Response to Emily Burke

In her blog Emily asked the question: Why are people concerned with animal rights often not taken seriously?

I am often made fun of in my house and by my friends for not eating meat. For the most part, this is all in good fun and I always make a reference to them eating the soul of an innocent animal when we sit down to eat together. My friends and family love animals and they cringe in disgust when I tell them the horrible deaths that those animals face so that they can be consumed unnecessarily at mealtimes. So then we do they continue to eat meat? For the same reason that they think I'm making an irrelevant decision by not eating meat: it's human nature to kill and consume animals.

We could go into a very lengthy discussion on why citing human nature as a reason for one's behavior is not always such a good idea (I mean, have you ever seen Gladiator?!). Here I will just say that eating meat is a long standing cultural tradition, especially in this country. I come from Tennessee and folks from the good old Bible Belt view the consumption of meat as the way that God would have us act. They find it quite stupid that someone would be so concerned with the rights of being that were placed here by a higher being specifically so that they could be eaten.

I think that much of the time when you tell someone that you're a vegetarian or a vegan they automatically assume that you're going to start throwing your meal choices in their face. It's easy to get labeled as one of "those people" who try to make everyone see the errors of their ways when they didn't ask for your opinion. People hear vegan and think radical. Once they have this thought it is impossible to have an open dialogue with that person and therefore they can no longer take you seriously.

My question for this blog is to the meat eaters out there: Do you know any vegetarians that constantly criticize you for eating meat?