Liz on Alternet: Anti-Fur but Pro-Meat? A Carnist's Dilemma

One thing I know for sure about love is that if you don't step away from what you love once in awhile that you can grow weary of it and there are few worse feelings than looking at something that used to turn you on and thinking "Feh..."

I don't want to feel that way about my writing niche of sex and love, so, very luckily, I get to do projects that are out of my genre sometimes, like my interview with Dr. Melanie Joy on Alternet. I was having a moral dilemma over my disgust with fur farms and having trying to reconcile that with the fact that I'm a very avid omnivore - how can I really be that anti-fur and have no problem eating meat? And I'm an enthusiastic carnist. There are days when I feel like I could easily wander into one of the many pastures in Central Florida with a fork and a salt-shaker and having at one of the undoubtedly yummy cows out there.

I was mulling over this when I happened on Melanie's book "Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows," a clever title for a book that doesn't bonk you over the head with ideology but simply presents the facts about "carnism," the culture of meat-eating. Her Carnism Awareness and Action Network is now up and both the book and the site are definitely worth a look.

There's nothing I love more than a story that opens up a dozen cans of worms and that's what this story did for me. On one hand it was very different from writing about sex an love - on the other hand it's still about flesh...so maybe I'm just substituting one appetite for another. In any case, it was intriguing, eye-opening and fun to work on. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Day at the Races

Image
       So - has anything especially fast, slow, theatrical, queeny, nostalgic, crowd-pleasing, hot, aerodynamic, silly or record-breaking ever happened in your bed? I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say it has. So the difference between you and this event is that your spectacle (probably) didn’t happen in front of a mob of drunks on as glorious an April day as you could order out of a goddamn Hallmark calendar.       This was the scene at the    Fairvilla Megastore   Conch Republic Red Ribbon Bed Race  down Duval Street in Key West, a benefit for AIDS Help, which took place this past Saturday. More than 20 businesses participated in this charity goodf allism, racing real beds which must be a certain size, have a mattress, four wheels that touch the ground, four runners pushing and be manned or womaned by one person.             Once you get past the rules the cool thing is outfitting your bed for maximum creativity – there was a coffin bed and a bong bed, and pirate
Read more

Say Ahhhhh: Drive-Thru Pap Smears in the COVID era

Image
        Listening to my friends talk about the COVID-19 test I thought it was going to feel like getting a lobotomy.      “They stick a swab so far up your nose, I felt like it was going into the back of my eye,” one said, but when free drive-through testing was offered in my little Florida beach town I went. I can pinch a penny until Lincoln starts crying and if something is free, I’m going to get one, even if it means being skewered like a corn dog.  The test was mildly irritating. You tilt your head back and they do, indeed, poke a swab up your snoot farther than you’d expect it to go. It felt like I’d been bike riding and got ladybug stuck up my nose, a sensation which lasted about 45 minutes after the actual sticking. It wasn’t as bad as I anticipated, but I’d anticipated getting my eyeballs yoinked out through my nostrils.  Anything else was emotional found money. What left a more lasting impression than the test was the joy of drive-through medical service. Si
Read more

Buy my book: Crazy Little Thing: How Love and Sex Drive Us Mad

Image
       Carl von Cosel installed a phone in his dead wife's tomb so they could chat - he eventually just took her home.      Burt and Linda Pugach married after he did a prison sentence for sending thugs to 'scare' her and they blinded her with acid.     Love makes us all feel insane. If it hasn't knocked you on your ass you haven't been in it.       I wrote Crazy Little Thing: Why Love and Sex Drive Us Mad several years ago because I wanted to understand why romantic problems had such a stranglehold on me and how people's greatest happiness, the thing we all want, could lead to them killing each other. It was published by Viva Editions just before the explosion of true crime shows like Wives with Knives and Who the Bleep Did I Marry?      My hope for the book has always been that the interviews with everyone from psychologists to felons would help people understand themselves but also that it would be a good enough read to take them out  of themselves, which is
Read more