© 2005 by John Varley; all rights reserved

Vegetarians piss me off.

Okay, I can see the hate mail already on its way to me, so I’d better qualify that statement. The way I see it, there are two kinds of vegetarians, different as apples and carrots, and I don’t mean ovo-lacto-vegetarians and vegans.

The first kind are apples. I like apples. These are the people who have opted to be vegetarians as a healthy life-style choice. They may piss you off from time to time by scowling at the unhealthy meat you’re eating, they may lecture you on the benefits of their diet, they may bore you by carrying on about how wonderful they feel, and point out that you could feel wonderful, too, if you only gave up meat. (I knew one woman who actually told me that after becoming a veggie, her shit no longer stank) These are basically smart and nice people and I like them, in spite of the most unforgivable thing about them: They are right.

I don’t dispute for a second that vegetarianism is better for you than eating meat. It has been proven many times over that human beings don’t need meat, that it’s a luxury which, in a sufficiently rich society, can be dispensed with. The reason I don’t adopt such a diet myself is simple. It sucks. It’s just bland and lacking in substance. I couldn’t do it. I like meat. I’m not about to give it up. So that shortens my life. Big deal. For me, a longer life without steak and bacon and pork chops would be a burden, not a blessing.

So, as long as you don’t proselytize me, I got no problem with your diet, no matter what you eat or don’t eat.

The second kind of vegetarian is like a carrot. I don’t like carrots much. I like them even less if they assert that they are morally superior to me. I’m talking about those wonderful “Meat is Murder” people. The “animal rights” people who assert that, if I wear fur or leather, or eat meat, I am a murderer. To distinguish them from the sane vegetarians, I’m going to call them “petaveggies.” Some of them are even in favor of killing people who harm animals:

Or there is David Matthews of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), the largest and most open terrorist group currently operating in America, and the one with the most members whose names you would recognize. Asked to name a man he admired, he nominated:

Most petaveggies probably would not approve of murder, but many of their leaders have explicitly endorsed arson, bombs, harassment, and any sort of vandalism:

PETA was founded by Ingrid Newkirk, who is given to saying things like this:

Therefore, killing 1000 chickens is the moral equivalent of killing one Jew. She’s good at math like that. She is the one who formulated the central tenet of PETA and their ilk. I’m going to call it the PETA Equation, and it goes like this:

Not exactly E=mc², but elegant in its own way. Sexist, too, so let’s clean it up and let B = “human child.” And I can’t argue with it, in a quantitative sense. Anything with a nervous system does feel pain, hunger, and thirst. Probably a lot of things without a central nervous system, too, judging from how a sea anemone withdraws when you poke it with a piece of driftwood. Where PETA and I differ is in the inference that causing pain or death to anything with a central nervous system implies a moral equivalency.

There are even those who go further than that.

We can hope that’s an extreme position, even within PETA, but with these people you never know. I do know they don’t have a sense of humor, so he’s probably not joking. When you go to bed tonight, say a little prayer of thanks that Mr. Fox is not your dad.

Even people who I would have thought would have more sense have made some astonishing statements. Get a load of this:

Gee, Maher, I don’t think anybody asked you make that trade-off, you sanctimonious asshole. It’s easy enough not to make that trade-off when my father is at risk. And forget about the dog; I would cheerfully vivisect you, if there was a 50/50 chance it would spare someone in my family from pain or death. As for your old man, I don’t even know if he’s alive, but if it took the deaths of one billion rats (rat = dog) to save his life, I would approve of it.

Arrogance is the key word here. What kind of arrogance is it to call the vast majority of cultures that exist worldwide and the vast majority that have ever existed “primitive and barbaric?” Primitive, maybe. I guess you could call the peoples of the Amazon primitive. They eat monkey and tarantula, neither of which interests me much, but I don’t judge them for that. You could call American Indian tribes primitive, too, compared to the technological and literary cultures of Europe who all but exterminated them, but they had their own wisdom, still do, and they revered the spirits of the animals they slew. They ate meat! Still do.

