from SeahorseTreble@lemmy.world to vegan@lemmy.world on 11 Nov 01:09
https://lemmy.world/post/38630901
It would certainly shine a light on why people almost exclusively talk about meat when talking to vegans. If “meat” is being used to mean any and all dietary animal products, or even just including dairy and eggs, not just animal flesh, then it would explain a lot of behavior I’ve experienced.
I think vegans know, that all you hear from non-vegans is talk about meat. Trying to provoke us by saying they like/love meat, or meat is tasty, or that they’re eating meat, or in cases of the internet, people (farmers, homesteaders) informing us that they’ll be personally slaughtering animals in our name and attributing blame to us for that action. But even in less hostile cases, talking about how much they would struggle to give up meat, or debating the ethics, environmentalism, health & other factors purely related to meat production & consumption, defending their own consumption of meat or others’, while seemingly ignoring what a vegan is and treating us as if we’re vegetarians.
Ever since being vegan, it’s been a weird notable experience for me that everyone talks to me about “meat”. When I was vegetarian (by my understanding of the definition at that time, which just meant no consumption of animal flesh/bodies), no one ever talked about it. As soon as I’m vegan? “Oh, a vegan. Meat, meat, meat.” It would make more sense to me if people said that when I was vegetarian, and then started talking about dairy, eggs or leather to me all the time when I went vegan. But I digress. I do have theories, like maybe the existence of people who don’t use any animals with an ethical association triggers them more, and maybe that causes them to default to asserting their defiant attitude to continue consuming the “product” they’re most attracted to, meat (though you also hear very frequently “I could never give up cheese”).
Btw- “meat” isn’t what I would rather say. I don’t even like that word anymore, at least when used for animal flesh, because it feels like a euphemism & helps distance consumers from what “it” is. Plus, it denies the existence of plant-based meat or its meat status (nvm how meat just meant food originally, including plants). But I’ll call it meat for these purposes or clarity and because we’re discussing how language is used.
#vegan
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I have found it’s people insecure about their dietary choice, as weird as that sounds.
Like in general most people are like
But every once in a while you get somebody that wants to counter your diet with their choice by purposely bring it up over and over again. Like you are Church of Satan and they have to be extra Christian, to avoid you converting them.
Definitely agree it can stem from insecurity and feelings of guilt about animals and the environment, though maybe other or more complex motivations at times.
And for all intents and purposes, people are criticizing our diet, because that’s what most people believe veganism is, even though it’s really an ethical stance against animal use/exploitation that extends to all products and actions beyond food. They’re really attacking/lashing out/criticizing our animal-free/plant-based diet or lifestyle, even if they do out of their own moral beliefs. Someone doesn’t even have to say anything, the existence of vegans is enough sometimes to make people feel like they’re on trial and need to defend their actions to animals, & disparage the choice to avoid them. That’s how it feels anyway. And tbh, it makes sense to feel insecure about it because it’s pretty horrific what we do to animals, but responding to the notion that we don’t have to do this or some people are against it, in an aggressive & unproductive way seems irrational to me. We just need to work on controlling our emotions better as humans I think.
The religious analogy is SO accurate too. It really feels like people are having their worldview and belief system challenged by people with a different one that appears to be rooted in ethics and sympathy for animals, something everyone can relate to. I think there were studies showing people who cared more about animals were more likely to hate vegans, which is really enlightening. The more that people share our values, the more they seem to want to fight against us because it forces them to comfront uncomfortable parts of themselves. This is also why so many leftists are anti vegan, imo. And I say this as a leftist, basically. Even though leftist ideas are usually about human rights principles, it’s not too much of a leap to extend it to other sentient species, and the environment. So it can create this feeling of hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance, often termed as the “meat paradox” in psychological research
Also funny and coincidental, vegans often eat seitan (a product made from gluten/wheat protein), and we basically are like a satanic force that needs to be cleared out in the eyes of a lot of people. 😆While some Christians argue veganism is entailed by their religion (maybe after watching Christspiracy), others have literally called us satanic and demonic lol. And the same was said of abolitionists too, I guess justice and respect is super scary and evil to whomever is tasked with defending their antitheses:<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/6f26cc67-eb2e-4963-b48a-52d8a35b86bb.jpeg">
To bring it back to language and the word meat and what people mean by it, I have no idea why people use the phrasing they do. Some people told me things like gelatin and rennet aren’t vegetarian (even though many dairy products contain it, meaning I was never really vegetarian), and a lot of people say fish aren’t meat. Not much rhyme or reason lol, at least it seems inconsistent across different people who use the words. I’m sure some people are generalizing all animal products when they say “meat”, while others probably just mean animal flesh, and others still would mean the flesh of land animals, excluding marine animals.