Can Meat Eaters be Easy to Offend?

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Sometimes, it's like if you tell people you don't drink and they immediately take the mere fact that you don't as judgement against them. You tell people you're vegetation and they assume it means you think you're above them. It's weird.

This is essentially the end post.

Because that's what most of humanity boils down to.

"You're not like me?! What the FUCK is wrong with you?! That offends me!"

I fly in the face of so many norms, people literally don't know how to handle me.

As in the quoted post, I do not drink. I also never have had sex just to have sex. I only have sex with women I care about. I believe Good is way cooler than evil because evil is so common place. I don't like chocolate. I'm a 6'2 athletic black man that doesn't like sports. I'm hopefully going back to McGill for Electric Engineering and I have Faith. I rarely eat candy or sweets. Street Fighter 3rd Strike is the best fighting game ever made, followed by Virtua Fighter 5 final showdown. I listen to Drum and Bass and love it more than most forms of music... yet Dubstep is just noise to me. I'm an active prepper. My biggest ambition right now is to get a Tesla S car. Sonic the Hedgehog sucks. I absolutely love porn, but I can't stand fan service in animes. I also started to actively hate anime with only a few exceptions here and there.

Any... three of those things in a day I'll have to answer to. And once you get enough arguments about these different topics, the faces blur away, the attitudes blur away, even the topics blur away. It all comes down to the one idea:

"Why aren't you intelligent enough to have all the same opinions as me?"

OP, the answer is most people aren't open minded any more. For everything someone can be, there's a rival group out there that wants to question their reasons why. Don't stress it. Move on and enjoy your life.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

As an omnivore, I rarely get offended by what people choose to, or not to, eat. What bothers me, and only because its happened before on many occasions, is people who get up in my shit about what I choose to eat. Rattle off your factoids, and why you're against meat and such, but the mere act of getting up in my face about my life choices is something I define as "being an asshole." That overall is offensive to me, period. Doesn't matter the topic, when someone jumps up in my shit, and gets preachy about something I'm doing I will inevitably take offense to it.
I don't like others trying to run my life, acting as if I'm unaware of what I'm doing. I understand consequences, I understand a lot of things in life and I take offense towards people who think they know me well enough to assume I don't.
Do I know everything? No, but I also didn't ask you to "educate" me either. If I wanted to know what you thought, I'd ask. No, not ever vegan is like this, nor vegetarian, etc. But there have been a significant amount of them in my life that have decided it was OK to jump my shit over a steak (which I eat on very rare occasions, mostly I'm not a red meat fan having grown up on a mostly tropical fish diet).
Its rude as hell to insert yourself into someone else's shit like that.
Enjoy life your own way, just don't hurt others in the process. And don't be a dick.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

I don't think I'm easy to offend, but I can be deeply petty when the mood strikes me. Once I had a vegan or vegetarian, I won't say activist but campaigner maybe, came up to me and asked if I wanted in on that action.

So far so polite, but I was standing there eating a three-meat kebab, so I just looked them right in the eyes and took the biggest bite I could muster: I appreciated she wasn't a cabbage thumper but you would have had to be blind and unable to smell to miss that I was eating meat and loving it.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

I used to take care of injured snakes. They seem pretty quick to take offence. Not so bad when you know how to pick up and hold them properly. For any full blown carnivore I always recommend not touching them unnecessarily, and never against the scales when picking them up. When in doubt use a snake hook, and when bitten by carnivores use a clean bandage. Their mouths tend to be pretty full of the nastier variety of bacteria, so be sure to use proper antiseptics.

In all seriousness, I don't get why people eat meat so much. I mean it's kind of annoying and expensive. People tell me it's tasty, and I ponder that. I stioll eat meat, but it 's like any food group. And more often than not it's a luxury depending on where you are. Me personally? It might be years of smoking, but people go on and on about taste of meat being something they're attracted to, and to me a nice bit of cheese and a bottle of wine is tastier. Also more affordable.

