Dumb Things Stupid People Say About… Vegetarianism (rant incoming)

If you were a Martian visiting the planet Earth, you could easily be forgiven for believing that vegetarians were a bloodthirsty, militant sect, positively armed to the teeth and prepared to make war against the helpless and peaceful denizens of civilisation. Judging purely by what the other ninety four percent of the population has to say about us that is.

Yes, yes, I can already hear the words coming out of your mouth:

“Oh no! He is one of those militant vegetarians about to jump on his soapbox!”

Well yes and no. I’ve never considered myself a “militant” veggie, in fact, I’ve always found the term somewhat mystifying, never having encountered one. Most of the vegetarians I know are reluctant to speak about their dietary choice, unless talking to another veggie, or pressed into conversation about it by an omnivore.
But I am about to jump up on my soapbox. Sorry folks, but this has been building for some time. It’s strange, but vegetarianism has been the only thing I have ever experienced any form of prejudice over, yet I’ve never tried to “convert” a non-vegetarian, and tend always to shy away from debate on the subject. Despite the fact that I would eat most omnivores alive in such a debate, and despite the fact that virtually every omnivore I have ever known has at least once tried to convince me of the merits of their diet, and furnished me with unrequested justifications for their murder of other species.

I get treated like a nuisance and a chore at meals and trips out, have been verbally abused by staff at restaurants, and am expected to endure any number of jokes at my expense with good humour. If any vegetarian should dare to answer back to the standard barrage of bigotry, they are instantly labelled a wild militant proselytising veggie.

I need to get this off my chest, so here it comes. My normally unspoken response to the stupidest things I hear said about my diet.

The Myth of the Militant Veggie

Every omnivore will talk about these people as though they cannot even get out the door without having to fight one off. Odd, since we don’t even constitute a tenth of the population in most western nations. They will roll their eyes and tut about how much they loathe them.
Here is some news for you:
There. Is. No. Such. Thing. The so-called extremist veggies, are usually just people you have cornered at a meal table. Every time my diet has been discovered by an omnivore, I have been expected to defend it, as though the very fact of my existence is a challenge. Every such discussion will mean having to endure the standard of effluent mush from self-appointed diet and ethics experts explaining their half-baked theories of why my diet is wrong. Most people that get pigeonholed as militant veggies are simply people that are sick of this shit. We just want to eat our meals, so please don’t take offence when you decide to pounce on us, and we reply in a manner that is less than obsequious.

What annoys me most, is that the smug critics of “militant veggies” are usually equally militant about their own moral qualms, it’s just that they aren’t forced to defend them every lunchtime.

Imagine if every time you tried to sleep with someone over 18, someone barged in and said “Oh my god, you don’t believe in fucking twelve year olds? Why?” And proceeded to explain why you should (twelve is the legal age of consent in more than one country you know…) and you might understand why some veggies start to feel a bit touchy on the subject of their diet.

So someone is a tad sensitive about having to defend their ethical stance against murder every meal time?
Well gee-fucking-willikers! What a surprise.

Humans Are Designed to Eat Meat…

Don’t you love it when people use superstitious anthropocentric teleological brain-farts in place of logical discourse?
Right.
Humans are not designed to do anything, you fucking imbecile. Keep your absurd religious beliefs to yourself, and then maybe I’ll keep my diet to myself. Humans evolved, from monkeys. Early human diets probably got their protein from small insects, not great lumps of cow flesh. Yes, human evolutionary history certainly includes the eating of meat, it also includes rape, living in trees and throwing shit at one another. This does not present us with a teleological imperative to eat meat, it is not a justification, it is simply a fact about the past. Trace our ancestry back far enough and you’ll find fish, should modern humans breathe underwater? The only “fact” about our diet in this regard is that we require protein and certain vitamins, all of which are attainable through a vegetarian diet without supplements. Meat is one way of getting those things, but it is not the only way.

You’re as bad as us! Cos you kill plants and plants might be able to feel pain!!!

This argument does genuinely does make me reconsider my stance on vegetarianism. Because I think “anyone stupid enough to try and field that as a rational argument, clearly needs to be removed from the human gene-pool for our good and theirs” and fuck it, if we’re killing them anyway, we may as well eat them for tidiness sake.
Now, I appreciate that you were probably never told this in primary school. This was because most primary school educators assumed it was self evident, that not even a lobotomy victim would fail to grasp the startling fact… Plants do not have brains. They do not experience life the same way that we do. Yes, there may well be some plant equivalent to displeasure, but to claim that their experience is analogous to ours, or even comprehensible to us, requires a special degree of mental ineptitude. Oh yes, you can invoke rhetoric and intellectual dishonesty, and point out that I don’t know what it is like to be a plant, and they might well feel pain and unhappiness at being eaten, but this argument could quite easily be applied to anything. It has the same degree of intellectual substance as claiming that eating shrimp may well upset Jehova.
Yes, Plants may well feel pain, and the invisible pink unicorn may well punish us for eating corn flakes. The simple fact is, we cannot possibly know, so as a statement it is entirely without meaning or content. However, we do know what physical pain is like, we do know what fear of death is like, we can clearly see that animals experience physical and emotional distress just like ours when confronted with pain and death.
We also know that an omnivorous diet is not a nutritional necessity, but simply a meaningless lifestyle choice.
Oh I know the “plants feel pain” defence was your favourite, I know, I know, it was a beautiful theory ruined by an ugly truth. Get over it. It wasn’t a valid argument when you spewed it up, it isn’t one now, and it won’t ever be. The only thing it provides evidence for is the possibility that you aren’t a thinking intelligent creature.

