To the subject-mobile!
Right. I've seen a lot of people on this forum mention having been vegan for a while, then reverted back to vegetarianism/eating meat, et-cetera. No problem there, I'm not preaching against that.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
However, this seeming shift between omnivorism (my spell-checker doesn't like that word, but I'm not sure what to use instead) and veganism implies that the meaning is entirely dietary. "Vegan" means someone who abstains from using all animal products, including honey, leather, silk and furs. One may argue that people who brand themselves "vegans" without knowledge of the other side of the term are really "dietary vegans", but that's quite redundant. The correct term is simply vegetarian.
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
Lacto-ovo vegetarians are people called simply "vegetarian", which I do not believe is false. However, the word vegetarian is quite sufficient for "dietary vegans".
Apologies again! As a vegan myself, this matters a lot to me. It is not because I have this arrogant notion of being in a special, limited club, but for sake of clarity, and correct terminology. Just as someone who drives a car cannot call himself a pilot (the assumption being that he does not operate planes), I feel that people that don't fit the description of a vegan can not call themselves that.
This was all written with the assumption in mind that all who had called themselves vegan here meant it in a dietary way, this is not directed to those that did indeed abstain from all animal derivative products while "vegan".
I hope my message went through without offending anyone, and without anyone thinking I am some kind of elitist.
Thank you for reading.
(edit: removed an automatically added BBCode tag)