There's been a tofu-load of articles out there about "vegansexuals," uptight eco-kids who ostensibly do not copulate (or whatever) with those who don't share their strict dietary standards—prompting a world of possible double entendres that we're just not going to go into here.

But, after joining the Facebook Vegansexuals group, and reading hastily thrown-together articles like this, we started to wonder if vegansexuals actually exist—or if it's just lazy trend journalism at work! (Remember those crazy 'metrosexuals'? They didn't exist either!)

What sparked the flurry of vegansexualism in the press was a rather obscure study out of New Zealand by Dr. Annie Potts, a researcher at the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies at Canterbuy University, who coined the term while researching "cruelty-free consumption."

One of Potts' subjects said, "...I really struggle with bodily fluids, especially sexually." Another explained, "I would not want to be intimate with someone whose body is literally made up from the bodies of others who have died for their sustenance... they are, after all, literally sustained through carcasses—the murdered flesh of others."

In fact, this sounds more like a psychological problem—or maybe a modern manifestation of the old-fashioned fear of intimacy and sex!—rather than a hot new sexual trend practiced by hip anti-cruelty renegades. Yet somehow, her rather disturbing findings translated into
this and this. Even Tucker Carlson weighed in.

PETA also chimed in, as they will do, on their blog with a missive that dismissed vegansexuals but nonetheless reeked of senseless left-wing ideological prostitution:

"I've even heard rumors from old timers that Ingrid once forbade intra-office dating, simply on the grounds that she wanted the staff out meeting new people to make vegan... that hot guy or gal you're eyeing at the bar just may be on their own personal mission to turn the world vegan one person at a time . . . by any means necessary."

On the Vegansexual Facebook group ("because vegans taste so much better," 139 members), one lonely dude posted forlornly, "So I'm guessing I'm the only polyamourous queer vegansexual in Southeastern Michigan?"

Considering the term didn't even exist before last year? You very well might be, man.