So, does that make people who eat any animal products immoral in your opinion Rubystreak?
asking why, in and of itself, isn’t rude. I usually just say, “I don’t like the idea of eating animals” or “I just am.”
Thing is, as a vegetarian, there are SO many rude things people say that it’s hard not to automatically get a little defensive.
The whole "but your shoes are leather. but they kill bugs and small rodents when they harvest grain. but why aren’t you vegan? But you feed your pets meat, don’t you? has already been mentioned.
And telling me all the reasons why you can’t be vegetarian or telling me you’d like to be but you like meat too much is SO OBNOXIOUS. The fact that I’m vegetarian does not mean I particularly care whether you are or not. And you really don’t have to justify eating meat to me.
Same goes for “Well I only eat a little meat. I mean, I don’t buy puppies from puppy mills… and I feed my fish. I like grilled cheese sandwiches more than ham and cheese.” that’s fantastic! have a vegan cookie! I don’t care!
or “you’re vegetarian? you know that’s really hard, right? and you have to be really careful to get enough protein. you know that, right?” no. I’m a total moron and, at the age of fifteen and having been vegetarian for several years, nobody has ever told me I need protein. Thank you so much.
or, “I was vegetarian for a week but I felt really sick and tired so I had to start eating meat again.” or “my sister was vegetarian. She got really sick and she couldn’t even get out of bed and she went into a coma and her feet turned purple and she broke out in blue spots until they fed her some meat. Now she’s okay.”
or my favorite, “are you vegetarian so you don’t have to eat? because that’s bad for you.” which is rude on SO many levels.
The moral of the story is: ideally, everyone would say, “you’re vegetarian? cool.” and get on with it. But on the rudeness spectrum, “why are you a vegetarian?” is pretty low.
I had a friend who was vegetarian, and just about everytime he had lunch his collegues were at him, as if him not eating meat was a moral challenge which had to be conquered by smart ass comments day in and day out. Very tiresome even for a bystander.
Anyhow, once we were at a place and he ordered a dish, I don’t remember what it was, I believe it was some kind of sallad. The conversation went like this:
“The sallad, it’s vegetarian?”
“Yes.”
“No meat in it?”
“No. Well, bacon.”
See, I’m NOT a vegetarian, and I don’t see anything but rudeness in that question. We’re not in GD, this isn’t a debate. This is exactly the sort of thing (based on what I witnessed with my husband when he was a veg), that makes them defensive and bitchy.
Is consensual sex within marriage immoral because priests don’t engage in it? Is wearing blue immoral because Tibetan monks wear saffron? Is eating pork immoral for goyim because it’s not eaten by those keeping kosher? No, to all of them.
Becoming a vegetarian for moral reasons is a choice, like becoming a priest, a monk or keeping kosher (the amount of outside influence may vary, but it’s still personal choice.) Just because something is immoral for a person who has chosen to restrict their life in a particular way doesn’t mean they’re passing judgment on you and expect you to restrict your life in that way.
They may, of course. There are militant vegetarians who do think you’re immoral for eating meat and they may let you know about it, loudly. They’re being rude. But assuming that someone is being rude is, itself, being rude.
This is exactly the kind of thing we’re talking about. Why do you automatically and aggressively seek confrontation on this subject? Especially on the boards, where all you have to do is start a thread in Great Debates instead of dragging your defensiveness into this one.
I really deeply hate all this semantics bullshit that has completely taken over something as simple as personal dietary choices. Why care what the words are? How could words possibly cover it anyway? I don’t know how many times I tried to explain that yes, I avoid meat from the meat industry as I don’t feel it’s ethical to support that industry. No, I don’t have any problem eating wild animals or indeed any animals that didn’t suffer to what I believe to be a significant degree just to end up on my plate. Yes, if you kept a happy pig in your garden and then killed it painlessly to serve it, I’d dig in. Yes, I’ll eat a moose or a deer or whatever. Once we’d gotten through what I feel to be a rather simple ethical system, the next question would inevitably follow.
