I don’t think so. They’ll eat all the bacon before I can get there. I think we need more people like you instead! 
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It’s not about the diners, it’s about making a Chris Cocker style viral video. Going in during the quiet period makes it more likely that they will be able to say what they want.
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Please note, I did not say that I am vegan.
I don’t give a shit what other people eat. Never have, never will.
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I wish that were true. I have had hundreds – yes, hundreds – of meals in which the people sitting next to me have made a point of talking about hunting in gory detail while I was eating, specifically to bully me. This mostly happens in the Midwest and in Texas. (I never tell them that it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Who knows what they’d come up with instead if they knew I wasn’t being harassed by their comments after all?)
More generally, I’ve never had a meal while I was sitting next to work- or volunteer-related acquaintances in which no attention was paid to the fact that my plate was different than everyone else’s at the table. It’s very important to tell me what’s wrong with my diet. Cannot be overlooked, ever.
I never say a word. Even my closest friends don’t know anything other than the basic fact that I’m a vegetarian.
So, it’s great that everyone treated you like an equal, but it’s not the universal experience.
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then the OR part of that sentence applies to you. 
unfortunately you’ve gotten the brunt of the aftermath of them having been judged by other vegetarians.
You really shouldn’t keep having meals with that same person…or do you eat out with hundreds of different hunters???
(are you a vegetarian gun rep or something, i’m trying for the life of me to figure out how this could be and am sorry that you’ve had such an atypical negative experience to have eaten with so many bully hunters as a vegetarian, that is rough…)
The key if you are eating with people who don’t already know you personally and that you are cool with how they eat is to actually say something first to disarm any tension from their having been attacked in the past. People have all sorts of different diets, and none of them get any attention, unless there is tension. Are those same people talking about how they harvest and grind their own wheat to the person with celiac? Or how they pulp their own sugar cane to the diabetic? Or how they milk their own cows to the person who is lactose intolerant? my guess would be no. it typically isn’t about eating different, unless you regularly eat out with real ass hats. If they truly are equally harassing everyone who eats different then they are just a special kind of jerk and it is best to ignore them and eat in silence and not eat with them ever again, if they are just defending meat eating then they are typically easily disarmed by letting them know that your choices are personal and you support them eating the way they choose to, ie establish mutual respect.
I treated them equal first proactively. I find if you make an effort it is typically reciprocated. You have to keep in mind that a large number of vegans and vegetarians are highly judgmental towards meat eating and you are coming into theses peoples frame of reference after those people. I’d also put forward that talking about meat eating is no more bullying then talking about eating vegetables, talking about hunting is no more bullying then talking about gardening, unless you actually do have a problem with how they are eating, then it is most likely they are picking up on that.
industrial Farming meat is ethically dubious
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Would you like to hear from an actual vegan, who has vegan friends, participates in vegan discussion boards online, and has had this conversation many times before?
If so, here I go (if not, please disregard and continue speaking for us):
There is no such thing, even in theory, as a vegan “consensus” on the matter, since there’s no Book of Vegan we subscribe to. But the overwhelming opinion I’ve heard in the discussion is “I support lab-grown meat for other people.” I’m used to a life without meat, so I don’t really care to try it, but I’d love for it to replace factory farming.
I can assure you, I’ve never heard it described as “evil,” and the ones who I find call it “unnatural” more often are those who do eat meat. Most vegans I’ve spoken to are well familiar with the “Appeal to Nature” fallacy, that just because something is “natural” doesn’t mean that it is good, nor does something being good necessitate that it’s “natural.”
For a better sense of the diversity of vegan opinions on the matter, feel free to peruse these subject keyword search results in the reddit vegan group, or find a local veg advocacy group and speak to someone there! Cheers.
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What how dare you blaspheme John Robbins: Diet for a New America? 
hee hee
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The Robbinsonians are impure. Long live the Singerbyterians.
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I personally am for eating foods produced on a small sustainable scale, supporting small farms is rad. yes i used the word rad. lol.
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Actually, I was talking about real life!
It is a particularly awful stunt, no doubt about it. Like, it is piss weak.
