All Men Are Created Equal and Have the Rights to LIFE LIBERTY and THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS…and that includes cows.

Well I am off to Hawaii tomorrow on my special pole dancing vacation.
I can’t imagine what it will be like. But I know it will be…..

So thrilling.

This is a combination of three of my great loves…pole dancing and the beach and vacation.Another one of my loves is the wonderful world of the animal kingdom.

On Mother’s Day, a lot of the posts from around facebook from the animal groups I follow got me thinking about animal mothers.

Animals have families. So simple and yet most people choose to ignore this fact.

Everything has been seeming so much clearer to me lately.

The dairy industry keeps mothers as slaves impregnating them until they are no longer fertile and then killing them. They take the male calves away within a day of birth and send them to horrifying veal farms.

It is like something out of a science fiction novel.

Every animal, human or cow, deserves rights—

I hold these truths to be self evident….

all animals are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights and among these are

the freedom to

life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

All men are created equal.

Male, female, human or cow, black, white, or spotted.

What does this mean?

I wish I had paid attention in class…..

I’ll give it my best shot….

Well, it does not mean humans and cows are equal in every way (obviously) …

but their moral worth, their right to live their own life, freely, is equal to every one on this planet.

No one is more “worthy” of living than anyone else. How do I know this?

Well I read a great reason in a book once. (David Burns’ Feeling Good where he was arguing that should you feel “worthless” you are so wrong because it is impossible to be worthless.)

Why???

Because the concept of “worthiness” is a meaningless to begin with. It doesn’t exist. It is just an abstract concept that is so generalized it has no concrete practical meaning.

How could it possibly be measured and whose standards would we use to measure it by?

It is impossible to come up with a meaningful measure of worth. It’s not a real thing.

There is no way of measuring the intrinsic worth of a life.

Therefore, if you must concern yourself with matters of worthiness, why not assign 1 unit of “worth” to everyone on the planet.

Everyone is worthy of their own lives.

Despite their infinitely numerous variations, “All Men Are Created Equal”

That includes the “men” in other species….and of course I take men by it’s archaic meaning of people in general, male and female and other.

It is wrong for us to enslave others. Even cows.

Clearly wrong for us to enslave and murder others–even more wrong.

Well, let me end my philosophic musings, by saying have a wonderful day.

I will let you all know how it goes in HAWAIIII.

PLease let me know if you have any thoughts on the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as it relates to animals or humans.

And whether you agree of disagree that a cow, for example, has the same moral worth, the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as a human does.

Also have any of you read Feeling Good by David Burns, my favorite book?

xoxox

Hawaii Vacations, Vegan Sandals on Pinterest and Speaking Up for Animals in the Comments on the INTERNET

Hello Everyone,

How are you doing?

I attended Vegan Drinks in NYC the other day. Were any of you there? If anyone who reads this blog lives in NYC, I would love to meet up some time at vegan drinks and meet you. I believe I may be away for this next one because I am going to HAWAII. I am so excited.

This was a really long winter in NYC and all winter long I dreamed, craved, going to the beach. I had dreams of going with my vegan boyfriend and going on holiday, but unfortunately we broke up.

Well, I am going to the beach anyway. On a No Boys Allowed women’s retreat–a pole dancing beach retreat nonetheless!! HA. As you may know if you read my 5 Random facts About Me blog post one time, one of my favorite things is pole dancing. It is so beautiful and athletic and I could go on for days about it. Well I am so excited for the retreat.

 

I have been updating my pinterest board with vegan shoes quite regularly. There are a few cool vegan sandal options on there inspired by HAVAII.

 

A few vegan shoes on pinterest.

 

Today I was reading one of my fave things online ROOKIE magazine (a magazine for teen girls) when I saw someone asking a question about vegan shoes. Though I normally do not get involved in self promotion, I decided to tell this fellow vegan shoe lover about my pinterest board in the comments.

