Why the behavior that I have been calling vegetarians on here for months is ableist, that if I showed people how much pain my health causes me, that if I pointed out why their behavior is rubbing salt in that wound every time, that people would listen. Obviously, I was wrong.

I've gotten tone policing from at least 10 regular commenters. There have been demands from people that I rename the piece "Dear Asshole Vegetarians and Vegans" so that they know in advance to ignore my post as not applying to them— usually while engaging in the behavior that I was talking about in the same comment. Posts have been written to mock me for talking about this.

The comment section of that post looks like Derailing for Dummies 101. You're being mean to people who are discriminating against you. You just want to feel like a victim. You don't have to internalize what people are saying to you; just get over it. 99% of vegetarians aren't like that. But people are mean to vegetarians, which is just as bad! Stop claiming that all vegetarians are like this (despite examples of vegetarians not like that). There are starving children in Africa. Some people have it worse than you. Oo look at you saying that it's ableist to call you names for a diet that you have no choice in hahahahahahahaha! I'm a vegetarian and I don't see that happening so it must be rare.


It's like a festival of born and still upper-class, straight, educated, Christian, white male Libertarian CEO/Congressmen in there.

There are accusations from one of the people guilty of that behavior on that particular day that I wrote a post and "sent the mob after her" so that she doesn't have to recognize that no, I wrote a post and people went back and read what she wrote and agreed. Meanwhile, a mob of vegetarians is doing everything possible to make it out like I'm oppressing vegetarians by pointing out that a lot of the language used by "vegetarian lifestyle" adherents is ableist towards people who do not have the choice to eliminate meat from their diets, especially: carnivore to depict meat eaters as savages; ethical to imply that it's unethical to eat meat; and moral to imply that it's immoral to eat meat.

And apparently, I'm supposed to magically mind-read that they don't mean people who need to eat meat— even though this is quite frankly the first time that I've explained the problem in enough detail that vegetarians believed that I can't be vegetarian. This is the first time that I've told a vegetarian that I have to eat meat for medical reasons and had them accept that, but apparently, most vegetarians will accept that at face value and be reasonable! Thanks for letting me know that it's meaningless that vegetarians correct me on the treatments for my medical condition every time I say that.

Who gives a shit about lived experience. Intersectional feminism!

Yes, vegetarians who have no choice in that have problems with asshole omnivores too but there's no omnivore lifestyle movement with a set of vocabulary designed to denigrate vegetarians to shame them into changing their diets.


I wrote the post because many people here engage in this behavior and have hurt me in the process. It's been happening here for months and I've been calling people on it for months. This is the same issue that drove me from Crosstalk. I tell people that they're being ableist and they dismiss it out of hand or they mock me for it. They pretend that vegetarians are a marginalized group— to excuse bad behavior targeting a disabled person. So many people are so intent on not even thinking about whether or not they're guilty of behaving this way that they're behaving that way while attacking me for accusing them of behaving that way.

I admitted to you that the reason that the behavior hurts so much is that my starting position is one where my health often makes me want to kill myself and while some of the response has been supportive, a lot of the response has been to defend and apologize to the people making me feel worse.


It's appalling and hurtful and hypocritical and it makes me ashamed of you. You're attacking me because you've realized that I have reason to be hurt and you don't want to be guilty; but this behavior is just making you guiltier.

So far as I can tell, not a single mind was changed and no one who was guilty of this before has shown any remorse for making me feel worse. I may have missed some comments to that effect. I may not have noticed that someone who had done it before had changed their mind because I don't always recall who it was who did it. I bared my soul and made myself vulnerable and it seems to have had no good effects. Lesson learned: don't call GTers on their unexamined privilege.


I should not feel that I have to withdraw from the topic and delete the post for my own mental health because of harassment by able-bodied people.

Thank you to those who have supported me and who have written follow up posts to try to explain. I've spent this whole week crying and having panic attacks because of this. I can't afford to lose any more productivity because people are eager to be assholes if it keeps them from wondering if they're assholes.


I am ignoring the notification queue again, GnuKinja be damned.