I don't get what's so wonderful about meat products. It's food ... a decent amount of pork is lovely in tamarind soup. But the tamarind soup over rice is still the staple of the meal. The pork is there to give it more body and add some protein and animal fats. Something that you can get from cheese ... and more often than not by animal fat and protein counts ... a hunk of cheddar packs more nutrition than a similar hunk of meat by price in Australia.

I don't get it. In short. Humans aren't even apex predators apparently, according to a scientific survey examining diets and food chains. Debunking a whole lot of bad pseudoscience that points to meat intake being responsible for our evolution. If anything, our teeth are better designed for tearing apart digestible plant matter, and that polymorphistic changes within the species to accomodate a high animal fat diet are more extreme than a largely vegetarian existence of most native pre-Sapien and modern Man uprising.

I'm no health Nazi. I used to smoke, I still drink, and I used to do a metric fuckton of narcotics. Not anymore ... and not because of guilt tripping or because I was 'out of control' ... my medical regimen won't let me. But itr seems stupid to then at least stop putting mountains of meat into my body when there is no pleasure benefit, nor an increase in vitality. I did drugs because it was fun, not because I needed to. I don't enjoy meat. And yes, some people mnake a point to that, grill me about it when I haven't done anything other than abstain from eating a bowl full of dead animal, and then have the gall to then accuse me that I am 'guilting them' by choosing not to eat said bowl of dead animal.

It's bizarre. If people wouldn't say you're guilt tripping them by wearing a simple tunic top and they're wearing a cheap off-rack shirt, then why the fuck should anybody say otherwise in terms of food?

Give me a delicious bowl of vegetarian antipasto (anything with pickled eggplant, sundried tomatoes, kalamata olives, pickled capsicum and artichoke), a bottle of cheap red, some crackers and (any) cheese, and I'm happy. It's all I want in a meal. Doesn't need to be warmed, doesn't need to be dressed, doesn't need to be further cooked, it's instantly available, easy to share with others, and I prefer the taste, and you can dip bread into the olive oil and balsamic vinegar residue. I fail to see how it's so mystical that a person can favour that over a pan friend hunk of meat.

If anything I fail to see why anybody likes animal dishes when cooking is quite literally a chore. Cooking is for people who don't have anything better to do ... like be on the internet and complain about cooking.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

I think its far easier to be a vegetarian nowadays, you have things like "meatless mondays" that are catching on, and there are tons of vegan/vegetarian athletes and celebrities that show that you can be just as healthy not eating meat as you can be eating meat

I still run in to the occasional person who seems to totally lose their shit when I mention I don't eat meat. It doesn't happen all the time, but enough to just be annoying. Every time I'm with a new group of people and have to mention it, it's a roll of the dice. Most of the time people are like "Whatevs," but every once in a while you'll get that batty person who thinks your trying to one-up them and really wants to take you down a peg.

It also doesn't help that the "face" of vegetarianism for a while was PETA. Having those batshit crazy people being the only animal rights group people knew of for a long time I think stuck in peoples brains. I almost want to make up T-Shirts that say "I'm a vegetarian but I think PETA are a bunch of fucking nutters!"

 

[stormtrooper9091]

Honey, everyone is easy to offend nowadays, they all feel so entitled and shit, it's laughable

 

[MrFalconfly]

In my experience, the only time I've been offended by a vegetarian, was when they insinuation was made that I was responsible for animal suffering.

I love animals. I had several pets. And the reason I'm fine with my omnivorous diet (meat and two veg) is because I know for a fact that before the meat ends up in the shop for me to buy and throw in the pan it looks like this (I know, I live in a different country, so this might not be the case for other people)

Spoiler: Happy Animals

You can practically see the smiles on their cute faces.

 

[Dizchu]

So... No. You have not visited any of these farms.

