Absolutely true. As best I can tell, these people feel that vegetarians are judging them and condemning them just by virtue of having a different diet. There are judgmental and self-righteous vegetarians out there, and PETA sucks, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a vegetarian go off an a diatribe about vegetarianism without being asked. Diogenes the Cynic, on the other hand, regularly goes off on how illogical vegetarianism is. I don’t judge other people for what they eat and my being a vegetarian has nothing to do with anybody else. It’s too bad people get so hypersensitive on this issue.
Actually, the food supply for vegetarians has changed drastically in the time I’ve been vegetarian (14 years, though the last two I’ve technically been pescetarian). Perhaps it might be surprising to you, but we can get Indian food here, too. 
Indian food is probably my favorite cuisine since being vegetarian doesn’t restrict you from full-flavor kick-ass dishes.
I despise food without flavor and there’s simply no reason to eat that way. Most of the faux meat is actually sold to people who aren’t vegetarian, anyway – there’s droves of it here in the Midwest selling to people who are on diets (believe me, vegetarianism is not common here). Even then, meat substitutes have changed drastically. Fewer and fewer people are abusing tofu to be in places where it simply doesn’t belong and doesn’t taste good because there are much better options. Why eat a square of tofu when you can have a spicy black bean burger? I get them by the metric assload over at Costco.
For whatever reason, people feel that they can be utter douches to vegetarians. I have no doubt that some vegetarians (e.g. PETA members) probably deserve it, but the rest of us just want to be left the hell alone. I don’t cry about your steak, there is no reason to move it around the plate going “Mooo!” and looking amusedly in my direction when the only reason you even know I’m vegetarian is because you drilled me about why I’d ordered my salad. I don’t understand why it’s ok to ask me repeated, stupid questions about my choices (how can you not eat baaaacon? how can you not eat steaaaaaak? they are delicioussssssssss. God said we’re supposed to eat animals so why don’t you?), but people get all defensive if I question them (who says God exists?).
I’m sure the forum owners basically want to avoid the same infantile shenanigans that happen over and over on the Internet. If I ran a forum for furries or any other group that tends to be mocked by mainline Internet culture then I’d have such a rule, too. If they wanted to debate, they’d put in a place for it. But, ultimately, vegetarians get tired of having to constantly justify themselves.
What if the guy arguing the vegan side was Cornell ecologist David Pimentel, who has written at length about how meat production in the US exacerbates world hunger? Or, what if the vegan side was represented by author Jeremy Rifken who notes that during the 1984 Ethiopian famine, Ethiopia was actually exporting grain to Europe for consumption by livestock? Or, maybe the guy arguing the vegan side could be the re-animated corpse of Harry Truman, who urged Americans in 1947 to reduce meat consumption in order to save grain, as part of a plan to help feed “starving Europe”? Would that amuse you?
Vegetarian food, by the way, can be exellent. But what do I know, I’m just an intolerant jerk who goes around telling meat eaters that they’re stupid and only eat meat as a fashion statement. I mean, nothing pleases me more than telling somebody that his hamburger is disgusting and so non-nutiritious that it reduces his ability to reason.
I always suspected I done be brought up poorly. Maybe the lack of indoor plumbing had something to do with it.
This is so true. One does get so fucking tired of the “Mmmm! How could you NOT eat this delicious, juicy steak?” and the whole argument about my diet being unnatural, my food disgusting, etc. I wonder how many times meat eaters have been subjected to similar unpleasantness from a vegetarian or vegan. I feel 100% confident that, in my almost 20 years of vegetarianism, it’s happened to me more often than it’s happened to them. Yet I still never comment on other people’s dietary choices, including my own husband’s, which are avidly carnivorous.
Ultimately, why do I have to justify it at all? My reasons could be totally idiotic, woo-woo nonsense, but as long as I’m not pushing them on anyone, no one should care or need to comment. The mere fact of my vegetarianism is does not make it an automatically open topic for debate, as some folks seem to think. If people want a place where they can talk about food without having to get into a debate or argument, I don’t blame them, any more than I would blame a hunting/fishing/trapping message board for its decision to ban a vegan who wanted to debate them about their practices. People have a right to talk about common issues in peace. The need to “debate” is really a need to tear down and belittle in disguise, I strongly suspect.
Seriously?
You don’t see how saying, “Your food sucks, your lifestyle is fraudulent, you don’t enjoy your life, you’re always hungry, and you’re doing this as a fashion statement” is insulting? Stop playing dense, you’re smarter than that.
