For the record, I never have and never would try to do anything like this. I just don’t want to be harrangued while I’m eating my chili dog.
They TELL me they think my way is evil and bad. They tell me how terrible my steak smells, or that I’ll get cancer from eating red meat. Do vegetarians get toasters if they can be the most melodramatically repulsed by meat? That’s the act that’s the most irritating to me. If they leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone. Actually, I’ll probably leave them alone regardless, but let’s not pretend that evangelical vegetarianism doesn’t exist or isn’t obnoxious. If they give the quiet veggies a bad name, blame them, not irritated meat eaters.
Deal. I never utter a peep whenever anyone I’m dining with chows down on any form of meat. Knock yourself out, man. I wish that respect went both ways.
And so the “debate” devolves into traded accusations of half-remembered insults from years ago. “I remember this vegetarian who was totally a dick to me once!” “No, this meat-eater was a real jackoff to me!” At least when we do this in the left-vs-right fights, people can actually point to recorded examples of the other side being pricks.
In any case, Curtis Lemay has, sadly, not returned. If he is interested in debating vegetarianism, perhaps he will look at the vegetarians posting in this thread, make a click up to “Great Debates”, and harness the awesome power of “Start a New Thread”. If it’s engaging debate he’s looking for, he can have it without poking the people over at veggieboards.
Right. We all know what you were attempting to do. And count yourself lucky, you don’t have the intellect to be a rhetorical footsoldier for your side. You would have only humiliated yourself.
To the people (meat eaters and vegetarians) who are harassed by the “other side” for their meal choices: Get better friends
My group of friends has a mix, and no one harasses anyone on their dietary choices.
Unless you guys mean that you are just ordering a meal at a restaurant and some random strangers tell you that you are weird/evil. In that case: Move to a better place.
And many vegetarians just don’t want to be harangued while they’re eating their meals. In short, it’s really nobody else’s business on what cuisine one subsists. And that’s pretty much the point of the board the OP was trying to harass.
Polerius: My friends aren’t the problem, nor are random strangers.
All the shit I take comes from my co-workers and relatives. One is occasionally forced to dine with either group (or chooses to for myriad reasons) and, so, when you do that, that’s when you have to put up with this shit.
There’s one secretary at work who will appear in the conference room (which my co-workers use as a lunch room; whole other rant, I despise the practice) poke her head over your shoulder and jam her nose about 3 inches above your plate and announce loudly to the room, “I don’t know what you got, but it sure smells good.”
Zilla, grumbling to self: Get your fucking nose germs out of my food, bitch. I don’t know what compels my co-workers to comment on and inspect each other’s lunches, but it happens all the time.
My family members are full of suggestions should I ever feel compelled to reform myself of my healthy diet. “Why don’t you eat just a little bit, so it doesn’t make you sick? Then you can go back any time you want to.” (Ummm… because I don’t want to go back and sometimes even a little bit will make me sick.) “Oh, I just put a little fat in it for flavor, you can still eat it, right?” (Ummm, you get flavor from cooking with bones, not from adding fat. You just made the entire meal inedible for me, thanks.) “Ooooooh, I don’t know what to make for you!” (Ummmm, remember when you used to make mac n cheese, or spaghetti with marinara sauce, or pizza? Just make that only leave off the meat. It’s not rocket science. I eat everything I used to eat, except for the land animals.)
However, you do bring up a good suggestion. I think I will divorce my family and getting a better one. Fuck my current family, fucking carnivorous freaks. And while I’m at it, I think I’ll quit my job and next time I interview, I’ll ask the interviewer “How does your current staff handle vegetarians? Will I be subject to self-righteous sanctimonious bullshit every time I join a co-worker for lunch here?” That oughta get me ahead in life.
None of my friends ever hassles me about my vegetarianism, and the vast majority of my friends are very happy meat-eaters. None of them make snide comments about hypocrisy or fraudulent lifestyles or sanctimony. A few have, when they find out i’m a vegetarian, asked me how long i’ve been a vegetarian for, and what my reasons were for doing it, but they all seem to be asking out of simlpe curiosity, and none has ever tried to convince me that my reasons were bad or that i should return to eating meat.
