Men's Liberation

I've experienced this many times myself. Been vegetarian for almost 3 years now. Male co-workers make unsolicited comments towards it when they find out I'm vegetarian.

It's happened probably a dozen times or more. I am probably one of the most casual and tolerant non-meat eaters you'll meet. I'll chat openly with you about hunting, guns, best ways to cook bacon, steaks, burgers, etc.

I never preach or shame people for eating meat. Still, when guys find out, it's a lot of:

"You're a vegetarian? Ha, your girlfriend doesn't have to know, we'll let you eat meat here."

"No wonder you're always snacking, you only eat rabbit food!"

"Yeah, my wife tried that crap with me once, didn't work."

I even had a co-worker get in my face because he, "thought I said something about eating meat being unhealthy." I didn't say anything of the sort, but it was ironic coming from a guy who was pushing 350lbs and pounded 3-5 Mountain Dews a day.

Assumptions that I was only doing it because a woman was forcing me, or that I was implicitly shaming them for eating meat, or that I wasn't getting my nutrition, blah blah.

Citations Needed podcast had an episode about the link between the colonial settler myth and eating meat (episode 139) which was really good. (Summarising very badly) Eating meat became proof of the settler dominion over the land, animals and peoples (Native Americans) of the West and was pushed to maintain the narrative.

Edit: I also recommend a recent episode of Maintenance Phase where they debunk the paleo diet and have past episodes on Peterson.

Besides settler colonialism, there is something else going on with "meat and masculinity": Hunting for meat was the favorite sport of the (male) aristocracy in most of Europe for centuries. The aristocratic desire to be seen as capable hunters had a unique influence on the development of masculinity, particularly in the 19th century when European aristocrats began to lose power to the rising bourgeois who - in turn - emulated the aristocratic lifestyle and adopted many of its habits.

I watched Game Changers. They had a segment there where they did penis measurements after eating meat and after eating plant based, and the plant based penises had stronger and more often boners. So remind me again how it's masculine to eat animal flesh?