The Queasy Grin

[Viking Redbeard]

Don't you just hate it when you're talking to someone and it comes out you're a vegan, and without missing a beat they say, 'Oh, I could never go vegan. I can't live without my steak (or whatever)' And then they give you that sinister shit-eating grin? Bluuuuugh! Does it not turn your stomach?

[Lightningman_42]

...and without missing a beat they say, 'Oh, I could never go vegan. I can't live without my steak (or whatever)' And then they give you that sinister shit-eating grin? Does it not turn your stomach?

It's weird to me that one of the most common responses to discovering that I'm vegan is to whine about how much they like certain types of animal flesh, nipple secretions, and avian menstrual discharges; and how they could never imagine "giving them up."

If nonvegans do this I usually point out that most vegans used to be exactly in that position, feeling the same way. "Most vegans used to be meat/dairy/egg eaters. We knew exactly how you feel." Often times this dumbfounds them, and perhaps it gets them to question their long-held assumption that they could never change. At least I sure hope so.

It saddens me that many people would rather insist that they could "never change", than to ask me about why I became vegan (despite having been an animal-eater myself for the first 20 years of my life) and how I do it.

I wonder if most people believe that "enjoying {insert animal-derived-food} too much to stop" is actually a sufficient moral justification for the suffering and deaths that they're contributing to. Do they realize that they themselves would not consider this to be a moral justification for harm in any other context?