Friday rant: Book contracts are for misogynists.

Picture me, dear readers, with my head on my desk as I type this. I didn’t want to write about it. I was hoping that other people would. Indeed, a few have.

Long story short: Dude named John Joseph has written a book entitled Meat is for Pussies. Sit with that one for a sec, then feel free to join me down here on the desk at any time.

Where do I start with this one? (To the haters who are gonna ask if I’ve read it: Hell no, I haven’t read it. Why should I waste my time? I’m a blogger, not a book reviewer.) Perhaps with the idea that shaming someone into changing his or her behavior is not only frequently ineffective, but always unacceptable? With the reminder that feminizing insults are hateful and do nothing but reinforce destructive gender stereotypes and power structures? Maybe with the editorial suggestion that all the compelling reasons to go vegan will doubtless be lost in all the macho rhetoric, thus alienating a huge number of potential readers? And finally, with the admission that I am so over fighting with people like Joseph, who would probably tell me to lighten up and stop being such a bitch, and do I just need to get boned?

I know I’m not the only one frustrated with this. So, where is the blogospheric outcry? The Discerning Brute, that arbiter of vegan masculinity, announced its publication in a brief-but-positive paragraph that acknowledged the “controversial” title. (Way to understate things.) Bitch, on the other hand, brought the noise with a brilliantly reasoned post about the dangers of single-issue veganism, sexism, unexamined privilege, and general assholery. Kjerstin Johnson may not be vegan, but she really hit it out of the park, as did the majority of Bitch’s commenters, including a hetero vegan guy who said he was “never okay with harming one movement in order to help another.” I’m hopeful that more writers take this on, because however noble John Joseph’s intentions, however lyrical and majestic his prose, this narrow-minded shit hurts more of us than it helps.

So, to recap:

Compassion is not gendered.

Using sexism and homophobia to market your book is unoriginal.

Shock-value veganism is half-assed veganism. Go play with PETA and leave those of us doing real work in peace.

Oh, and STOP USING MY BODY AS AN INSULT. I AM MOTHERFUCKING SICK OF IT.

Image courtesy of I Can Has Cheezburger? (as if you didn't know).

Case of the Mondays.

One of my co-workers just teased me about being anemic because I don't eat meat. He's a good-natured guy, and even gave me dark chocolate.

I wasn't having it. I told him to shut up.

Bad, unhelpful vegan.

I do not want to live in a little house on the prairie.

I had hoped to have some momentous event to chronicle for my 100^th post. Alas, I do not. But the very fact that I’ve made it to 100 posts at all is reason enough to celebrate. In fact, Red and I celebrated last night by swigging some soy White Russians. We toasted the Dude and vowed to keep achieving.

My new friend b over at Bitch directed me to this gem, courtesy of the New York Times Magazine. She’ll probably do a better job at taking it apart than I will, but that’s the Internet for you. Titled “The Femivore’s Dilemma” (Michael Pollan is going to haunt me until I die), it lauds these women who are doing the urban-homesteading thing, including raising animals for food, as an alternative to whatever unsatisfactory thing they were doing before. It hurt my head to read all the justifications, but I think the premise is that women who are burned out on working outside the home seem to find a renewed sense of purpose in growing (and presumably slaughtering) their own food. To wit: “The omnivore’s dilemma has provided an unexpected out from the feminist predicament, a way for women to embrace homemaking without becoming Betty Draper.” While I think we can all agree that Betty Draper, though enviable for her wardrobe, is not exactly an aspirational figure, I submit that there is slightly more middle ground than is presented.

Why do I think this? Because I live it. I am a loud-and-proud feminist who works 40 hours a week and can’t grow herbs to save her life, but who happily repurposes old pillowcases into produce bags, buys organic from a locally-owned market, cleans with homemade potions her brilliant husband whipped up, and just this weekend learned to make her own seitan. I do all this without killing anybody, for food or any other unnecessary reason. I may not spend my days working at home—sometimes I wish I could—but I do my damnedest to spend them well. I am not interested in “transforming the definition of homemaker to one that’s more about soil than dirt, fresh air than air freshener.” To frame the choice between working a soulless 9-to-5 or building a backyard chicken coop and learning to can tomatoes as the only feminist options is reductive and insulting. But it gets better:

Femivorism is grounded in the very principles of self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal fulfillment that drove women into the work force in the first place. Given how conscious (not to say obsessive) everyone has become about the source of their food — who these days can’t wax poetic about compost? — it also confers instant legitimacy. Rather than embodying the limits of one movement, femivores expand those of another: feeding their families clean, flavorful food; reducing their carbon footprints; producing sustainably instead of consuming rampantly. What could be more vital, more gratifying, more morally defensible?

