world about Donald Watson’s sane, logical and practical solutions to save the civilised world.

There are now more self declared members of the Jedi Knight movement (0.7% - now recognised as a ‘religion’ since the last census) than there are known vegans in the UK (0.5%) This is despite 65 years of vegan campaigning and the unfaltering logic of Watson’s original philosophy.

There are some vegans that have done more to alienate the rest of the world from veganism with their small mindedness than our children will ever be able to forgive, having inherited a desecrated planet.

Are these detractors CIA or MI5 spies with orders to infiltrate, nullify and sterilise veganism’s potency? Or are they just egotistical, short sighted, essential fat deficient, socially retarded idealists who are just desperate to try to remain the big fish in their small ponds?

No ! - Don’t look to me for answers, I was asking you!

One thing is certain - Vegan is now in the English Language to stay. There are official guidelines on it's definition and veganism now has a life of it's own so now no pompous self rightious self appointed 'guru' will ever own it - it's public. Veganism is dead - long live veganism!

Large Tone Blog

I’m so gay (allegedly)

Giant Parrots and Jedi Knights Spotted In London