How vegans/veganism is perceived

45.

Vegans have an important story to tell. Not only about the criminal attack on animals but about how vegan consciousness is an enlightening and exciting opportunity. And there’s the bonus of it stopping us buying crap food.

            All this would be wonderful if it were only a private matter of conscience and personal diet, but some of us feel duty bound to speak about it; and when we do there’s a silence, forced on us by people who don’t get it and don’t want to hear it. As vegans, we neither have the power nor the right to change their minds. If we attempt to change people’s fixed attitudes we’ll immediately seem too ‘good’, as if we thought ourselves superior. Or it’s like being stand-offish, or like rejecting the traditions of our culture. And we would seem crazy, for ignoring the fine cuisines of the world, by restricting ourselves to a plant-based-only diet.    

This is the usual reaction when someone finds out I’m vegan: “This is NOT for me!!” they say. “I’d go mad with all that denying-yourself-things. You’re just trying to be different”. I’m seen as a threat, and up go the defences, and in come the white lies, thrown in to put me off the scent. They say all the usual things, so as not to hurt my feelings. “I admire vegans for what they stand for” and “I wish I could do it myself”. But under their breath they’re saying, “Ugh! No way! Never! Not for me!”.