 

While I was there I noticed another commenter being like “vegan shoes are highly toxic and bad for the environment. So is fake fur. People think animals are treated badly and killed in horrible ways on fur farms but that is just not true. Furs are worth less if the animals aren’t kept in good condition…so it’s worth it to the fur farms to treat their animals well.”

 

………………………….

 

I felt I had to comment! I almost didn’t cause I was thinking how can I possibly express how wrong this person is. They prob won’t even accept my comment.” Well, I decided I had to give it a go anyway. One can make a difference.

 

 

I calmy wrote that what she said was not true. Most animals are anally electrocuted and go crazy in the cages and chew off eachother’s limbs and what not. I told her to watch The Witness– a great documentary I saw online (wrote about it here) about a man whose love for his cat caused him to see the connection between cats and animal and try to make a difference by educating people about what goes on at fur farms by driving around in a van with footage from fur farms playing out the back, forcing people to witness the truth.

 

 

I also told her to watch earthlings.

 

Anyway, YAY for me. I spoke up for animals. I hope some teen girls read that and it gets to them.

 

If you want to learn more about animal rights my humble recommendations are …check out 269 life and follow Anita Krajnc, both on facebook!

 

Do you ever respond to people who try to knock veganism, or vegan shoes, or animal rights? Or do you prefer not to get involved and let their ignorance reveal itself. I always feel releived when people respond to those haters in the comments, but I know it is a rough role as they are attacked themselves. What do you do?

 

Feel free to comment any time and let me know if you ever attend vegan drinks!

 

 

New Vegan Shoes and a Tumblr that will Open Your Eyes through Art

I added some more vegan shoes on pinterest today.

vegan go go boots

white converse high tops.

vegan birkenstocks because I have really been reminiscing about my old pair. They were so comfortable, and incredibly real birkenstocks for all their hippie-ness, are not at all vegan.

These little babies. Converse! Pretty cool right?

Some nice classic “thongs”.

Anyway check em out on my vegan shoes pinterest board!

After you have done that, turn your mind to more troubling matters.

Check out this blog by an unknown tumblrist: I Have Seen Another World.

Through pictures and dreamy captions….it tells a story of a war.

All of a sudden you see it as a war…that’s going on right now…and has been going on for thousands of years…against our fellow earthlings.

It’s incredible. This blog really opened my eyes. Wish I knew who created it. I recognized many of the photos on it as Jo-Anne McArthur’s.

Check it out, and check out the Holocaust Comparison Project by David Sztybel if you didn’t already. It is very ….interesting.

Down the Rabbit Hole into the World of Animal Rights

A few things:

1. I updated my vegan shoe pinterest with some cool vegan shoes such as these:

There are some excellent shoes on there, so check it out if you so desire to clothe your feet in man-made materials. Vegan Shoes 4 Lyfe.

2. Following Anita Krajnc, head of Toronto Pig Save, on facebook is very educational. I feel as if I have gone down the rabbit hole, so to speak.

If you want to learn more about animal rights stuff, just subscribe to her posts and then check out the pages of groups she shares and whatnot.

I don’t even know where to begin.

I now feel certain that animal rights will be the next great battle our society wages for freedom and justice and all that.

Everywhere I see more and more people mentioning veganism. This movement is growing!

Along time ago when I started with vegetarianism, I always used to think to myself “what difference am I making. So I’m not ordering meat at a restaurant…big deal. 1 billion other people are.” Still I stuck to it because it felt like the right thing to do, not really knowing why, besides I loved animals and my dogs.

After all this time I feel I finally understand my true motivation for being a vegetarian and now vegan.

For one thing, it DOES make a difference. Little by little, person by person, vegans infiltrated mainstream media and awareness.

And for a second thing, ( a thing I have become so much more aware of lately thanks to my interviews with animal rights heroes) vegans are, as one blogger put it so well, Conscientious Objectors to Cruelty.

Check out this blog post from the great blog Once Upon a Vegan. She shares the story of a man who privately financed the transport of 669 Jewish children to England…because they were going to the death camps. He saved their lives, but no one, even in his family, ever knew about it until 50 years later he wife found a log in his attic listing all the names of the children he saved. She contacted them and there is a video clip on the blog post showing him meeting some of the children he saved years later…

I could watch it a hundred times. It’s amazing.

