Amateur Dramatics

Riled.
A guy in our office called Simon has organised a Christmas lunch for everybody. I said no to it the other day (as did Chris and John). He's been back round this morning to make further enquiries. Apparently we're the only people who aren't going and Simon has come back to pester us. Chris and John are using the excuse that 14 quid for a rubbishy three course meal is too much. I would have used that excuse if I hadn't have found a better one.
You get to choose between beef and turkey for the main course, which is not much use if you're vegetarian. Which I am. I gave him this reason last time, he's obviously come back to see if I've overcome whatever illness had made me choose to not eat animals.
Now, Simon is a big, big lad. Really big and he obviously loves his food. So he sneered last time when I mentioned that I was vegetarian, this time he tried to mock me for it, and started going on and on about how much he loves meat. Well, obviously Simon, as you seem to be storing half a farm in your stomach.
I've been in quite a confrontational mood lately, especially in work. So his sneery attitude was like a red rag to a bull. I may have started ranting.
He's gone away now though, so it seems to have worked. It's going to look weird though that the only three people who aren't going are the three who've been labelled as troublemakers.
Even if it was quite cheap and had really nice vegetarian options, I still wouldn't be looking forward to going. I hate all the fake friendship bullshit that goes on at work gatherings, where people who don't speak over the whole year (and quite often see each other as competition) pretend to be interested in the person they are talking to. Also, and I'm not trying to claim some sort of intellectual high-ground here, I just find a lot of what people talk about at work to be extremely dull.
I have no interest in what car each of them has, or what holiday they've been on lately. Or what girl in films they find to be "fit". Maybe I'm just being rude.
I do have good friends at work, who I share interests with, or with whom I share the same sense of humour. Two of these aren't going. They are going bowling on Friday though, so I thought that I might as well make the effort for once.
I've been vegetarian now since about April 1997. I would have done it earlier, but my parents were paying my way through university so I didn't really have a say in what I ate. I didn't eat much meat though and tended to avoid it when I could.
When I started work, I quickly decided that was it. I had a bit of trouble at first deciding to what level I would take it. Do sweets count? They are not obvious meat products, but do contain animal gelatin. Certain types of crisps also contained animal by-products. It wasn't long before all these went on the no-no list. Which is a shame, as it was these foodstuffs which I missed most, not the things that were obviously from animals.
To this day, I still get a lot of people surprised when I turn away food like cheese, crisps or sweets because of what they contain. Not because they think I'm being overly fussy (though that does happen), but because they themselves are surprised that a packet of fruit pastilles contains pig bits. Mmm, fruity pig bits.
I don't miss it, I never have. A lot of veggies stop eating meat because of moral objections to the slaughter of animals, even though they like the taste of it. Therefore I guess it must drive them mad with desire when they smell some bacon cooking or see a roast chicken. I had this moral objection, but also didn't like the taste or texture of meat. I found the whole act of eating the flesh of an animal to be slightly repulsive.
So it was piss easy for me really.
I don't rant at meat eaters, apart from when they get defensive about it. Simon for example seemed quite threatened that I didn't eat meat. Ah, the fear of something that you don't understand. It is no business of his though, and I didn't see why it bothered him so much.
I do surprisingly get this a lot.
But then again, a depressingly large amount of people get offended that somebody would choose to sleep with somebody of their own sex. Even though it has nothing to do with them. So whereas some straight men have ridiculous thoughts (fantasies?) about a gay man trying to feel their arse, maybe they suspect that I'll try swapping their steak for a cauliflower.

"If he comes round here touching my steak, I'll break his face, the fucking veggie"

And, where a gay man will probably hear a straight man spitting insults about how ludicrous it is that a man couldn't fancy "fit birds", I get

"How can you not like a fucking steak cooked rare? How can you prefer a carrot? You fucking freak".

Jesus, I'm not trying to claim that veggies get a hundredth of the discrimination that gay or lesbian people get. Because we don't. I've never been beaten up for eating a veggie burger or discriminated against in a job interview because I don't eat chicken McNuggets.
It is probably the only way I, as a straight, white, fairly well off male suffer grief due to the fear people have of something that they don't understand.
Ethnic minorities around the world get it. Gay people, disabled people, even women sometimes; all regularly on the receiving end of "I refuse to understand what I am not".

Which makes the world a sadder place.
I'm not gay. I'm not religious. I understand that some people are. I don't see how being something that I am not will automatically make them a lesser person than I. But the world is still riddled with intolerance of anyone who differs from "the norm".
Anyway, I know you all enjoy a bit of teenage philosophy in the blog witterings.

"What's that Glenn, you reckon the world would be better if people were more tolerant? Holy shit man, nobody has ever thought of that before. You could win a prize for thinking like that!"