Natalie Portman To Critics: Vegans Aren’t Annoying, You’re Annoying.

Natalie Portman told California teens that being vegan is a feminist issue Image by Getty Images

By Jenny Singer April 30, 2019

Vegans are so annoying, right?

Sorry insecure carnivores, longtime vegan Natalie Portman has the perfect counter for you: “Lots of people make fun of anybody who cares about anything deeply, right?” Portman asked a group of 16,000 high school students in California.

“I’m here to say, it is always a great thing to care…to have your heart open so much that someone else’s pain feels like your own, to care so much that you’ll spend your time making sure that change happens, and that’s why you are all here today,” Portman cried, according to Yahoo News.

Portman, as righteous as she is resplendent (and we love her for both), appeared at the youth activism event in California, for WE, an international charity that works on sustainable change in impoverished areas, in part by partnering with schools to educate and spur activism. The actress, activist, researcher and parent says that her choice to abstain from eating all animal products (that’s veganism, which is distinct from vegetarianism — not eating animals) feels deeply connected to her feminism.

“Only after I became active in women’s issues did I realize that my veganism was related to those very issues,” she told the massive crowd of young activists. “Dairy and eggs don’t just come from cows and chickens, they come from female cows and female chickens.”

“Mothers are separated from children to create milk,” Portman continued. “Animals are sick and in crowded, prison-like conditions to make dairy and eggs. It doesn’t take a lot to draw the line from how we treat animals to how we treat humans.”

Radical, huh? Jewish literary luminary and Forward writer Isaac Bashevis Singer said the same thing. And he didn’t just compare animal slaughter to feminism, he compared it to the Holocaust.

“Eat how you believe,” Portman added. And another thing — if you’re convinced that vegans are annoying but you’re the only one you ever hear talking about vegans, chances are you are annoying.

Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO