Opinion: Asking if veganism is ‘not manly’ leads to other questions
This response is to the commentary published on May 31 titled “Why going vegan is the ‘manly’ thing to do.”
Author Mark Hawthorne posed this question: “Is it possible to overcome the narrative that veganism is not manly?” He goes on to say, “Stereotypical expectations of men, such as being strong, courageous and protective, can be viewed through a vegan lens.”
Here’s to cautious optimism that vegetables’ responsibility for gender insecurity will soon sound as illogical as attributing gender to intelligence, physical conditioning, and above all moral characteristics such as courage and being protective.
I never asked my late grandmother whether in her youth they ever used the expression “seeing how the sausage is made” as a euphemism for doing something unpleasant out of public view. She didn’t like eating chicken because as a child she had to kill their own chickens for food. Family stories of ancestors prior to the mid-1900s referenced backyard animals used for food. For many people in those eras, seeing how sausage was made was perhaps their euphemism for their weekly backyard chores.
Fast forward to today. Aside from hunters and dwindling numbers of farmers, how many of us raise or take the life of the animals we eat? According to the ASPCA, “the majority of the nearly 10 billion land-based animals, plus countless more aquatic animals, farmed for food each year in the U.S. are suffering on factory farms,” formally Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO). When the eggs and dairy-products are simply cartons on store shelves, do we no longer have an ethical responsibility to end suffering of these sentient beings?
I began rethinking the unintended consequences of my actions after returning from Iraq. Riding around on Friday nights for fun with friends as a kid — and never thinking about where the gasoline came from, nor the soldiers and sailors sent to conflict-ridden parts of the world to ensure that supply remained secure. Getting cheese and pepperoni pizzas or going to fast-food restaurants like Arby’s because “they have the meats,” and seldom thinking about the factory farmed animals that suffered for my food cravings. And if I did, I rationalized my contribution to their suffering as insignificant. Until I found the courage to watch Paul McCartney’s video “Glass Walls” on YouTube.
Now it’s impossible to unsee these cruel consequences: Male chicks getting ground-up alive in the egg industry simply because as males they won’t lay eggs. The male calf that is separated from his mother in CAFO dairy facilities so that his mother can be kept perpetually lactating to provide the steady stream of milk for my breakfasts, and he in turn can be fed an iron-deficient diet to make his flesh the right texture for my veal parmesan. Sea turtles drowned in trawling nets, or the fish raised in crowded fish farm pools for my fish sandwich. Pigs confined to standing and lying on uncomfortable concrete or metal floors for their entire lives ...
Jesus cautioned pulling the plank from my own eye before pointing to the speck of dust in someone else’s eye. Yet animals suffering on factory farms is so much a societal norm, does this cruelty even get mentioned in any local church? In the years between Communion and Confirmation I don’t recall a minister mentioning our complicity in factory farming cruelty we cause to God’s creatures. Or maybe this cruelty is deliberately neglected in sermons to not acknowledge the minister’s complicity? If there is a congregation that has expanded their community’s compassion to include all living beings, including factory farmed animals, I would like to visit.
Strength, courage, protection. Maybe it’s an entirely worthless question whether it’s possible to overcome the narrative that veganism is unmanly. Perhaps the worthy and gender-agnostic question is whether it’s possible to overcome the narrative that factory farming is Christian? Because if factory farming isn’t a sin, heaven is one hell of a complicitly cruel place.