Welcome to Gaia! ::

... i have made a grave error. i have thoroughly confused abolitionist animal rights with veganism, and have been confusing the two concepts. not to mention arguing out of my butt defending "abolitionist veganism," which in retrospect doesn't make a whole lot of sense denotation-wise. veganism is a part of AR, but i was wrongfully attributing arguments of AR to veganism.

concessions:
merriam-webster and Tea are right on that definition.

right.
the exploitation is in the intention of owning an animal for the wrong reasons. Francione [guy on the interview] argues that if you're getting a dog simply because you're lonely and want companionship, that's exploitation. it means that you think the objective value of the dog's life is about whether or not it satisfies your desires.

if you're getting a dog because you can offer him/her a good home because shelters suck and he/she deserves better, that's okay. i personally would say that a combination of both isn't a bad thing. if you can offer a great home to a pet in need, which simultaneously fulfills the lonliness you experience, cool.

So it's finally become increasingly apparent to me how terrible the state of the nation is in.
Doesn't really hit you til it hits you.

I often get accused of not being a "real" vegetarian because I'd rather see the meat and dairy industries reformed instead of doing away with them. Or because I'm not a vegetarian for health or animal rights reasons. Or because I've been known to cook meat for my family. Or because blah blah blah. Sigh.

ETA: Okay, the no health reasons is a lie. Meat and meat byproducts do make me pretty ill; depending on how much I've ingested, I get what looks pretty similar to an allergic reaction. But if I cared to and reintroduced it slowly, I could probably add fish and poultry to my diet without a problem.

My best friend got it all the time. She's just started reintroducing meat after her second attempt at vegetarianism. However she was kind of a lacto/ovo-pescatarian to begin with.

Basically, her main problem with meat was how the meat industry was handled. She never intended to stay vegetarian in the first place, she just wanted to find a provider of ethical meat, and she'd also eat animals that were farmed/slaughtered in an ethical way throughout being a 'vegetarian'. She sees nothing wrong with eating meat or using animal products, she just doesn't agree with the treatment of animals by most of the meat industry. In the end she stopped being vegetarian again because there was so much she wanted to cook that you can't substitute tofu for (like, you can't make braised quailfu. You just can't) and she didn't want to destroy her enzymes.

I'm pretty sure this started with that awesome recipe for beef cheek ravioli we found.

I got confused at university at the definition of vegetarian. Mostly because Indian people count not eating eggs as vegetarian, so when my vege-room mate was eating eggs the morning after, I was thoroughly confused until someone explain it to me. xD

Indeed. I mean, I can justify domestication pretty easily: We're smarter than they are and we taught them to do s**t that is beneficial to us. They were there. We needed s**t done. It was a matter of practicality.

And this our world/animal world bullshit is just asinine. We are part of the animal world. We always have been. There is no seperation.

So, my Nana's health has taken a slight turn for the worse. Physically she's doing better, but mentally, she's slipping further away. cry