Tuesday, October 13, 2015

I love you even if we don't agree.

I've been having a lot of little spats with people lately about politics, ethnicity, animals rights and feminism. It comes with the territory of sharing your views online and I totally welcome opposition. I shared a couple posts over the last couple weeks about xenophobia and sexism and advocated for deleting toxic people off your friends list and from your life.

But not everyone deserves to be blotted out. I mean, opposition is healthy and challenges to my way of thinking are what made me a feminist vegan in the first place, so challenge away!

I guess it doesn't always seem like I'm open to challenges, though, and I suppose I need to work on that. I was recently called intolerant and it made me think seriously about whether my fanatical obsession with social and animal justice have turned into a jerk. I read through a few of my blog posts and my journal to see if I could find evidence of this. I found that there is some of evidence that I am intolerant, but mostly my intolerance is of...intolerance. I don't think that that is real intolerance.

I have come to the conclusion that while I am obviously very passionate and can sometimes say things that seem offensive to some, I am not a jerk and I am in fact a very tolerant person. My friends and family love me in spite of my fanaticism and I love them right back. My experiences over the last 4 years of being vegan have taught me that there are actually a ton of things that I will totally tolerate, even though they make my blood boil. For example:

  1. If you believe deeply in any God, I might not understand or agree with you, but I love you anyway!
  2. If you think that science is stupid and prefer to live life spiritually without concern to deep understanding, that's actually totally okay with me and I love you anyway!
  3. If you don't support gay marriage for religious reasons I have to say that this makes literally no sense (unless you're opposed to the concept of marriage altogether), but if you don't shout it from the roof tops like an ass (like...if you tell me in confidence and have a non-yelling conversation with me about it) then believe it or not even though I am totally appalled and confused I love you anyway! 
  4. If for some reason you think there are only two genders, I realize you and I are both products of our cultures and I love you anyway!
  5. If you hypocritically love animals but eat animal products, it makes me incredibly, insanely, deeply sad (and sometimes very angry), but I love you anyway!
  6. If you vote Conservative for whatever reason, I think you are probably not thinking things through and you need to sort out your priorities but I still love you anyway!
  7. If you are doing your best for the planet and trying genuinely to be a good person then even if your tactics don't line up with my values I love you anyway!

If you are outwardly homophobic, xenophobic, sexist, hateful, hurtful, or just mean then I don't really love you. If you call me names, tell me I'm ignorant, or threaten my safety or the safety of anyone else on this planet, I really don't love you. but I still think I could if you admitted you were being unjust and unkind, and changed your ways. Why? I think its because loving feels so much better than hating. Love is the reason I do almost everything I do. I love animals, and therefore I am vegan; I love humanity and therefore I respect all peoples; I love women and therefore I think they deserve freedom and equality; I love people of all genders and sexuality and therefore I think intolerance must be challenged; I love the planet and therefore I am an environmentalist. 

Most of all, I love you for reading this blog. You deserve a kiss. Kiss yourself for me, will you? 

Happy Tuesday!

-J

ps. Less than one week until voting day!!!! let's make this one count!

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