Of course not. There’s a big difference between direct and indirect responsibility. Blaming vegetarians for the indirect slaughter of small animals is a red herring; we all cause suffering indirectly no matter what we eat. I could grow all my own organic vegetables and be careful not to harm any mice or gophers, and then for all I know, the guy I buy my newspaper from goes out and spends my money at the cockfights. For that matter, if you pay income tax, you know for a fact that part of your money is used to kill human beings, including some innocent civilians. Does that make you a murderer?
Moral vegetarians decline to support the industry that exists specifically to slaughter animals. They act on the level on which they have direct responsibility. The fact that some animals are incidentally killed in vegetable farming is unfortunate, but inevitable, and not being vegetarian certainly wouldn’t reduce that toll at all.
Glad to hear it. I guess that stick up your butt has been good for something after all.
So my opinion about vegetarians who drone endlessly about meat eaters killing ‘innocent animals’ doesn’t apply to Marley23. If he’s not one of those people who harps about the innocent animals, that’s fine.
Other posters do like to trot out the often used and emotionally laden ‘innocent animals do not die at the hands of vegetarians’ argument, and I vehemently disagree with those people, because not only is it dishonest, it’s used as an emotional plea of feeling sorry for certain types (although not all types) of animals.
When I start discussing self-righteous vegetarians who condemn meat eaters, Marley immediately seemed to take it as if I meant ‘Marley, you are a self righteous vegetarian.’
A debate in GD about vegetarianism in general does not specifically have to deal only with the posters in that thread does it? Outside experience with other vegetarians (such as those who hand out ‘UnHappy Meals’ and carry signs and shout things like ‘Meat is murder.’) shouldn’t be mentioned unless a vegetarian in that thread brought them up?
There are such militant vegetarians out there. Those are the kinds of vegetarians I take issue with, along with those who smugly (and wrongly) state that absolutely no animals die to support their diet.
Oh, another subset of vegetarians that piss me off: the ones who rail endlessly about the cruelty of cattle farming for beef, but feel no guilt at all sporting leather shoes and leather jackets.
I’m related to one of those, and I can barely talk to her anymore. She’ll sit around at a family dinner giving everyone shit about the meat on their plate while wearing her leather skirt.
I’m just stunned at how the concept of reducing the number of animals killed can be turned into an all-or-nothing situation - if you’re eating vegetables, you’re still murdering little animals, so all you vegetarians are hypocrites. Reductio ad absurdum. Aside from the rare idiot, even Jains (who try to avoid stepping on insects, say prayers in repentance for the occasional tiny deaths they cause, etc.) don’t consider themselves pure of conscience in this aspect.
You can feed more humans with the farmland used to grow vegetables than with the farmland used to grow feed for animals that are to be turned into food. More efficient land use, plus fewer animals die. But I suppose I’m just a hypocrite since I cook meat for friends plus I haven’t up and died from starvation due to refusing to harm an animal in any way, or some nonsense like that.
No, it’s only a peeve of mine if you sit around calling other people murderers for eating meat while ignoring the fact that animals are dying for your convenience also.
If being a vegetarian makes you happy, then be a vegetarian. I just don’t want to hear about how pure and wonderful and in tune with nature and free of animal killing it is. Especially not every day, and especially not from vegetarians like my cousin who won’t shut the fuck up about meat being murder but her 300$ Italian leather shoes are not.
Fine, catsix, you can’t stand proselytizing vegetarians and you have medical conditions that mean you more or less have to eat loads of meat. I can understand this. But since there were no proselytizing vegetarians in that other thread, couldn’t you just have toned it down? Or started a Pit thread about proselytizing vegetarians?
Probably not, but it comes off as a huge non sequitur if you do.
“I like vinyl interiors in cars.”
“Me too, I used to have a leather interior but I prefer vinyl.”
“You frothing-at-the-mouth leather interior haters make me sick!”
[Pause while everyone looks around, trying to figure out where that came from.]
Well, what is the point of arguing against people not in the thread? It’s like everybody else is sitting in a circle debating except you, who is yelling out the window. Although it looked like in that thread you would pull in one of your “militant vegetarians” whenever the agument was not going your way.
