People hating on vegetarians

The Internet.

For example, think of what happens to the guy who doesn't drink alcohol when he goes to a party. Sometimes he get shit for it from the drunks. Sober people make drunks uneasy because they reject what the rest of the group is doing. While the sober person may not believe alcohol is bad, his actions give the rest of the partygoers a different impression that they may react poorly to.

It's to be expected. Your vegetarianism will somtimes make others uneasy. Sometimes they will interpret your refusal to eat meat as a criticism of their own beliefs. Just don't be the first to talk about it and people will get it that you're not some condescending PETA supporter.

I agree that 'meat pride' people are terribly annoying as well. But, admit it, man, vegetarians are the Urkels of modern dining-out civilization.

Beyond that, though, honestly, and all kidding aside, I think it's just one of those things where people hate on what they don't understand. Even I get annoyed when my wife orders a Whopper without meat at Burger King and the troglodyte behind the counter repeats incredulously "no MEAT?" It's like, fuck you asshole. Go deep fry your GED.

The lessons we learned early on are appplicable here - just ignore them dude. Whining just makes you an easier target.

It's the same with attractive female virgins. All other females hate them.

xpost: I mean the coffee thing not the Zimmerman Bomber

2.) When you pop up among strangers and start talking about a topic like this one, no matter how much you say it's just an offhand question, people are going to get defensive. I mean, c'mon -- you've surely seen enough of the world to know that most people who approach strangers to discuss things like this are usually angling to prosyletize them or sell them something.

3.) E.g., how would you respond to this?

So recently my (non-Scientologist) partner started some college work, and sshe chose the topic Scientologists and Scientology...as I am a Scientologist she has gotten quite an insight into my beliefs and this was somewhat helpful.

She posted a topic on a few website forums, which was simply a questionnaire for Scientologists to fill in about why they have made their choices, and how, or what could make them change their minds. Just for research.

I responded, and unfortunately all we have recieved from people is abuse. People assuming she too is a Scientologist, and actual hatred towards us for this. I tried explaining that I am just a person who's found contentment by following the teachings of the great L Ron Hubbard. I also explained about the hopelessness and lack of purpose that can come from modern life without those teachings. Never ever have I told people they too should turn into Scientologists, or tried to change the world!

I'll get me coat.

For example, think of what happens to the guy who doesn't drink alcohol when he goes to a party. Sometimes he get shit for it from the drunks. Sober people make drunks uneasy because they reject what the rest of the group is doing. While the sober person may not believe alcohol is bad, his actions give the rest of the partygoers a different impression that they may react poorly to.

happens. Get better friends, dude!

Who said they were my friends?

This is true, but a lot of our fellow vegetarians/vegans are condescending assholes.

I've known some vegetarians like that

xpost yes, well that is the point I'm making, I suppose, MW.

Fortunately most of the non-drinkers and vegetarians I know are non-judgmental about others' consumption.

but seriously, you do realize that compared to vegetarians, carnivores are far, far more likely to act like complete assholes at the dinner table?

However, I do still crash parties every now and then.

I mean, the only problem I've ever had either way is like trying to make sure a restaurant or event has both options available for people, which isn't usually a huge hassle. I've never actually been in the presence of someone, vegetarian or meat-eating, who ridiculed what anyone else at the table was eating or took political stances during the meal or anything. The closest was maybe my grandmother giving me a bit of chiding because I was a vegetarian but then she decided it was funny and left it be. I'm actually mesmerized by the polarization here. I understand it like in terms of actual discussions ie online or debates or school projects--but DURING DINNER? Social occasions? What are y'all smoking?

whoa, whoa, WHOA! This is the most nonsensical (and obviously unprovable) thing I've ever seen on ILE.

-- jhoshea (totalwizar...), January 26th, 2007.

OTM.

Again, it isn't always friends. I work in a professional setting, and so have dinner/lunch with plenty of people who I wouldn't otherwise hang out with. Beyond that, I live in the general proximity of Berkeley, which is an epicenter for annoying, self-righteous vegetarians. If you leave the house with any regularity, they are unavoidable.

What is wrong with this, exactly? If you don't eat meat, why is it annoying to make sure there isn't meat in your food?

Also, WTF is that about carnivores being assholes at dinner???

It's a bit high-maintenance maybe. It just doesn't seem like that big a deal to me if a salad dressing contains fish sauce (as it does at the restaurant where I work) if you're not allergic.

these two things otm. nothing else really needs to be read by me.

How Comic Book Guy is that?

What if, for example, you hated beets, and you received a dish that was filled with beets? Would you eat it just because you're not allergic to it?

Not always, but sometimes.

I totally agree with this. If you don't like how the restaurant cooks the food, go to another restaurant.

