Toojoh

So, its been a while again, but I have a perfectly valid excuse: it has been an incredibly busy, hectic, and emotional couple of weeks. In the last couple of weeks we have had a meet and greet with VOMD's and my parents in North Bay, and house sat for my mother in Magnetawan; on top of that I've written about 20 pages of my thesis and edited like crazy, we've chosen wedding bands, we've visited VOMD's parents to talk about wedding decorations and other wedding related plans, and most importantly we've decided to adopt a dog who needs regular medical care.

Toojoh is a 10 year old dog who is probably, and I do not exaggerate, the sweetest dog every born! He's been dealing with food allergies, a skin condition and lots of other nagging issues for about 2 years, and this past weekend he was diagnosed with renal failure. He is my mother's dog and she loves him very much and has given him all the care she can, but now he has to see a specialist and so VOMD and I are taking him home with us to Hamilton so he can see a specialist at the University of Guelph's veterinary college.

We've set up a Go Fund Me campaign to raise funds for his care. His first vet visit cost $600 and his specialist is going to cost at least that much. With the medicine he will need, his specially formulated diet, and his future regular vet visits, getting him healthy, and keeping him happy and comfortable for the next couple years is going to cost us. It is worth it, obviously, but we are hoping that some generous, dog-loving folks will send some generosity our way to help with his medical fees.

If you would like to help out you can visit his campaign page at https://www.gofundme.com/Toojoh

Happy Monday, everyone!

-J

Update: I'm not sick anymore

For the better part of last few weeks I was battling a very brutal cold, and then playing catch up on everything I missed during said cold, so my decision to be fully back into blogging really didn't play out the way that I'd intended. Some how I still have a dry cough, three weeks after the first sniffle.

On the other hand, thanks to the insomnia that came with my cold I managed to get a lot of thesis writing done! Only about 50 pages to go, folks!

That sounds like an unbearably large number, but I think the goal should be to complete it in the next few weeks. But, I am very lucky to have won an award that pays my tuition for the Spring and Summer Semester, so if I do not defend on time, I do not have to worry about it impacting our wedding plans (thank goodness!).

I've not got anything to say today, except that it is Monday and I am happy. VOMD and I will be headed to play pool this evening with a couple friends, and then I am back to teaching tomorrow (after the February reading break last week, which was a much needed break while I made up for what was pushed aside while I was sick for two weeks).

After my cold, and the snow we got a couple weeks ago, I am now ready for summer. I can't wait to go outside and play!

Happy Monday!

-J

Why we should stop telling people we're stupid

There is this thing that many of us young academics do early in our careers. I find it most common among the most committed and passionate students (and I know this because I am one). We like to point out that we are stupid. I think that is comes as a knee-jerk response to the stereotype that says academics are all know-it-all butt-hats. Believe me, I know enough of those as well.

We really need to stop calling ourselves stupid, though. It is one thing to say that we learn every day how little we know. It is entirely another to say that we know nothing. Unless you are some sort of Socratic, there really is no excise to walk around talking about how little you know. For one thing, it comes off as incredibly disingenuous - there is something awful about hearing someone you respect and admire talk about how they don't deserve to be respected and admired. Stop acting Christ-like and admit that your education has equipped you with a certain set of skills that make you a benefit to society.

We're not stupid because we may not be adept at science or mathematics (or if we are scientists, we are not stupid if we can't write an essay without twenty editors).

I guess I should get to the point of this rant. There is a "meme" going around the internet with a simple math problem that anyone who took elementary mathematics should know how to complete. Granted, there are certainly valid reasons to not be able to process numbers, but I find it shocking that one source says that 87% of respondents get the answer wrong. The question is: 3+3*3-3+3

I have always told myself and many others that I just plain suck at math. I say it casually. Someone tells me their phone number and I say "I've got to write that down, numbers just go in one ear and out the other". Someone asks me how much their paycheck is after tax and I say the answer but then finish by adding "but don't quote me on it; I'm shit at math".

