Veganism as Grounds for Divorce?
L’Chicken note: This is a guest post from the Rooster.
As L’Chicken noted in a recent post (in which she muses on the guilty pleasure of watching our eleven-month-old play with a nine-inch chef's knife), I recently read Eating Animals and have since stopped eating animals. For all intents and purposes, this means I’ve gone vegetarian, with the exception of certain varieties of seafood that are caught or farmed in certain ways. I won’t attempt to get into the nitty-gritty details informing this habit change – for that I recommend the book – but it’s primarily ethical and has actually been a long time coming.
What L’Chicken didn’t note was just exactly how she feels about this new habit change of mine. That’s for her to say, but she was clear on one point: While I am “allowed” to go vegetarian, and she will even support the effort by trying to cook without meat, if I succumb to veganism she will consider that as grounds for divorce.
Being husband to L’Chicken is a sweet deal. She’s beautiful, and great company, and comes from a cool family, not to mention the fact that she generally takes true pleasure in preparing delicious food all the time. A man would be quite the fool to put this kind of relationship in jeopardy. To wit, according to a Facebook application I ran in December, my #4 top used word in 2009 was “thankful.”
So here I am, between a rock and hard place. Because the fact of the matter is that I've got just as much trouble stomaching what goes down with layer hens and dairy cattle as with their counterparts. I tried to present it like a challenge: Wouldn't it be neat to try living without ANY animal products for a year? A month? A day? I tried presenting it like an adventure: Let's pretend we're in Tibet and eat like Buddhists! No, no, and NO. As for the suggestion that I might take over in the kitchen... Do you read this blog? And you're still asking that question? Check yourself, and stay tuned.
2 comments:
Rooster said all the really right things - you are beautiful and great company, he loves your cooking and your family. It gets no sweeter than that. Lots of people feel the way he does about meat. However, having seen how fruits and vegetables are grown in other parts of the world, I hope he's not giving up meat because he thinks vegetables and legumes are healthier choices. Folks in Tibet aren't that all healthy. They may be more humane than we are, but not healthier. So, in case this is a voting situation, let him refer to himself as a non-meat eater and let it go at that. Just my 2 Cents worth.
His basic principal is actually one that I respect quite a good deal. But full disclosure, I don't let him give me any details because they are too upsetting. The book talks about how horrendously animals are treated in meat-eating Americana. Then there's fishing-- dolphin deaths and whale massacres as by-product on the netting end. Sad to think about. So I guess here we are, non-meat-eaters and hopefully forever-supporters of humane dairy and egg farming!
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