But, I have visited the farms in my area, and I can attest that their conditions are entirely ethical. Though, I suppose it is pointless to attempt to continue this conversation with you if you do nothing but continue to spout the same nonsense, and not consider that it might not be entirely accurate.

Sigh, I don't know where you live or if the farms you're describing are actually factory farms, so I can't really dispute your claims that the farms are "entirely ethical" (though forgive me if I am skeptical). But I gave you the definition of factory farming as well as their common traits and you had a knee-jerk reaction to it. Which just makes me wonder if you are aware of what factory farming even is. I'm not trying to sound patronising here, the common perception of farming is still the image of cows prancing around open fields and pigs having fun rolling around. This sort of farming makes up around 1% of all farms in the USA.

Factory farming by definition restricts the comfort and health of its livestock. That's not me being preachy, that's me literally looking at the encyclopedic definition of the term. I'm struggling to understand why your issue is with me and not the encyclopedias and dictionaries that have defined the term.

This isn't even me debating the ethics of meat in general, for the sake of argument let's just assume that extensive farming is 100% ethical and environmentally sustainable. Can you not see the difference between extensive and intensive/factory farming? It's not a matter of opinion, these things have definitions. To be honest I'm baffled that you think I've made these terms and their definitions up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensive_farming
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_animal_farming
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_animal_farming#Animal_welfare

You know what I noticed reading through this entire thread. There wasn't a single goddamn thing said about the positive aspects of being a vegan other than avoiding animal cruelty.

That does appear to be the main motivation, though. It's like recycling, people don't do it because it's convenient or fun. Dividing waste into plastics/glass/paper etc. is time-consuming and can be a pain in the ass. They may not even personally see any benefits. I know that sucks and sounds really unappealing, but the other "positive aspects" are secondary.

I'm not a vegan because I find it difficult to make such a huge compromise, at least at the moment. Admittedly, the guilt-tripping from vegans is not gonna help and I wish they'd realise this (the same with social justice warriors). But were I to become vegan it'd be for ethical/environmental reasons, because giving up eggs and dairy will put a lot of restrictions my diet (and damn I love cheese). It's about sacrifice, ultimately.

Personally I think it should be encouraged rather than used as another stick to beat people across the head. At the end of the day it has to be a personal choice.

 

[Amaror]

From my own experience as a vegetarian i had very similar experiences than OP, though i would not quite put them like this. It's generally not a good place to discuss this here, because the majourity of people won't get that response from "meat eaters" since they're not vegetarian/vegan themselves.
Personally i experienced that people can get really defensive about eating meat. I personally try not to mention that i am a vegetarian, because very often people do take it as a sort of attack at them. They seem to feel that the fact that i don't eat meat, means that i am accusing them of being horrible people for eating meat. So evertime it comes up that i am a vegetarian and the other person didn't know before theres typically the same conversation:
"Well, i try to eat not too much meat myself"
"But we're meant to eat meat!"
"But how do you get Protein!?"
One time i even got "Just Vegetarian? Too pussy to go Vegan?", while the other person stuffed his face with steak. He was a hunter, though, so i can kind of understand why he was so defensive.
It gets old pretty fast. I don't care whether other people eat meat or not, just let me be a vegetarian in peace, please.
This is not an accusation though. Before i became a vegetarian myself one of my friends became a vegetarian and i reacted the exact same way when i found out. It seems like a natural reaction.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I have no idea who is the subject of the OP. I've never met anyone who's been "offended" by jokes about their diet, carnivore or vegetarian. TBH, anyone who gets so easily offended are probably the same types of knobends that need "safe spaces" and post shit to facebook like "Share if you agree life is for living".

I have friends of various races, religions, diets and sexual orientations and poking friendly fun at each other is par for the course. I'm not as quick to make the jokes as most of my friends but I give about as good as I get it. I love them all dearly and quite often they'll make jokes at their own expense. I'm not offended when I'm teased about my pronunciation of certain words, my faith, my looks or whatever. It's because I'm not a moron who has to be offended by everything.

