Male Vegetarian – Veggie without Applause! (get it?)
Vegetarianism is new to me I guess, about 4 months or so now. No way I’d ever go back so I guess timespan is irrelevant. Along my Vegetarian path so far I’ve discovered very few fellow male vegetarians, I found it’s a bit of a shame so decided to post about it.
Bar the often ‘girlfriend conversion’ male vegetarians who are only doing it as they’re nagged into it and stop the second they part ways there doesn’t appear to be all too many. Why is this? Surely male vegetarianism is something to be proud of?
Apparently not, at least not for me – questioned at every turn with stupid questions, “what if you hit a cow in a car, is this natural death and so you’d eat it?” & the classic “do you use coal? that is old animal parts”. This is just a personal thing though, the whole deal with male vegetarianism I feel is something much deeper.
Males are depicted as rough, tough hardy creatures. It’s deemed girly in our society to be caring, compassionate and loving towards fellow man and animals. It’s embedded in us to go out and kill a boar, sling it over our shoulder and throw it on the fire. I agree, it probably is. But the day I see any meat eating male do this deed – i’ll shut my mouth.
Basically, if you hadn’t got the gist yet, it’s that it’s deemd “a bit soft” in the eyes of peers if male vegetarianism is considered. While it’s perfectly alright for women. A stupid thing that was said to be recently was “well women are more caring, it’s just something that’s in them. Us blokes are meant to eat meat” and it triggered me to write this post. This is exactly the kind of thing I’m trying to rebel against.
I’m no pansy because I don’t eat meat, am I? Surely I can rank up my masculinity points by going to the gym and studying Thai boxing (not that masculinity points mean sh*t). Guys, do yourself a favour, search ‘Earthlings’ on Google video, watch it, have a cry and decide what’s more important:
Your tastebuds and your “friends” opinions or the unnecassary death of hundreds of thousands of beings?
Give male vegetarianism a go!
Another male veggie said,
August 22, 2006 at 4:36 pm
Amen to that!
I get really sick of people asking if my girlfriend is veggie and, when I say yes, smiling in that kind of “Oh, did she get to you?” kind of way. I always say: “Yes, but we were both veggie before we started going out.” Then they look and say: “Did you meet through somewhere vegetarian then?”.
Gawd. You want to scream out loud “You and your husband both eat meat, so did you meat in a butchers shop or a slaughterhouse? No? Well guess what. We met at college! Because there are lots of people at college and not all of them eat meat!! And no, we did not meet through the animal rights group! There was none!
I think it is true what you say, that people see us males as the “providers” going out to get boar. There are plenty of men I know who could do this. There are plenty of women I know who would want a male provider. But neither me nor my partner want this (OK, I lie, I’m sure she’d love a provider, but not in the traditional sense!
). Men and women have so many different roles these days…no one would question a girl being a mechanic (apart from on Coronation Street) so why question us for eating meat…
Anyhow, thanks for starting this rant….no doubt between us we’ll be able to go on forwever….welcome to the world of vegetarianism, where everyone you know is an expert on nutrition and health, where everyone has a sudden rush of deep ethical thought but still miss every single shallow point let alone the deep ones and then proceed to tell you how you should live your life.
Anne Xiety said,
October 2, 2006 at 6:08 pm
There is a great book called The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol j Adams….I think you may like it.
Go vegan!
officialism said,
May 30, 2008 at 1:52 am
Officialism says : I absolutely agree with this !