Rigel Haloran, I actually don’t care about the OP. I was remarking on the people posting in the thread. If you can’t thread crap in the pit, where can you do it?
Because it’s wrong. You’re making the assumption that a person who cuts meat from their diet will replace every meat dish with one containing fish. Among people who stop eating animals because they’re concerned about animal welfare, it just doesn’t work that way. For such a person, “cutting” something from their diet generally means to replace it with a vegetarian dish. Your conception does have a logic to it… it just has no basis in reality.
If you truly want to make the one to one case of the ethics of eating X fish dinners vs. eating X meat dinners, then it gets complicated. But if all you care about is rigging up a good straw man so you can think of vegetarians as hypocrites, I can’t see the point in discussing it with you.
Vegetarianism isn’t a religion. If I think eating animals is morally wrong and I reduce the amount of animal dishes in my diet, I’ve done a good thing. You want it to be all-or-nothing. It isn’t. Vegetarians are by necessity quite pragmatic. Aside from that, you should realize how your criticism sounds from a vegetarian’s standpoint. You’re somebody who does nothing criticizing anybody who does anything for not doing everything.
If I as an atheist hear two Catholics arguing about Catholic doctrine and chime in with “you’re hypocrites and you’re going to hell either way, HAHAHA!” why should they care what I think? What they are arguing about actually makes a difference to them, their immortal souls could be in peril. To me it’s just an intellectual game, I’ve got nothing at stake. Would you blame them for not giving a shit what I think? Again, vegetarianism isn’t a religion, but consider this analogy and be aware of what the value of your opinion is when you offer a vegetarian advice about their hypocritical dietary choices.
My example has everything to do with Miller’s. Being a vegetarian in the real world involves making pragmatic choices between non-ideal options. The fact is, killing only Moe is less evil than killing both Moe and Larry. So if Miller is faced with a situation where he has to decide if a few people will die as opposed to a lot of people dying, it doesn’t make him a hypocrite to choose the option of fewer deaths even if he believes that killing people is wrong.
It’s true (and I also read this in Vegetarian Times) that it is impossible to not consume some animal products or cause the death of little critters, no matter how hard you try. So all vegetarians have to compromise.
Using film for your camera? It has gelatin! Hypocrite! There are all sorts of itty-bitty trace amounts of animal products in all sorts of things that most of us use, and we don’t even know it.
So most vegetarians do have to compromise. To live in a western society and still function in society and make a living, travel around, etc., means that by default, a vegetarian is probably going to use something derived from animals. I don’t even think that it’s necessarily “hypocritical” for a vegetarian to wear some ancient leather boots. If that’s the only leather product they own, and they’ve had these boots for a long time, how is that sooo terrible? If their goal is to save animals, at least a little bit, an ancient pair of leather boots is pretty much a blip on the screen.
And this goes for fish-eating too. I don’t necessarily want people who eat fish to call themselves “vegetarian” (for reasons stated above) but I admire what they are doing. They want, for whatever reason, to limit their diet to fish, and more power to them!
I eat fish about three times a year. I don’t really have much justification for it except that I can’t resist good sushi, and my reasons for being vegetarian are pretty half-assed anyway.
But I don’t think that makes me a fish-eater anymore than haveing three cigarettes a year makes me a smoker.
Bullshit. If you hold that eating animals is immoral, and you eat an animal, you’re violating your own moral code. I don’t need to share your moral code to be disgusted by your inability to follow your own definition of right and wrong. Even worse, the woman in the OP has made a habit of judging other people for not living up to her moral code, when even she can’t do that. And this isn’t a matter of something minor and impossible to avoid, like using gelatin-based film, or accidentally eating rice cooked in chicken broth: it’s tucking into an entree that is entirely meat-based, while still claiming to be an ethical vegetarian. I don’t respect ethical vegetarianism/veganism much as a philosophy, but I can at least respect people who are willing to make the considerable extra effort to follow a diet that they think is morally important. This woman doesn’t even do that: she wants the ethical highground of being a vegetarian without having to go to the effort of actually eating a vegetarian diet. That’s absolutely scorn-worthy.
