“It’s not you. It’s me.”
These common break-up words are typically painful and often not fully believed. Who are you trying to fool?
But in the context of microaggressions committed by meat eaters against vegetarians, they take on a different meaning. In this case, the sentiment is likely quite appropriate. But unlikely to be forthcoming. Or even recognized. Our meat-eating friends don’t fully understand their reactions to us.
Chances are my vegetarian readers have been on the wrong side of a meat eater before. You may have been minding your own business, been on good behavior, and not looking for a fight, but there you were confronted by a meat eater with an edge. I remember getting ambushed by my wife’s family years ago over not eating meat although time has made me recall the incident as a mere annoyance. Sometimes we are teased, sometimes the butt of jokes, sometimes questioned in what seems like a playful manner, sometimes the subject of hushed whispers or unwanted stares, and sometimes even directly challenged.
Sometimes it can be very subtle. The Daily Beast once asked me to respond to an article in the Guardian suggesting that 37% of English vegetarians admitted to eating meat while drunk[1]. Although it was a friendly conversation, I couldn’t help feel somewhere that my own eating behavior was under scrutiny. Was this story generating so much publicity because it was a way for meat eaters to attack us with cover and a smile on their face?
It never feels good to be figuratively undressed in any of these ways. I have sometimes thought that a basic social problem of forgoing meat in our society is that you are either thought of too much or not enough. Too much as in the above interactions with meat eaters when you feel like your personal beliefs and practices are under scrutiny by all, and not enough when you are in a public situation where others have ignored your dietary needs. Yeah, sure, I can always order a salad.
Too visible or not visible enough, interactions with meat eaters can be stressful! No matter how carefully you try to manage such situations, allow me to share with you a dirty secret: Their reactions are not about you; they are about them.
What’s Going on Here?
The mere presence of vegetarians makes meat eaters feel uncomfortable. In her book Living with Meat Eaters[2], renowned theorist Carol Adams notes that vegetarians trigger over a dozen negative emotions including guilt, and anger. Her central thesis is that relations with meat eaters can be difficult for vegetarians because every meat eater is a “blocked” vegetarian who would rather avoid examining their behavior. Basically, meat eaters are conflicted because although part of them wants to avoid animal flesh for a number of reasons, another part of them wants to keep eating meat. It’s the classic angel on one shoulder and devil on the other. Normally, this tension or cognitive dissonance can be suppressed because vegetarians aren’t that common and because of the dominant and unnoticed carnist ideology that makes eating meat seem normal. But encounters with vegetarians bring it all to the surface.
Vegetarians make it harder for meat eaters to avoid thinking about the treatment of animals or the environment. We undercut the notion that eating meat is necessary for good health. Meat eaters imagine arguments we might make, even if we haven’t said anything, and feel threatened by these arguments. To strike back, they attack, pointing to our inconsistencies and the flaws they see in our arguments.
My Study
This was the rationale for a series of experiments I conducted almost ten years ago[3]. The basic idea was that exposure to vegetarians should be threatening to meat eaters, again not because we have acted rudely or offensively, but because we bring to the surface turmoil within meat eaters that they would rather avoid. To nullify this treat, meat eaters should defend their eating behavior by more strongly endorsing justifications for eating meat. In essence, vegetarians provoke defensiveness about meat, and meat eaters calm themselves with reassuring thoughts that eating meat really is a justifiable and reasonable action.
In a first experiment, participants read a short description of a man who followed either a vegetarian or gluten-free diet (in parentheses).
“John is a 19-year-old sophomore at a large state university. He is a political science major from the suburbs of Washington DC. John has many friends of both genders and loves to go out with them on weekends. John (follows a gluten-free diet and never eats food containing gluten because gluten makes him feel badly) is a vegetarian and never eats beef, chicken, pork, or fish because of moral and health reasons. John’s favorite sport is basketball, and he likes all kinds of music. John hopes to work in a political campaign following graduation and perhaps run for political office one day.”
Seems pretty innocuous, right?
But those presented with vegetarian John were more likely to believe that animals lacked mental capabilities (like memory and planning) and were less likely to express that animals were capable of experiencing emotional states (such as happiness and excitement). Mere exposure to a vegetarian seems to have made them question their own eating behavior, and they responded by convincing themselves that meat was okay because animals don’t really think and feel like we humans do. It’s not simply being deviant – because exposure to a gluten free person didn’t lead to these effects – but the nature of our deviancy.
Notice here that there was nothing overtly incriminating about John in the description. The information was too generic to really attack him personally. But I expected that if vegetarians could be devalued – because of some weakness they displayed – meat eaters would take advantage of that as a way to reduce their inner conflict.
And indeed, three additional experiments showed that exposure to flawed vegetarians did not motivate meat eaters to defend their eating behavior in the same way. They could simply derogate the weak vegetarian and move on. If you’re curious, the imperfect vegetarians were either shown as being an imposter, only abstaining from meat because of allergies, or being inconsistent in how they universally supported animal rights.
Here is one example, from the no imposter/imposter condition:
“Katie is a 19-year-old sophomore at a large state university. She is a political science major from the suburbs of Washington DC. Katie has many friends of both genders and loves to go out with them on weekends. Katie likes to tell people she is a vegetarian. In fact, she (eats meat and fish all the time and never sticks with her claim about being vegetarian.) is dedicated to this diet and never eats beef, chicken, pork, or fish under any circumstances. Katie’s favorite sport is basketball, and she likes all kinds of music. Katie hopes to work in a political campaign following graduation and perhaps run for political office one day.”
Being presented with an authentic vegetarian, a vegetarian freely choosing their behavior, and one consistently applying their ethics across other animal products posed a greater challenge for meat eaters. These vegetarians could not be dismissed so easily. In such cases, meat eaters showed signs of conflict and of trying to reduce this internal conflict. When presented with these more threatening vegetarians they bolstered justifications for eating meat, by endorsing views that it was natural to eat meat, God’s will, healthy to do so, and that animals don’t really suffer in the process.
Ironically, the “better” a vegetarian you are, the more you provoke conflict within meat eaters, and the more likely they are to feel the need to reduce it.
The Bottom Line
The point is that your mere presence triggers an internal conflict within meat eaters. One that makes them feel uncomfortable. Rather than deeply process the roots of their thoughts and feelings, they find it simpler to direct their energy toward you, the source of their angst.
It doesn’t matter how polite you are, they are going to have their reaction. In some ways, it’s quite liberating to realize this. It takes some pressure off.
It’s also important to realize that no matter how hard they try to convince you otherwise with their scrutiny, it isn’t about you; it’s about them.
[1] Why Drunk Vegetarians Eat Meat (thedailybeast.com)
[2] Adams, C. J. (2003). Living among meat eaters: The vegetarian’s survival handbook. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press
[3] Rothgerber, H. (2014). Efforts to overcome vegetarian-induced dissonance among meat eaters. Appetite, 79, 32-41. Efforts to overcome vegetarian-induced dissonance among meat eaters (univie.ac.at)