Earning a living wage, I would suggest. But that’s my 78 cents to my husband’s dollar talking again. Or perhaps my latent desire for instant legitimacy. Then I nearly blacked out:

Conventional feminist wisdom held that two incomes were necessary to provide a family’s basic needs — not to mention to guard against job loss, catastrophic illness, divorce or the death of a spouse. Femivores suggest that knowing how to feed and clothe yourself regardless of circumstance, to turn paucity into plenty, is an equal — possibly greater — safety net. After all, who is better equipped to weather this economy, the high-earning woman who loses her job or the frugal homemaker who can count her chickens?

BITCH, DID YOU JUST TELL ME TO GET BACK IN THE KITCHEN?! Ahem. I can unequivocally get behind the notion that knowing how to do for yourself is an invaluable set of skills. I’m glad to have a sewing machine and know my way around at least most of it. I’m thrilled I know how to cook. I love DIYing the hell out of anything I can. I can’t change a tire, but I know how to use a can of Fix-a-Flat, which I defy you to tell me isn’t the next best thing. I like to think that I can, as Red tells me the Marines say, improvise, adapt, and overcome. But we’d be shit out of luck if I didn’t have my job, and I won’t be guilted by pseudo-feminist, self-congratulating omnivores telling me their choices are more valid. Life does not guarantee you unlimited choices, and most of us are doing the best we’ve can with what we’ve got. I’m so sick of the false dichotomies being set up everywhere I turn—bad vegan, bad feminist, bad human. I realize I say this from a position of considerable privilege, but get off the cross and improve your own little corner of the planet without getting your half-assed agenda all over the rest of us.

Shit, I got so spun up I don’t have any energy left to talk about the awful irony of “femivores” exploiting the reproductive cycles of other female animals. Someone get on that for me.

Ed Block Foundation issues statement, says nothing.

I know we’ve all been busy with the holidays and all, but sadly, animal cruelty and the support of same by the status quo never take a holiday. Recently I told you about Michael Vick’s controversial selection for the Ed Block Courage Award; then, I shared the letter I wrote to the Ed Block Courage Award Foundation expressing my consternation and the hope that they would question the decision of Vick’s team to reward his behavior. I know I’m not the only one who’s been waiting to see what the Foundation’s response would be.

I wanted to be happy when they finally issued a statement. Then, I read it. It’s short, so I’ll reproduce it for you here:

Since its inception in 1978, the Ed Block Courage Award has been presented to NFL players that were selected solely by their teammates. The Ed Block Courage Award Foundation cherishes its relationships with the NFL and each NFL Team. This year the Philadelphia Eagles selected Michael Vick as their 2009 Recipient. Our Foundation has a great deal of respect for the Philadelphia Eagles organization, Head Coach Andy Reid and the Eagles Players. Michael Vick is just one of 32 NFL players that will receive an Ed Block Courage Award for 2009. The focus of the Foundation is and always has been to raise awareness and prevention of child abuse and we are proud to add 32 new Ambassadors of Courage along side of us in our journey to break the cycle of child abuse and reach our goal of a Courage House in every NFL City.

FOR REAL. That’s the best you can do, Ed Block Courage Award Foundation? Did you let an intern write that? Was your PR person on vacation? After all the calls and letters and emails I know you’ve received, this half-assed “But we’re doing it for the chiiiiiiilllldren” is all you can muster?

Whatever I was expecting—and I try not to expect too much in situations like these—clearly I set the bar too high. Thanks for encouraging Baltimore’s downward spiral, Ed Block Courage Award Foundation.

Fish out of water.

This will be ranty. Hie thee to Cute Overload if you wish to avoid excessive rantiness.

OH MY GOD WHAT KIND OF DUMBSHIT PUTS GOLDFISH IN A SWIMMING POOL?!?!?!

Ahem. Deep breath. Let me count to 10.

It has come to my attention that as part of an end-of-summer celebration (so, around Labor Day), a public pool near us is in the practice of dumping goldfish into the water and allowing kids to go in after them.

I’ll give you a minute to process the extreme cruelty of this situation.

Keep in mind, I heard this story from someone who realized how much it would upset me, though she giggled the entire time she told it. She tried to gloss it over, assuring me that they were told to bring containers of fresh water for the fish once they were scooped out of the poisonous chlorinated water.

Even without the benefit of Google, I knew that fish and chlorine don’t mix. Chlorine is basically bleach. It is toxic. It stings. Ever been in the pool too long and had that nice chlorine afterburn in your eyes? Delightful, no? Do you want to know what it does to our fishy friends? It burns and erodes their gills. Without their gills, they can’t breathe. Without breathing, they die. If by some miracle they survive to be plopped into that container of clean water (and even tap water is chlorinated; I highly doubt these parents tested and adjusted the chemistry of their water before this little science experiment), they will still have suffered injuries and may very well die later.