That’s a piss-poor analogy. It’d be valid if if this thread were an argument between a pesco-vegetarian and a vegan over who was “really” a vegetarian. That’s not what this thread is. The bone of contention here is a vegetarian who judges others by a standard she herself fails to meet. No one in this thread has suggested that this is a flaw endemic to all vegetarians everywhere. In fact, vegetarianism is largely incidental to the OP. To try and salvage your analogy, it would be like a Catholic judging non-Catholics for not living up to the Catholic standard of morality, while at the same time said Catholic unrepentedly fails to meet those standards himself.
That’s not the hypothetical situation I proposed. You are inserting a false dilemma: that either one or both of them have to die. Killing only one instead of both may be “less” evil, but it is still evil. The moral choice is to not kill either of them. If you go ahead and kill Moe anyway, you’ve got no moral basis to condemn someone else for killing Lenny.
So by this rationale, it makes just as much sense for me to claim I’m a vegetarian, yet still eat beef. After all, I’ve reduced the death toll by not eating fish, pork, chicken, turkey, etc.
If I might speak for Miller, I doubt he’d claim that there’s anything specifically extra-moral about eating whatever you want. It’s simply that in my opinion, there’s no additional morality in foregoing specific foods, either. To me, it’s a little like claiming that driving a green car is morally superior and then saying “what’s so moral about driving whatever color car you want?” Well … nothing. (Note: this trivial example is not chosen to belittle your specific moral beliefs. Your morality says that eating animals is bad and I respect that. I just don’t agree, and I’m trying to refute your idea that I would claim that there is a specific morality in eating whatever I want…)
And this would be relevant if the menu in the OP’s restaurant had only two choices, both of which contained fish, but only one of which contained beef. In reality, there were other choices, but she didn’t really like them, so she chose to abandon her ideal of not killing animals in favor of tasty food. That’s completely fine with me, but it sort of takes the wind out of her sails of self-righteousness when it turns out that having to have soup and a salad for dinner is enough of a hardship to warrant ignoring the all-important rule that you shouldn’t eat animals. If she’s not going to take her own cardinal rule seriously, why the hell should she be allowed to make others feel guilty about it?
And there’s nothing, I repeat, nothing, wrong with that.
I don’t eat turkey. I haven’t knowingly eaten turkey for many a year. Not that it makes me special or “better” or anything like that, I just haven’t eaten it, that’s all.
But if I were to annually plan on eating turkey for Thanksgiving, each and every year–just that one meal, but still, I knew ahead of time that I was going to eat it, then technically, I’m a turkey-eater. A very rare turkey-eater, but a turkey-eater nonetheless. And eating turkey once a year is no big deal by anyone’s standard (I hope) but the once-a-year turkey eaters still eat turkey. And that separates them from the never-again-will-I-eat-turkey crowd.
And the three-cigarettes-a-year smoker is still a smoker. Because they want to smoke–three times a year. Their level of “smokerhood” is so low as to barely be mentioned, but still, they are different from someone who never smokes, never buys cigarettes, wouldn’t know which kind to buy even if they were inclined, wouldn’t know which end to smoke, etc. etc. Because the three-cigarettes-a-year smoker knows that they will continue to smoke. Three times a year.
Not that I am making any moral judgment on three-cigs-a-year smokers or turkey-on-Thanksgiving turkey-eaters. But there’s a difference.
Wrong. I’m violating an oversimplification of my moral code. Eating animals is immoral, but practically speaking it is impossible to avoid. So the practical goal is to reduce it as much as possible. If someone is still pedantic enough to insist I’m being a hypocrite, I guess I just don’t give a shit what they think. I break the speed limit sometimes too.
I was trying to say that it’s not likely that a vegetarian will give much weight to a non-vegetarian’s charges of hypocrisy. The non-vegetarian doesn’t have any commitment to the problem, so how could they understand the practical challenges of living up to it? As I said, it’s hard to take criticism about where I draw the line seriously from someone who doesn’t draw any line at all. Of course it’s black and white to you… you’ve never tried actually doing it.
