I know a few vegetarians who are against meat, because of their "good moral."
When I've asked their reasoning I'm getting the same answers repeated, "it's wrong to kill animals for our gain," "the animals have feelings too," "Would you like to be eaten!?!" etc.
But they're walking around with fucking leather handbags, belts and boots. I really don't see how this isn't completely hypocritical; anybody care to explain?
When I've asked their reasoning I'm getting the same answers repeated, "it's wrong to kill animals for our gain," "the animals have feelings too," "Would you like to be eaten!?!" etc.
But they're walking around with fucking leather handbags, belts and boots. I really don't see how this isn't completely hypocritical; anybody care to explain?
If you believe, as many vegetarians do, that it is doing good to kill less animals, then they ARE still doing good by their own criteria because less animals die than they would if the vegetarian also ate meat.
Also, consider this.
Products made from leather are often quite hard-wearing. Think how much meat you eat in a month, and have a guess at how many animals died from it. It's probably not very many, maybe only 5 or 6 (if that doesn't sound like a lot, this is because one portion of meat does not equal one animal death. One animal death probably equals several portions. And obviously, a cow can provide more portions of meat than a hen). Yeah, those numbers are just made up; if someone can find an actual number go ahead and feel free to correct me :)
One leather belt will equate to a tiny fraction of the used parts of a slaughtered cow (there's still huge amounts of leather left over, and all the flesh too); so the owner of the belt only takes a fraction of the responsibility for it's death. And a good belt will last a long time, not just the duration of one meal. Thought of that way, the leather belt isn't all that bad.
Even if a well made leather jacket took all the leather from a single animal, it would still last a much longer time than the energy from eating the meat of the animal would last, hopefully a few years as opposed to a few hours. AND the meat could still be used. With this logic, even a large piece of leather isn't all that bad.
The number of animals killed by wearing a leather jacket, a couple of pairs of leather shows and a few leather belts for a for a year is still going to be a lot less than the number killed by eating meat for a year.
I get the feeling that I've not explained this terribly well. Anyway, ask questions if you want and I'll try and answer. The TL;DR is that vegetarianism is not black and white, it's a sliding scale. You can still reduce the number of animals that die and still have leather products. It's isn't necessary to be one of the two extremes.
This belt belonged to my mother. By owning this belt, I no longer have to purchase a new one, and I am not creating a demand for a leather product. If you buy leather or fur from second hand stores or get them as hand me downs, it is not the same as buying them and supporting the industry that created them as a fashion product because then you are creating a demand for them.
It's the difference between going out and buying factory farmed meat, or dumpster diving for it when it gets thrown out wastefully hours later. You are not putting your money into an industry, therefore it doesn't violate my principles.
Its like saying, would you kill a wild animal and eat it, or would you just buy food from the shops.
Some vegetarians (possibly most) just don't EAT meat. They feel that vegetables with there low fat and high healthy content makes them feel more healthier. (Plus they likely are more healthier, because they're not eating Maccas hamburgers etc etc etc)
Its not just that they love animals and don't want to be cruel to them. Most are quite happy to wear leather. They just want to eat healthy. And in their view, meat is not healthy.
Latest research on this does show that meat is not all that its cracked up to be anyway. ie Vegetarians are generally healthy and live long lives. Quite obviously we don't actually need meat.
All this talk on meat, I now feel like gnawing into some bacon, grrrr get away, its mine.
the hippie "bleeding hearts" that are trying to save every living soul? If they do, they're hypocrites!