If your offended by a joke about your diet, the problem is you, not the joke. Lighten up and get a thicker skin, have a little self-respect and confidence for heaven's sake. Unless your family are devoutly religious, no one else cares what you eat (tho a husband/wife is entitled to tell you if you're getting podgy or clogging up your arteries).

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Interestingly though, I've found that meat eaters can be really easy to offend. I've seen many take criticisms of the meat industry very personally, which often results in lashing out. Accusations of aggression on the part of vegans, desperate proclamations of how "tough" they are or how humans have "evolved to eat meat".

You've pretty much answered your own question here: the meat eaters don't react until they are criticized.

With vegans and vegetarians (stereotypically), they point out the fact that they are vegan or vegetarian without any sort of prompting, usually as a means of pointing out how wonderful and 'progressive' they are.

Like I said, this is all based upon wildly broad comical stereotypes, but there is a difference between "people who tell you about their choices because they want to show off" and "people who don't even mention their choices unless they get criticized for them".

 

[OldNewNewOld]

You can't name a single large group of people that doesn't have people that are ridiculously easy to offend (unless you make a group where all members have the same characteristic of not being easily offended).
SO yeah, there is a part of the "meat eaters" that are easily offended. There is also a part of the vegan group that is easily offended. And the feminists and anti feminists and every other group. What's the point?

Are there people that are "triggered" by vegetarians and make constant jabs at them? Yes. But there is also a loud group of vegetarians that are the spitting image of the stereotypes. Those people are the web comic "artists". They paint themselves as the reasonable human while sticking every single possible logical fallacy onto an imaginary opposition to make their point. Both side.

I eat pretty much everything. I understand vegetarians, not really vegans,but okay. Their life their choices. But I do get annoyed when someone starts telling me that I'm a horrible human for eating meat while the same person ends up eating fish which is as meat as a cow no matter what everyone says.

There is a cooking show I like watching. 5 random people make diner. One for each working day, Monday to Friday. The worst episodes were almost always on Mondays when there was a vegetarian. They would apply to the show, not say they are vegetarian and then get offended and make a scene when they come on Monday and diner has meat in it. What did you expect? When applying the show administration asks is there anything you don't eat or if you have any allergies and informs the other participants about you. So you come, lie about your eating habits, ruin the dinner, lower their score for what?

So as you can see, the other side can be also unreasonable. From my experience, a lot worse.

 

[Saltyk]

If meat is murder, murder is delicious. I mean eat a steak. You can taste the suffering. It really adds to the flavor.

Yes, these are things I have said. Mostly as a joke. If you can't take a joke, the problem is with you. Not with the person telling the joke (99% of the time, anyway).

Also, the few vegans I have had the displeasure to encounter were pushy liars who said whatever they thought you wanted them to say to get what they wanted. At a concert once, there were vegans trying to get people to sign a petition to ban the slaughter of pigs or something. They were giving out DVDs if you did and claimed they were DVDs with music videos. So a few of my friends signed the petition simply for the DVD. The next day, at my house we decided to pop the DVD in and watch the music videos.

PETA propaganda. Nothing but videos telling us how the slaughter of animals is wrong. Or how the circus is wrong. And hey, a few of the videos actually did show legitimate animal abuse, like someone kicking an animal. But plenty of the videos were flat out lies. One claimed that people skinned sheep alive for their wool. It showed this, but it was obviously an old video at some mountain village. Here's the thing, NO ONE WOULD SKIN A SHEEP FOR IT'S WOOL AS WOOL GROWS BACK. Plus, the wool can be detrimental to the animals heath at times. Sheering the wool is actually beneficial to the animal.

After watching several videos showing animal slaughter, we realized we were hungry. So we ordered pizza. Meat lover's.

Let's be honest, PETA does not help with the image of vegans. They do want to ban animal testing, animal assistants for disabled people, and pets to name a few things. Not to mention, they offered financial support to domestic terrorists.

