I got this question from Magdalena, which I will translate for your reading pleasure. I’ve been thinking about writing an entry about this so I’m glad the question came up!

“…Since I know you’re vegan and a vintage lover just like I am, I have a little question for you. What is your position of wearing fur from, say the 50s? Do you make a difference between vintage and non-vintage in that case? I ask since I’ve been thinking about it a lot and there are many angles and viewpoints to it.”

Short answer: I won’t wear vintage fur, or new fur. I think there’s a big difference between the two but I don’t feel comfortable in it anymore, dressing up in something that really reminds me of a living creature makes me start thinking about the politics of it all the time I’m wearing it and it’s not the mindset I want my clothing to evoke. That’s not a moral stand point though, merely a selfish one. I do wear second hand leather, wool and silk. (For some, that would mean that I am not a pure vegan, but just someone who sustains her life on a plant based diet.) I don’t mind others wearing vintage fur. I think it’s good that it comes to use. I think that all vintage things, including fur, should be worn until it’s all worn out or put in textile museums, and that new production of merchandize made out of the bodies of animals should be phased out.

Figure out if you are vegan because you mainly 1) think that animals are autonomous creatures who should not be used for human purposes or 2) because of how they are now being treated & the environmental aspects of it. Maybe read a bit of Regan & a bit of Singer, and about speciesism. Knowing what you think in that question will help you in determining if you think it’s wrong or right to wear a fur even if it’s vintage.

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Long answer: From what I can gather, you can divide vegans into two belief groups. Those who are mainly vegan because they think that animals have a right to live their lives to the fullest for their own sake and that you shouldn’t use them for your own purposes. And those who are mainly vegan because of how the animals are treated today, concern about the environment and biospheric balance, and out of concerns of their own health. (Of course a lot of people agree equally with both parts and, hopefully, then live their lives after the moral reasoning which comes from those two beliefs. But those people often come to the conclusion that Fur Is Wrong straight away, as does the first group… Can’t say that I think they’re wrong about it either, it’s a different and less anthropocentric moral position to start at and it’s a noble one I think.)

My reasons for being a vegan are definitely mainly the latter; particularly an environmental concern & that I find it wrong that someone suffers for my sake when it’s easy to prevent. I can’t say for sure that I would be vegan in a world where animals were treated fairly and you ate their products and used their bodies after they had lived a full and rewarding life. Veganism is probably not my “main fight”, it’s environmentalism. I’ve had a lot of discussions about this with Frej who is more animal rightsy than I am.

So here are a few topics, typical comments, etc that you have to consider if you are not among the ones thinking it is wrong to use animals, period.
All of these arguments and thoughts can be torn down with “It’s wrong to condone violence against an animal by wearing it’s carcass no matter how long ago it died. Killing someone without having to is the most violent act one can take part of.” I know this but it’s not part of how I reason about me being vegan and I’ve been in that discussion numerous times.

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- It’s more wrong to wear vintage fur than to eat meat and wear leather because you throw the rest of the animal away and luxorious consumption is worse than eating. And it’s better when you use the whole animal.

I don’t agree. It is (for most people, in western society) easy to choose to not eat meat. It’s easy to buy a canvas bag instead of a leather one. The choice to consume animal parts is mainly a luxury choice, as in having the ability to chose what looks or tastes more to your liking and the luxury to not have to think about what consequenses this has for anyone else. I think that is luxury consumption.

To mainly consider how much of the animal was used as a reason for killing it, I find strange. We need food to live, and we need clothes not to freeze to death (in Sweden anyway). That means we need to eat food and wear clothes. Not that we need to eat meat and wear clothes. Or that we need to eat meat, wear clothes, make leather filofaxes, shoes, bags, wallets, and then feed other animals with the last parts of the animals just killed. How much of an animal should then be used to justify it’s death? How many percent?

If you buy one vintage fur, X number of animals died for it in the past and continues to be dead whether the fur is worn or thrown. If you eat meat or drink milk, an animal died just a few days ago, or is suffering right now because of your decisions, and other ones will suffer today & tomorrow for you. The fact that the skin is then made into a pair of shoes doesn’t really make up for it.

And what is the difference between buying a vintage fur & buying for example a vintage wool coat for which sheep were subjected to mulesing or the like? Or a pair of leather shoes, or anything else of animal origin where you can be pretty sure they were treated badly. If you think that vintage fur is wrong because it’s unneccessary – buying anything else that’s produced out of suffering is unneccessary aswell as long as there are other options. It’s just that it’s more obvious when it’s in your face the way fur is.