“What is it called, the thing you are?”
It’s such a dumb question, I can barely believe people ask it. Why would it be called anything? Why would someone else have given a name to the exact ethical preferences that I have? I suppose “utilitarian” or “consequentalist” would be the correct answers, but considering my audience, if I’d used those I would have been there for weeks.
I mean, what is it called, what you are? You don’t eat spiders, locusts, pine cones or blue whales. What is that called? What do you mean there’s no word for it?
Oh god, yes. All the fucking time. I even had a sister-in-law who claims to be soooo knowledgeable about diets (claims to have gone macrobiotic for a long while, vegan at another time; funny how I see her a few times a year or more and never saw her eating that way) and yet she made a particular dish with chicken broth while only pointing out beforehand that it had cheese, and oh is that all right for you to eat? Gah. Afterwards she said she had wanted it to be “healthy” and she skimmed the fat off before adding it.
Just makes me wonder how many Jewish people have to deal with someone gulping down a ham sandwich while asking why they think God doesn’t want them to do this too. Probably all of them.
Do you really care about my opinion, kambuckta? Or do you just want to start an argument? I’m guessing the latter, so I think I’d rather not engage in this discussion with you.
And this is how I handle questions like the above.
Actually, probably very few have to put up with this, because decisions based on religious beliefs are generally respected. While I’m sure there are some people who are such colossal assholes that they’d eat a BLT in front of a Jew and comment on its deliciousness, my guess is they’re few and far between. Unlike the sort of colossal asshole who yammers away on how tasty their meat is in front of me or try to sneak meat into my food.
Ruby, you will be pleased to know that if I know well in advance, whatever dietarian restriction I have to accomodate for when I cook, applies to the whole table. No special menus, nobody singled out.
yeah, stupid farmer keeps chasing me with his shotgun.
[Slight hijack]When a callow yoot, I used to ask vegetarians whether they were so for political or health reasons. The most interesting response I got was from a woman who said neither; that when she was growing up, her brother would always make animal sounds while she was eating meat, and so now eating meat squicked her out. She can now eat fish, however, because she took the therapeutic step of catching, killing, and then eating her own fish, and somehow in her mind this eliminated the idea, ingrained by her brother, that the animal she was eating was still alive.[/Slight hijack]
That is very considerate and nice of you. It’s beyond what I would ever ask for or expect. Except for my best friend, all of my friends, family, and boyfriend eat meat, so it doesn’t bother me. My vegetarianism, like my spiritual beliefs, are PERSONAL, so I don’t need to inflict them on other people, as long as they respect that mine are what they are.
It gets tiresome…
Even more tiresome is when people, for some reason, think vegetarianism is funny:
"RunSilent, we are going to Arby's, do you want anything?"
"No, I don't."
"HAHAHAHA!"
"RunSilent, I am making ham sandwiches. Do you want one?"
"No, thank you."
"HAHAHAHA!"
"RunSilent, did you eat a lot of turkey on Thanksgiving"
"No, I didn't."
"HAHAHAHA!"
Good God…
If you are uncomfortable with my vegetarianism, go talk to a therapist.
I find it hard to believe that people can be so rude about something so common. I suppose it makes a difference if this takes place in a part of the world where meat is central to the local diet but still…surely being a veggie is not that much of an issue? (I know it can be an issue because I’ve heard people doing many of the rude things mentioned in the thread. It’s just that I find it hard to believe that they would do it).
I also find it slightly strange that some vegetarians can’t seem to work out what non-vegetarians eat. I am not a vegetarian but I just don’t *get * the way some veggies will anxiously ask if it’s ok that there will not be any meat consumed during the week/weekend/day/hour that I spend with them. I won’t die from lack of meat! Why don’t they understand that non-vegetarians are omnivores and perfectly able to eat carrots and survive?
Too much bizarreness on both sides of the issue.
I’m not a vegetarian, zelie, but sadly, I’ve heard of people actually bitching about meals that didn’t have meat.
