April 17th, 2007
Hello blog world. I’m featuring a comment I got yesterday as a vehicle to addressing something that bugs the shit out of me. You know you love it when I gripe!
My friend Bronn says, in reference to my meat eating experience yesterday:
Nope, not going to give up a nice juicy steak, roast beef or turkey dinner, or anything chicken. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a vegetarian stirfry and I’ve even had a very good vegetarian lasagne. Heck, I’ve even had a couple of mushroom burgers in my time, and they weren’t bad. But I won’t limit my food choices.
I’m apparently morally ambivilent about eating meat. Its called top of the food chain for a reason.
Do you eat fish as part of your vegetarianism or are you totally meat-free? Just curious.
To which I reply:
You’re not morally ambivalent! You face no moral issues with meat eating at all, based on this comment! Not minding vegetables has nothing to do with minding meat.
And no, I do not eat fish. In an perfect world you would be able to tell this by the fact that I call myself a vegetarian, but that is sadly not the case. This is one of the things that always bugs me about the vegetarian label – I have met vegetarians who eat chicken. Hello? Since when is a chicken a vegetable? Chicken eaters are NOT vegetarians. At least not in my book. I feel the same about fish, which, let’s face it, is also not a vegetable. Fish flesh is fish meat and that means if you eat fish you eat meat. But there are loads of vegetarians who eat fish so I’m hugely outnumbered on this one. I guess fish aren’t cute and furry like mammals so somehow that puts them in the non-meat category…?
But you know, many people feel that since fish live wild (though many we eat don’t, but that’s another story), and since they don’t really have advanced brains like mammals, it’s no big deal to destroy the ocean to let them die gasping on a ship deck for our eating pleasure. I find this morally objectionable (and intellectually puzzling – just because you think its suffering doesn’t matter, does that make the fish a vegetable?) but of course each of us is free to make our own choices.
The point is, if you eat fish, you shouldn’t call yourself a vegetarian. You shoud call yourself someone who eats meat, but only fish meat. Maybe that would be a fishevegetarian. Or something. I don’t know. But if you fish people stopped calling yourselves vegetarians I could stop being irritated by waitpersons at restaurants who, when I ask if they have any vegetarian items they could recommend, say: “Ooh, try the grilled halibut!”
A FISH IS NOT A VEGETABLE!
I concur… I tend to call the fish eating vegitarians… BAD VEGITARIANS.
I also do not think that people should questions a person’s eating choices… moraly or religously based (ok… I question the “won’t eat cute animals” as a logic for avoiding certain foods, but whatever). I think its grand that you have taken a moral stand against meat.
Yes. At this time, mutual respect of differing eating habits is a sign of respect, and lord knows we can use more of that. I make my stance clear but I also hope I have made it clear that I am not trying to convert anyone, but rather to explore my own experiences and thoughts related to vegetarianism.
I don’t think of my stand as grand. But it would be nice to think my example helped someone else change their eating, even if it meant going veg for one night a week, say. Even that little bit on a large enough scale matters. Hell, it all matters.
There may come a time when for environmental reasons we are forced to question everyone’s eating habits, but that’s a topic for another day.
In my defense, as you say, there are a lot of vegetarians that eat fish or chicken, and aren’t true vegetarians, hence the reason I asked. If I hadn’t had tuna yesterday, I probably wouldn’t have even thought of it.
Also, you’ve never come across as trying to convert, which is nice, since people trying to do that to other people (usually based on religion) bugs me.
Finally, while I’m certainly nowhere close to vegetarianism, nor do I ever intend to be, barring doctor’s orders, my diet has seen the amount of vegetables in it grow greatly. Sadly, I’m probably too picky an eater to go too much farther, but you never know. If you had suggested that this would be the case even two years ago, I would’ve laughed at you.
Yes, I don’t see the point in trying to convert others. Well, of course there is a point – less killing! Less environmental harm! But really, all I would end up doing is pissing people off. So… meh. I don’t bother. Anyway people are often intensely, intensely defensive of their “right” to eat meat, and I have found that most aren’t even open to conversation about it. One day I hope to be paid to deal with people’s defensiveness, and until then I’m just going to stay away from it.
Pescetarianism would be the term for the fish and vegetable ideal.
But are you also against animal testing? Giving some poor heartless baby a Baboon heart? Lab experiments on mice?
Do we have philosophical consistency in our moral stance on a steakless life?