- Buy a new fake fur instead!

I think that throwing out usable things is pretty disgraceful. And I think that production & demand of new things made out of oil are ridiculous aswell, if there’s a substitute that is being thrown instead. If you don’t want to wear a dead animal but like fluffyness, buy a fake fur. But I think it’s strange to buy a fake fur because you wanted or already owned a real, vintage one.
Also, less fashion aware people or people with bad eyesight might still believe you’re wearing fur and get ~*inspired*~, which leads me to the next topic.

- Wearing vintage fur inspires other to buy new fur. You’re showing support for the fur industry by wearing a vintage fur.

Possibly. Doing anything probably inspires someone else to do something, if you are interacting with other people. This is why I probably would think it was “more ok” to wear vintage fur if the fur farms in Sweden were closed down as they have in Britain, Croatia and Austria. And I sincerely hope that will happen,

But someone has definitely suffered, and will do in the future due to climate change and environmental destruction, for most of what you consume. Especially if you use electricity from fossil fuel. Many entire species of animal are being extinct each day, from destruction of rain forests. So if you don’t want to be hypocritical, maybe you should ask yourself what suffering is worth preventing, how your life style is harming or “inspiring others” to do harm, and how to act on it, instead of focusing on someone else’s consumption of just one type of merchandize that is thought to inspire destruction. (Throwing away useful things also inspires destruction, just in another way. The world’s resources are not endless, we are already at Overshoot Day on 21th of August.) I think this is a bit narrow way of thinking, even if it’s very understandable since the fur is a very clear symbol of someone who died for nothing after a life of suffering.

If you buy something second hand you are directly supporting the second hand industry, with your money. Not the fur, or leather, wool, or meat industry. You are however showing that you’re okay with wearing something obviously dead and provocative. It might also be very visible that the fur is vintage, especially if it’s an accessory or a brim on a coat or something that is easy to put a date on, and then I find it as supporting to the current fur industry as wearing an obviously 50s dress is supporting the clothes industry in general. A bit far fetched. And if I were to follow this logic in my own life considering I am strict on buying nothing new produced except underwear and stockings, I would not be able to wear anything second hand that doesn’t look super vintage, because other might get inspired to buy new things which I wouldn’t want them to do on behalf of me.

(Also, though this is a weak argument, I do find it pretty unlikely that for example I, a pretty strange looking pierced girl, would inspire a random rich person in the street to make a 50.000 kronor purchase, if I were to be spotted wearing a vintage fur, would it not be more likely that I would inspire a random similarly subcultural girl to use her grandmother’s old fur?)

- Wearing vintage fur is a provocative thing to do and it produces a lot of debate.

Which I find pretty great! I’ve been over this subject with a few aquaintances who are wearing vintage fur aswell as aquaintances who are very clear with their position on not using animals for any reason, and it always leads to big environmental/moral/ethical debates. If you are prepared to talk for yourself a lot of new thoughts might be planted in someone elses & your own head aswell.
(No I don’t mean this as reason on it’s own to go out and wear fur to create debate but it is very interesting to listen to the debates that emerge when someone is wearing it at a party or whatnot… or in this blog…)

- Vintage fur is an ecological hazard when thrown away. (As is leather, by the way.)

You have to add a lot of chemicals, such as chromium, formaldehyde, aluminium and more, to an animal’s insides to make it last as a fur or leather as it naturally will decompose as any other dead object would, and it will last for more than a hundred years if moths don’t get a hold of it… So throwing a fur before it’s time means adding to piles of trash of  hazardous waste that won’t decompose properly.

- The money for a vintage garment goes to a charity or to a second hand store owner. Or you enherited it and no money is transmitted.

Isn’t that pretty good aswell? Better than to throw your money at any brand that actually sells both new synthetic jackets and ones with fur brims or filled with duck feathers. Then you’re directly supporting a company that is doing harmful things to animals, even if you’re not buying the actual animal product. If you want to buy a new jacket – buy one from a brand that doesn’t use animals in their production. If you want to buy a vintage jacket, buy one that is made out of animals if you can live with it and don’t if you can’t.

- The degree of suffering the animals went through should gross out any thinking person out of wearing their fur.