But it took me two seconds to answer this question. 12 I thought. But then almost everyone on the Facebook page I was visiting said either 6 or 18 and I started to doubt myself. I said it in my head. B-E-DM-AS...that made the answer 12. Didn't it? Right? But I suck at math. So I am probably wrong.

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that we really should stop doubting ourselves. We should stop putting ourselves down. Being a good academic means taking ownership of your natural and practiced abilities so that you can put them to work to make the world a better place, or our lives and the lives of others a little easier. The fact that I am better at writing essays than I am at doing complex mathematical equations does not mean that I am stupid. And in fact, if you can't do math or write essays, there are certainly other things that you are good at that far make up for your shortcomings in these areas. I've personally never been very good at hitting a ball with a bat, but I can carry a tune, and while I can't paint a still-life to save my life, give me a portrait and I'm all over it.

So, stop saying you're stupid. I'll stop saying I'm stupid. This probably isn't going to change the world, but you'll probably feel a lot better about yourself.

Happy Tuesday!

J

Getting Engaged and writing a Thesis

Around Christmas I made the decision to restart my thesis. I was not motivated to keep working on the project. I had gradually strayed from my original intent of doing a work of theory toward something more policy driven. It made me miserable to sit down at my desk to write.

My project is now well under way and is much more oriented toward what I see as a more important and interesting way of approaching the problem of the gender binary. The only problem is, I have to finish by the end of April, and that leaves me with three more months to write a solid 120 pages. I know it is completely doable, but boy did I back myself into a corner.


On December 30th, after VOMD and I had returned home from our Christmas holiday with our families we decided to have our own little Christmas together here. We had no tree, but we hung baubles and bead garlands over doors and hung our wreath and Christmas lights on the banister leading up the stairs to our apartment and around our windows. And we gave one another stockings. As I got to the bottom of mine and pulled out the last wrapped little package, VOMD sat down on his knees in front of where I sat on the couch, and as I opened the box he held out a ring and asked me to marry him.

We've decided to get married in August at my father's house in my home town.

And now I am struggling to focus on those 120 pages.

When I first decided to go to graduate school one of my favourite professors told me that I should wait until I finished my PhD to settle down and start a family. He wasn't trying to discourage me from living  a happy life with someone I love. He was warning me that in academics a woman will struggle more than a man when it comes to balancing home life and education. It is not because we are less capable. It is because people expect certain things of women culturally. I have not told any colleagues or even my adviser about my engagement. I have refrained from doing so because I have heard so many first hand accounts from friends and colleagues who shared this type of information and faced discrimination. If you are slow to get an assignment done, or you neglect certain aspects of university life they claim it is because you are too distracted by your wedding/marriage/pregnancy/kids etc. Men do not face this sort of discrimination in the academy. When my adviser had his child earlier this year he came to work the next day. Nobody hassled him about having a child in his first year of full time teaching at a new university. When some of my female colleagues have had children they are bombarded by questions about who was taking care of their child when they had seminars or had to teach. They were asked whether they planned to take time off. They were asked if they PUMPED!

I know I am not expecting, but I am planning a wedding, and I fear that if I share that with my colleagues I will be less respected. I am heartbroken that I can't share this exciting, beautiful thing with my work mates. The moment VOMD asked me to marry him was one of the happiest of my life.

But I am a woman. And I am an academic. And unfortunately those things sometimes have to be kept separate.

Happy Monday folks!

-J

I'm Back! Happy New Year!

I took a leave of absence from my blog for a while in the aftermath of the Daesh terror attacks that took place in France and Beirut in November. I was fed up with the anger and hate that the internet is just so damn good at spreading and I was feeling a little self-righteous, thinking that I could shield myself from the anger and hate and sadness by simply not contributing to social media at all. I thought I was better than social media. I thought I was better than people who spread anger and hate on the internet.

