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Comment by lackbeard | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure the "hatred" towards vegans and vegetarians isn't actually hatred, but defensiveness. I think most meat-eaters wouldn't care about veganism and vegetarianism at all if there weren't so many vegans and vegetarians trying to moralize to the rest of world how they ought to be eating.

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As a vegetarian who makes a point of being low key about it, not bringing it up unless asked, etc, there is almost endless judgment and questioning put forth in my direction. Every time I go out for a work lunch and order the black bean burger, or meatless sides at a BBQ joint or whatever, people want to dust off their freshman philosophy class ethical arguments.

People with non-normative beliefs stand out from the normative culture just by virtue of existing. If we must defend ourselves constantly it sounds louder. I understand that can be annoying to people like you.

We'll look at WeWork, they banned their employees from expensing non-pescatarian meals. I think you'd be hard pressed to find an example of an employer who banned their employees from expensing vegan meals.

One company among the thousands upon thousands of non-vege-/pescatarian companies limiting their meal reimbursement policy does not support the argument that there exist "so many vegans and vegetarians trying to moralize to the rest of world."

In fact, I believe it is evidence of the opposite: members of the normative culture are so protective of their own homogeneity, wittingly or not, that they consider a single example of heterodoxy to be intolerably deviant.

Wow, an employer dictating my diet is where I draw a HARD line of “get the ____ out of my life”. This seems discriminatory and unethical to say the least.

They aren't "dictating your diet" unless you plan on eating all of your meals during business travel. They are telling you the scope of items they are willing to reimburse.

It would seem far more discriminatory and unethical to me to ban the creation of vegetarian institutions. If not unethical, at least antithetical to any minimally principled formulation of capitalism.

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