Possibly! Maybe you should watch a documentary about mink farming or seal clubbing if you’re planning on wearing a vintage fur. If you want to, I’ve linked one below. However, when it’s vintage fur you might not be sure if the animals have been farmed, or trapped, or shot or whatnot. Maybe they didn’t suffer to the degree where you draw your line. As long as your reasons for wearing or not wearing fur comes from an anthropocentric view where you’re “allowed” to determine what suffering is acceptable you should perhaps check the history of the production of the kind of fur you’re considering buying vintage. So perhaps a research of how the animal in question was treated say 80 years ago is in order. Was it hunted wild, or already fur farmed? Maybe it suffered when it was being hunted aswell, or was stuck in a trap.

- Give the fur to animal rights groups instead. Or to homeless people.

I don’t know if this is as custom in Sweden as it is in the US with PETA’s actions but I think Djurrättsalliansen have asked for furs a couple of times. So if you do have a vintage fur and you’re feeling weird about wearing it – send it to them? However, there is probably more vintage fur around than they could ever make use of. So what to do with the rest? Flood them anyway so that they’ll have the problem of dealing with hazardous waste? To give it to homeless people feels (more than) a bit offensive. Is it to not accidentally inspire a rich bitch to buy a new coat? Let the poor people wear the dead animals that we “normal” people are too ethical for? I think it would be very very awkward.

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I think that was what I had to say about it. If there’s anything else, just comment! I like new perspectives.
(Please keep the commenting civil, I know this subject is controversial to say the least.)

Read more about poisons in fur here.
Second Hand Store Emmaus fur policy as an example.
Watch Djurrättsalliansens short documentary on farming of mink below. (all these three are in Swedish.)

Pose picture to not make a text only post… I am studying for my last exam before summer, and am too busy to write much here. It is due tomorrow and then I have summer vacation to some extent (have to study some maths). I just wanted to say that I just discovered Djurens Rätt’s list of pretty much all vegan food available in regular grocery stores, that it is very useful, and that you can find it here.

Vegan bell pepper “pesto”

1 yellow bell pepper
3 cloves of garlic
Almost one dl of rape seed oil
A heap of capers (we used almost a whole, cheap 200g jar of them)
A lot of fresh parsley, just keep adding more until you’re pleased.
Some (just a splash) white wine vinegar
Some balsamic vinegar (same as with the other vinegar)

Then if you’ve got any available, I think you should add pine nuts or walnuts or any other nut aswell. And Frej said that he has been told that you can add a few table spoons of nutritional yeast if you want a more cheese-like flavour to it. I think that sounds absolutely delicious because I am a lover of nutritional yesat (öljäst & b-jäst) but some people absolutely hate it so be careful and don’t add too much at the same time if you’re not sure if you like it or not.

Mix it all up with a food processor or what ever it is called. Mixerstav!
Eat on hard bread with chopped up red onion. Or, like I will later today; with pasta and beans!

View if you’re me.

*behind the scenes* Frej was making his bed.. haha.

I actually looked like this the whole weekend through because I stayed longer than I expected at Frejs place… as often happens. On Friday I was at Radikalt Forum (my university’s socialist students seminar weekend) to listen to a seminar on Gramsci, then I went to Frej’s place.  Saturday I went back to the forum and listened to a few more lectures, one was about the book the Spirit Level and was very interesting, bought Arturo Bareas biography and a book on the spanish civil war, then I went to Pop Boutique’s one year celebration with Johanna & Anton and where Frej later joined up.

Here’s a (sorta annoying) little short film I found on the book the Spirit Level, when I was googling. But yeah.. see it anyway! Then borrow the book, or something. I don’t think I will read it because I got the most of what’s in it from the seminar and might just use it for references once in a while…

Sunday Frej and I watched a few documentarys and made our own pizza.

This one was mine! Ooh so gooood, I want it back again! I think it might have been the most tasty pizza I have ever eaten. I will make it again with vegan cheese some day, then I might die with joy. It contained:
Crushed tomatoes mixed with oregano, chili and garlic.
Asparagus, mushroom, onion, falafels (which was what made it so great) and spinach.
Wish I had taken a picture after it had been in the oven, but I ate it instead.

And then there were the documentaries we watched.
First this one, Flow – for the Love of Water.

After watching this I take back that I don’t think that the Story of Bottled water which I mentioned earlier is that important in correlation to other dietary consumption issues, I didn’t know it (bottled water industry that is) was that bad in other countries,… Kinda spoiled being from Sweden which has relatively very clean water. The film is of course about more than just bottled water and very informative and easy to understand if you’re not into the subject. You can stream the entire documentary here on Documentary Wire.