Anyway, I have no problem with slaughtering animals for consumption. I would probably have a hard time doing it myself, but it doesn't bother me at all that it happens. At a Christmas party/bonfire with friends last night, someone asked if we could slaughter animals (one of my friends has family that owns and slaughters cows and we could hear them mooing) and we all pretty much agreed that we could and that we would eat the meat afterwards.

If you do, that's not my problem. And as long as you don't make your problem into my problem, we don't have a problem.

 

[Naraka]

Well, it seems like the OP isn't too interested in arguing for their point, except in a few posts with a selected few in this thread. Was this whole thread just a really backhanded way to express your angst OP, not really an invitation to a discussion?

 

[Orga777]

As an omnivore, I rarely get offended by what people choose to, or not to, eat. What bothers me, and only because its happened before on many occasions, is people who get up in my shit about what I choose to eat. Rattle off your factoids, and why you're against meat and such, but the mere act of getting up in my face about my life choices is something I define as "being an asshole." That overall is offensive to me, period. Doesn't matter the topic, when someone jumps up in my shit, and gets preachy about something I'm doing I will inevitably take offense to it.
I don't like others trying to run my life, acting as if I'm unaware of what I'm doing. I understand consequences, I understand a lot of things in life and I take offense towards people who think they know me well enough to assume I don't.
Do I know everything? No, but I also didn't ask you to "educate" me either. If I wanted to know what you thought, I'd ask. No, not ever vegan is like this, nor vegetarian, etc. But there have been a significant amount of them in my life that have decided it was OK to jump my shit over a steak (which I eat on very rare occasions, mostly I'm not a red meat fan having grown up on a mostly tropical fish diet).
Its rude as hell to insert yourself into someone else's shit like that.
Enjoy life your own way, just don't hurt others in the process. And don't be a dick.

This is all kinds of true. People need to shut up and butt out of other people's business more often. People are just more self-important these days...

Also, as long as meat (or ANY type of food for that matter) tastes good, I will eat it. Sorry, folks. I like freaking scrapple, and I know what that is made of. As long as it is good, though, I don't give a damn. XP

 

[Dizchu]

Well, it seems like the OP isn't too interested in arguing for their point, except in a few posts with a selected few in this thread. Was this whole thread just a really backhanded way to express your angst OP, not really an invitation to a discussion?

Arguing? I asked a question. Others in this thread have recognised the sort of behaviour I described and I was wondering what the mentality behind it is. I responded to people who directly confronted me so I could settle a few misunderstandings. I wanted people to entertain the idea and see how people would react to it, or if they had any input of their own.

I didn't respond to you because I didn't know what to respond to. A lot of people in the thread have tried to divert the conversation to be about animal welfare when that is not what I'm interested in discussing (because let's face it, it is such an incendiary topic that really touches people's nerves). I'm not interested in that, I know how those discussions go. What I was wondering was why those discussions get so personal. This is a forum topic, not an "ask me anything".

I don't care if you personally eat meat and I'm not sure how many times I need to repeat this. Think of this like me testing the waters, trying to get a sample of reactions.

Look, sorry if I made an assumption about a certain behaviour I have come across frequently that, as some have pointed out, may just be the result of me involving myself in animal welfare discussions on social media. Just because I don't respond to posts doesn't mean I don't read them. I've kept an eye on what you've been saying, chill.

I will point out one thing though.

Most people eat meat, so if 6+ billion people are all one way, then they're not "Easy to offend" by definition, they're normal.

Err... statistically most people are religious (to narrow it down more, Christian). Does this mean that Christians can't be offended easily?

 

[Naraka]

Well, it seems like the OP isn't too interested in arguing for their point, except in a few posts with a selected few in this thread. Was this whole thread just a really backhanded way to express your angst OP, not really an invitation to a discussion?