Cite?
It’s NOT insulting. It’s just personal observations from my own experience. The food DOES suck. Sorry. I WAS always hungry. I didn’t say EVERYBODY was doing it as a fashion statement, I said MANY people do, which is true. It IS fraudulent, or at least futile, on an ethical level.
If you’re going to eat a wierd, unnatural diet, don’t get all bent out of shape when people think you’re wierd.
I think what really bugs you guys is me telling you that no one thinks you’re special just because you deprive yourselves of meat. If you’re going to tell me that sanctimonious, pretentious, attention whoring vegetarians don’t exist, then you guys are the ones who are being disingenuous. I don’t know how many sermons I’ve had to listen to about why “meat is Satan,” or regaled with exciting stories about how “I can’t stand the smell of meat.”
I’ve never tried to stop one vegetarian from eating whatever gerbil food they wanted, but I’ve been assailed many times about eating meat.
How so?
Because growing vegetables still kills animals.
So, if I recognize a problem or an injustice, and I wish to take action against that problem, I can only take action which completely eliminates the problem on its own, or else I am being a fraud? If, for example, I think that consumption of gasoline is an ethical problem, but I am unable to completely eliminate gasoline consumption from my life, it is ethically fraudulent for me to buy an efficient car? After all, I’m still buring gas. Might as well go for the Hummer, right?
You don’t like Indian food, or Chinese, or Thai, or Mexican, or Italian? All of these cuisines can easily be made vegetarian. I think you’re experiencing confirmation bias.
More confirmation bias. You don’t have a cite for this, I’m sure, just your opinion, so you can paint vegetarians in a certain way that makes it easier to dismiss them.
I’d like you to explain this, mostly because I suspect you have little idea of WHY people who do it for ethical reasons are doing it. You’ve composed your own reason, attributed it to vegetarians, and then decided it was fraudulent, very likely.
What’s weird and unnatural about it? My health is perfectly fine, so my diet must be OK. It’s just different from yours, and of course, here you go again with the judgments. Yes, “weird” (note the spelling) and “unnatural” are judgments, not arguments based in fact.
Who asked anyone to think anyone was special? Who asked your opinion at all? You offered it, unsolicited. No one cares what you think, but it is rude to just drop a bunch of insulting judgments and then expect no one to react to them, esp. when they’re based on bullshit.
Not as many times as I’ve heard the same line of crap you’re espousing, about how gross my food is, how my ethics are fraudulent, how I’m weird and unnatural, etc., not to mention good old fashioned taunting. I’ve heard it a million times, and that barely seems like hyperbole. So obviously meat eaters are just as guilty of this santimonious, pretentious, disingenuous behavior as vegetarians. Sadly, you outnumber us by a wide margin, so you usually get to dominate the discussion, here and elsewhere. I don’t engage in debates about my diet anymore because it gets too stupid and too ugly. You, despite your claims of experience with these conversations, still wish to do so, which makes me doubt you’ve reached the fatigue level yet. Or you have a bone to pick, pardon the pun, and enjoy starting arguments about it, which makes you kind of a jerk.
As wierdaaron said, take your victim politics elsewhere. You’ve never tried to stop anyone, but you have, in this very post, being insulting, belittling, and dismissive, so maybe the assailing started with you, but you only remember what came after that.
Very well.
So I think I’ve now cited something you’ve already expressed in the thread we’re posting in: you don’t think much of vegetarianism. That’s your prerogative, I’m just pointing out you’re rather vocal about it.
This is a distortion. Farming crops kills far fewer animals, although of course it does kill animals. But we farm crops to feed meat animals too – something like 70% (iirc) of farmed cropland goes to feed animals. So stopping animal agriculture would dramatically decrease farmed acreage and reduce the concomitant killing further.
Those truths aside, I don’t get the argument that “if farming crops kills any animals you might as well give up trying to reduce killing.”
Do the cops throw up their hands and stop trying because some crimes aren’t solved? Do you stop protecting your children because some children get harmed? Does the inevitability of car accidents mean we should take off our seat belts, disable our air bags, and stop pursuing drunk drivers? Does the fact that some people get struck by lightning mean we should stop insulating and just string bare electrical wire everywhere?
No. It’s an imperfect world. Vegans are not deluded into thinking they stop all killing in the world, or even that they stop all killing that supports them directly. they are reducing the killing as much as is feasible. Giving up meat is not as hard as you think, and life without dead corpses in one’s mouth is not as joyless as you depict.
