Attacking me

272

Recently I was visiting an elderly friend of mine and her youngest and eldest daughters were visiting at the same time. The younger one ‘needed’ to joke with me about her choice of food at her sister’s recent birthday dinner in a restaurant. She wanted me to know that she had had ‘the lamb’. This was her way of saying “up yours” to me, a reminder of how much her views differed from mine.
I’ve known her since she was a child and have followed her views for over 30 years. As a kid she was sensitive to animals and familiar with vegetarianism. In later years she became interested in cuisine and now she’s enthusiastic for eating meat, hence her mischievous joke about ‘having the lamb’. Knowing me and knowing my stand, she was obviously making a point with her throw-away line. She meant to attract attention.
It rather changed the mood of our little tea party. Whatever I said in reply would escalate things between us. I’m always up for a stoush over such things but I don’t want to quarrel just to score a point. Maybe she wanted a fight. I didn’t hang around to find out. I don’t know her well enough, these days, to be sure of her.
I think she meant to make a joke at my expense. For her it was probably mandatory that she should joke to counter my stand on Animal Rights, as if whenever ‘animal-eating’ comes up in a conversation it needs to be joked about ... to show people like me how un-cool it is to get sniffy about traditional eating regimes.
My friend tells me she enjoys eating lamb (probably to provoke outrage in me) and as the ‘joke’ goes along it gets more serious and turns into a challenge. She makes a comment, I make a reply, and it goes on until someone ‘wins’, and that’s okay if there’s mutual respect but if there’s not ...
Perhaps it’s the meat-eater’s revenge, this sort of sniping attack, to bring about a vegan’s de-moralisation. She probably enjoys seeing the outrage on my face and me rising to her bait.
My friend’s daughter, having known me for the past thirty odd years, and knowing I defend animals, regards me as fair game. But for me it depends on who I’m talking to, as to whether I take up the challenge. Sometimes I’ll withdraw, at other times I’ll take them on ... but that’s why I’m writing about this incident, not to put her down and not to justify myself but out of interest to both sides of the debate.
Once, ethically, we tip one way or the other, we seem to be committed to making a stand - carnivores love to win an argument with vegans and vice versa. They usually make a joke about being a meat-eater to wind us up, as a show-off position. They intend to win, but more importantly it’s material for future conversations with friends - by having a real ‘head-on’ argument we can make a good story out of it. It’s something to talk about later. Vegans do it too. We make fun of meat eaters amongst ourselves - “These carnivores, what bastards they are … they’ll even eat a lamb!”