Honestly, I don’t get what the big deal is, either, but who knows?
Yeah, my dad for one. I told this story a few years back when it happened. I had to work Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas so I couldn’t get to my parents’ for the holiday. They and my brother decided to come to Madison for a few days instead and asked me to find a restaurant for dinner. I decided to surprise them by cooking. Six or seven dishes, including a tofurkey, homemade cranberry sauce, stuffing, a broccoli casserole, rolls and a pie for desert. A couple days before they called and asked if I’d found someplace for dinner. I said I had and they asked if it was vegetarian, I said it was. My dad got so mad about it that he actually said something like it was selfish of me not to find someplace where everyone could find something to eat and hung up on me.
I was so mad I almost called right back and told them not to bother coming. Instead I waited a couple of days and emailed, explaining (rather tersely) that I planned on cooking, detailed the menu and advised him that those who found themselves unwilling to eat that food could cook and bring meat with them because none would be prepared in my home. There was some collateral talk about saying grace at my table as well but that’s somewhat beside the point. He actually emailed back and was quite reasonable about it and when they arrived a few days later there were even apologies.
Still, the idea that he would think that I would take them someplace where they couldn’t find something to eat (unlike the year before when I’d gone there and they took me to a restaurant with exactly one vegetarian entree, and the next time they came here two years later when I booked a table at a place that had assured me they had a number of options and, again, had one) was just bizarre. It was like he couldn’t grasp the idea that as an omnivore he can eat anywhere.
Next time say “Sure, those jalapeno poppers are delicious! I’ll have some of those!” They’re great. Only thing on the menu at arby’s that I eat because I hate cheese sticks.
How on earth is such a simple question interpreted as aggressive and confrontational? From some of the responses I got, might I suggest that the defensiveness is not mine?
I asked the question because Rubystreak made the claim that she does not eat meat for moral reasons. Now, I might be mistaken in my understanding of the term, but the term ‘moral’ has always packed a helluva lot more weight in its meaning and implications than simple personal choice. It does indeed imply that, if I consider what I am doing to be moral, then those who don’t do it are by sheer definition behaving immorally.
Don’t you see the underlying message in the quote above? It says to me that Rubystreak prefers not to be drawn into discussions about her dietary preferences because to do so **would ** result in her either blatantly or indirectly making judgements about others’ eating habits: in other words, she may not actively proselytise, but she personally feels that they are not acting morally by eating animal products.
And THAT is why I asked the question.
So, may I ask again (if you can all get down off **your **defensive high-horses for a minute or two), Rubystreak (or any other vegetarians out there), do you believe that those who eat meat and/or use other animal products are immoral? I’m not asking whether you get all bolshie on folks who eat meat, I’m not challenging your dietary beliefs, I’m asking you what YOU believe about those who eat meat.
Simple: We’re in In My Humble Opinion, in a thread that is about whether it’s rude to ask people why they stick to the dietary habits they do. You couldn’t leave it at “we don’t eat meat for ethical reasons” which is all that would be on-topic for the thread, you automatically had to transfer it onto yourself. If you wish to have a debate, open a thread in Great Debates.
Sorry, pert peeve…
moral = according to custom (more); normal (as in “according to norm”). It changes with time and location.
By definition, someone who lives in a society where it is “normal” to eat meat, is “moral” by eating meat.
ethical = relating to absolute good and evil. Does not change with time and location.
When people say that they don’t eat meat “for moral reasons”, unless they are hindu what they mean is by “ethical reasons”.
/pet peeve hijack
We’ve had whole threads on this, and I think you’re taking the words’ etymologies too literally to make up definitions that are’t actually used. “Ethics” is a (hopefully) logical system of beliefs by which one determines various morals, or specific rules of how to act within that ethical framework. So “an ethic” is: people have a right to bodily autonomy; one “moral” that derives from that ethic is don’t blow smoke into a non-smoker’s face. For a vegetarian, an ethic might be “Animals have the right to an existence without human intervention”, and a moral derived from that *could *be “Don’t eat animals.”