She links to this article which tells the whole story of Nicholas Winton. One of the most touching things I’ve ever read. At the end of the article it says he wears a ring given to him by one of the children he saved which said

“save one life, save the world”.

(nicholas winton with one of the children he saved)

a book about him was written by one of the children he saved.

This guy never asked to be recognized, he just quietly did a beautiful thing. I imagine he felt he could die happy after that meeting, knowing that he made a difference in the lives of so many grown men and women. You have to see the vid in the blog post–so good!

3. Speaking of the Holocaust, I saw this video Anita Krajnc posted on Facebook the other day–these two guys discussing why people become violently offended and write vegans off when they compare the exploitation of animals to the holocaust. They do a fantastic job of discussing it, and it’s really fun to watch.

The similarities to the things I saw in the slaughterhouse videos and in the trucks thanks to the youtube videos of Toronto Pig Save have really been haunting me with how similar they seem to the holocaust. Gas Chambers. Cattle Cars. Horrible experiments on animals. The dark barren barns chickens and pigs, for example, live in before being slaughtered.

The moment I decided not to look away and “bore witness” was the moment everything changed. Now I feel like I want to see more, to know what is really happening. Now all these extreme animal rights people’s tirades are really making sense!

When I learned about the holocaust in middle school I read a lot of books about it…in my typical, disturbed and depressed yet can’t look away fashion. I always remember thinking, how could this have happened only 50 years ago? It didn’t make sense. I looked around me and didn’t see evil people who were capable of doing anything like that. It seemed like a blip on the radar. And yet I imagined myself, being half Jewish, in that situation and tried to make it feel real.

Now I see that those behaviors are still in place but they are hidden from our view…in the slaughterhouses of the world. In the video I mentioned above, they talk about how evil is often just no one taking responsibility…like in a bureaucracy where normal people take orders but don’t want to take responsibility for what they are doing–that’s how evil happens. Exactly!

Clicking around, I found this Holocaust Comparison Project, a photo essay by David Sztybel, that the video is responding to. It makes fascinating and disturbing points. The same patterns of violence that existed in the Holocaust are very much alive and well.

At the end of the photo essay there is this post script:

Edgar Kupfer was a survivor of the Dachau death camp. After his liberation, he furtively scrawled the following message on the wall of a hospital barrack:

Wow.

I understand the Holocaust is an extremely sensitive subject. But like they say in the video, by discussing the past, we can learn from the past.

Your thoughts? Do you feel that you know your motivations for being vegan or vegetarian on a deep level or do you sometimes question? What do you think about the Holocaust Comparison Project?

Night Thoughts

Hello everyone,

Just thought I’d post a brief update.

What an intense experience it was writing and putting together my last blog post, my interview with Anita Krajnc, founder of Toronto Pig Save.

Intense because… it is intense to witness these things. Death. Suffering. Cruelty. Injustice.

It is intense to even talk about these things. In fact, in rereading my interview I noticed that I skimmed over talking about the true horrors of what I saw. I did write a brief post about it on my other personal blog though, which can be found here.

I think it is amazing that Toronto Pig Save bears witness 3 times a week.

I think it is important too…because I think…you start to second guess yourself. You think, maybe I couldn’t have seen what I did. Pigs boiled alive… It was only after reading a comment on TPS’s facebook today where someone was talking about how many pigs are boiled alive did I feel like, OK! I wasn’t just seeing things!

It’s hard to believe the things you see. It’s like your mind almost wants to protect you from it, and tries to dull the memory so that you can’t “bear witness” as powerfully. The emotion fades. But at the same time, I’ll never forget what I saw. Yeah, I can’t recall the exact sound of the pigs screaming anymore but I know what I heard, and saw. It never totally leaves you I guess.

Did anyone watch any of Toronto Pig Save’s videos? If so, I’d love to hear your experience watching them, and thanks to everyone who liked and commented, that was so amazing to feel your support. It is wonderful to hear from people from far and wide.