But barbaric? That implies a value judgement I am not willing to endorse. Calling someone a barbarian has a well-known meaning, and that is, “you are less than human.” You are not of our tribe. Your philosophy and your gods are false, inferior to our philosophy and gods. You are therefore not worthy to call yourself a human being, and in fact, killing you is not like killing a human being. The Nazis had a word for it: Sub-human. They applied it to Poles, Russians, Gypsies, Jews, homosexuals, and the retarded. Speaking of whom, get a load of this:

Wow! Ignore, if you can, the absolutely stunning insensitivity to the parents of retarded children. Put aside, if you can, the difficulty of administering an IQ test to a child and a dog in the middle of the ocean. According to the PETA Equation, R = P = D = B, if those four animals were drowning in the ocean, you should rescue the one that’s nearest to you, or the one that’s easiest to pick up (the rat), or perform a visual triage, ignore the ones that are swimming well and the ones who are obviously goners, and rescue the ones who seem to have a chance. If you would consider any one of these options for even a second ... I don’t acknowledge you as a human being. The moral choice here is so obvious that it continues to stun me that anyone, anywhere, would ever consider it.

The whole animal rights movement states that all animals are equal, and now this jerk-off tells me that intelligence is the determining factor. The more brains you have, the more worthy you are of his attention.

(I have my own solution to this conundrum. Since I can’t swim, I’d toss Tom Regan into the ocean beside the dog and the child and hold his head under until he drowned, while a human being who can swim rescued the child, as any real human being would do.)

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One more thought. We return to La Newkirk, who once said this:

Along with a hearty endorsement of her wish that there be a hole in the space she’s currently occupying, this statement has come back into my thoughts over the years as I tried to pinpoint the pathology behind it. Because it is clearly pathological, these are obviously the words of a very, very sick person. I finally came up with a term for it, and that is Environmental Anorexia. It’s not in the diagnostic manual yet, but it should be.

We all know about anorexia, that puzzling condition whereby a woman (usually) can look at her stick-like figure in a mirror and see a fat girl. There’s different theories about it, but most seem to agree that societal pressure plays a large part. We value slenderness in women, we make fun of fat people. And there is no denying that being overweight is unhealthy. (Oddly, it is not usually fat girls who are anorexic. They agonize about their weight, too, but they keep eating. It is usually girls who are already thin who try to starve themselves thinner. Go figure.)

Recently I was horrified to discover that there are literally hundreds of websites devoted to helping anorexia. Not helping the anorexics, helping the disease, enabling these girls, giving them support. (“Sixty-eight pounds? You go, girl!”) They see it as a life-style choice. I guess it is, in a sense, like alcoholism, methedrine ... and suicide.

EA is like that, and PETA is such an enabling organization when it goes to extremes. No question that the human race is managing its environment badly. This is not good. People get passionate about defending the environment, they react against an evil that I do not deny—I am in total agreement with them. At first, there is the idea of “leave it as you found it.” When you go into the wilderness, pick up your soda cans and cigarette butts. Don’t start forest fires. Don’t kill anything you don’t plan to eat, and don’t kill any endangered species. Don’t pollute. You know the drill.

But soon, as fanatics do, you begin making leaps of logic. It’s not a very big leap, for some, to the proposition that no one should go into the wilderness. Eventually you come to the pathetic position of Ingrid Newkirk, who fears to walk on the ground lest she accidentally crush an earthworm she can’t even see. “At least I wouldn’t be harming anything.” With that attitude, you can’t even eat, Ingrid. I got news for you. Every second your body is slaughtering millions of single-celled animals intent on doing you harm, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it except stop breathing. At last, you will be at one with nature.

Hurry up, dear.
 

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I was lying in that first line up there. I just said it to get your attention. I actually have no problem with 90% of vegetarians.

Bottom line:

If you CHOOSE not to eat meat, eggs, and dairy product because you think it will make you healthier, you’re probably right, and I’m behind you all the way.

If you CHOOSE not to eat meat, wear fur or leather, or use make-up that was tested on animals or medical procedures developed by testing with animals, that’s your right. We disagree, but you can do what you please.

But if you CHOOSE to do any of the above and thereby set yourself up as somehow morally superior to me ... you can kiss my carnivorous ass.
 

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I’ve got more to say about this. Maybe next week.
 

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