Per the fish sauce thing, I would never ask someone to make something without fish sauce, but I would gravitate to a dish that naturally doesn't have it. When you start fiddling with chef recipes, that's when you turn from a regular vegetarian to an asshole, imo.

Waiting for other people to decide on something and order, already -- is excruciating. But that's another thread.

xpost - But Thai food is tricky, then, poly. I know because eating Thai food with my wife is always an ordeal. "Fish sauce." And the language barrier just makes it more comical / awful. "Fish sauce, yes!" the waiter nods enthusiastically when my wife asks, almost as if, "There wasn't any in this soup before, but we can add a cup of it if you want!"

Thai restaurants around here are a little more vegetarian-friendly, so I don't have this problem much. But if I do, I usually just eat it and suffer the stomach wrath that inevitably follows.

I am home, unless you think I should move to Eureka or something.

HOW DOES VEGETARIANS TIP?

I don't think it's because they're trying to convert or convince you, though -- I think it's because they've put a lot of time, energy, and self-definition into the issue, and don't get a lot of chances to show that stuff to the world. Dinner with friends becomes the only place where they can really let out all the stuff they've been thinking about, so I can understand the desire. And hell, being in the minority positions, I'm sure a lot of vegetarians are used to other people acting all amazed at their food, and pressing them with questions about it.

(Also, I'll admit that one of the reasons lots of meat-eaters don't like having the issue raised is that they really don't have compelling arguments for why meat-eating is okay, or for why it's okay not to care about not having compelling arguments -- we haven't necessarily spent lots of time thinking about our actions, true. Still, nobody wants to have to do that work on social occasions, and it's generally considered due -- with any issue -- to randomly press people on them when they don't want to be pressed.)

Oh well, I abide it because the poor thing puts up with much, much, much more from me. I'm a holy terror to live with, you bet your buttons.

does it make a difference if they're a virgin or not?

I WIN!

The most annoying thing about the most annoying vegans/vegetarians I know is that they are self-obsessed about their food and their bodies - going out to eat with them all they want to talk about is where they can eat, what they can eat, why that place/item on the menu isn't cool for them, etc. Its just boring.

That was my dad's thinking the time he decided to sneak chicken stock into some dish he was making for me. He was very incorrect.

OTM

"They'll watch you eating a steak like they're watching a nature show, or they'll just casually express amazement over your meal -- "wow, that's so much meat."

OTM x100

I DIDN'T EVOLVE GRINDING MOLAR TEETH FOR BROCCOLI, MAN!

That cherry pepper -- a VEGETABLE -- was 100x grosser. Chomp, spurt!

OR VICE VERSA

It's more likely than you think!

I've been vegetarian for a little over eight years (actually, I just started eating fish last year) and I have to say I've *rarely* encountered any hatred about it. Although I have to say, Roger's comment about vegetarians being annoying doesn't really square with my experience. Occasionally, I'll ask a server if a soup is made with a meat stock, but it's pretty easy to tell what stuff is probably veggie-friendly and which isn't. Of course, there are some self-righteous vegetarians, but I'd wager that the vast majority aren't like that.

But y'know what? Vegetarians not nearly as annoying as the meat-eaters who complain about 'em, after all. I'm married to a part-time vegan -- she happily set aside her "dietary beliefs" when confronted with Scottish haggis earlier this month -- and most definitely the greatest amount of ear-pain I've had over the issue has come from folks who feel insecure about their own meaty habits. I don't ask about spatulas at restaraunts, and if I suspect there's fish sauce in the pad thai, I order something else without bitching about it. All the vegetarians I've known in my life -- quite a few, as a matter of fact -- have been no more obnoxious than that at meals or whenever the issue comes up.

Although the meat-eaters' snark has gone down quite a bit since I moved to California (which, it turns out, likes meat every bit as much as Wisconsin), nowadays I'm more apt to dish it back in kind. If you give me flack about not eating meat, I'll be more than happy to tell you about factory farms, obesity, and colon cancer. Leave me be, and I'll do the same: Fundamentally, I don't give a shit what anyone else eats until they decide that I'm an easy target for their obnoxiousness.

Ally is kind of OTM here; most of the people being described here are dicks regardless of what they eat.

shakey mo -- no duh

Also: The US is about 1000x more vegetarian-friendly than China, which surprised me when I visited last year. I thought that since Chinese restaraunts are so vegetarian-friendly in the US, they'd be even more so in China. Not so.

Course then there are just ignorant narrow-minded people who have never had to contend with a different idea about anything in their lives.

Right, but not every vegetarian chooses to do so for moral/ethical reasons.