The place where i’ve seen the most intolerance and stupidity regarding vegetarianism is this very board, actually. And the whole debate generally progresses in a predictable arc: Some will start a thread complaining about how intolerant/judgmental/abusive vegetarians are; a bunch of vegetarians will enter saying that they don’t judge other people’s dietary choices and that militant vegetarians are assholes; and then a whole bunch of meat eaters will chime in talking about how vegetarianism is stupid and fraudulent and hypocritical and they should just eat a burger once in a while.
For vegetarians who say that they are not judgmental: Sure, you may not say anything to your meat-eating friends (which is great), but at the end of the day, if you are a vegetarian for ethical reasons (you believe we shouldn’t kill animals to eat them), then it is only logical to infer that people who do eat meat are acting unethically in this ethic system.
It’s like when slavery was around. Some people did not have slaves due to ethical reasons. Some non-slave owners were very vocal about their opposition to slavery, but some may have been quiet about it. Nevertheless, even for the ones who did not want to comment or impose their decision to have no slaves on others, it is a pretty solid conclusion that within the ethic system of the non-slave-owners, the slave owners were in the wrong.
Imagine a slave owner inviting a non slave owner for tea. A slave brings over tea and crumpets.
The slave owner asks the guest: “Slaves, they’re so lazy. How do you deal with them?”
Guest: “I don’t have any slaves”
Slave owner: “Why not?”
Guest: “I believe it is unethical to have humans as slaves”
Even if the guest adds “But it’s my choice. I’m not imposing any moral judgment on anyone else who may want to own slaves”, I don’t think it works. Even if the guest is not making the conscious decision to judge the slave owner, it follows from his ethical standards that the slave owner is being unethical.
Similarly, even if vegetarians (who do it for ethical reasons) are not making the conscious decision to judge meat eaters, it follows from these ethical standards (“should not kill animals for their meat”) that the meat eaters are being unethical.
I think it is this conclusion that some meat eaters realize, even if the vegetarian in their group has not chided them directly, and makes them somewhat uneasy, and which then causes some assholes to attack the vegetarian for his choice.
There’s a bit of an asymmetry in this instance, compared to religion, in that generally one doesn’t decide to become a meatasaur, but becoming a veggiesaur is generally a personal decision arrived at after a period of personal debate. Religious arguments, generally, compose of two people who have come to their own decisions upon personal debate, so two people can feel abliged to argue with eachother and judge each other’s seemingly mistaken conclusions.
But since vegetarianism-vs-not is (sorry if this is insulting) basically, normal people vs people who decided to not be normal, there’s a lack of balance there. Veggies look at their personal decision to break from the norm and (usually) feel, if not superior, more enlightened than their meaty brethren who have not seen the light; it’s like a christian in a world where everybody is generally non-religious. Non-veggies, on the other hand, see the veggies as people who have broken from the pack for their own reasons and seem to be on a crusade; they’re like the majority non-believers in the world where there are few christians, they generally think that decision is weird, try not to think about it, but wish the ones within 10 feet of them wouldn’t seem so judgemental of the fact that they don’t worship and invisible space monster.
A balance could be found if the vegetarians realize that they have broken from the norm, which is a norm for one reason or another (good or bad), and they can’t expect people to understand or embrace their choice, and trying to convince other people that their own choice is better than yours is only going to piss people off. Like any minority, if you want to be tolerated by the majority you have to make an effort not to play into their established stereotypes.
In other news, re: the Indian/Thai food, I agree with this. American’s food culture mostly descends from the french style, and is largely based around a “meat + side dish” template. Pretty much every other culture of food treats meat more like an ingredient component of a dish, and so typically have better vegetarian options. When my brother and his wife come to town, we spend a lot of time at a Lebanese restaurant around here that they both love. Problem is, I can’t seem to eat anything at a Lebanese place without having major potty problems later. I don’t know what it is, but some spice that they use commonly must not agree with my insides at all.
