[Politics] It isn't easy being Blue.

[davywavy]

Whilst out on the town a few weeks ago, I got talking to a girl in a bar. After a while, for reasons I can't recall, the conversation came round to politics. Suddenly she stopped short and looked at me quizzically.
"You're right-wing, aren't you?"
"Yup", I replied.
"Well, I don't think we should let homeless people starve to death on the street", she said, smugly ensuring her moral superiority over me and my homeless-starving ways whilst necking the booze I'd just bought her like there was no tomorrow.

A friend of mine who shares my political opinions once told me they didn't really like going to social events with many of my friends, because they knew that they would be belittled and insulted for holding their political beliefs. They found it upsetting that they would be insulted by people they barely knew not even for their beliefs, but for what those people considered their beliefs to be without even taking the time to find out the reality of the situation. In other circumstances this sort of behaviour would be considered 'prejudice'. When you're dealing with a lot of people I run into, it's called 'informed debate'. Sometimes it's nice to open LJ and read the wise words of the mind-numbingly gorgeous vulgarcriminal, who is political voice of reason.
The irony of the intellectual intolerance of many people amuses me in a bleak sort of way; most of the people on my friends list consider themselves to be tolerant, understanding and non-judgemental; however this just highlights the basic dichotomy of many people's political views - they're tolerant of any kink, perversion, social attitudes and outre behaviour which they happen to agree with. Their tolerance doesn't extend so far as being polite to people who think that, oh, say, civil liberties have been undermined quite a lot by the current government or that spending thirty-seven billion quid which we don't have every year in a slowing economy might lead to trouble later.
raggedhalo recently made a post in which he compared prejudice against vegetarians to homophobia, and presented himself as being a persecuted minority. Personally I think it's a bit difficult to be a persecuted minority when you're a socialist vegetarian in a student union, but that's just me.
Re-reading his post, it's interesting to me just how much of his argument I can apply to my own point. After all, if he can compare prejudice against sexualities with his own political views, so can I - to object to that would be prejudiced, wouldn't it? Back in the 1980's, being gay would get you socially ostracised and sometimes insulted in public, whilst being Conservative would get you social acceptance and congratulations on your snappy dress sense. And now...?
There's a comparison to be made here, I think...

Of course, I think Joe's comparison is as nonsensical as mine. But it's funny nevertheless.

Comments

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Joe, I'm curious. This 'structural oppression'. How does it manifest? Evil gangs of veggie bashes stalking the streets? Do restaurants refuse to sell veggie food? Or do supermarkets sneak pork products into salad to oppress you?
Or are you talking nonsense (you are, by the way)?

Talking as a Pro-hunting Conservative Voter, I can guarantee you I'm more likely to encounter unthinking prjudice in my day-to-day life than you are for being a meat-dodger and that's not oppression. It's people being dumb.

You aren't oppressed, Joe. I know that being a part of an oppressed minority is seen as pretty cool in student unions up and down the land, but you aren't. Really. Trust me on this.

However, as regards your 'try being vegetarian for a month, you might enjoy it' challenge which you issued on you LJ, I'll make you a counter offer: I will go vegetarian for a month if you agree to vote Conservative at the next general election. I'll trust to your inherent honesty and willingness to keep your word as the next election is about 4 years away.
How about it? You never know, you might enjoy it.

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

As stated elsewhere, it manifests in such things as the "fish" attitude or terms of abuse like "meat-dodger."

And oppression is people being dumb. That's exactly the point!

It's important to note that what I actually said in the post was that anti-veggie sentiment is most similar to that experienced by LGBT people, because it's a covert, rather than overt, basis -- ethnicity or sex are both generally fairly apparent on sight.

I particularly like the way you use personal attacks to try to make your argument; I'm somehow saying these things in order to garner some more respect from my peers in the SU movement (surely they're the people I'd be saying this to if that was the case..?) or I'm talking nonsense. Nice.

Incidentally, you going vegetarian for a month is in no way comparable to me voting Conservative at the next General Election. You going vegetarian for a month will in no way lead to at least four, if not longer, years of systematic deregulation of business, erosion of workers' rights, and destruction of the welfare state, as well as a repeal of the ban on hunting.

Being pro-hunting and being a Conservative voter, by the way, are separate issues, although linked in your politics, as with many other people's. The issues I have with each of these stances are separate, and it's disingenuous to conflate the two.

A more appropriate request might have been for me to vote Conservative in the next local election...actually, no, spoling my ballot in the next local election -- still participating but in a way which is against the majority view. In Birmingham local elections, voting Labour would fulfil that criteria, however.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Joe - I honestly believe you to be much more intelligent than to believe that you are in any way oppressed (overtly or covertly) for your diet; as such I cannot take you seriously when you express this opinion. What you're saying does not fit with my normally high opinion of you, and so I'm taking you to task over it in a tone of somewhat exasperated disbelief. Comparing yourself to a victim of sexual discrimation of any stripe isn't tenable as an opinion, and I take some small offense that you would do so - by comparing yourself with something serious, you dimish that which you are making the comparison to. ("What, not giving jobs to puffs is comparable to taking the piss out of veggies? Well, I suppose it isn't so bad then, is it?")
I'm attempting to highlight what I consider the absurdity of what you are saying by making similarly absurd statements about myself: namely that I'm persecuted and oppressed for my opinions. I could make a strong argument - at least one as strong as you are - for me being a member of an oppressed minority for popping on my pinks and shouting "Tally - ho!"; however, you know as well as I do that skill of advocacy does not make something true or right: it just makes me good at arguing.
I honestly cannot imagine why you consider yourself to be oppressed for being vegetarian; what you are saying is alien to me. I would apologise if you're offended by my flippancy and facetiousness in the earlier post - a part of me assumed that you had - had - to be being satirical simply because I cannot take your basic contention at face value.

So. No offense seriously meant; and apologies if any taken. But please, reconsider what you're saying. It's not a convincing or (IMO) even tenable position to hold.

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

Understood. To clarify, the initial statement was saying which kind of "mainstream" discrimination it was most similar to -- not that it was comparable in terms of scale, for example. Apologies for any misunderstanding.

My actual point in the post was the centrality of food to the human experience -- as I said there, I (sadly) eat more often than I have sex, and there are demonstrable links between the food that children eat in their lunchbreaks at school and their attention span and behaviour. It wasn't actually a pro-vegetarianism post in its conception (that was just an aside), but a pro-food one.

It does sometimes amaze me that intelligent people (this isn't me finger-pointing at you, by the way) take such offence at the fact that I choose not to eat meat or its by-products, but that wasn't actually my point, or even anything I particularly talked about in the post in question.

Does that make more sense?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Yes, that makes sense.
Having been for meals with people who've (say) made me feel actively guilty for rather liking pork chops I think that's a two way thing; in my experience meat-eaters tend to be more accomodating of vegetarianism than vice-versa.
I think this is (and your opposite experience) an expression of the natural human tendency to percieve ourselves as being persecuted even when we aren't being.

[(Anonymous)]

What I want to know is how he's sneaking letters out of the veggi-gulag where Ronald McDonald has incarcerated him for crimes against hamburgerology.

Wierd isn't it: doing a degree course which only equips him to serve burgers, yet he won't eat them!