Well, I feel I am kind of left with the question, what do I do? Anita invited us all to think about starting our own Pig or Cow Save groups,  and in the interview she suggested I do use my artistic bent to make some sort of art for animals.

I would love to do something kind of like what Jo-Anne McArthur does. But how? But what? I will be brainstorming on this question…

One thing I read today got me thinking about…

All those people out there who still think we need meat to be healthy…

Also all those people who skim over the elephant in the room when talking about vegetarianism or veganism (sure it’s healthy, and good for the environment, but what about the murders taking place)…

What a challenging issue this is. Definitely something that will be in the history books. This is a movement. I love how Anita is leading it on one front from Toronto, Non-Violent Style–inspired by Gahndi and Tolstoy…

Something I hate:

I hate how people don’t like vegans. I hate how people don’t understand that vegans are self righteous for a reason.

Murdering innocent animals…so crystal clear in my mind. And yet….so …everywhere!

My main question I think after the interview was

WHY

Why don’t people get it?

Here are my ideas why people don’t understand why animal rights matters:

1. They may not have a very large capacity for empathy

2. They are numbed to feeling empathy for animals from all the conditioning from food companies (“you need meat to be healthy”), scientists debating whether or not animals are conscious, hunters numbed to violence at a young age, parents creating a “bystander effect” by eating meat like there is nothing wrong with it, advertizing proclaiming humane, local, sustainable meat from old fashioned farms with happy pigs and cows (ha!) and just generally all the messages we receive in our society that animals are ours for the eating and using.

3. people do feel empathy for animals but are addicted to the taste of meat and dairy and feel they can’t change (I definitely have felt this way and know how hard this can be)

4. They feel threatened by vegans moral stance which deep down makes sense to them, and feel judged and that creates a backlash like “but it tastes so good!”

5. They have never seen a farm animal before in their life, let alone gotten to know one, and so they never think about animals and can easily assume animals are dumb and don’t suffer like we do

Other ideas?

a puppy in the womb

I am experimenting with the 80/10/10 Diet by Dr Doug Graham, which is a book about High Carb Raw Veganism, also known as Low Fat Raw Veganism, or Fruitarianism or eating all fruits and vegetables. I have been eating so much fruit.

Hope you are all doing well, and Happy Tax Day and Happy Monday!

An Interview with Anita Krajnc: 10 Questions For the Founder of Toronto Pig Save

Hello Everyone, I have something very cool to share with you today. It is an interview with the founder of Toronto Pig Save, Anita Krajnc. (Anita Krajnc, left) For those of you who don’t know what Toronto Pig Save is, …

A Great New Way to Find Vegan Shoes and Vegan Bags–My Pinterest Page

Hello!

Yesterday I made a pinterest board for vegan shoes and bags. Wish I had thought of it sooner, it is so easy to use and fun to look at. By clicking on the pics you can be linked to all of (in my opinion) the coolest vegan shoes and bags on the market. It’s exactly why I started this blog to begin with, but pinterest is a much better platform for that. I think from now on, I will just add any cool vegan shoes I see to my pinterest page and that will free up my blog for more interesting things. Also, I’m going to try to integrate the pinterest page into the blog so you can just see what’s available to purchase in case you need some vegan shoes quick.

I have to say, while I was looking for vegan shoes to add to my cool vegan shoes pinterest board I was really struck by how few options there still are for vegan shoes. Some of the websites that are the top search results for vegan shoes are appaling! This probably leads people to believe that it is next to impossible not to buy leather and still be able to look presentable.

On the plus side, there are more than 54 awesome vegan shoes on my page all of which I would love to own. So can’t complain too much.

As I was searching for vegan shoes, I found that slightly contrary to what I say in my article “where to find cool vegan shoes online“,  I found the coolest vegan shoes on the following websites:

The Good Guys

Cri de Coeur

Zara (sort by price, lowest to highest, should under or around $60 may be vegan, but look at the materials)

Asos and Urban Outfitters (ditto what I said about Zara)

mooshoes

Let me know what you think of the page and if you have a pinterest page let me know because I would love to check it out. Thanks to everyone on my Facebook page (mynonleatherlife) who sent me theirs already.