And then we finally watched Capitalism – a love story.
Can’t give you tips on streaming it anywhere.

Trailer.

I thought it was pretty good too, leaves a few loose endds, wish he would have brought up more of what this has done to developing countries and how the IMF and World Bank have acted with their structural adjustment programs…  and I get kinda bothered with the confrontativeness as that always make me really anxious as a person. But yeah it’s an important documentary to see anyway, and then see others on similar subjects.

Ok now I’m gonna go drink tea and love myself for getting the best grade in my course in “the origins of the modern world order” which I finally got my grade in today after nervous waiting… I’ve started sneak in to my global development studies courses aswell again today, haven’t been with them since that course ended four weeks ago… I think I am becoming a total information junkie… I wished again that I could take those courses aswell as the ones I am taking now but you’re not even allowed to be signed up to that many courses at the same time and I don’t think I could do that and keep sane either for that matter.

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There are tons of vegan waffle recipes out there and I’ve stuck to this one as long as I can remember so maybe there are even better ones but this one does equal delicious waffles! Good things with this recipe is also that you almost always have the ingredients available at home since you can switch oath milk for just oaths and water if you mix the batter with an electrical mixer or something, that the oil can be exchanged for other oils, or 100 grams of vegetable margarine and that you don’t have to buy NoEgg which is kinda hard to find!

5 dl oath milk

4 dl flour

1 dl rapeseed oil

2 teaspoons of baking powder

sugar

salt

Eat with raspberry jam, blueberry jam, tofuline icecream, ajvar, avocadoes mixed with coconut milk, nyponmarmelad (don’t know english name) avocado chocolate mousse…. or other things! What are your favourite things to put on waffles & pancakes?

Feed everyone with it!!

Julia on Waffle day last year! With ajvar and the avocado/coconut milk mix. Don’t think you have Waffle day outside of Sweden. 25th of March!

Generally, though I wasn’t hungry I was really bored when not allowed to eat. Eating is one of my favourite things ever!!! ! Thought of this fact when I read Terre’s blog… This is me, only not with coffee primarily but with tea and pretty much all other food things! Livsnjutare!! Food is the best! I now feel I appreciate it even more because I have thought of it quite a lot duing these days, the ritual of eating is fab.

Be mindful of the prayers you send

Here’s an illustration/collage that Becka sent me ages ago and that I’ve been meaning to scan but never gotten around to! It’s us having tea and listeing to my favourite line in Oh My Lord with Nick Cave! (Link to Spotify, listen! It’s a wonderful song) It was part of our little project to send eachother illustrations once a month to try and stay creative but that kind of died again after her having made this & I making a portrait of her. We’re now supposed to look up a word in a dictionary and draw something from that. But neither of us has initiated anything in forever… At least we kept it up for one month! Maybe we’ll succeed with doing it once a year, then there’s still time left for the new creativity to come back haha!

3 day fasting

Today Frej and I have started the fasting, will do three days to try it out, one week seemed a bit too scary for me. At least I will, maybe he will keep it up longer, I’m not sure what his plans are. So far it’s going good! (But that’s partially because I slept so long that I haven’t even gotten hungry yet, it’s just half past two in the afternoon and I’ve been awake for like three hours.) I’m not sure how much I will write about it here, maybe a lot, maybe not much at all. Because 1) I don’t know if anyone is interested and 2) I wouldn’t want to inspire any kind of unhealthyness or experimenting that might be bad for someone. I *think* I’ve read up on it enough, but that’s enough for me to subject myself to it, not for me to try and make someone else do it aswell.
This is something I am doing because I find it really interesting and suitable with my alcohol free month and definitely not to lose weight. And you don’t lose any weight from it in the long run either so yeah…

Inspiration?

To keep myself from thinking too much about food my plans are to read and create a lot (or a bit more than usual anyway) so if you have any inspiring sites I’d love to look at them! Could be art or sewing, or just interesting facts or history or whatever! Things that keep your mind alert anyhow.

Åsa gave me this bread the other day as a reward because I cleaned her apartment (yes I am that nice! Or, she needed it and she also provided me with wine). She works at Alvar&Ivar which is the best bakery in all of Göteborg and that’s where the bread is from aswell. They make sourdough bread, vegan, ecological & fantastically good. (I don’t even usually like bread that much at all so me thinking that a bread is fantastical is very rare!)  If you’re ever in Gothenburg, you should go there!! Keep Åsa baking!!

Click the picture for a larger map.