Thanks to my husband for having a really interesting conversation with me the other day. I find it interesting, you may find it intolerable. In fact, the conversation itself is really all about intolerability.
Subject: This.
I posted on Facebook that I am opposed to this bill, and I am not surprised that it passed and I am hopeful that it will run into constitutionality problems.
It isn’t really that interesting that I am opposed to this bill. But talking about it brought up a lot of stuff that I found quite interesting. You see, I grew up on a farm. Not a mass-market meat farm, just a run-of-the-mill-mink-killing farm. My favorite “when I was young” story is certainly the time my father chased some high school boys away from my house with a rifle. No, no, no, he wasn’t worried about his daughter. If he had been, perhaps he would have snapped into reality long enough to notice it was about 12:15, the requisite 15 minutes-past-curfew-arrival-time his daughter had come to regularly return home. He would have thought the make / model of car was somewhat familiar. He would have pieced all this together. He did not.
Why didn’t he? Because his livelihood, his little hillside of individually hammered boards and meticulously databased animals, was at stake.
Or so he thought.
I am not saying he was wrong. Perhaps, bored from years in Peoa, the excitement of a gunfight with terrorists was just too much to pass up. (Oh who am I kidding, we all know my father. It was totally the latter.)
I get it. That is where this can all be summarized. If you want to read no further you can stop now. I get it.
I get both why the a.l.f. would possibly be interested in freeing the thousands of mink on our hill and I get the rallying together of all those men who came and helped my father when it was skinning time. Most people don’t get to get both sides. I’m lucky like that.
I was laughed at by my family when I was 12 for preferring my meat come from the store. This wonderful trait of mine led my mother to literally cook two separate meat dishes – both with hamburger, one labeled “Kelsey’s.” Later, turning toward locally produced products, I was ashamed of my youthful love of packaged meat. The secret, that I have until now been too ashamed to admit, is that the homegrown meat still makes my stomach churn. Just a little.
Why? Why does my stomach still churn a little when I am actually eating a better, more eco-friendly, healthier alternative?
A) because it tastes like sour dirt.
B) There is nothing pretty about killing an animal. While I have watched while countless have been killed, I’ve also killed a few myself (stories for another day). There is a shed on a mink farm that is the “skinning shed.” Despite knowing and seeing what went on in there, despite benefiting from my father’s hard labor, that place was, and still is, one of the darkest places I have ever known. I didn’t go in there alone if I could help it. When I did, during times it was not “in use” I was anxiety ridden and overly curious- the smells, the stains, the tools! It was like I had discovered the secret lair of a father who murdered small children for pleasure rather than mink for a living. I slammed the door shut and literally ran away from it every.single.time. I would act the same there today. This was not anxiety reserved for a child. It is real.
Now that I’m grown (am I?) I have been exposed to all types of people and ideas. I’ve known and loved quite a few hard-core vegans in my day! They are not wrong. These people who abhor the killing of animals for any reason are right. There should not be sheds like that, folks.
However, unlike many of my vegan buddies, I had one particularly interesting little life experience. My father was the one inside that shed. And I guess I subconsciously found it a bit difficult to jump to the far side of this argument without feeling like I was perhaps being a bit unfair.
Life is a hell of a lot easier if I get my self-righteous liberal hat on and state that only backwards hicks with no sense in their head kill animals, and they do so because they are horrible human beings. This is a mantra that a previous version of myself repeated a lot. This is a mantra many still have. Now, I’ve grown quite a bit more comfortable with saying things like “Well, you know, it just all depends.” Saying this feels a lot more honest.
This NPR story was fascinating to me. I listened intently until the end, when the author said that while he believes it is actually morally incorrect to eat animals, he still does. And that it is OK, because contradiction is OK. Seriously? Mind = blown. Every rule in my overly controlled life was just removed, thanks. Contradiction is real, and isn’t always something that you can, or should, choose a side on. Let that sink in for a minute.
I bought 1/4 a cow recently, raised by a friend of my father’s. My old piano teacher’s husband in fact. It’s quite a romantic little story. This cow, feeding on the grasses I ran through as a child. My father told me the other day that he saw the cows had been moved to the shed. They must be waiting for the butcher. If I wanted to, I could come see the cows. I think my response was something along the lines of “Are you fucking kidding me?”
I ask that farmer to care lovingly for that animal. I ask that he use his years of expertise and his dedication to the craft to raise something my family can happily munch on for quite some time. I also ask that he quietly work out the details of getting it slaughtered. I ask that he understand the details of such slaughter, even likely watch such slaughter. I ask that he stand before everyone and carry on his shoulders the weight of that life. I ask him to leave me out of it. I need him to leave me out of it.
I understand when a state legislator says the bill targets ”animal-rights terrorists” who shoot videos or photos on farmers’ property without permission to create propaganda to destroy the agriculture industry.” I cannot say “that is not true” because it is. I know some of these folks. Sure, they are trying to do that.
What is also true is that these farmers, these men who, ahem, RAISED ME, deserve respect for carrying a load that most people (like me) cannot carry for themselves. They at least deserve a moment of understanding this predicament we are all in.
It’s a tough moral tite-rope to navigate, the farming industry, but being a “farmer” doesn’t give you a free pass. Interestingly, neither do I have a free-pass for not being a farmer. Meaning that I don’t get to assume that you are practicing questionable things and are engaged in disgusting activities AND I don’t get to say that you are a backwards hick that must enjoy murdering things. We are in this together.
It’s not a comfortable relationship, but it’s ours.
Sometimes you may need to draw your rifles and chase teenagers away from your property. Sometimes I need to stand in opposition to common practices of factory farming. It’s OK. Throught it all, what makes it OK is that we are still friends. In our awkward relationship, contradictions can exist.
BUT: All the years we’ve spent tending this delicate relationship and all of our differences aside, you sir, betrayed me. You betrayed me first, in an effort to beat me to the punch.
That is where you went wrong. You did not fulfill your end of our relationship. Trust that I will soul search as I trust that you will before you do ‘whatever-it-is’ I might catch on a video camera. Trust that while I have a video camera in my home and the internet at my fingertips, that I will honor our relationship. Most of all, respect me. Respect me as the woman who cannot watch while this cow is slaughtered. Respect me as one who cares intently about the safety of the food my family eats and weighs that against that awful sour dirt taste such healthy meat carries. Respect me for having come to you to provide food for my family. You aren’t doing that.
The end.
