tofu and carrot sticks
If there is one thing that makes otherwise liberal and free-thought advocating folks bond with just about anybody else, that would be hating vegetarians. I kinda get it and I kinda don’t, but mostly I just wonder what gets people so annoyed about my stating a preference that doesn’t infringe on their liberties.
I have been vegetarian, loosely interpreted, for several years. Technically I think I’m an ovo-lacto-pesca vegetarian, which is arguably barely vegetarian at all, but what it cuts out of my diet are the key ingredients in hamburgers, hot dogs, steak, ramen, meatballs, yakiniku, tenderloin, pot roast, chicken salad, corndogs, ham sandwiches, BLTs, tacos, beef curry, and the damn bacon bits that are in everything. And reptiles and bugs I guess. Anyway.
I have reasons for deciding not to eat meat. But I’m not sure they are important, because not one of my reasons has even once been enough to convince a non-vegetarian of, well, anything. Not that I was trying to convince anyone–absolutely 100% of the times I failed to convince were during the process of responding to a question as to why I am vegetarian. People are always with the questions, no conversation is too polite to save from firing off a round, like ammo.
You know what the most common response is to my answer? “But I like meat.” As if I were saying, for example, that I was personally forbidding them from ever eating meat again. Or even implying that they should change any of their habits. As if they were in any way addressing my statement. In fact, I’m pretty sure the average non-veg is usually seeking a target, rather than a conversation. They want a finished argument from me, which [being flawed and weak, naturally] can easily be attacked and trumped. If possible, they would single-handedly like to send a former salad eater running to the nearest steakhouse, freed from their burden.
If it mattered I could give you a litany of speculation on the motivations beyond simple curiosity, for the unexpected intensity of an average interrogation; secret guilt because they eat meat and feel they ought not to, satisfied disillusionment as to the reality of a painful world, association of vegetarians with suspiciously hippie activities like living in co-ops, conviction of cold-eyed realism wherein one accepts humanity’s blessed status at the top of the food chain, their father is a pork farmer. Whatever. In truth I don’t care about their deeper motivations.
Even the more thoughtful questioners don’t bring much of a counter-argument, and that is because this is not a debate. In the end, of course, I am vegetarian because it is my opinion that to be so is a good thing. I have a system of thought based on philosophical study and empirical evidence, but nothing irrefutable at the bottom of it. Which makes it kind of like believing in God, come to think of it. Though I am loathe beyond loathing to draw parallels between religion and being a vegetarian, one thing is certain; believing in pretty much anything is a declaration of war against today’s enlightened ethical agnostic.
The Japanese take. At an enkai last week, a drinking/karaoke party with my former adult class students for a member who got married on Saturday, I was asked. Among the but-I-like-meat responses I caught a comment (which I can’t be sure of because it was in Japanese). I think the guy said he was surprised, not by any of my reasons specifically, but because my reasons were a personal choice.
I took this to mean personal choice in the sense that it is my decision to inconvenience myself (and sometimes others), not a mandate by a doctor or a religion. Which is true, though I try to minimize the hassle for others. But anyway, it was possibly an example of what gets the collective Japanese dander up.
One more thing. People who style themselves vegetarian purely for reasons of health. They grate, and it’s not just the smugness. Something about the damn granola they are always chewing on, it really pisses me off.
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through your whole piece you go on about being allowed the free choice to decide what you consume which I totally agree with. Your last paragraph however reveals you to be the destroyer of your own ideals - you get annoyed by others personal choices while at the same time promote your ability to make choices. i am sure you can see how this doesn’t make sense to me.
oh an by the way - please don’t call yourself a vegetarian - as fish is not a vegetable…
Stomping on my own ideals–oops, you’re right. Except I don’t pester them about it by using personal arguments based on my likes and dislikes as supposedly valid support for why they should change their minds.
And yes, I did say vegetarian “loosely interpreted.”