Well, some might take issue with you calling yourself a vegetarian, but really it isn’t important. Anybody concerned about animal welfare will see any reduction in your diet of animal dishes as a good thing. That’s the whole point of doing it, so that matters more than a name.
She shouldn’t. There’s no excuse for it. It just strikes me as odd based on my experience as a vegetarian. Most of the time that guilt-tripping flows in the other direction. An overwhelming majority of the time.
Even if 100% of the vegetarians in this country were complete and utter assholes, they still wouldn’t be a match for the officious carnivores at the dinner table. It’s a simple question of numbers*. And therein lies the real hypocrisy. If people were really serious about taking overly judgemental people to task, the majority of these dinner table pit threads would be about carnivores hassling vegetarians. They aren’t. My suspicion is that a lot of people just have an irrational dislike for vegetarians, and the hypocrisy stick is what is nearest at hand when it comes time to beat on them a little. Which makes the criticism difficult to take seriously.
-fh
*There’s about 288 million Americans in the US as per the 2000 Census. According to a Zogby poll from 2000 for the Vegetarian Resource Group, about 2.5% of adult Americans are vegetarians (do not eat meat, poultry or fish).
This is true, however, it is NOT impossible to avoid ordering a fish dinner at a restaurant. Nobody is complaining that she ate a dish that, unbeknownst to her, had meat in it. She CHOSE a fish dish, that is an avoidable circumstance.
If you choose an animal based dinner, by your own code you’re engaging in an immoral act, plain and simple. If you get an animal based dinner unknowingly, nobody can fault you. One would expect you to take rudimentary precautions to avoid an animal meal, if you fail in that, I’d say you failed to live up to your moral code.
I agree with hazel-rah, and particularly with the paragraph from which you quoted. I try to avoid expressing views over the table, and even when “obliged” to do so my views are “this choice suits my conscience”. Yet, I have observed on many occasions that my very preferences have caused affront, and that this affront has been expressed most negatively.
Though I certainly agree that there are more omnivore’s hassling vegetarians than vice versa, the two offenses are not of equal value. When an omnivore makes deriding comments about a vegetarian’s diet, he or she is saying, in effect, “your diet is silly and you are a stupid person”. It’s the act of an asshole. I think we can all agree on that.
However, when a vegetarian like the girl in the OP makes deriding comments about an omnivore’s diet, she is saying, in effect, “Your diet is immoral and you are an evil person”
Nobody likes to be thought of as stupid, but if you really want to offend someone you call them evil.
Eh, Monkey’s got a point. Another difference though, is vegetarians/vegans very rarely, if ever, start a confrontation like that. Omnivores however, do it on a regular basis. When a vegetarian does it, it’s considered rude and assholish. If an omnivore does it, it’s just funny and the vegetarian should just “lighten up.”
On everything else, I completely agree with Yosemitebabe. And no, even if you only eat fish 3 times a year or turkey once a year, you’re not a vegetarian. If you had no choice, that’s one thing. If you planned to eat it, that’s quite another.
I spent about five years giving up Skittles and Starburst because of the gelatin, never eating soup at restarants (waiters usually don’t understand the whole concept of chicken and beef broth) and only eating at yuppy mexican restaruants where I could be sure of what went in the rice and beans.
Then one day it dawned on me that no matter how hard I try, I’m still going to be eating a myriad of dyes, addatives and preservatives made from animal products. So I relaxed a bit on the gelatin issue, figureing that any meat involved had been so chemically rendered to the point that it might as well be any other chemicle. I’m still iffy about broth, although I choose not to ask too many questions at Mexican restarants and figure I’ll be okay as long as I avoid the refriend beans. I’d still never make something with these ingredients in my home.
The point is that it’s pretty much impossible to be a perfect vegetarian and live a normal life. However, it is easy to be generally vegetarian and not worry about it at all. Every vegetarian has their own comfort zone, and they have no obligation to eat based on anything else but their comfort zone. I do not have any particular oblgation to maintain eating habits that I follow consistantly and which I can justify to others on demand.
