The Story of Cyan

I was a culture misfit from the start, though it took me a while to become radical. In my Catholic high school junior year, I committed minor rebellions such as putting up "Don't vote" campaign posters for the student council elections, writing a paper on polygamy for religion class and violating the dress code with pigtails (until apprehended by the VP). I escaped from the oppressive dress code and conservative environment by dropping out at age 16, after a rushed summer application/accceptance to college (Simon's Rock).

On my first day of college orientation, they asked who was vegetarian and, after a thoughtful pause, I raised my hand, confirming my long-term desire (which previous circumstances had prevented me from doing). In my first year, I made some vegan friends and learned from them about the harm caused by dairy & egg industries, and I began experimenting with alternatives. I went vegan in 1995 (Autumn of my sophmore year). That was also when I began more intentionally exploring my gender identity through makeup and clothing. Feminism, androgyny and veganism were always linked for me.

I identify as androgyne (more commonly known as "non-binary"), which means my gender is "other" (neither/both man or woman) and I believe that gender expression should be free and protected, as should everyone's right to basic bodily safety (humans and animals). As a pacifist, I think violence should never be used to obtain resources, revenge (aka "justice") or other personal/political gain.

Although mainstream culture may pretend otherwise, gender has never been hegemonic (a word that means always & everywhere the same). For example, in Western culture, babies used to wear dresses and pink was once considered a "stronger" color more suitable for boys than "pretty" blue (see "When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?" article in Smithsonian). Within the 20th century, dresses became acceptable for girls only and blue transformed to signify "boy" while pink came to signify "girl" - this just goes to show the artifice of gender codes (which are invented and vary across time and culture).

Over the years, I've dabbled in various art forms, especially at my third and final college, where I majored in Electronic Media, Art and Communication. In 1999, I built my first website using HTML code (in notepad) and since then, I've overhauled it several times (using WYSIWYG editors), the last time in the late oughts ('09?). The site originally included some "hypertext" art as well as "VRML" (virtual reality modeling language), but as web technologies progressed and old formats were left behind, I've had to cut some of my older projects. The current site features examples of artistic pursuits from my college and 20-something years, including electronic audio, digital images, pictures of sculptures and details of performance art.

View my art site.

Writing

I've long been an avid reader and, as a child, I'd fantasized about writing, but my teen efforts (hundreds of poems and a few short stories) were overwrought and immature. My vocabulary was good, but life experience was lacking - once I realized this, I gave up on creative writing for a long time. Over the years, I have written countless paper letters and have been a prolific emailer since 1994 (my first email account), which I feel has improved my writing significantly. My professional experience (various jobs) has also been a boon, as I've created a great many documents over my working life (e.g., training, process, testing, reports, functional specifications).

After I felt confident that my writing skills had improved and my life experience had given me enough perspective, I returned to creative writing in the mid-late oughts, starting a blog in 2007 (mostly writing essays). At the encouragement of a friend, I submitted stories and essays for various art projects he did, such as MEWS-PARI, "The last time I saw..." and his zine "i left this here for you to read" (which I consider my first published work). On a 2009 trip to visit my sister in Los Angeles, I began a project of haikus (a haiku to document each day of my trip) and found the format suited me, so continued with other haiku projects. One of my haikus was published in Itch (winter 2012 issue #14).

I also self-published (and assembled, DIY-style) a booklet of my haikus called "One Thousand Paper Cuts" in 2012. Sample haiku below:

Check out my haiku books or essays (on my blog).

This Site

After more than 2 decades of living the vegan lifestyle, I've picked up a lot of information (e.g., "carmine" is crushed beetles used for red coloring), almost too much. On occasions when people would ask me for help with vegan food and other products or why I chose veganism, I had trouble coming up with a simple reply (so many things, too hard to summarize off the cuff). I could give the basic information about avoiding eggs, dairy, meat and I could summarize a few moral arguments for doing so, but I often felt inadequate to the task. I wanted a document or online resource that covered what I considered the essential information.

In 2008, I wrote a vegan "one-pager" document with some brief explanations of the most common unclear ingredients from animals (e.g., lanolin, whey, carmine), but I realized that was insufficient as there was much more information to be covered. The other vegans I asked didn't seem to be aware of any such resources other than various Vegan Advocacy groups' pamphlets - but those were generally light on practical tips and heavy on moralizing (using arguments I didn't necessarily agree with), so I didn't feel they fit my educational need.

