voluntary simplicity?
I'm tired of feeling like a hypocrite or like I'm hiding something, which means that I'm going to have to get rid of my leather shoes and wool sweaters and scarves. I have two wool sweaters, three scarves, and two pairs of leather sneakers. Am I going overboard? I don't think so. I've maintained a vegan diet with very few slip-ups for approximately eight months. Prior to October, I had maintained a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet for nearly seven years. I think it's high time to make a stronger commitment and bring my dietary ethics more fully into the rest of my life.

The more that I read about the dairy & egg industry, the more evident it becomes to me that lacto-ovo vegetarianism is closer to a full meat-eating diet than it is to a strict vegan diet / lifestyle. Furthermore, I believe that the "happy meat" industry (think: free range eggs, organic milk, and so on) provides a perverse incentive for maintaining an omnivorous lifestyle -- If the animal didn't suffer "too much," it's okay to eat meat / dairy. Gary Francione makes an excellent analogy: It's worse to beat and rape someone than to merely rape them, but no one argues that rape sans beating is morally acceptable. Organic milk and free-range eggs are equivalent to rape without beating: Less suffering, but still morally unacceptable.

I'm writing this down knowing full-well that doing so might result in alienating myself from my lacto-ovo and omnivorous friends. Before you get pissed off at me, please realize that I only made the switch from lacto-ovo to vegan less than a year ago, and I have nothing but respect for the ethical impetus that drives a person to become lacto-ovo. I believe, however, that in order to be an ethical vegetarian, one must cut out all animal products, as far as is practical. The ethical considerations that drive a person to become lacto-ovo are simply not satisfied, and instead, the lacto-ovo vegetarian is lulled into believing that she has done her part, her fair share. This simply is not the case.