Well you aren’t saving any animal lives by not eating meat…

Well, aside from being an outright lie (the meat industry is a good 6-7% smaller than it would be if we ate meat, simple logic, give it a try sometime) this statement is based on an extremely shaky ethical assumption.
The point isn’t that we are saving all the cows, the point is that we aren’t killing them. Would you apply the same logic to abortions or the holocaust? No? Of course not, because it’s fucking ridiculous.
If a woman is going to be raped anyway, would you join in?

Vegetarianism is a luxury, what if you were starving to death and had nothing but a cow/sheep/duck/kitten/etc?

If there was a famine, and people were starving to death, why the fuck would they waste the bulk of their edible resources raising an animal, that will provide them with barely a quarter of the same amount of food in return?
When you produce meat, you are throwing away food because meat is a secondary food source. The idea that hard times would force people to adopt meat-eating diets is patently absurd. Why don’t you take a trip to the third world, and ask them how many times a week they have steak?
Meat is a luxury product, ecologically unsound and wildly inefficient to produce. If you were starving in a desert, you wouldn’t eat a cow, you would tuck into your grain like everyone else, imbecile. Sorry to break the illusion for you.
And if for some reason I were forced to kill an animal to survive, well what of it? It’s a completely different ethical situation to our current one. We don’t have to kill animals to survive. We have a choice. And one of those choices leaves you less prone to cancer, is better for the enviroment, less expensive, causes less heart disease…



But we stun the animals, so they feel no pain…

And I drugged your sister with Rohypnol, so she won’t even remember…

But it isn’t wrong to kill weaker beings for food…

Good, I’ll eat you

But…but… but

Shut up already. I’m done (exhales). So next time you’re at a meal, and about to abuse the veggie with the usual line-up of flaccid inanities, please, just think back over this, see if it has already been covered. You might just spare yourself an encounter with a militant veggie.
Our diet is better than yours, morally, ecologically, medically and economically. But if you don’t bother us, we might just keep it to ourselves.

 

Awwwwwwwwww giant hugs :grouphug: Actually I like millitant vege types who stand up for what they want its only negative to me if its just all air. People who go out and say set up an amazing vege eating place to get people to enjoy the food they like is great. You meet those people you feel their passion for what they believe and its who they are and its just breath taking. I mean I can feel you in what you have written and this is something more than just a bitch. Its great you really put it out here

 

that was an awesome rant - I loved the rohypnol bit! Such a good way to get your point across

 

Wow thats alot to read...but I think I agree with the parts I didnt skip over

 

i eat meat.
i like to eat meat.

i don't eat it often, but when i do, i try to eat free range things etc. to ensure that no cruelty was endured throughout the life of all animal prior to its human-induced death.
i do realise your opinions and your stance on all this, and i have no quarrel at all with any vegetarians ( and I LOL'd at your great comebacks btw - kudos on them ), & i have a two veggie friends, and used to be in love with a vegetarian,
but if i don't try to make you eat meat,
will you try not to make me a vegetarian?


my friends never try to convert me,
and i would never tease them with meat and try to provoke them,
so is it possible for me to support your rant, without being called a hypocrite?


hopefully so.

x

 

Im a meateater. I could care less if youre a vegetarian. Im not gonna judge you, harass you, joke on you.

But when I say Im having a barbeque, bring your own veggie stuff. Ill supply the chips. ham flavored of course. JK

 

That is an honest an consistent statement, and I for one have have no desire to try and make you change your diet.

I think so, I don't like trying to "convert" omnivores, people need to make their own decisions, and lord knows I don't fit the moral criteria of other people.
My only real issue is with the really silly things people keep springing on me and other veggies, which I usually decline to comment on out of politeness.

lol outside of the above rant, I'm a live-and-let-live veggie

 

lol so long as people warn me in advance, I have no issue with that. I rarely expect people to go out of their way to make me a "special" option at meals.