To the OP: Sometimes boards like that are used to strategize. Would you like to open up the inner workings of Republican strategy to DNC CHair Tim Kaine? Give him a call, I’m sure he’d like to debate your guys and hear or read all they’re planning. You’re not an intolerant bastard, are you?
Then you weren’t doing it right.
I’ve been veggie for ten years and I’ve never run around constantly hungry. Do you not understand enough about nutrition or cooking to be able to come up with a nice protein meal that’s filling, low-fat, and healthy? Then the problem is you, not vegetarians.
If I want to eat sucky food and walk around hungry all day, what business is it of yours?
Personally, I take the most issue with two things:
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People wondering if I’m hungry all the time. Not with my mad cooking skillz and a properly balanced diet. There’s no reason to be hungry constantly.
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People either slipping chicken stock into the soup or trying to slip me some animal fat food product, thinking I won’t know the difference. First, I can smell the fat before I put the food in my mouth. Second, I might not know. As I’m eating. But about a half hour later, when the explosive diarrhea starts… then I know some carnivorous asshat has slipped me animal fat for kicks and giggles because they think the explosive diarrhea is “all in my head.” And then they laugh at me because they fed me something that made me sick. :mad: I eat with people like that only once.
Finally, the title of this thread is very misleading. The OP isn’t pitting vegetarians; he(?) is pitting the administrators of a veggie board who followed their own policy. :rolleyes: Whatever.
If he hadn’t done that he wouldn’t be getting this much attention, now would he? 
mhendo, Rubystreak, and Marley23 all make excellent points about what I’ve seen since I started dating my SO, with whom I now live. He’s vegetarian (has been since about ‘88), I am not, and we get along fine. I’ve become more vegetarian since cooking one meal is easier than cooking two, but if I want to chow down on a big ol’ steak, he never says a single word to me. Or to anyone else unprompted. If asked, he’ll talk about why he’s a vegetarian (moral/philosophical issues), but otherwise, never brings it up, never complains about going out, always manages to find something to eat on any menu without bitching.
And the amount of vitriol his personal choice gets him, from “friends,” acquaintances, and strangers alike, is ASTONISHING to me. He’s accused of hypocrisy because he isn’t fully vegan, he’s accused of hypocrisy because “killing plants is just as bad as killing animals,” he’s asked if he’s always hungry or doesn’t he miss dead animal flesh…it’s weird to watch normally rational people lose their frigging minds when he exercises his food choices with no comment.
It’s like his choice of vegetarianism (like my choice to never have children) is a personal insult to people who’ve chosen differently.
That’s what a lot (and probably all) of these kinds of debates boil down to, no matter how much people try to claim there are other reasons. That kind of person thinks that if you choose to do something differently from them, that means you think their way is wrong, bad, and no way for a decent person to behave. After all, that’s what they think about people who make different choices from them. So they launch what, in their addled minds, is a preemptive strike.
It sometimes does work the other way as well though. Nobody’s wrong here.
The thing is some PEOPLE are fucking arseholes no matter what they eat. I’ve seen veggies get tonnes of shit from people because of what they were eating and they were just sitting there eating/ordering food.
I’ve also seen and had veggies go off on a self aggrandising over the top ‘I’m better than you’ rant just because of what people were eating/ordering.
Some people just love themselves and their opinions a little too much and like to belittle/‘educate’ others. This is true about almost all lifestyle choices and many other facets of our lives.
Anybody that says that either veggie or meat eating areseholes don’t exist are most likely part of the arsehole group themselves.
As to the OP, I don’t think this has been brought up yet but on the front page of that site it says
Etc.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
My own experience is that vegetarians (and worse yet, vegans) are far more prideful, pompous, and judgmental about eating habits than people who eat a diet that our bodies evolved to digest.
DtC did mention that Americans should probably eat less meat than they do, to which I’ll add that meat could also be processed more humanely and with greater attention to environmental impact, a statement with which I’m sure he would agree. It’s absurd to use the fact the some of our industrial food processing is unhealthy and destructive as a justification for eliminating a component of our diets, because, as DtC points out, that exact argument applies also to our industrial production of vegetables.
I’m not at all convinced that a beef food lot (for example) is that much worse than a pervasive sea of corn (for example: take your pick, rice, wheat, lentils, whatever) which, because of the overwhelmingly habitat-destructive nature of monoculture-based farming, eliminates habitats for literally scores of animals and other kinds of plants.