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The Personal Is Political

October 29, 2007

Another example of vegan hate:

“Sydney McMahon, a ninth grade student in Canada, is a vegetarian and animal rights advocate. And, like any good animal rights advocate, she wanted to spread the news of animal-friendly living to her classmates. She and some friends started a student animal rights group, and they made a presentation, with the approval of the school, to two classes of seventh and eighth graders, on the benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle.

“Unfortunately, one of the classes didn’t want to hear their presentation, and the students started heckling the advocates. No one has explained why the teacher didn’t intervene to make the kids behave. The harassment continued over the next several days; says McMahon, ‘In the halls after, there was a lot of screaming at us.’

“However, not all the kids were adverse to the advocates’ message, and, two days later, parents of other students who had heard the presentation became irate when their children were refusing to eat meat. These parents called the school to complain about the success of the advocates’ presentation.

“Rather than remind the parents that a school is a place of learning, the administration turned on the advocates. According to McMahon’s mother, “They talked vaguely: ‘This will be a mark against you,’” and threatened to not allow the advocates to go on a class field trip later in the year, as punishment.

“The harassment and unfriendly administration has led McMahon to leave the school altogether, and she will be home-schooled for the rest of the school year.”

from: AnimalBlawg, emphasis added.

I went vegetarian at age 6. The discovery of agricultural animal violence was my first exposure to violence that I could effectively change. At the time I didn’t quite understand what a socially disastrous move going vegetarian was. I chose to stop eating animals simply because animals were my friends (pets) and I don’t eat my friends. But I learned later that vegetarians are one of many groups that are routinely ostracized and othered. There are certain belief systems you can have that will make you hated by large groups of people in the US. Some of them are: atheism, veganism, and feminism.

I experienced much teasing and mocking. Kids sometimes ruined my food (or even my toothpaste once) and made it not vegetarian. Cafeteria staff routinely lied about what is and what is not vegetarian, because they don’t care and think you shouldn’t care either. Teachers tolerated other students’ harassment of me as though I deserved it. One moment in high school is permanently etched in my brain:

I refused to do the fetal pig dissection in science class. I had the right to refuse since California had just recently passed a law letting students (up to grade 12) with religious or ethical objections to dissection refrain from participating. I could do an alternative project instead.

My teacher complied, with an eye roll, and let me write a report instead of dissecting a pig. When the day came, though, I was expected to just sit in the class and work on my report. Forcing someone who thinks dissection is cruel and wrong to witness dissection is itself cruel and wrong. But the law said I could refrain from participating, not that they had to make special accommodations for me.

I was expected to just turn off my senses: to plug my nose from the formaldehyde smell, to ignore the jokes about ham, to close my eyes from the tiny pig fetuses, to stop my brain from imagining someone cutting open a pregnant pig (with the intelligence of a human three year old) and removing her piglets (some of the most adorable creatures on Earth). I was supposed to stop my mind from thinking about how these teens were forming a habit of cutting up innocent creatures needlessly. I was supposed to focus on my task at hand: writing a report.

I couldn’t do it. The extremely shy and nervous teen that I was finally mustered the courage to ask to leave. I spent the rest of the class in the library knowing I was the only student in my grade who had refused to participate in needless slaughter. I felt very alone and wondered why resistance to violence wasn’t the norm.

As an adult it hasn’t gotten much better. When prejudiced people fear me or call me crazy because of my belief system, it feels like they’re attacking my religion or my heritage. It feels like they’re attacking me. When they defend their violence with more violence, I am sickened and ashamed of my species.

Reading stories like this one brings back some of those memories of my own vegan evolution. And reminds me that these tales aren’t kept in the past. This is still happening.

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