After well over a year of making excuses and arguing with myself, I finally went vegan a couple of weeks ago. And one of the things that made me so hesitant to do it, despite firmly believing that it was the right thing to do, was my budget. Or lack thereof.
(There’s also the fact that I’m a notoriously picky eater, but I was already mitigating that some by researching and preparing my own food. Knowing how something is prepared can take some of the edge off. Though there is still a part of me that throws a tantrum because Violife doesn’t taste exactly like real cheese, even if it tastes fine in its own right.)
Compounding the issue was the fact that, at the time, I was staying in a hotel room (attending CDL school downstate), with no personal transportation, in an area with such poor walkability I couldn’t even walk to the neighborhood grocery store less than a mile away without putting my actual life in danger. (Shout-out to American urban planning!) And for the duration of my stay there, I had two or fewer digits in my bank account about 90% of the time.
Even now that I’m back home, I’m still not what you’d call ~economically privileged~. I’m an Uber driver, for fuck’s sake, at least until I actually start my trucking job. (Vegan diet as an OTR trucker? Super not looking forward to it.)
But my lack of money doesn’t magically negate the harm that’s done when I contribute to animal agriculture. Likewise, I could easily excuse away shoplifting by saying I need the food more than Walmart does, but-- wait, no, the only reason I don’t do THAT is because I don’t want to go to jail, whereas I DO actually care about harm done to animals.
Bad analogy.
Oh well.
Anyway. Sitting here broke as shit, it’s just infuriating when I see people posture about how veganism is classist because The Poors just ~can’t afford it~. No, no, don’t talk about how meat and milk prices are through the roof, we have to save our energy for shitting on people who care about animals.
Just a rant. Tired of seeing it.
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