I’m vegetarian because the whole concept of meat gives me the willies. I’ve never liked it much and it’s just not worth choking down stuff that creeps me out just to fit in. Environmental/animal rights benefits are nice, but not my primary motivation. I do respect those that maintain a stricter vegetarian diet than I do, and I respect those who do it for nobler purposes than I.
Now fish doesn’t gross me out quite as much. Less veins and tendons to crunch through. Less worries about factory farms. It’s still pretty gross, but sometimes I do want to eat it. And when I eat sushi the actual quantity of fish involved is so small that it’s pretty pointless to freak out about doing it a few times a year. I never made any sacred vow.
Anyway, the point of all this is that I don’t think I should have to explain to my dining companions/family/any punk on the street who feels like getting intrusive that I am a very-rarely-pesco-ovo-lacto-vegetarian. Especially since that will just lead to stupid questions like “Well why don’t you eat fish today, and why not have this soup with just a ‘little bit’ of pork in it while your at it”. For all practical purposes I am a vegetarian, and to act otherwise would just make everything harder. Since I am not purporting to have any good reasons behind my vegetarianism and don’t claim that vegetariansm is more moral, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to refer to myself as vegetarian.
That’s the thing though, sven, when you go around claiming to be vegetarian, then chow down on sushi later that day, it does nothing but make it harder for vegetarians and vegans such as yosemitebabe and myself, who actually do consistantly follow a vegetarian or vegan diet. You see? To all those people that think of you as vegetarian and then see you eat fish, they’re going to assume that when I tell them I’m vegetarian, that I eat fish too. When I tell them I don’t, they’re going to argue with me that yes, vegetarians do eat fish, because they know one who does, see?
Doesn’t matter that I’ve been vegan for 6 years, they’re gonna sit there and tell me what I do and do not eat, based on their experiences with other vegetarians.
I don’t care what you eat and what you don’t eat. Doesn’t matter to me. I understand the “icky” factor behind your “vegetarianism”, I’m vegan for very similar reasons. Eat fish. I don’t care. Just don’t eat fish and call yourself a vegetarian in the same breath, you’re doing a disservice for those who follow the traditional vegetarian diet.
A not-so-close-anymore friend of mine claims to be a vegetarian. She will argue and argue that eating meat is a horrid thing to do, and god forbid if you mention veal. But wait, what is she having for dinner on a fairly regular basis? Chicken. Or salmon. Or turkey. While I certainly respect her choice to eat whatever she is comfortable eating–as mentioned before, everyone has their own comfort level, to me this is unbelievably hypocritical. When I asked her about this chicken/fish/turkey eating thing, she said that she would really love to work those things out of her diet. Okay, she would like to but apparently it isn’t important enough for her to actually attempt at this point (it has been a couple of years since I last brought it up). To me (and I am not a vegetarian), if you are eating chicken, fish, and/or turkey on a somewhat regular basis, you are not entitled to call yourself a vegetarian or to make yicky faces when people eat a steak sandwich in your presence. I truly believe that she would like to be the type of person who does not eat anything with a face, but right now that doesn’t really count for much. In the past I have heard her outright lie when someone has confronted her about whether or not she ever eats chicken. That’s just wrong. Again, I don’t care what the heck she eats; it is the berating of others and trying to make them feel like awful humans for eating red meat. That’s where she draws her line; she isn’t allowed to draw lines for others.
I agree with what lezlers said above, and I also want to touch upon this:
When I decided to be a vegetarian years ago, I pondered if perhaps instead of going fully veggie, I could just cut down my meat intake to a few times a year (or “just tuna once in a while,” or something). I decided against it, for the very reason you cite here. I decided I had to do it all the way, or it wasn’t going to work very well.
Some people will never get it. They just won’t. I learned this in the month that I tried to go “semi-vegetarian” in order to get used to the idea. I still was offered big ol’ slabs of meat, and expected to “make an exception” because “you ate that other bit of meat, right? So why not this?” And if I were to attempt to refuse the big ol’ slab of meat, there would be hurt feelings and a big scene because I refused to make one exception. But of course everyone wants the meal that they’ve prepared to be the “exception” that you’ll make.
