Not Everyone Can Be A Vegetarian

There seems to be an assumption made by a lot of animal rights activists that anyone can be a vegetarian. Nobody has to eat meat; they choose to. Everybody can give it up if they try hard enough. This argument really bothers me. After reading "Animal, Vegetable, or Women?" by Katherine Paxton-George for my book review, I've become aware of the many reasons why people might not be as suited for vegetarianism as others. When I wrote my Q&A from a few months ago where we had to state under what conditions vegetarianism was morally obligatory, I kept thinking of more and more examples of cases where vegetarianism should not be morally obligatory. It got to the point where I was making so many "exceptions" to the moral superiority of vegetarianism, that it just didn't make sense to ever say that vegetarianism is morally obligatory. I can't even account for every reason somebody might have to eat meat. I personally can't be a vegetarian or vegan because I have a history of disordered eating. Despite the fact that I don't even like the taste of meat, officially banning it from my diet reminds me too much of when I would restrict my food intake for dieting purposes. Also, making food a moral issue (and I'm not saying that it shouldn't sometimes be a moral issue) reminds me of "good foods" and "bad foods" in the dieting/eating disorder world. I don't want the food I eat to define how good or bad of a person I am, even if it's somewhat true. It may sound like I am making this about myself, but people who claim that "anybody can be a vegetarian" and "nobody needs to eat meat" are making it about themselves by making themselves the standard for everybody else (if they can live without meat, then so can everyone else). So many voices have been silenced so that privileged groups can tell everybody else how they should be living their life, and that seems to counterproductive in a movement where there is supposed to be empathy for beings with less power and freedom.

A Consumer's Responsibility?

Today in class we discussed the fact that when you buy animal products, you are supporting a corrupt industry. Nobody wants to fund something that they believe to be immoral, whether it is animal or human exploitation, but is it the consumer's responsibility, or the industry's? I wonder if we are placing too much moral responsibility on the consumer. To be sure, consumers have a responsibility both to themselves and to society to be informed about their economic choices. But, as we have discussed in class, not everybody has complete autonomy over their options for where they shop, what they eat, and what they buy. Therefore, while I believe that consumers should definitely assume some responsibility for what they are putting their money into, I think we need to hold the corporations that we are opposed to primarily responsible. Supporting something immoral is obviously not good, but being immoral is the real problem. I think we spend a lot of time focusing on how to get people to stop indirectly supporting these corrupt systems, when we should also be challenging the systems themselves.