Arguing? I asked a question. Others in this thread have recognised the sort of behaviour I described and I was wondering what the mentality behind it is. I responded to people who directly confronted me so I could settle a few misunderstandings. I wanted people to entertain the idea and see how people would react to it, or if they had any input of their own.

I didn't respond to you because I didn't know what to respond to. A lot of people in the thread have tried to divert the conversation to be about animal welfare when that is not what I'm interested in discussing (because let's face it, it is such an incendiary topic that really touches people's nerves). I'm not interested in that, I know how those discussions go. What I was wondering was why those discussions get so personal. This is a forum topic, not an "ask me anything".

I don't care if you personally eat meat and I'm not sure how many times I need to repeat this. Think of this like me testing the waters, trying to get a sample of reactions.

Look, sorry if I made an assumption about a certain behaviour I have come across frequently that, as some have pointed out, may just be the result of me involving myself in animal welfare discussions on social media. Just because I don't respond to posts doesn't mean I don't read them. I've kept an eye on what you've been saying, chill.

I will point out one thing though.

Most people eat meat, so if 6+ billion people are all one way, then they're not "Easy to offend" by definition, they're normal.

Err... statistically most people are religious (to narrow it down more, Christian). Does this mean that Christians can't be offended easily?

Easy to offend has to exist on a scale in which it is "Easy-Normal-Hard" or some variation. By definition, normal is most people. Try not being inherently contradictory, and I won't have a problem with it. Your analogy changing "Religious" to "A minority sect of religious people" is weak sauce.

 

[NPC009]

Bit late to party, but I'll give it a shot: thanks to all sorts of stereotypes, meat-eaters expect vegetarians/vegans to launch a rant to force their ideas on them. Instead of waiting for the attack, they go for a preemptive strike. Maybe. Maybe it's just people being uncomfortable around people with other lifestyles. Or maybe they launch a preemptive assault because they are uncomfortable with other lifestyles and can't imagine other people not minding not everyone is exactly like them.

I get the 'dumb treehugger' treatment once in a while. I have a light complexion and some people like to assume I'm pale because I'm anemic. They use that reason for why I should be eating meat, like they are, and they get to feel good about themselves for being smarter than me. Jokes on them, though. I'm a blood donor and you aren't allowed to donate if your hb levels are too low.

 

[Rahkshi500]

Probably because some accusations levied at those who eat meat tend to fall upon the same thoughts as murder or killing, like calling those who eat meat along the lines of a killer or murderer, almost in the same way as if they killed another human, even if the person eating the meat didn't kill the animal first. Also again pointing towards an arrogant mindset among some vegans and vegetarians who believe that there way of eating is better, therefore everyone else should be the same as them and if anyone dares not follow their way of life, then they're treated like the scum of the earth.

For me personally, I'll gladly stop eating conventional meat once vitro meat becomes a successful, healthy, delicious, and accessible across the country, if not the whole world.

 

[Sampler]

Okay before you accuse me of shoving my views down anyone's throats, this is not an argument about animal rights. As far as this thread goes, I don't care whether you eat animals or not.

We all know the jokes about vegans. "How do you know if someone's vegan? They'll tell you!" We've all seen the stereotype about vegans and vegetarians being smug, we've seen jokes at their expense because "we didn't get to the top of the food chain just to eat grass".

Interestingly though, I've found that meat eaters can be really easy to offend. I've seen many take criticisms of the meat industry very personally, which often results in lashing out. Accusations of aggression on the part of vegans, desperate proclamations of how "tough" they are or how humans have "evolved to eat meat". Because they are the majority group they tend to have a lot of support. Which just makes me wonder, if they have such strength in numbers and they honestly believe what they're doing is morally/ethically okay then why do they have such knee-jerk, emotional reactions?

Again, not judging meat eaters here. I'm just curious about why many of them are quick to get defensive if they're the vast majority.

Vegans would get angry, if they had the energy to get worked up...