There seems to be a veggie theme to IIN recently. I was posting to DannyKanes recently about my relationship with food being complex and you've tapped into one of those complexities. As a vegetarian, I'm probably one of the last people you'd expect to attack vegetarians, but here goes...
Many vegans and vegetarians get their idea of veganism or vegetarianism from what other vegans or vegetarians are like. It's almost a fashion. This idea of not letting their food be near meat (because they'll technically then be eating parts of an animal) does make sense on first inspection. But you don't have to think too hard to see the ridiculousness of it.
I am a vegetarian (now) because I don't want animals to die for my own needs. Meat isn't poison to me. If it's my choice that my food is cooked near meat then I'm a bad vegetarian. But if it just happens regardless of my choice, then no more or fewer animals have died than would have done anyway. It makes absolutely no difference. The ONLY thing that matters to me is whether my choice ends a life. And, in this case, it doesn't. If I was a vegetarian because I was allergic to meat, fair enough, but I'm very open about how much I liked meat.
The complications are, for instance, say I finished off someone's cheeseburger if they weren't going to do so themselves. By my own logic, that's okay, but I don't think it is. If I didn't eat it, people would eventually have smaller portions, and fewer animals die.
If you make the choice to be vegetarian, I think you also need to think about your own reasons. If you eat meat, the same is so. Much as I could criticise vegetarians, I think they do think harder about the choices they make than meat eaters do. But they still make mistakes by not thinking hard enough.
As for PETA, I'm in a similar bind. I work for an organisation that experiments on animals, yet I am a staunch PETA supporter. My views have nearly cost me my livelihood twice. The first time, I think I only survived because nobody could actually believe I did what I did. But if anyone ever wants to pick a fight with me, then this is the area to go for, because I'll lose every time. I can't justify myself at all.
Hey, maybe you can comment on this then-I was reading Cosmopolitan a month or two ago and on a trending page, there was a snippet of a new PETA ad. It was a nude football player, T.O. maybe(?), he was holding a football over his, um, junk. OK, now footballs are made of leather!! Even if the one in the picture was synthetic, which I don't know, still he plays with real leather footballs in the NFL. I wondered how they didn't catch that??
A good friend of mine almost lost her job because she used her work email to send something that referenced PETA. She works for an organization that studies primates and this was a giant red flag. It wasn't the misuse of her email that was an issue but the fact that she associated herself with the group. She's a bit more careful these days.
I took more direct action and, if I did it now, I'd lose my job; the economy being what it is, we shed jobs at any opportunity. We don't get animal rights protesters picketing outside our buildings any more, either, or phoning in bomb scares. When times are hard, people turn their attention on themselves.
Who'd have thought moral decency was a function of affluence?
Is it normal to be completely annoyed of vegans and PETA?
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There seems to be a veggie theme to IIN recently. I was posting to DannyKanes recently about my relationship with food being complex and you've tapped into one of those complexities. As a vegetarian, I'm probably one of the last people you'd expect to attack vegetarians, but here goes...
Many vegans and vegetarians get their idea of veganism or vegetarianism from what other vegans or vegetarians are like. It's almost a fashion. This idea of not letting their food be near meat (because they'll technically then be eating parts of an animal) does make sense on first inspection. But you don't have to think too hard to see the ridiculousness of it.
I am a vegetarian (now) because I don't want animals to die for my own needs. Meat isn't poison to me. If it's my choice that my food is cooked near meat then I'm a bad vegetarian. But if it just happens regardless of my choice, then no more or fewer animals have died than would have done anyway. It makes absolutely no difference. The ONLY thing that matters to me is whether my choice ends a life. And, in this case, it doesn't. If I was a vegetarian because I was allergic to meat, fair enough, but I'm very open about how much I liked meat.
The complications are, for instance, say I finished off someone's cheeseburger if they weren't going to do so themselves. By my own logic, that's okay, but I don't think it is. If I didn't eat it, people would eventually have smaller portions, and fewer animals die.
If you make the choice to be vegetarian, I think you also need to think about your own reasons. If you eat meat, the same is so. Much as I could criticise vegetarians, I think they do think harder about the choices they make than meat eaters do. But they still make mistakes by not thinking hard enough.
As for PETA, I'm in a similar bind. I work for an organisation that experiments on animals, yet I am a staunch PETA supporter. My views have nearly cost me my livelihood twice. The first time, I think I only survived because nobody could actually believe I did what I did. But if anyone ever wants to pick a fight with me, then this is the area to go for, because I'll lose every time. I can't justify myself at all.
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wigsplitz
12 years ago
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howaminotmyself
12 years ago
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Hey, maybe you can comment on this then-I was reading Cosmopolitan a month or two ago and on a trending page, there was a snippet of a new PETA ad. It was a nude football player, T.O. maybe(?), he was holding a football over his, um, junk. OK, now footballs are made of leather!! Even if the one in the picture was synthetic, which I don't know, still he plays with real leather footballs in the NFL. I wondered how they didn't catch that??
A good friend of mine almost lost her job because she used her work email to send something that referenced PETA. She works for an organization that studies primates and this was a giant red flag. It wasn't the misuse of her email that was an issue but the fact that she associated herself with the group. She's a bit more careful these days.
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dappled
12 years ago
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I took more direct action and, if I did it now, I'd lose my job; the economy being what it is, we shed jobs at any opportunity. We don't get animal rights protesters picketing outside our buildings any more, either, or phoning in bomb scares. When times are hard, people turn their attention on themselves.
Who'd have thought moral decency was a function of affluence?
--
howaminotmyself
12 years ago
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Direct action? I'm intrigued...and what are these morals you speak of :)