veg hot take
Exploratory post to sort out my thoughts and arguments around this topic. Had this thought for ages but want to further gather my arguments and find out why.
I don’t think vegetarians and vegans have anything in common. Shouldn’t be mentioned together. Shouldn’t even be a category of people. That’s like making not eating the green bell pepper your identity.
Exceptions exist - but all vegetarians I come in contact with do it in a half assed way. They still buy leather, wool, fur. They still consume cheese that is made with calf rennet. Many don’t do it for animal welfare reasons, but instead because they don’t like the taste of meat or have gut issues with it.
Which makes sense, I guess, because if you truly gave a fuck about animal welfare, vegetarianism would make zero sense to you. It would feel rightfully inconsistent and hypocritical, like it did for me, which made it harder to follow. If you truly acknowledged and cared about the meat industry, you’d also have to acknowledge that dairy cows still suffer, that they get slaughtered and eaten when they don’t produce enough milk anymore, and that to make milk they are forcefully impregnated and the calf is taken away and either also becomes a dairy cow or gets killed for calf meat. You’d have to acknowledge the suffering inside huge hen batteries where most of you all get eggs from, not some sweet backyard operation.
I can’t stand the exceptions everywhere, ovo lacto pesce whatever, and making an exception during Thanksgiving or Christmas or business trips or vacations (because you wanna experience “the local culture” and that includes meat dishes). You’re just a picky omnivore! You’re a flexitarian at best, which is also, again, a picky part-time omnivore. You love zoos and riding horses and all that stuff too. My “vegetarian” coworker is still eating rennet cheeses and fish and books camel rides in Morocco. My “vegetarian” mother-in-law is similarly inconsistent.
Claiming vegetarianism feels like stolen valor, because it clearly rides on the effects and attitudes of veganism. Any discussion about climate and animal welfare has these people going “Well I’m vegetarian!” as if it was a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card that absolves them of being responsible for any of that, even if they still actively participate in animal exploitation and climate harming behavior.
They enjoy lecturing omnivorous people about meat like a champion, but when they’re asked about eggs and cheese, suddenly they get defensive. Suddenly it’s “I can’t live without eggs and cheese, I’m sooo addicted, I looove cheese!”. It’s like they don’t realize that steak lovers feel the same way, and that giving something up pretending it was for ethical reasons while just not liking it is lame. It’s dumb as hell belittling meat eaters when you never cared for it, but then faltering yourself at eggs and cheese. You’re the same as the meat lover. You’re just doing the below bare minimum effort and failing.
It’s just so convenient: you get the moral high ground and clout from seeming like a climate conscious person or whatever by cutting out meat, but when pushed to the logical conclusion of your morals and choices, you can pretend vegans are too extreme and pose in front of omnivorous people as “one of the chill guys” who “doesn’t take it too far” to protect their egos.
What you are is someone with a food preference. You have more in common with someone that avoids food due to an allergy than with vegans. I don’t think you are on the same side, or similar at all. You’re no different than someone who chooses to eat all kinds of animal products except pork.
It really shouldn’t matter what kind of animal product you choose to avoid if it isn’t all of them, because the effect is almost negligible seeing how the suffering is the same and the cows are still there farting because of your precious cheese. I don’t see people allergic to eggs create some faux green identity for themselves, so “vegetarian” as a label should cease to exist.
I’m sorry for all the “vegetarians” who genuinely care, who do it for animal welfare and see the hypocrisy but can’t change their diet for whatever reason, but they’re an extreme minority in their group and they know it. The others rest on the laurels of vegans and cry online every time a vegetarian product’s recipe is switched to vegan despite not even tasting the milk and egg in it, like in fake meat. Who needs enemies when you have “allies” like this?
So ideally, stop even using that word. And stop saying it together with vegans as if those had anything in common. In practice, they don’t.