Comment by probably_wrong | Hacker News Reader

Comment by probably_wrong | Hacker News Reader

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A bit of (hopefully constructive) criticism:

> L. condoms are made with non-toxic, vegan-friendly natural latex

This sentence right here puts me off the whole thing (if I lived in an area where they are sold, of course), and it might be useful to share why.

The thing is: as a guy, I'm terrified of condoms already (of course, I still use them). They may break, they may slip off, they have to be applied following a certain, almost clinical procedure. And now you have "vegan-friendly" as a selling point. I have no idea why should a condom be vegan, and as a non-vegan myself all the contact I have with vegan things is through the vegan menu at my cafeteria.

But the vegan menu sucks. So does replacing regular milk with coconut milk to make cookies vegan (I've tried). If a "vegan-friendly condom" is to condoms what the vegan menu is to the regular menu, I am now certain that the chance of breaking will be higher, or that it will feel weird, and that the only reason the thing is around is because "that's the only vegan alternative we have" (pretty much like the vegan menu).

Maybe things are different enough in San Francisco to make a difference, and people protest loudly to have a vegan condom. Or maybe one of the founders is vegan. The rational part of my brain says that they are perfectly safe and probably indistinguishable from a regular condom. Unfortunately, I shop mostly with my irrational side.

The cynical part of me says that it's pure marketing fluff - like labelling a Turkey as "gluten free" or a bottle of fruit juice as "fat free".

So it looks like TC made a bigger deal about that than L. does in its own materials. It's not on the home page for example, which is mainly about "feel the difference" and testimonials and the donation aspect.

The same way PU (imitation) leather is now marketed as "vegan leather" [1].

[1] http://inhabitat.com/natalie-portman-vegan-shoes/

So in the near future, instead of "no animals were harmed during production of this video" we'll have vegan movies? :).

In a way, maybe it's good that we have one word for the concept.

Is human milk vegan? Maybe we can make things with it?

This was a vegan comment.

Human milk is vegan if extracted consensualy...for some definition of consent that is left as an exercise to the reader.

Someone tried a few years ago http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12569011

(Certainly not the first, but the first "big" news story that came to mind)

Haven't people already called digital vegetarian because it doesn't use gelatin film?

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/641/. I wonder if someone literally did that.

By default, condoms are vegan-friendly, being made from trees. Non-vegan condoms are the special-needs version (i.e. for latex allergy sufferers), that are not as good.

Some condoms contain casein, a by-product of milk which by definition makes it non-vegan friendly.

This is a good point that I hadn't realised. It seems that both latex condoms and gloves can contain casein.

Apparently, this has messed up tests for latex allergy:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091674999...

Are you including the lubricants?

The traditional, non-vegan alternative would be lamb's intestines.

The other distracting part of "non-toxic [...] natural latex" is that it ignores the people who are allergic to latex.

Yep, as you acknowledge, your reasoning is irrational. Replacing regular milk with coconut milk is more environmentally friendly, medium-chain fatty acids are better for the liver and heart.

Still, veganism is much more than just a diet and this meaning is what was meant by the vegan-friendly natural latex.

I do assume that people who have never googled "veganism" might have negative opinion of these condoms, but I guess they also won't be aware of the struggles of third world countries and won't care about the goal of this company.

Not that I don't find the fact that veganism had to be mention entertaining.

> Replacing regular milk with coconut milk is more environmentally friendly, medium-chain fatty acids are better for the liver and heart.

Except it doesn't taste as good, which is 90% of the whole point.

At the very least, it doesn't taste the same which is probably most of where the complaint comes from. 'Good' is entirely relative.

Except that milk is not just empty fat. The CLA in grass-fed milk, the vitamin D, and many other vitamins in milk are not present in coconut milk. Best is to put coconut oil in your warm milk!

Because there are many condoms made with animal intestines ("sheepskin") on the market, and they wanted to reinforce that they're not those. Of course, they could have just said "latex" and left it at that.

However, there are certainly non-vegan condoms.

Brainstorm from a while back: Vegans exercising bikes to power bitcoin mining.. vegan bitcoins.. sell for more $

Vegan-friendly simply means it is plant-based and doesn't use animal products. I would have preferred plant-based but does it really matter? This company is saving lives! It's diverting money from consumers of the on-demand economy and using it to save lives in Africa. That's pretty great.

> I would have preferred plant-based but does it really matter?

I struggled about my comment because I don't like being negative for the sake of it, but here's why I think this issue might actually matter.

Let's say you really care about selling this condoms as a mean of helping, and you have two alternatives: BoringCondom©, which is pretty much just a condom, and the AlternativeCondom©. If AlternativeCondom is provable better than BoringCondom and people buy more of those, then by all means sell it and everyone will be happier. But what if AlternativeCondom is actually putting people off your product? Wouldn't your help more people by doing it the boring way?

Based on votes number here, my complaint seems to have resonated slightly. If we take those numbers to be The Absolute Truth, then "vegan condom" may actually be hurting their statement, which is why I pointed it out.

But the vegan menu sucks. ... If a "vegan-friendly condom" is to condoms what the vegan menu is to the regular menu, ...

If indeed. I think I can understand why you are reasoning this way, but in the end it is just nothing more than a pretty wild (and incorrect) overgeneralization? I don't like most vegan food, tastewise, but that doesn't influence me in choosing vegan/animal-friendly alternatives over other products which are not food related.

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