(Also they never get it when I do bad observational comedy about how fake meat products are just a capitulation go the meat-eating hegemony, and vegans will never get anywhere if they set up their cuisine as a constrained imitation of the mainstream.)

xpost -- the vegetarians I've seen get particularly poky at dinner are usually coming from the ethical direction, though (or at least the ethical end of the environmental/political direction). And I don't think it's a matter of wilting under the hot lights of moral uncertainty -- just that when someone keeps raising the point that you're eating meat, you begin to feel like they're asking for a response, explanation, or justification, and sometimes you just don't feel like being asked for one.

no, i think it's a fair statement. it's mostly a result of vegetarians being a minority (about 3-6% of the population in the US) and eating meat being the status quo for all of human history. carnivores can get away with a lot more vegetarian-bashing at the dinner table than vegetarians can carnivore-bashing, and there's a hell of lot more of them.

but then again, i didnt become a vege for moral or ethical reasons. i just feel healthier when i dont eat meat, i hate handling raw meat and i find that i dont have to exercise as much and i havent gained weight since becoming a vegetarian.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/100/261204346_e4e98565d3_b.jpg

Oh god, that's bullshit and all of the comparisons to Scientologists and alcoholics are off base, too. To the obnoxious public, being a vegetarian isn't like either of these things. Look, I have a coworker who's allergic to poultry, some vegetables, and some seafood. The poor guy has to pick most of the shit off of a roast beef sandwich and can't eat chicken or shrimp. I have another friend who's just a picky eater -- does he get any shit from waiters because he likes to live off pizza and chicken nuggets? No.

If someone tries to shove their moralizing about vegetarianism in your face, then be pissy about it. Otherwise, making assumptions about a vegetarian or vegan's motivations is bullshit.

Even if we take the extreme position that there's a totally unbridgeable gap between human consciousness and animal brain function (humans have souls while animals are just mindless automatons), the behavior of birds and mammals is often human-like enough to warrant the belief that our cavalier meat-eating attitudes towards their life and death can be evidence of a pathology, much the same way the defacement of eyes in an ad or the torching of a doll can be. What makes meat-eating disturbing, then, isn't that an end-in-itself has been destroyed but that the animal's destruction serves as some kind of echo, however faint, for human-on-human cruelty. So it's possible to say that harming animals is a bad thing without necessarily having to grant them any kind of metaphysical status or ethical responsibility beyond whatever you'd give rocks or trees.

I just don't understand the "no meat, not even a trace, may enter my body" version of veganism, unless you can actually taste the trace and it grosses you out. Even if "freganism" is not strict enough for you, it's hard to see what goal you're achieving, beyond a spiritual/supersitious one, by seeking this sort of purity.

Yet I'm not dreaming. I look into your eyes, into your wife's, into the children's, and I see only kindness, human kindness. Calm down, I tell myself, you are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is life. Everyone else comes to terms with it, why can't you? Why can't you?

Another of the more devastating forces behind deforestation is cattle grazing. With the international growth of fast food chains this seems to be an evident factor in the clearing of trees today. Large corporations looking to buy beef for hamburger and even pet food seek cheap prices and are finding them with the growth of cattle grazing (Heller 3). In the Amazon region of South America alone there are 100,000 beef ranchers (Heller 3). As the burger giants of industrialized society are making high demands for more beef, more forests are being torn down. Statistics from less than a decade ago, 1989, indicate that 15,000 km squared of forests are used expressly for the purpose of cattle grazing (Myers 32). Once the trees are gone the land is often overgrazed. In some places the government wants this to happen. Cattle grazing is big profit that can't be turned down.

That's not enough for you?

Said far upthread by nabisco. Sadly bass-ackwards.

Meat is edible. People eat edible things. Being edible is the very definition of "what's okay to eat". Things that are not okay to eat, like various toadstools and berries, are not okay because they are poisonous. Meat, however much it may disgust some poor souls, is not toxic, any more than are brussels sprouts, mushrooms, or tomatos, all of which foods disgust certain other poor souls, who also make wry faces if you offer them some of these to eat.

De gustibus non disputandum est.

So serve up some cocker spaniel at your next 4th of July BBQ and let us know how it works out.

Why does this make me laugh?

People eat *ALL KINDS* of things. That may by strict definition make them edible, but then again, I saw this BBC show once where this big tough dude ate a railroad car.

"Why does this make me laugh?"

Because it's a tautology?

Why do people keep biting* when this topic comes up?

*on tofu, if you must.

However, if you would like to eat some, you will not hear me bitching, no, nor even moaning about your unsuitability as a human-type person. I will acquiese in your choice and still find you ethically acceptable (upon the understanding that the spaniel in question is legitimately your own spaniel and it was butchered in a reasonable humane manner).

The legality of your appetite I am not qualified to comment upon, as I have not a clue what cockamamie laws you must live under. In Thailand, for example, such laws are not an impediment.

