Michael Vick was sentenced today -- 23 months. We'll have a lot more news on that tomorrow!
Meanwhile I bring fun vegan news from the past weekend. On Saturday, December 8, Vegan fighter Mac Danzig won Spike TV's "Ultimate Fighter" championship. You can learn more about Danzig at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Danzig
(Thanks to Joseph Bartolo and Robin Murray for making sure we heard that bit of news.)
And the Sunday, December 9, New York Times Magazine section's "7th Annual Year in Ideas" included this new one, written up by Jeff Stryker, on page 96:
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VEGANSEXUALITY [51]
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/magazine/09vegansexuality.html
Forget homo-, bi- or even metro-: the latest prefix in sexuality is vegan-, as in ''vegansexual.'' In a study released in May, Annie Potts, a researcher at the University of Canterbury and a director of the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies, surveyed 157 vegans and vegetarians (120 of them women) on the topic of cruelty-free living. The questions ranged from attitudes about eating meat to keeping pets to wearing possum fur to, yes, ''cruelty-free sex'' -- that is, ''rejecting meat eaters as intimate partners.''
Some of the survey respondents volunteered their reluctance to kiss meat eaters. ''I couldn't think of kissing lips that allow dead animal pieces to pass between them,'' a 49-year-old vegan woman from Auckland said. For some, the resistance is the squeamishness factor. ''Nonvegetarian bodies smell different to me,'' a 41-year-old Christchurch vegan woman said. ''They are, after all, literally sustained through carcasses -- the murdered flesh of others.'' For some, it is a question of finding a like-minded life partner. An Auckland ovo-vegetarian had tried a relationship with a carnivore, but reported that despite the sexual attraction, the gulf in ''shared values and moral codes'' was just too wide.
Potts, who coined the term vegansexuality, says the ''negative response of omnivores'' to her study has surprised her. Even some fellow animal lovers question the wisdom of vegansexuality. A blog for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals noted that sleeping with only fellow vegans means forgoing the opportunity to turn carnivores into vegans by the most powerful recruiting tool available -- sex.
PETA's founder and president, Ingrid Newkirk, agrees that vegans smell fresher. (''There's science to prove it,'' she says.) But Newkirk is all about the recruiting, even if it means one convert at a time. ''When my staff members come to me and say: 'Guess what? My boyfriend, now he's a vegan,' I say, half-jokingly: 'Well, it is time to ditch him and get another. You've done your work; move on.' ''
(End of New York Times magazine Vegansexuality piece)
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What a great opportunity to continue the discussion of veganism with letters to the editor! The Magazine section takes letters at magazine@nytimes.com
Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Remember that shorter letters are more likely to be published.
My thanks to Mary de la Valette and Teresa D'amico for making sure we saw the piece on "Vegansexuals."
Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)
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Date: Mon Dec 10 19:42:52 2007