How You Become One of THOSE vegans

It seems I am becoming one of THOSE vegans.

My meaning? One time I saw a profile on OKcupid that said I’m vegan, but trust me I’m not one of THOSE vegans!! You know, the ones everyone hates because they go around preaching about veganism and how you’re evil if you’re not a vegan. The ones everyone is hating on in the comments section of PETA videos on youtube.

Well, here’s how it happens.

First you are raised into a culture where everyone eats meat, dairy, uses animal tested products and what not and it’s totally NORMAL. You hear things like animals aren’t conscious beings. People speculate over whether or not animals feel pain.

You have a dog or a cat. You know your pet feels pain, has a personality, loves you. But you never see any other animals. You hesitantly guess that all animals are probably like your pet.

You decide you want to be vegetarian. Amazingly you manage to break your habit, restrict your diet–now you’re a vegetarian!! You are on a roll. People always ask you about it. Why are you a vegetarian? You don’t really know how to explain it. They ask you “is it for health reasons or animal rights reasons”. You don’t want to seem weird and you don’t really know how to explain yourself, so you say “both”.

You’re a vegetarian for years and you start reading more about it. You hear rumblings about veganism but it seems way too extreme. Plus, what is wrong with milk? They don’t kill the cows.

You hear about egg farms and you make sure to always buy free range eggs and tell all your friends and family to buy the same.

You feel bad for cows and make the connection that you are wearing ANIMAL SKINS on your feet. you decide to stop buying leather and find your fashion choices are vastly reduced.

Then you finally get the courage to delve deeper into what people are saying about dairy farms and egg farms. So free range farmers lie about what free range means? You read all the grisly details. You’re ready.

You become vegan.

You lapse a couple of times. Finally it sticks.

Suddenly it starts making sense. Why would I want to participate in a system of slavery, violence, cruelty, and torture.

You feel really relieved to be out of it. Free of any guilt that you are complicit in it.

Suddenly all around you, things start seeming different.

You pass the meat aisle in the grocery store and see logos with happy cows and sunshine and old fashioned looking farms. It reminds you of something out of a superhero movie, something that the villains would come up with….creepy and sinister. Like The Joker.

You see pictures on tumblr of food which you formerly would have thought looked delicious even though you wouldn’t eat it, and now you just feel kind of sad.

The world looks different. You try to have patience for everyone and realize that it’s really hard to change your diet. If you hadn’t gotten on a path of vegetarianism you might still be eating meat today. You try not to judge anyone.

But once you cross over to the other side, suddenly the simple fact that was there all along, that animals have feelings, suffer, have lives, have families, want to live their lives and deserve to be free becomes like, coldly obvious.

Why was it so hard to see that simple truth for so long?

There was so much brainwashing going on. Through advertisments, through the guise of being scientific and not anthropomorphizing animals, through the fact that we never see or get to know any animals in our modern society (since they’re all hidden away in factory farms), through the fact that people are addicted to meat and cheese (I definitely was).

I am a huge fan of capitalism and the power of entrepreneurs and business to make people’s lives better, but you do understand why capitalism has gotten such a bad rap. People don’t always think about the lives behind their business. Even good people don’t, such as one of my favorite bloggers, the Pioneer Woman, who is a hilarious writer, loving mother, beautiful photographer and lives on a cattle farm. She loves those baby cows but she separates them from their mothers and sends them off to slaughter, thinking she’s given them a good life and that’s the way of things.

It shouldn’t be.

People are making huge progress in overturning this huge wrong in society. I have an awesome interview upcoming with someone whose work and progress is going to amaze you.

But yeah, in conclusion, I guess I am one of THOSE vegans now. I understand them. As soon as you turn vegan, I think most people get free of all the brainwashing and the simple facts become obvious for the first time. The emperor has no clothes.

That’s why there are so many of THOSE vegans.

