ABSTRACT
My teenage years were spent in contrast. I excitedly embraced a vegetarian and later vegan identity, while I repressed my sexuality. This repression was driven by experiences of homophobia and my own misunderstandings of what it would mean to be gay. At the same time, although I did not know what it would mean to be vegetarian or vegan, I was eager to find out. In this autoethnography, I employ a critical lens to explore the adoption of minority food identities (first vegetarianism and later veganism) as a subconscious way to deflect attention from what I found to be an initially less desirable, but innate social identity. Thus, this work traces two seemingly parallel themes in my life to reveal the ways in which they intersect. I delve into what it means to cultivate an identity of one’s choice and to also embrace being a member of the LGBT+ community. I demonstrate how adopting a stigmatized identity can serve as a mechanism through which to pre-emptively screen a person’s openness to otherness and in this way, I constructed vegetarianism and veganism as a figurative shield.
