I think we need to start with an uncomfortable truth: we're not as evolved as a species as we like to think we are.
And that shows up very clearly in certain online spaces like Nostr where meat-eating has stopped being food and turned into ideology. Not just carnivore, but raw carnivore—as an identity. If you eat meat—especially raw meat—you’re told you’re more “alpha,” more sovereign, more real.
Most of the people pushing this are men. Many of them are chasing the same fantasy: stack sats, get jacked, become a GigaChad, get a girlfriend someday.
Meat gets folded into that worldview as proof of strength. This isn’t accidental—it’s belief layered on top of insecurity, amplified by group reinforcement, and "justified" by biased biology.
That’s narrative. That's belief.
One of the main reasons this gets pushed so hard is distance. Most people are completely removed from the act itself. We don't kill the animal. We don't hear it. We don't feel the weight of it resisting death.
Language helps keep that distance intact: it's veal, not a calf; pork, not a pig; steak, not a cow. The animal disappears, and what's left is a product.
We even use the names of certain animals—the ones who didn't get the pass—as insults. Dirty rat. Fat pig. Calling someone a chicken, a snake, a weasel.
The language does double work: it erases the animal we murder, and degrades the ones we decided weren't worth protecting.
Anyone who has ever field-dressed a large animal knows this isn't abstract. It's intense. It's visceral. It demands attention and respect. There's nothing casual about it.
And let's be clear about the language: "field dressing" and "processing" are just softer words for skinning, gutting, and dismemberment. If you're talking about survival, that's one thing.
Humans have always made hard choices when there were no alternatives. But when alternatives exist, eating animals is a choice—and pretending otherwise is dishonest.
Factory farming exists so people don't have to face what they're supporting. Slaughterhouses are hidden for a reason. Violence is outsourced and sanitized.
Look at the dairy industry. A cow can live around 20 years. In industrial systems she's used up and dead by about 4–6. Forced into repeated pregnancies. Her calves taken from her almost immediately.
Anyone who's spent time around cows knows they grieve—mothers will walk for miles and cry for days searching for their babies.
Or look at the egg industry. Male chicks—millions of them—are considered waste. They're thrown into plastic bags and left to suffocate, or dropped alive into industrial grinders within hours of hatching, because they can't lay eggs.
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All of this happens at massive scale. Most agricultural land isn't used to feed people—it's used to feed livestock in feedlots. Forests cleared. Water drained. Bodies broken early. Not for survival, but for preference.
And here's where the story people tell themselves really falls apart: which animals get a pass is almost entirely cultural.
At some point, people decided dogs were off the menu. Horses too. Cats became family. In other parts of the world, those lines are drawn differently. In India, cows are revered. In Japan, the Nara deer—sika deer—are treated as sacred. In Australia, you can buy kangaroo meat at the grocery store.
Ask the average American if they'd eat kangaroo and most would recoil. Ask them about deer, and it's completely normalized. Same animal. Different story.
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Religion often functions the same way. Some people point to scripture and claim humans were given dominion—that we're the "top" species and therefore granted a moral pass to kill other living beings. But that's one interpretation, from one religion, written in a specific historical context.
It isn't universal truth—it's narrative authority. And even within those texts, stewardship and care are just as present as dominance. What gets emphasized depends on who's doing the interpreting—and what they're trying to justify.
That's why I say this isn't about necessity—it's about narrative. If dairy truly came from animals who were loved, respected, and allowed to live full lives, I'd be vegetarian without hesitation. But that's not the system we have. What we have is industrialized exploitation, justified by tradition, convenience, culture, and selectively interpreted belief.
There's also a reason this ideology has been marketed almost entirely to men.
The meat industry spent decades selling the idea that "real men eat meat." It worked. To this day, it's one of the only things many men are socially encouraged to cook.
That narrative wasn't accidental—it was profitable.
Even Arnold Schwarzenegger has spoken publicly about how deeply that myth was sold—and how, after multiple major heart surgeries, he was forced to confront reality, face the facts for himself, and shift to a mostly plant-based diet.
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I'm vegan—not because I think I'm morally superior, and not because I haven't looked at the science, but because I have. And because animal rights actually mean something to me.
If you believe in freedom, autonomy, and sovereignty, those principles don't magically stop applying when the subject can't speak your language.
When alternatives exist, eating animals is a choice.
An animal doesn't just walk around as food.
And outsourcing violence doesn't absolve anyone of responsibility—it's still murder.
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#IKITAO #AnimalRights #GoVegan