Vegan Lucite Shoes, Vegan Harnesses, Vegan Shoes to Wear with Black Milk

I’ve got some more vegan shoe tip offs for you today.

First…

Yay! Someone has made a vegan knock-off of those Jeffrey Campbell shoes. You can get the unintentionally vegan version at Urban Outfitters. I have been hoping for a shoe like this for a long time.

vegan lucite shoes

I think I prefer white over the black.

I am a fan of Lucite. It is kind of taboo, since it makes you think of strippers, but at the same time it makes you think of Cinderella, and for me, pole dancing, which is my passionate hobby.

The logo of my blog is actually a pair of lucite shoes with a big rose clipped on it. Romantic much?

While I am on the subject of cool vegan shoes, I also like this shoe I found at urban outfitters.

vegan harness shoes

It also reminds me of a Jeffrey Cambell knockoff. This shoe reminds me of the kind of shoes that Black Milk encourages girls to wear with their black milk outfits. I am a huge fan of the company black milk for their marketing and generally the way they run their company. They never push anyone to buy anything but somehow they have developed a frenzy around their products. I like how they are a company that is so transparent and homegrown, always trying to befriend their customers, and how they do so many innovative things, their way. Check them out on Facebook for a fascinating business case study. Observing them on facebook brightens my day.

So yeah. Good to have vegan shoes for your black milk addiction. Even though I mostly observe from afar.

Finally speaking of harnesses, I recently hit the jackpot when I found these vegan harnesses.

The following may or may not convince you why I think harnesses are cool:

I could go on. If you think this is a cool look, check out Zana Bayne’s vegan section of her online shop. (she does make leather harnesses as well). Also check out the video–very NSFW but totally awesome.

Vegan Thigh Highs, Goldmember Heels, A New Unintentionally Vegan Shoe Resource, and Musings on Birthdays and the Passing of Time

I found a great site for unintentionally vegan shoes– Urbanog. Weird name, but it seems like all of the shoes on their site are vegan and made with man made materials (let me know if you find this isn’t true). They have a huge selection, and the some of the shoes are pretty cool. Definitely better than a lot of the cheap vegan shoe online retailers I’ve come across. Check it out, if you are in need of some type of vegan shoes. I will add this to my article “where to find cool vegan shoes online“.

I was looking for some thigh high boots. I am tall, so I have some tall boots, but they only go up to my knees. I wear black legging like pants basically every day, and a great shoe to wear over them, I think, would be black knee high/thigh high vegan boots.

I like these. Not that tall, but getting there.

I like these also.

These aren’t boots, but I thought they were pretty cool. They look better on the model,  if you click on the link–I just couldn’t find a good pic of them.

vegan heels

These are pretty cool, too. Very Goldfinger, or GoldMember.

They come in black too.

Remember Beyonce in GoldMember?

Just for old time’s sake!

In other news, I am having a birthday party on Saturday. And I’m calling it a vegan birthday brunch. I am really excited about it! I made fancy invites on paperlesspost, and am getting 40 balloons in pink, purple and yellow, pink and purple streamers, party hats…I am cutting out a pic of each guest and putting them on the hats…I am having vegan appetizers served on silver platters by my sister. Best of all, I am having it catered by Blossom du Jour, with their amazing sandwiches..my favorites being the Burrito Grande and the avocado fake chicken sandwich. I already want to plan like 10 more parties.

So excited. For the past couple of years I have really hated my birthday. I felt like I was getting older, and didn’t have any better clue what I wanted to do with my life. Then the other day I remembered turning 10, and having the same feelings. AS I turned ten I remember sitting under the piano reflecting on getting older. And now I’m so much older. It makes me realize that instead of agonizing over the inevitable passing of time, the only thing to do is celebrate the time we have left. Don’t consciously make yourself upset, simply seize the opportunity to make this birthday a happy day, and one to remember for the ages.

How I used to celebrate…NOT A GOOD IDEA!!

Your thoughts? Do you have any tips for entertaining? I’m really out of practice.

TTYS all. have a great Thursday!