Misconception about veganism

[toodlepipsky]

I don't know about the situation in other countries of the world, but in my wee country, I often get responses from people that make it clear that people don't really know what being vegan means

Comments

[dinospine]

I live in Vancouver, Canada, and when I say vegan pretty much everybody either knows what it is, or occasionally asks what it is.
I've never encountered these kinds of mistakes, but they are really interesting.

My parents are vegetarian + kosher, so they have a tendency to push dairy on me, and insist that veganism is unnecessary because there is no "tradition" of it, and that it is "invented." Haha. Don't know if this "lack of tradition" argument is common among jews or not, as I don't follow the faith personally.

Are you sure the word doesn't have another, alternate earlier meaning they they are using? Perhaps it's time to get creative with vernacular. What is "vegetarian" in hebrew? Perhaps you could remove a few syllables and call yourself that. :)

[toodlepipsky]

Well, here are quite a lot of rules about animal welfare in jewish tradition so industrial milk and egg industry are taken care of by that.

As for the word for vegan (tiv'oni, and the word for nature = teva, the word for vegeterian = tzimkhoni from the word for plant = tzemakh) I have a friend who insists on calling vegans vegeterians in hebrew because they and only they eat only plants, unlike vegeterians. Maybe I can use the word for "plant-made" (because I'm sure by now most of the cells in my body were built solely on plant diet, so I am plant made XD) it's worth a shot.

[nyghtinggail]

One of my professors (!) in my university once mentioned vegans as people who won't take western medicines, but instead take only herbal and homeopathic stuff.

I've heard this before, I think it comes from those who won't use anything that is animal tested... which is a lot of it.

At the same time, I know of vegans who won't use traditional toilets because the wax seal is from bees.

[toodlepipsky]

Wax seal? Where? (I'm not asking because of the veganism, I'm just wondering where it is)

The vegan and animal rights forum we have in my country has all kinds of people and one of them actually asked a farmer why he's using a type of hornet to pollinate his fields and asked us in the forum is that's animal exploitation...

[nyghtinggail]

Between the bowl and the tank. And from the bowl to the drain pipe.
http://www.hammerzone.com/archives/bath/fixt_repair/toilet/wax_ring/replace.htm

[toodlepipsky]

It's actually made of rubber here...LOL