It took me a couple months to realize that I am not actually better than anyone. I'm not berating myself here. What I mean is that when we see people do things we disagree with our automatic response is usually to belittle them, mock them, and generally just think and act as though we are superior to them. Whether we do this by posting on social media, or whether we do this by detaching ourselves from social media, the intention is still there. We are trying to prove that we are better than that.

I didn't want to be another negative thing on the internet. I was frustrated that only my somewhat controversial posts seemed to garner any major interest from social media users. Who were all these anonymous jerks coming to my page only when I bitched about things that pissed me off? See? Self righteous as fuh. What I should have asked myself is why exactly I write a blog in the first place. And after that, how can I get my point across without resorting to pumping out sarcastic, and frankly sometimes mean-spirited, click bait.

My new intention for this blog is for it to serve as a bit of a bright spot on some of my darker days, and to serve as a resource and an inspiration for those who like me aren't perfect. I may still post shitty, sarcastic and anger-fueled posts, and there is bound to be plenty of heart ache. But I am  going to do my best to drop the superiority act.

Veganism and feminism will still be central themes, of course. And my life, and its ups and downs, are bound to play a role in determining content. But the intention is changing.

Happy Wednesday, and Happy (belated) New Year!

-J

Monday Happies: Just Joy

The world is this beautiful, messy, messed up place. The last month seems to have been particularly turbulent.

When bad things happen all lumped together like they have over the last few weeks we start to feel nostalgic for the good old days when things like this didn't happen...when there was no terror, mass shootings, suicide bombers and the like.

But we are romanticizing the past and under-appreciating the present. I am not going to say that these events didn't matter. They matter because every life matters. My heart is certainly with the families of the Beirut and Paris victims. It is also with those involved in the many mass shootings and terror attacks on this continent at Planned Parenthoods and schools and other public places.

But the world is filled with both Dark and Light and both horrific and miraculous things are happening all over the world every day.

I took a brief absence from the blog in order to deal with the negativity and sadness spreading across the internet in the aftermath of these events.  I meditated every day. I struggled to understand why it is that it seemed we are so full of horror in this day and age. And in that week where I didn't look at facebook every day, and didn't look at twitter (because as I pointed out in a previous post, I have deleted my twitter account) and the only news I got was from my daily hour of Democracy Now, the world didn't seem so dark. I spent time with my handsome, amazing VOMD, and cuddled with my cats, and played with Tobi the bunny, and did research for my thesis, and drank lattes from a local coffee shop, and went to a vegan potluck with a bunch of fantastic local folks. I signed a couple email petitions, yes. I still handed out a couple dollars here and there to the homeless people I encountered in downtown Hamilton. But I didn't dwell in the sadness. I didn't dwell in the negativity. I didn't dwell in the horror. I saw the beauty in the world that we miss when we spend all of our time on the internet.

Please, shut off your smart phone for a couple hours. Put it in your sock drawer and go for a walk with someone you love. Close your laptop for a day, and play a board game with some friends. Quit tweeting for an hour and go volunteer as a dog walker at your local animal shelter. Cuddle with your kids (whether they be animal or human), make some art, bake a cake, listen to some joyful music, go dancing. Be happy. Don't let the internet become your life. Don't be part of the spreading terror by sharing ever picture of bombed buildings, sad starving children, emaciated animals, tortured government detainees. Do you really want to beat the terrorists, the animal torturers, the mass shooters? Then be joyful, live your life, do good things for others whenever you can, and have a little fun now and then. Do your part, but don't let it consume you.

Be happy, my friends.

Happy Monday!

-J

Oh, and if you are in the Hamilton area, check out Cowspiracy, streaming at Democracy on Locke St. tonight at 8pm!

Not all vegans are jerks (but this post is written for those who are)

Dear Vegans,

Seriously, stop being dicks.

