Meatless Like Me : Vegetarian Myths, Debunked
Every vegetarian remembers his first time. Not the unremarkable event of his first meal without meat, mind you. No, I mean the first time he casually lets slip that he's turned herbivore, prompting everyone in earshot to stare at him as if he just revealed plans to sail his carrot-powered plasma yacht to Neptune.
Posted May 07, 2008
amanda
Responses to this thread:
Robocop:
I agree that meat eaters find vegetarians threatening. The reason is that their diet is just the tip of the iceberg. Most vegetarians have wierd political, philosophical and worldview positions. Someone saying I don't eat meat is code for: "I'm a wierd liberal" 
That's why they get stared at...
smckenzie23:
I like being a threatening vegetarian. When people get smug about their meat eating I love to point out that beef contributes way more greenhouse gasses than all transportation combined. I'm accusatory when I do that. Not interesting.
Jim Cowie:
todd:
amanda:
Richard Wagner was, however, and thusly influenced Hitlers quasi-vegetarian diet. "In an essay, entitled "Heldentum und Christenheit" (Heroism and Christianity), Wagner articulated an anti-Semitic theory of history, which linked vegetarianism to Germany's future. It drew on the racial theories of Joseph Arthur Gobineau, the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, and Wagner's own idiosyncratic brand of Catholicism. Wagner believed that, in abandoning their original vegetarian diet, people had become corrupted by the blood of slaughtered animals. This degeneration was then spread by the mixing of races. Interbreeding eventually spread through the entire Roman Empire, until only the "noble" Germanic race remained pure. After their conquest of Rome, the Germans, however, finally succumbed by mating with the subject peoples. "Regeneration" could be achieved, even by highly corrupted races such as the Jews, through a return to natural foods, provided this was accompanied by partaking of the Eucharist."
amanda:
Maybe that's why meat eaters find vegetarians threatening! They think we think they're racially impure and are trying to restore civilization with our spiritually clean diet.