In doing research to bolster my outrage, I learned a little bit about chlorine. Most tap water has a chlorine concentration of about 0.5 ppm (parts per million) at most—the EPA requires a minimum of 0.2 ppm to kill bacteria that could otherwise be harmful to humans. Swimming pools, on the other hand, frequently clock in between 1.0 and 3.0 ppm (any higher can be unsafe for swimming). Water with as little chlorine as 0.2 ppm can kill fish rapidly. Basically, even the least-chlorinated tap water is gonna poison your fish, and you’re a fucking idiot for not knowing better.

I’ve been entertaining horrifying visions of shrieking children splashing around in a frenzy, grabbing roughly at terrified fish. Meanwhile, the fish are suffocating while they desperately try to escape. Fish are exquisitely sensitive animals. They feel sound vibrations. Of course they feel pain, though some people still don’t seem to be on board with this. We all learned that they only have a three-second memory span, but it’s actually more like three months. They exhibit learning behaviors. Being pursued by screaming, flailing anything is a nightmare for any kind of fish (and mammal, and bird, and reptile….). They think they’re about to be killed, and they are.

So, that fish that my friend’s kids managed to “rescue” and bring home? He (she?) died, along with the fish that they brought home from a carnival. She told me that, when she was removing the dead fish with a paper towel, some of the orange from their scales rubbed off. Her four-year-old was dismayed, thinking it was blood. When her mother corrected her and told her it was just color from the fishes’ skin, it was all better for her.

Pity it wasn’t for the fish.

Goldfish photo ripped from Wikipedia.

When vegans attack: domestic edition.

My filter failed again last night when Red told me he wasn’t going to continue to be vegan once his challenge ends on Tuesday. “You’re not?” I asked. He said (and he says it better than I can here) that he’s gonna give the vegetarian gig a shot. Now, this is a huge change from his current omni diet, and I should have been dancing on tables and covering him with kisses in my excitement. But, for whatever sorry-ass reason, all I could see was (what I perceived to be) his rejection of veganism as a lifestyle. Never mind that I too was once a loud-and-proud vegetarian, who slurped ice cream and flipped omelets and regularly deployed my friend Jess’ method for making the perfect grilled-cheese sandwich. No. I, in my myopia, was sad that three weeks of veganism had failed to convince my husband to quit animal products cold tofu.

Do you see how moronic I was being? Do you? LAME, Burnout, very lame. Y’all, what is wrong with me that I tear up over pictures of baby cows but then try to engage my husband in a philosophical argument about the supreme logic of veganism when he’s already made the major decision to go vegetarian? Vegetarians, I’m sorry. I try not to let the holier-than-thou gremlin out of her cage too often, but I was weak last night, and not as compassionate as I wanted to be. There are lots of differences between Red and me in the ways we experience food, and I failed to put myself in his place when I was huffing in frustration about how eating eggs and dairy still dooms animals to slaughter. He’s doing the best he can, and has made huge strides. I’ve told him that I don’t want him to do any of this for me, that if he does he’ll only end up resentful and hungry. He has to make these changes on his own schedule. I’m proud of him, but I sure did a shitty job of showing it last night.


http://www.nataliedee.com/

What's wrong with eggs?

Feeling pretty aggro this evening, kids. I wanted to write about this while my blood was up, but I didn't. Maybe I was afraid of offending someone. Maybe you won't watch this. But if you do, I defy you to tell me that you think eggs are part of a humane diet.



That is what you're condoning if you eat eggs. Your money sends millions of male chicks into industrial grinders. It sends their sisters to brutally short lives, crammed into cages and laying more eggs than their bodies can handle until they too are sent to slaughter. Because, yeah, where do think laying hens go when they're "spent"? Hen retirement communities? Please. The whole disgusting web is interconnected. There's no such thing as a cruelty-free animal product.

I know it's hard to kick the egg habit. Even harder still is avoiding packaged foods made with eggs. But it can be done. I usually just skip to the bottom of the ingredients list, where the allergens are disclosed. If eggs are in there, they'll be listed right alongside nuts and dairy and wheat and whatever else. Vote with your money. If it's got eggs in it, just don't buy it. You'll live, I promise.

This afternoon I received my weekly email horoscope from Rob Brezsny. I recommend him and his book Pronoia. I'm a Cancer, and yes, I can be crabby. He says:

I have tuned in to your yearning for resolution, O Seeker. I know that your heart fervently wants the riddles to run their course, the mysteries to be revealed, the uncertainties to be quelled. And I have ransacked my imagination in search of what consolation I might provide to appease your quest for neat, simple truths. But what I have concluded, O In-Between One, is that any solutions I might try to offer you would not only be fake, but also counterproductive. What you actually need, I suspect, are not answers to your urgent questions, but rather, better questions; more precisely formulated questions; more ruthlessly honest questions. Dig deeper, please. Open wider. Think fatter.

I don't have answers, and I've learned that there are no simple truths. The world is not black and white: it's tie-dyed gray. But there's one thing I can do, and I'm doing it. I'm asking the ruthlessly honest questions. Why do you let these atrocities be carried out in your name? What would you give for a world without cruelty? How far are you willing to go?