“Hey, Alyssa. Did you hear about the vegan, the atheist and the Crossfitter that walked into a bar?” an obnoxious male that shall remain nameless said.

I roll my eyes. Of course I’ve heard this joke before. In my eight months as a vegan, it’s been a common occurrence. I start to answer but am cut off by the punchline.

“I only know because they all announced it as soon as they walked in.”

If I had a dollar for everytime I heard this joke, I’d probably have enough money to buy the whole bar. It almost always come from the same people too. The obnoxious bacon obsessed male who is flabbergasted that anyone would go against their way of thinking. The joke targets not the person casually being vegan, but the ones on that unfortunately become the stereotype.

As a vegan, I can say that I find the punchline to be extremely hypocritical. I know that I have never entered a room and shouted, “I’m vegan, bask in my excellence.” Instead, when my dietary choice is brought up in appropriate conversation (most of the time by other people), I’m almost immediately harassed. I might as well be placed in a dim room with a single light shining in my face while detectives interrogate me.

Usually as they lecture me on my choices they will munch on something extremely non-vegan. Something like a hamburger or copious amounts of bacon. The grease clings to their hands and faces as they disrespectfully question my choices.

“So if you’re a vegan, why do you eat meat flavored things? Don’t you hate meat?”

I have to calmly reply that I don’t disagree with eating meat. I just don’t agree with inhumane factory farm practices.

“Do you really think that by not eating meat you can solve any of that though? Why even try?”

I simply reply that, maybe it won’t solve anything, but at least I know that I’m not a part of the problem. Simply acknowledging the problem is not enough for me. I couldn’t sleep at night knowing that I’m helping to cause the exploitation of innocent animals.

Not once do I ever call out to non-vegans what I would believe to be the wrong life choices. Being vegan requires making a lot of sacrifices. It requires endless reading of labels, checking and double checking. It requires eating a lot of bland salads at restaurants that don’t have many vegan options.

It requires reminding yourself as you stare at a cupcake that it’s not worth the suffering you would cause. Because of that, I would never accuse someone of being a murderer or boast about my superiority.

However, for whatever reason, I’m constantly accused of impressing my ideals on other people. There’s plenty of vegan “propaganda” that I could ramble on and on about.

I don’t because I know that what I believe to be morally right might not be the same to you. On the other hand, people are always trying to tell me that my lifestyle as a vegan is frivolous.

But in a society that’s obsessed with pointing out our differences it’s hard to be taken seriously for something that goes against the norm. I’ve accepted that this will be a common occurrence for as long as I am vegan. I can only hope that by reading this some people will come to understand that someone being vegan is not a direct attack against your lifestyle. We’re just simply taking another path.