[constantius]

Thinking badly of right ideologies is justifiable, but being bigoted is wrong in any way.

I answered your comment because it was purely about gender, nothing political, and because the claim about social media posts being a major barrier was nonsense.

Yes, there are political underpinnings to eating animals. I assume you're American, so here's a gallup poll for the US:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/510038/identify-vegetarian-vega...

Since this is about America, it's about right vs liberals (so not left), and indeed they're 3 times more likely than conservatives (9 vs 3%), and indeed women are 2-3 times more likely than men to be vegetarian/vegan (6 vs 2%).

But we're talking about tiny, tiny percentage points. It's the same across the entire West. So singling out men, or even conservatives, for a tiny difference feels like antagonisation with no basis, and your comment reads not like arguing for climate or animal welfare, but as fighting your culture war. And everyone outside of your bubble will see it for a weak attack and dismiss it as just a vehicle for your favourite flavour of bigotry.

Hence why dropping it would have been better.

As an aside: women are the vast majority of leisure travellers (>70% for all travel, and much higher for leisure only). Women are probably 99% of consumers of fast fashion, and the majority of consumers of smartphone updates. The gap is much starker, and seeing it as a culture problem would be justified in discussions about pollution (though not socially acceptable...). But if you were talking about, I don't know, the externalities of coffee production, and women/liberals drank 51% of coffee and men/conservatives 49%, and you complained about women, I'd also just dismiss your comment as bigotry.

[Alpha3031]

> I answered your comment because it was purely about gender

I was under the impression that it was about the demographics that are unresponsive to efforts to reduce meat consumption, but I suppose I could be mistaken.

> I assume you're American

I am not.

> So singling out men, or even conservatives, for a tiny difference feels like antagonisation with no basis

I consider the Boterman paper and other similar works (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/136843021882440..., https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019566632..., etc) to be sufficient basis. One does not need to eliminate meat entirely to significantly reduce it. Also, I consider right-wingers to be more reactionary than conservative.

> but being bigoted is wrong in any way.

I think I'm ethically justified in bigoted towards people that want me to die, but whatever,

[constantius]

I actually appreciate your replies and the argument, not attempting to belittle you.

My point is that, whatever your papers assert, the differences on carnism, in absolute terms, are so insignificant on the political/gender spectra that accusing one side on this basis can only be seen as having the only purpose of attacking that side, not of genuinely wanting to see meat consumption reduced.

When you look at the data (or when you don't eat meat and regularly debate randos about it), you will see it's not a conservative/liberal, man/woman thing, but a generalised disregard for animal life. So turning it into a culture war just makes it worse, because the conservatives who read your attack will be likely to start seeing it as part of their identity while liberals will do nothing, so in total this worsens the issue.

A big part of my debates on this site is about animal cruelty, so I'm not defending those who eat animals here, only pointing out this approach is both a lie on numbers and bad for the cause.

> justified in bigoted

You seem to think that bigoted means having a negative view, but it's actually "obstinate and unreasoning attachment of one's own belief and opinions, with narrow-minded intolerance of beliefs opposed to them". The unreasoning part and acting on prejudice is what I'm saying is bad.