Vegan Bookclub

This is my review of "Feminisms: A Global History" by Lucy Delap

#visions #writers #dreamers

This took a long time to finish as when I started it I was disillusioned with the idea of feminism as some of the activists have disappointed me in person. But now that I continued it I was disillusioned with vegan activism. The text is so factual, dry, but the reactions it got out of me were so fiery because I just kept remembering real life instances, and the hurt that I experienced regarding activism. They both are great movements, and both bring a lot of value, ideas into society, but that doesn’t mean I will get along with everyone inside those movements especially when I am an artist who tries to create, and improve instead of replicating what exists. I had to grow up, and learn that. I clung to my ideas of everyone getting along so much, and paid the price for that. It was like being in a group of engineers, and yet they tried convincing me all the time that we would do art eventually when that wasn’t the case at all. Choose people who make you shine alongside them, not the people who use you as car fuel due to their lack of self-awareness.

Regardless this is a very cool account on how all groups that called themselves feminist were as different as they can get. The parallels to vegan activists were so fascinating to observe, it’s basically the same thing in so many ways with a different make-over. Feminism is a way more popular movement, and at the moment with a way richer history so vegan activists can really learn from this. There’s the peaceful, and the direct activists, visions of Utopias, songs, etc. At any instance of the book I can’t help, but think of the vegan movement. Vegans aren’t that unified either, and there are a lot of fringe groups. Lots of people with contrasting beliefs from all sides of political spectrums.

It is of great irony that some feminists called women the negros, and the meat. And even now plenty of feminists do not realise that the meat industry is wrong, they continue using the meat metaphors without realising it.

I am not sure I want to continue with books like these because this does conjure a deep feeling of hopelessness in many ways. There are so many fights to fight, and most people don’t choose a single one, and even if they do choose one then they don’t support the others. I want to be in a better headspace + educated. I am ambitious. So anyways I will read even more hopeless books about factory farming as that would make the most sense for me to do. This is the only way I can face my traumas, and develop hope from them. Wait no, I could do this by creating as well.

I read this book in Lithuanian in restaurants with vegan options, and I made sure to carry it around. The cover of it is pink, and it brought me immense satisfaction to do something like that. I also chalked some vegan messages in the park while I carried it. I remember I journaled, and summarised some of the book somewhere.

One very motivating thing about the book is how a lot of activists were commonplace people with no support whatsoever, working terrible jobs for decades. It really puts life into perspective, and how it’s about what’s the best one can do in their given situation, not about how much one can achieve. It is the personal achievement which matters the most, and can only be assessed by the persons living their lives, not the outside. I am just a tiny dot within the collective, but that’s okay, and I can still try my best. I am never alone. I have myself.

#feminism #lucydelap #nonfiction #history #feminist #activism #activist #dreams