No, but we do appreciate when someone posts something that’s actually relevant to the discussion. You contributed what you were going to contribute with your first few posts. After that it was all “pretending that your choices are optimal” and “pretend their choices are better than mine” and “self-righteous vegetarians who think they’re somehow able to live without being bad, evil animal killers” and “trying to prove you’re better than me” and that shit. No-one was doing that. Really. Debating whether or not a vegetarian diet reduces the suffering is fine and good and on-topic and everything, but this was just obnoxious and self-obsessed.
If someone asks me why I don’t eat meat, I answer that part of it is for health reasons and part of it is for moral reasons. If that person, or indeed anyone else in the vicinity, decides that this means I’m trying to judge them or put them down or pretend I’m better than they, then so be it. Not my problem. I just wish they could whine elsewhere. If they feel like I’m better than they, they should stop eating meat. If they don’t, fine, Neither do I.
Do you know what I would really like? Really, really, really like? To be able to sit down with my relatives and have dinner without having to endure endless questioning and discussion about my dietary choices. I stopped eating meat 16 months ago, I’ve never spoken a word about it unless I was asked, and I have never proselytized in the slightest. And yet, they won’t fucking leave it alone. The next step for me is to simply stop attending family dinners, because it’s just an annoying chore for me now. Now, imagine that I popped into a thread sounding obnoxious and assuming every meat-eater was like they are.
Uh? What?
I brought up the fact that vegetarians often use the emotional and incorrect plea that their diet does not result in the death of animals. Someone else took offense.
Then we have yosemite’s input, which was basically a parody of me. Don’t know what the hell that was attempting to accomplish other than accusing me of attacking people I never attacked.
Whatever, though. My opinion of the ‘innocent animals’ argument is that it’s still a bunch of hyper emotional bullshit.
catsix, you have all those dietary restrictions and can’t have a lot of carbs? I thought you loved beer and Primanti’s, missed the U-cut at Subway, and ate soft carbs as a newborn?
Priceguy basically articulated my argument. I’m in the same boat he is, except it’s been 7 years for me, not 16 months. And you know what? I still catch the same shit, every damn holiday.
There are a lot of vegetarian threads on these boards. I can recall one off the top of my head that was started by an actual vegetarian. Every other one (it seems) was started by a meat eater, for the purpose of either 1) starting a logical argument about the vegetarians reasons for being that way or 2) a thinly veiled attempt at mocking vegetarians.
That’s why I get so tired of people busting out the old “but they’re militant vegetarians out there!” argument. Yeah? So fucking what. Yes. We all know that. Every damn vegetarian thread on these boards discusses it. Thing is, there’s just as many obnoxious meat eaters out there who seem to believe it’s their moral duty to mock vegetarians.
That’s why most vegetarian dopers are fucking tired of hearing you meat eaters whine about all those evil militant vegerians out there. Do you see any of them here? No? Then kindly shut the fuck up and leave us out of it. Unless you want to take on the burden of answering for all of those obnoxious meat eaters who mock us with no provocation.
Your cousin is annoying? Wears those leather skirts while preaching to you? Preaches at all? Go talk to her about it. Quit projecting your issues with her onto all of us here. It’s hardly doing any good.
Oh, give me a frickin’ break. You were not saying on that other thread, “I know that you here on this thread aren’t doing this, but there are some other vegetarians (like my cousin) who do this annoying stuff.”
Nope. You didn’t do that. You directly were accusing people on that thread of “judging” you. Several times. It defied logic. And it was exactly as I predicted would happen early in the thread—that some meat eaters think that vegetarians are “judging” them, even when they’re, like, not judging them.
And you just went ahead and did exactly what I had described, just a few posts after I described it.
Yeah, I have a lot of likes that are bad for me. I smoke, too. And I pay for it when I eat or drink stuff that’s carb laden, a lot like my sister who is now sans-gallbladder pays for it when she eats pork.
Carbs like that are treats, not daily things. I’m generally fucked up after sushi because of all the rice, but I still love it and suffer.
Only Marley, and only after he took my post saying that the only type of intolerable vegetarians are the proselytizing kind personally.
See, that’s where you get me wrong. I don’t think all vegetarians are judging me. I just can’t freaking stand the ones who whine about innocent animals killed by omnivore people.
Guess it’s easier to write your parodies if you don’t have to be accurate?
