Sanity or My Loss of It
Okay - I will break it down for you and I am pretty crabby so you are going to see fuck a lot.
I work with a woman, who I consider a pretty good friend. Today she brought in donuts, and I declined. (Part of this story is my fucking fault. I should have just said "no thanks". Instead I said, "Donuts have milk and eggs in them". I am a dumb ass, I know).
So later, she comes to my desk and starts on this big spiel about the bagel I ate and that had eggs or milk in it. I calmly explained, they didn't because I emailed the company for their ingredient list. She then started rambling off a fucking laundry list of foods that had milk or dairy in them. For fun and so every one else has to suffer, I will list them with my response.
1. Noodles have eggs. - No, pasta has eggs, noodles do not. I check the labels when I buy them.
2. Bread has milk and eggs. - Again, I check the labels when I buy bread, and when I bake it at home I use recipes that don't call for eggs and sub the milk.
3. Your tator tots have egg in the breading. - Again, I have contacted the company and they don't have eggs in the breading.
4. The tortilla shell has to have milk or something - FUCKING SEE ABOVE.
Okay, this may not sound like much, but she kept going on and fucking on. And then when I would give one of my responses she would quickly say "No, all bread has milk".
And - the vegan icing on the vegan cake that I made so I know all the fucking ingredients - she openly admitted that she just was waiting for me to slip up.
I have decided I can't win.
7 comments:
Hi!
Just wanted to tell you that's a great pict with your dogs!
Hard not to justify ourselves. I'm not a vegan but women have a tendency to feel they need to justify every they do!
We need to stop that shit!
hey, i'm from the VF forum, and i check your blog from time to time because i grew up in GB. sorry this lady gave you such a hard time. anyway, i'm sorry to correct you but noodles are by definition made with eggs (though you can find "noodles" that aren't). pasta can go either way.
Hello there, I am your new blog stalker! ha ha (just kidding!) - I just heard about your blog after Bob & Jenna read your letter on their podcast - your letter was very well-written and I appreciated it because I am also a vegan married to an omni and I could relate. Also, I have been involved in dog rescue on and off over the years, including starting a fostering group here where I live. I just thought it was funny, we have a lot in common. :-)
Tamra - Hi. You can stalk me any time you want!
Cj - Thanks. I guess I thought it was the other way around.
Nancy - Its hard to take a bad pic with my dogs. :0
I think the vital question in this case is "Why is it so important to you to try to trip me up?"
What's her deal that she can't handle your veganism? Is it guilt? Or does she just enjoy picking on people? Of course I wouldn't say that...
I tend to tell people when they give me a hard time that I've been vegan actually a while now and I've done a lot of research on it. I read ingredients and contact companies. Still there's always a chance I might make a mistake, but it's about doing the best I can, and that's what I do. Nobody has to be perfect, we just have to do our best.
But in a way her little tantrum is a gift to you, because now you know what she's really like.
My take -- In general, non-vegans are threatened by vegans, because they can see that the vegans have stopped participating in avoidable violence and cruelties that they still do. The vegan is acting morally in a way that the non-vegan is not. The vegan implicitly reminds the non-vegan of his/her moral shortcomings.
So non-vegans feel defensive, and if they don't directly confront their transgressions, they employ a number of defense mechanisms, including trying to find fault with the vegan; they may also resent the vegan for causing usually suppressed internal conflicts to bubble up to the conscious level, so they resort to retalitatory tactics such as the one described in your post.
They're silly, annoying, and counterproductive, but they're also human nature - self-protection and avoidance mechanisms. Not our better nature, to be sure.
This is how I interpret these behaviors, anyway, and it makes it less personal for me. This analysis, if it's at all right, reminds me that the people who engage in these tiresome, superficially pointless tactics are troubled, and my job is to help them be more honest with themselves and act more in accordance with what I think are their most deeply held principles and goals - peacefulness, humility, kindness, respect, the golden rule - and then they will no longer be troubled by their wrongful habits, or my veganism - because it is ultimately their own failings that cause their flareups, their resentment, and their endless excuses.
I also like what neva vegan said.
Man, someone did that to me when I was lacto-vegetarian in elementary school. Their father worked at a chocolate company, they said, and ALL CHOCOLATE IS MADE OF EGGS. Since this was after I had learned to read, I read the ingredients of everything I ate and knew this to be patently false. My point is your co-worker there is displaying some elementary-school-level behavior.
GLT
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