As for pig's anus, I have no doubt that I have consumed some small amount of it in a hot dog at some past moment and considered it perfectly okay to do so.

Human flesh is taboo. This is a matter of little debate. However, in many places and other times, this dish was not just relished, but prized. See "long pig". With human flesh there is always an inherent problem of, firstly, provenance and secondly, disease. Eating of one's own species is just begging for a parasite.

good night everybody, the governor's tofu was fuckin' amazing like always. hong kong cafe is the best chinese food in the midwest.

My bassist just got back from Turkey. While he was there, he ate sandwiches every day from some guy with a street cart. Only the last day did he learn that the meat was sheep colon.

Migraine, dude. Migraine. Have to cut it out unless I actually want mad headaches.

If you think it's morally wrong to eat meat, then of course that's a religious reason -- you can't prove something is wrong or not, you just have to take it on faith, base it on your presumably intuitive understanding of the world, of what is right and what is wrong.

Similarly, if you think it's morally justifiable to eat meat, that is also a religious belief. (See, for instance, Aimless, above.)

It's possible that you don't know or care whether it's right or wrong to eat meat, and eat it or don't eat it for pragmatic reasons.

It's that middle sentence: sure, you're not trying to convert people or anything, but explaining the cruelty of meat is another way of saying to meat-eaters 'you're responsible for animal cruelty, and also you're ignorant'. I don't know many people who enjoy being told this? It's hard avoiding trying to justify yourself in that sort of situation, but any attempt to do so will sound judgmental and put people's backs up, so you kind of have to stop at 'but the wee fwuffy bunnies are my fwends and i willna eat them' or 'i don't much like the taste of meat and it's effin expensive'. It's like people who won't stop at telling you they're on a diet (which i hate btw, because how can you respond sympathetically without basically saying 'yer fat' or 'yer delusional'?) but need to explain to you that the meal on your plate is crammed with bad naughty starches and will kill you according to doctor whatsit whereas their plate piled high with tasteless low-cal plastic food is the height of healthfulness. They're too proud to accept just being characterised as a picky eater.

People who take the high moral ground are annoying, and so are those who make a fuss about themselves: it's not really a surprise that people associate those two things with vegetarianism, which often has an ethical base? Also, god, I hate the term 'omnivore', I know there's no better term for that sort of a diet but on vegan recipe/nutrition/lifestyle websites they keep using it and making these smug little digs at people with meat in their diet and you just want to slap them. All I want to know is good sources of b12 and selenium!

I have an adverse reaction to people who drink mochas: either drink actual coffee or drink hot chocolate, ladies! Not some godforsaken hybrid!

"It's that middle sentence: sure, you're not trying to convert people or anything, but explaining the cruelty of meat is another way of saying to meat-eaters 'you're responsible for animal cruelty, and also you're ignorant'. I don't know many people who enjoy being told this?"

otm! that's basically it, really.

fwiw i've never had problems with vegetarians/vegans.

Yes, we're here to enterain you.

But, ah, the great paradox! Hunting is also better for the environment (and oftentimes, animals) than NOT hunting. So where do you stand on that?

Or anyone who thinks a one-shot latte with three different flavor syrups, tons of sugar, whipped cream and then more carmel and chocolate syrup should still be called "coffee."

Ooooh! You so challenge me with one big wet load of a claim, Sir!

On the other hand, do they make sustainable bullets?

Also, can we please stop talking about "the environment" like it's all the same thing and like everything we do is either "good for it" or "bad for it"

this made me laugh.

"Go deep fry your GED."

so did this. sorry. carry on.

Hunters also consistently support conservation measures and adhere to limits and restrictions that benefit individual species. Hunter advocacy groups are "environmentalists" according to most definitions of the word.

And most of them are not shrieking upper class college educated stoners, so easier to deal with on the whole, as far as I'm concerned.

http://freephone.chat.ru/games/alf.jpg

Hunters also consistently support conservation measures and adhere to limits and restrictions that benefit individual species. Hunter advocacy groups are "environmentalists" according to most definitions of the word.

And most of them are not shrieking upper class college educated stoners, so easier to deal with on the whole, as far as I'm concerned.

-- Spine Swine (eat...), January 27th, 2007. (Roger Fidelity)

Even forgetting my prior objection to "the environment," if you were going to go purely on environmental grounds wouldn't it be better then to have some people doing limited hunting AND everyone eating a mostly vegetarian diet?

Got protein?

http://www.horizontalbowhunter.com/news/images/Ted%20Nugent%2001.jpg

Then there are the hunters who get drunk on quail hunts and shoot their friends in the face with birdshot. Those types, not so pro-conservation.