Though I do make those people bring their own meat when I invite them to meals ;P

 

I'm not a vegetarian, but the people who hate on veggies strike me as too weak-minded to deal with the cognitive dissonance that comes from doing something that is wrong without somehow making it into a thing of massive importance. Eating meat is wrong in many ways, it's taking a life, it's bad for our environment, for our health, and so on. I do it anyway, but I admire you vegetarians for your strength and morals.

PS- good points!

 

did you know that they did a scientific study where the amplified the sound of a carrot being uprooted and it let out a vey noticable scream or shriel. think about that next time ya eat a salad.nah im just talkin shit

 

lol I like it when the carrots scream, that's the best bit

 

Agreed.

 

As one comic said, we're not plants, and we're not algae. We were designed to eat meat as well as vegetables. We shouldn't have to make a choice of one over the other, and should not be judged if we do. But some people make their best arguments over why we should eat meat; others say they won't eat anything with a face. I don't like to eat anything that's looking back at me for that matter, but meat is good, veggies are good, beer is good, in fact beer used to be a main staple in peoples' diets. And there's no meat in beer, at least the domestic stuff If you think you can live on plants, be my guest. But I like cheeseburgers

I missed the one about the screaming carrots. I wish I could find a job where I went into a lab and listened for carrots being uprooted. I wonder what sound onions make? Maybe they just emit a foul odor ....

The essence of all this is that we get the nutrients we need to stay healthy. Eating only vegetables without dietary supplements will deprive you of needed proteins. Even if you eat meat as well, you may not be getting all the nutrients you need. If you injest too much of a nutrient, your body simply passes it out. So the smart thing to do, if you're a vegetarian or otherwise, is to take supplement vitamins. They won't hurt you, and if you're lacking in the protein and other things meat contains, you'll still have them in you system. The problem arises when you become too ' organic ' and don't take supplements. Then your body can suffer. But a compete or even predominate vegetarian diet can be very healthy, avoid unneeded weight gain, and give you more natural energy than a predominantly meat diet. You just have to use common sense, like always.

.

 

We aren't designed to eat meat, that shows a fundamental misunderstanding about how evolution works.
We are capable of eating meat, though our digestive systems actually struggle somewhat with large quantities of some meats, which is why vegetarians are less vunerable to bowle cancers and spend less time in hospital.

You can survive on either diet, but the point we're all sick of hearing, is the false idea that vegetarianism is somehow unnatural or inferior to a meat diet, because it isn't the case.
I pretty much some up my opinions of the "designed to eat meat" nonsense in my OP

That is actually an outright lie, so long as you know what nutrients you need it is possible to gain all of them, without supplements, from a vegetarian diet. It is a common misconception that veggies need to take supplements all the time to get our vitamins. The only real vitamins that are hard, but not impossible, to get from vegetables are some B vitamins, but these are in plentiful supply in dairy products (which vegetarians eat) so B-vitamin deficiency is as rare in vegetarians as it is in omnivores.

These are exactly the things we're sick of, smug ill-informed omnivores lecturing to us about subjects they aren't really competent in. Most vegetarians will have done a lot of research into their diet before taking it up, and know what our body requires to survive.

 

What about people who think killing and eating another animal is wrong, but don't give a damn and do it anyway.

 

I stand by an earlier statement I made in another one of these threads....I eat meat because it's illegal to eat vegetarians, but I may be willing to go to jail just to shut you up

get over yourself, you're a vegetarian not god....

 

There is no god...

I actually like vegetarians and i don't like killing or eating meat but i am just weak so i'll eat meat anyway... Because i like the taste... There are no vegetarians around where i live though... Aww... I so wish i could stand against the temptation of eating meat...

 

lol but isn't this exactly my point?
Day to day I don't make a big deal out of my diet, never have. Everything I write here is a response to stupid things other people insist on coming up and saying to me.
If you don't like self-righteous vegetarians, then mind your own business at the dinner table, and don't spout nonsense.

I like people who say "look I just eat meat cos I like the taste"
or "I eat meat cos I enjoy killing bwahahahahaha"
or "I have no problem with killing, so I eat meat"

Those people are honest, they don't have some pseudo-scientific righteous poppycock built up to convince themselves that they only eat meat because it is the "superior" diet.

No two people have the same moral qualms, and I'm sure I belive or do a lot of things that others consider immoral.
I'm cool with that, laissez-faire, live and let live.

But just spare me the bullshit.

I wouldn't even mind it if you genuinly ate human vegetarians, so long as you didn't insist on lecturing me at the dinner table that you do it to avoid vitamin deficiencies
You're more than welcome try and eat me...


but you would lose

I'm vegetarian, not a push-over.

*shrugs*

What about them?

 

Wrong. period.

 

On a tangent,

Remember that German chap who got eaten?

The guy had him with pepper-sauce. I never understood that. Humans are meant to taste like pork, who has pork with pepper sauce?

Apple-sauce is the only appropriate side for a plate of lean human.


Pepper Sauce That is just barbaric