I truly do understand what you’re doing, sven, and I empathize. To be honest, I don’t freak out when I discover that there were trace amounts of this or that animal product in whatever dish I am eating. Of course I do try to avoid knowingly eating some meat product, (even in trace amounts), but I am sure I sometimes fail in my attempts. But I don’t think that my (ignorant) consumption of these itty bitty amounts of whatever registers to others as me actually eating fish, fowl or red meat.
But when people see the “vegetarian” eating an actual shrimp dinner, or a chicken dinner, and they figure that vegetarians can eat shrimp or chicken dishes. And it’s a confusing message for them.
Again, I say bullshit. I’ve never, ever seen an omnivore criticize a vegetaian for not eating meat. I’ve reapeatedly seen vegetarians attack omnivores for eating meat, and in terms of vituperation that an omnivore simply could not match. I’ve personally been called a worthless excuse for a human being because I ate at a McDonalds. In this very thread, I’ve been called amoral by you, hazel-rah, with absolutely no provocation. So excuse me if your “poor little vegetarian” act ellicits nothing more than an enormous eye-roll from me.
Just to make this clear, I’m not saying that omnivores are never dicks about people being vegetarian. I’ve read lots of stories in more than one pit thread about asshole omnivores trying to sneak meat to veggie friends and relatives. My point is that someone else doing it to you is no excuse to do it to someone else, and that on a person-to-person basis, an individual omnivore is no more or less likely to be a dick about someone else’s diet than any individual vegetarian.
Ah. So your argument is, “Other people have been dicks to me about this, so I’m going to assume that everybody who doesn’t share my diet must, therefore, share the prejudices of those other people.” Well, fuck you too, buddy. Seems like the only person in this thread making generalizatins about people based on what they eat is you.
Okay Miller, you’re one of my favorite posters on this board, but what you said in that last post is simply not true. You think that there are more vegetarians giving omnivores a hard time because you don’t notice the vegetarians who don’t. It’s considered an assholish thing for a vegetarian to give an omnivore a bad time and that’s why when they do, it sticks in your mind. It’s almost commonplace for omnivores to tease and harrass vegetarians (we call it “any family meal with the brothers” in my house) so most omnivores aren’t really aware of how often it actually happens.
In six years I’ve never once given an omnivore a bad time. I’m given a bad time by various omnivores (many of them friends and family!) on a very regular basis. I believe I’m the rule, not the exeption.
I am sure that there are many people who don’t know I’m a veggie. I often get people acting surprised when they find out. I don’t make a big deal of it. A lot of us don’t. So, Miller, if I were to eat next to you and I ate a salad or grilled cheese sandwich, would you know I’m a vegetarian if I didn’t tell you and you didn’t ask? No. But I’d be one more vegetarian who didn’t give you a hard time, and you never noticed.
I make a rule of not giving omnivores a hard time. I simply do not give a damn. In fact, at my last job, it was part of my duty to prepare meat dishes for others. I did it, didn’t whine or complain. I just didn’t want to eat the damned stuff myself.
I do discover that my apathy about what others eat is sometimes met with contention. People like to point out what they are eating, saying, “Yummmmm! Meat! See? See? Meat! I’m eating meat!” They are disappointed when I only act bored. Frankly, their lame, tired attempts at “offending” me are far more offensive than the meat that they are waving in my face. I’m just tired of the same tired lines, trotted out as if they are new, funny or original.
I do believe that lezlers and the rest of us are the “rule, not the exception.” I am not harassed daily for being a vegetarian, but I certainly do get more grief than I’ve ever dished out.
I submit that the above applies equally to you: you don’t notice when vegetarians do the same thing to omnivores. In your personal experience, omnivores are more likely to do this than vegetarians. In my personal experience, vegetarians are more likely to do this than omnivores. I certainly don’t expect you to take my personal experiences as gospel truth, but I’ve just as little reason to give your personal experience more weight than mine. This is why anecdotal evidence has no place in debate.
Yeah, well in 27 years of life as an omnivore, I’ve never once given a vegetarian a bad time over their diet. All this proves is that neither you nor I nor yosemitebabe are jerks. Which is my point: this isn’t an omnivore thing, or a vegetarian thing. It’s a jerk thing.