Better luck is found in Thai and Chinese places. Were I a vegetarian, I’d probably eat mostly Thai food. Of anyone, the Thai places seem to be the only ones who know how to address tofu to make it not taste like chewy socks.
What I say to anyone who bothers to ask is that I think the eating of meat is by no means a simple issue, and that good and decent people can disagree on this point. If a meat-eater is so thin-skinned that the mere fact of my making a different choice than he makes him feel judged, then I’m not sure that’s my fault.
Agreed. I’m not a vegetarian but I thought that the comment in question was very rude. So was the whole, “No one’s impressed” line. To quote Yukon Cornelius, “You eat what YOU like, and I’ll eat what I like!”
I realize that I have “broken from the norm”. I’ve been doing this for 18 years, and believe me, I understand that I am not in the “norm”. I do not expect people to embrace my choice. What I would be happy with is being left the fuck alone about it. I was cruising along just fine yesterday, enjoying my day of veggies, soup, and so on, when suddenly a bunch of allegedly smart people in the community I’m a member of started telling me that I’m a jerk, a fraud, and a weirdo. The onus of “striking a balance” is not entirely on the side of the vegetarians. It also requires the meat-eaters saying, “Hey, live and let live.”
If you think it’s unethical for YOU to eat meat, then you think it’s unethical for everybody else to eat meat. That doesn’t mean that meat eaters should get their backs up about it, but at least cop to the logic that if you think it’s unethical, you think it’s unethical for everyone.
But this applies to so many things that it’s a completely pointless argument.
You could say the same about religious people and their attitude towards atheists. Or, for that matter, people of one religion and their attitude towards people of other religions.
You could say the same about liberals and conservatives, or Democrats and Republicans.
You could say the same things about Prius drivers and Hummer drivers.
You fact that Person A is made uncomfortable by the simple fact of Person B’s ethical choices is not a license for Person A to act like an aggressive asshole. If Person B gets up in Person A’s face and starts accusing him of being unethical, that deserves a response. But if Person B simply does what they do, with no overt moralizing or attempts to proselytize, then Person A just needs to get the fuck over it.
I love how the whole tone of your “argument” is that the cause of all the problems is vegetarians feeling superior to everyone, and judging everyone, and being on a “crusade.” I’m amazed at how easily you get inside the heads of people you’ve never met.
Let me say it again, slowly, so morons like you can grasp the concept: I don’t feel superior to anyone because of my vegetarianism. I don’t care if you eat meat. I’m not judging you for eating meat. I’m only judging you, as an individual, for being stupid. Because you clearly are.
And yet neither you, nor anyone else, has shown that anything more than a tiny minority of vegetarians try to “convince other people that their own choice is better than yours.” In fact, if this thread is any indication, it’s precisely incorrect, and it’s meat eaters who are just as prone, if not more so, to trying to convince vegetarians that their choice is wrong.
I also love how you put “understand and embrace” together, as if they were the same thing. I’ve made very clear, and have dozens of other people in this thread, that i don’t want or expect other people to embrace my choice. Eat all the meat you want. I DON’T CARE!
As for understanding it, all i ask is the most basic level of understanding, somewhere along the lines of, “II don’t agree with your reasoning, i will continue to eat meat, but i respect your decision not to and i won’t try to convince you that you’re a stupid poser for being a vegetarian.” That’s it. Is that really so unreasonable? Is that really such a huge burden for the poor, downtrodden meat-eaters of America to suffer?
The “balance” you are allegedly seeking can only be reached, in your puny mind, if vegetarians just shut the fuck up and don’t even talk about their diet at all, or, better yet, just start eating meat like “normal” people.
While I believe a meatless life is more ethical and sustainable, I think it is a difficult issue, and people who disagree with me can still be good, decent, and ethical people. I’m not sre how to make that sentiment clearer.
If you think I’m a fraud and a hypocrite, why do you give a fuck what my moral judgement of you is?