But I’m kind of reminded of the way conservative media will always report on the crazy Imam who’s preaching hate, and then everyone feels OK making allusions to how hateful Islam is. It’s the sort of thing that most regular commenters at BB abhor, yet when vegetarianism comes up, bam, off they go. PETA has become some kind of Vegan equivalent of ISIL.
In fairness, you could characterise my post as an overreaction, but the topic did outperform dancing tits and hilarious UFO footage by a factor of around 4:1 comments per hour, so I think there is something to what I am saying.
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You’ve sussed correctly in general: it’s work-related. Guns are part of the culture, but not my specific field.
Oh…sorry I misunderstood. But yeah, real life too!
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You seem to be implying that myself and others brought this on ourselves, with our proselytising at the dinner table.
I think if you never had an unsolicited agressive response from a meat eater during your 10 years of veganism you were unbelieveably lucky.
I certainly was very discrete about my diet, and never maintained it was for ethical reasons, and never broached ethics. All I did was mention that I didn’t eat meat when meat was being served. That’s it.
This was enough to consistently provoke meat eaters into long discussions of pig fat in ice cream, nutritional deficiencies of a vegetarian diet, how much they love steak, etc etc.
This happenned a lot, and while I’m glad you dodged the bullet, you are kind of victim blaming in this post.
You’ve also kind of said you think all vegans are wackjobs.
Edit:
OK so this is one thing I’m really not sure about. Is the US really full of aggressive vegans challenging people’s diets all the time, or is it more just that stunts like the one we are dicussing here give that impression, so people are defensive about it?
I know in Australia I have hardly ever come up against an aggressive vegetarian of any stripe, and I went and barbecued meat at confest.
In my experience, there is a very strong perception amongst meat eaters that they are under attack from hoards of aggressive vegetarians, that is not matched at all by reality.
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Meatsplaining?
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Lets just enter that directly into urban dictionary shall we?
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My take on the matter is, if what you’re eating looks unfamiliar and tasty, I’ll probably ask for the recipe. Don’t care if its vegan, vegetarian or carnivore. Things that require heavy equipment to prepare will probably not show up on the table anytime soon.
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NO, if you read I quite clearly point out that it might not have been your judgment but rather someone before you. It isn’t from nowhere though, and that is the important point. Meat eaters only care about vegetarianism if they’ve been judged, otherwise they don’t really give a rats ass. Most meat eaters also eat vegetables, they have nothing against eating vegetables, they are against people being against what they eat, full stop.
NO, that is unfairly quoted out of context. I specifically say not pointing out any specific group, I was just making the counter argument that not all groups are misrepresented by the few, which is a PC mistake and not at all true. The National Association of Alien Abductees probably has more wackjobs then the National Association of Scientists. That certainly doesn’t mean that everyone in the first group is a wackjob or that everyone in the second group is sane, it is merely pointing out that there is a huge variation and it is a mistake to think that all groups are equally sane except for a few outliers. (i was playing devils advocate of the assertion i was replying to)
I also clearly say I was vegan for almost 10 years. I am not anti vegan, if anything I understand the perspective more then most. I also understand the other side as well though.
yes unfortunately. meat is murder and meat eating is destroying the planet are not outlier opinions of the fringe but rather core beliefs of a good percentage of those groups here. think “pro lifers” for animals.
In my experience there is a huge cognitive dissonance between veg judgment and bewilderment that those people being judged having some backlash towards the veg movement.
I’m truly sorry if you somehow felt i was attacking you or blaming you personally somehow. That was not my intention. Like i said I’ve been on both sides of the fence and have a pretty clear perspective of both sides of this issue. If you truly have no judgement then you are suffering from a backlash from the judgment of others unfortunately.
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That is an amazingly broad assertion. Again, I think many of them (edit: “us” that is. All of a sudden I’m identifying as vegetarian again) feel judged, but I’ve borne witness first-hand to a kind of tribal banding that occurs as soon as someone is identified as vegetarian. It doesn’t corroborate your assertion.
Probably. Glad you clarified. You certainly left it open to interpretation.
Don’t worry, I’ll get over it! We clearly have just had wildly differing experiences on this particular issue. I guess it’s a big planet, with a lot of people.
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