For a while, I opted to reference the Boston Vegan Association site's link page (which covered a fair cross-section of vegan needs), but they ended up simplifying their site and removing all external links. I searched online, but was unable to provide what seemed like a good, single resource for the essential information; many sites which seemed promising included misleading or unhelpful messaging, or completely skipped over quandries like how to eat out vegan in an omnivore world (when a vegan restaurant is not available), finding vegan vitamins or animal-free makeup.

Inspired by several new discussions with omnivores interested in veganism in 2011, I decided to compile a vegan resource list that I could host on my website. I began with a list of foods and some basic nutrition info (with help from some friends and online resources) and then added a second page on non-food resources (putting my extensive research into vegan shoes to good use), continuing to add categories and information over the next year.

I originally planned to complete the site by end of 2012, but life happened and I decided to add an Ethics component and enlist the help of a designer, so it took a few months longer. In early 2013, I was able to engage Fresh Pond Media to "make it look nice" (note: design work done by my friend, Quinn Sonia-Sergi, no longer with FPM). I subsequently worked hard to write (and research) the Ethics section, polished up the writing and information elsewhere, and here you are!

Disclaimer: I've provided external links throughout the site for additional information on various statements, terms or suggestions of mine; however, I do not necessarily endorse the content of such sites, nor am I responsible for changes to such sites. My stance is that we should eliminate animal-based ingredients from our lifestyles as much as possible, for the reasons I've explained on the Ethics page (excluding link contents).

See also my [vegan] Food album on Flickr

Community

After choosing veganism in 1995 and then switching colleges in 1997, I had a tough time as a vegan. My younger sisters and cousin (vegetarians at the time) were some solace, but I struggled to manage socially, at work and at home. So much of our social lives are centered around food events and my only choices seemed to be to participate and go hungry (eating nothing) or to be isolated.

After my first college, I had few vegan or vegetarian friends for nearly 10 years and my non-vegetarian family and friends weren't very supportive (only my sisters and one cousin, all 3 of whom later became vegan). Later, that got better as I became more assertive and my friends and family learned to be more accommodating, but I still lacked for any sort of local vegan community (by 2005, I had no vegan friends and knew only a few vegetarians in the Boston area).

In 2006, at the suggestion of a good non-vegan friend, I started up my own community, the IV Social Club, which was a group of queer-friendly and diverse ethical vegetarians and vegans with professional careers. We got together monthly for social events, such as dinners out, apple-picking or a trip to the Boston harbor islands. I met some great, like-minded people, but it became a lot of work to manage (in terms of scheduling events and retention/replacement), so I retired it in 2008, just after completing our legacy cookbook. Fortunately, I retain a number of friendships with folks I met through IV Social Club.

In 2007, I began attending meetings of the Boston Vegan Association (BVA), which has since been shut down and reborn as the International Vegan Association (IVA). At the BVA, I met a lot of vegans and began to learn about animal rights philosophy. I took a free class they offered and read some Tom Regan, Peter Singer and Gary Francione. The class (and the BVA) was focused on the "Abolitionist Approach." In 2008, I became involved in the leadership of the BVA (briefly enjoying the title of Co-Director, helping to revamp the website, moderate discussion forums and other tasks). However, while I wanted to maintain (and strengthen) the vegan community focus, while most of the other leaders wanted to focus solely on [animal-use] abolitionist education for non-vegans, so I wished them well and went on my merry way (in 2010).

At the same time, I was involved with a feminist discussion group from 2007-2011, centered on Bitch Magazine, which I co-led for the last three years. When that ended (due to waning interest), I started up a similar group in 2011 (with a friend from the Bitch group), but one explicitly focused on intersections of veganism with other social justice movements like anti-racism. I co-led this Vegan Intersectionality discussion group for a few years; we started with Sistah Vegan: Black Females Speak on Food, Identity and Power (edited by A. Breeze Harper), then covered various blog posts and articles (e.g., this F.E.P. report on food deserts), and ended with The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (by Carol J. Adams) in 2013.

I also spent some time volunteering with the Food Empowerment Project from about 2012-2017, helping with technology and information architecture. Currently, I just socialize normally with both my vegan and non-vegan friends (and no volunteering).