I met the cartoonist Dan Piraro at a Farm Sanctuary fundraiser in 2007. Stefan, Andrei and I introduced ourselves to him and we chatted for a while. He told us about buying a really amazing, stainless steel, high tech refrigerator and bringing it home only to find that, sadly, magnets don’t stick to it.
I’ve loved Dan’s work and been confronted by his work over the years. He’s an outspoken vegan but was a popular cartoonist before he went veggie, and he’s created cartoons digging for the humorous side of animal rights issues.
A few months ago he did a piece for VegNews magazine that really got my goat. His opinion is that a real environmentalist, a real vegan, wouldn’t have babies. They wouldn’t bring more humans into the world. Since I have two children, I admit I felt defensive.
He’s right, of course. But I start creating all sorts of really holier-than-thou and racist thoughts like (here we go)…
- My kids are always going to be vegan so they’ll inspire others.
- My kids will change the world.
- My kids live more simply than the average kid.
- I’m just like a cow – I was biologically motivated to have babies.
- It’s too late to tell me I shouldn’t have kids. It’s already done, you a-hole!
- Why write in VegNews that vegans shouldn’t have children? Shout it out on the street corner where people in the process of building their 8-child family are likely to pass by.
So I had a little soul searching to do with Dan and his no-kids perspective, but it came down to me knowing he was right (we don’t really need more people in the world) and I felt angry about that.
But did I mention that he’s super funny?
Back to the not-so-funny, thoughtful side of Dan Piraro, I found this quote recently. It helps define the perspective vegans have, in case you’d like to understand…
“If you caught your kid raising cats in tiny boxes, forcing them to live in their own feces without clean air or sunlight, pulling their teeth and claws out with pliers to keep them from hurting each other…you’d rush him to a psychiatrist. But you support that very behavior every time you buy meat, eggs, dairy or fur” – Dan Piraro