I wrote a post a while back about things that vegans do that piss me off. Honestly, it was sort of a funny little post about how vegan tend to turn against not only non-vegans but also their vegan compadres with whom they disagree on minor aspects of veganism. But I guess some people just don't have a sense of humour. Lots of butt-hurt vegans jumped on the lets hate Johanna/HerHerbivore bandwagon and started sending me shitty hate messages saying that I wasn't a real vegan because I still had honey in my cupboard and didn't think it was useful to tell others they aren't vegan if they wear wool or silk. (For the record, since that tub of honey was finished off by VOMD we haven't purchased more...so don't send me some hateful messages because it will go straight in the trash. I also personally do not use wool or silk. So again, please shut up.)

There is so much hate out there for vegans, on the internet and probably in your personal social circles. We vegans like to think that this hate comes from a place of defensiveness. We say things like "people get mad at us when we talk about animal cruelty because it makes them feel bad about their own choices". No. That is not the reason. I mean, maybe sometimes that is the reason. But really, the main reason they hate it is that we shove it down their throats, refuse to agree to disagree, and completely cut people down for not living the way that we do. Like...brutally cut them down. Remember when the Blonde Vegan became the Balanced Vegan? She got freaking DEATH THREATS from vegans all over the place. Sure, she doesn't seem to be the brightest...I mean, veganism really wasn't her problem. But still, man, death threats? People don't like that. Surprising, right? Okay, I am sounding a bit bitchy and sarcastic. I know. But I honestly just cannot understand where this self-righteous, bullshit attitude comes from. Yes, I think that the world would be a better place if everyone was vegan. But I definitely don't think it is remotely okay to hate people who aren't. I may have said some kind of shitty things about non-vegans jokingly in my past posts, and in my real life...but death threats? WTF vegans?

How is it that a philosophy that preaches non-violence and compassion can lead to hate and anger? Oh right, every single religion in history has taught us that eventually, there will be a bunch of douchy extremists who ruin it for everyone. Any time a philosophy becomes popular enough, some people will take it too far. But seriously jerk vegans, you're giving the rest of us a bad name. Most of the vegans I know do not walk around thinking that they are better than everyone, but the few that do are the loudest in the group. The problem with this is, though, that unlike other philosophies that can be rescued by other loud, compassionate voices rising up to set the record straight, veganism is difficult to rescue. Why? Because as soon as you say you're vegan people are now going to tune out. This is not like hearing what a Muslim has to say about how Daesh does not represent them...even bigots will probably tune into that, and maybe some of their hearts will become less hardened. It is not like that because shitty vegans have begun to successfully silence non-shitty vegans. By yelling the loudest, because they desperately wanted to be heard, they have made it so that they will never genuinely be heard. So now, the tiny group of people in this scary world who chose speak on behalf of animals have been silenced and the animals again have no voice. Good job, ass-hats. Your hate and anger have made it impossible to change the hearts and minds of people who may have been open to your perspective were you not a total dick to them. Now that you've threatened them with violence, called them immoral, told them they can't love animals but eat steak, they are never going to come around. They are more steadfast in their views than ever. I hear vegans say things like "we will never be silent, because the animals we speak for cannot do it for themselves", and yes, I totally agree, but there is a time and a place for your activism, and if you would just for a moment remember that you are a regular human being and not some enlightened Übermensch  you will realize that other people deserve the same level of dignity and respect you are demanding on behalf of non-human animals.

Of course, I am being a bit of a pessimist here. If I'm totally honest I have to admit that there is still hope. There are more vegans in the new generation than ever before, and that number will definitely continue to grow. But I hope that the vegans who send death threats, and blacklist celebrity vegans who still eat honey, and just generally shit on other people, know that this victory is not a victory for them. They didn't do this. The people who had the impact, who influenced new generations, are those who went about their activism with a view to compassion, and used hard facts with a soft heart. It is not a victory for those who yell the loudest, but for those who care the most.

Non-vegans need to see that those who ascribe to a vegan philosophy and lifestyle are not some stuck-up, self-righteous, oft-cruel, non-joke taking group of people. We are regular folks. We know how to be kind to other humans and we know how to take a joke. So, just stop it with the insults and the death threats, okay?

And now this Kumbaya vegan is going to go eat some broccoli and cool down.

Happy Friday

Love,

-J