Modern Prejudice in a Seemingly More Accepting Society

 Things are great, aren't they?

Gay marriage is legal, the women's rights movement seems to be resurfacing

So things should be pretty good, equality side, right?

Weeeeeeellll......

Vegetarianism

Ok, so we’re starting off small. I want to ease into this first, instead of diving in headfirst and accidently offending people (I tend to go off on tangents which tend to not always come out right on paper…)

As a vegetarian myself, I know first-hand the kind of things we have to go through. However, I was brought up as a vegetarian from birth, meaning that some of the temptations don’t affect me as some… born again vegetarians (?) get, such as Bacon. (The fuel of the internet apparently…)
We are constantly bombarded with constant questions and statements, of which the following are most common

"How can you live without BACON?! (see, I told you…)"

"*holds up broccoli* Can you eat this?  *holds up bread* Can you eat this? Can you eat this... (and so on…)"

"You eat that rabbit food?"

"So do you eat cheese?" (can’t people learn the difference between Vegetarian and Vegan, PLEASE!?)

"But WHHHHHHY!!!???!!!???" (BECAUUUUUSE. THAT’S WHHHHHHY…)

I find these constant questions a little irritating, but I understand them, I mean people are naturally curious about different parts of society and want to know for themselves instead of just Googling it… but it can get a little trying after sixteen years of answering the same question; however, one thing I cannot abide is the jokes about vegetarianism.

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a joke as much as the next man, in fact I spend hours procrastinating looking for things to laugh at; however, some of the jokes I come across are… less than tasteful.

Ok, some are funny (in my opinion), such as the popular ‘Save a tree, eat a vegetarian’ and one I came across a while ago: ‘Why did the vegetarian cross the road? She was protesting for the chicken.’

However, I had the misfortune of finding some not so funny ones, especially those adorned on t-shirts for sale in shops. I saw my first one properly while working a weekend job and a bloke walked in wearing a t-shirt on which was emblazoned ‘Vegetarian – Native American Word for ‘Bad-hunter’’
I gave this man a dark look when he wasn’t looking. I hate these t-shirts. Not only is this offensive to people who have the self-restraint not to eat meat either on ethical, religious or health grounds, but it is also incorrect:
The word vegetarian was coined in Britain in the 1800 as a name of a non-meat-eating club. Before then, vegetarianism was called ‘The Pythagorean diet’ because Pythagoras (yes, the triangle guy) was a famous vegetarian and set up a religion based on the very prospect.

You wouldn’t put offensive jokes about disabled people on t-shirts; people would throw eggs at you. In fact you wouldn’t make jokes about the disabled anywa-

The Mentally Ill and the Physically Disabled

Hell fire, them too? Ok…

Lets start with the physically disabled. Unfortunately, these days these are the most likely to be victims of a hate crime, whether it is bullying, mugging or abusive care at medical institutions.

   There was an incident here in Britain back in January when a partially blind and frail man named Alan Barnes was mugged outside his home, most likely due to his appearance and short stature (caused by a birth defect when his mother contracted German measles before she gave birth.) The mugging shook the poor man who had to move house out of fear of the neighbourhood. However, on a happier note he has gotten a new house recently due to over £160,000 ($252,401) through a fundraising campaign.

That does show that while people can be complete dicks sometimes, when it comes to rooting for the underdog or protecting who they perceive as a weaker person against the cruelness of society, its what we humans do best... kind of.

With the medically ill, however, are less likely to be protected by the media (unless there mental illness also handicaps them physically) and are actually more likely to be ridiculed by them than helped.

Have you ever seen a fundraiser for OCD, or Schizophenia? (If you have, good for you because I haven't). They aren't cute or show in any pitiful outward appearance like wheelchairs or prothetics (note: not that they're is anything wrong with raising money for disabled people, in fact it's fantastic). The people who have the most serious ones either look normal, or look sinister and threatening. People aren't willing to give money to a mental illness clinic when it's patients are twitching or cutting, when there is a carehome across the road from the Forrest Gumps and the babies with missing limbs (again, still a good cause).

The most we get is 'mental health levels rising' or 'teen commits suicide' before it gets brushed under the rug. The real issues with it are actual society in general, and we all know how willing the public is to actually changing things for the better on a larger scale; throwing some pocket change at a homeless person instead of writing a letter encouraging the local council to build a homeless shelter because oh dear what if the town gets infested with vagabonds.

Why is teen mental health increasing on a weekly rate? Is it a side effect of taking exams right during the rough years of puberty? Is it the stress of constantly being pushed more and more to get jobs as the numbers of unemployment skyrocket? Or is it just them being angsty and distracting them from class? Hmm, that sounds right. Here, lets make the tests even more difficult to snap them out of it...

note: I apologise for the bitterness of the above paragraph. I kind of got on a tangent there...

Some people on the other hand, treat serious, medically diagnosed disorders like adjectives to be thrown around in everyday life. OK, I am also guilty (no ones perfect…) and I have used a few, such as using ‘Insomnia’ if I didn’t sleep and ‘Depressed’ to describe my mood, but I’m aiming to use them less and not as willy-nilly in my conversation.

However, it is not just adjactives that are the problem. Some people know what they are talking about and actually support the disorder. There are infamous pro-anorexia websites and tags on social networking helping people develop these horrific disorders just to get some kind of reward out of it (google it. It’s not pretty…) And also, while doing research for the article I came across a YahooAnswer question about someone wanting to ‘Fake OCD to prove to my friends that I am crazy’, this person actually wanted to prove to her friends she was crazy (in a good way, I hope) by faking a serious mental illness. Some people…

LGBT

Ok, time to bite the bullet here….

These people have a similar problem as the mentally ill people, in that the words for them have become insults and a stigma, such as “This is so gay” and “tranny” among others.
In years gone by, being gay was an arrestable offense; most famously, writer Oscar Wilde was put in jail for that exact offense. Most people either hid it by marrying women or by just hiding their partners from the law. Luckily, this is no longer the case, unfortunately though, some people still think that it should be.
Not only this, but also with homophobes unfortunately common on this planet, stigma is pretty common. Recently, a UKIP councilor blamed Gay-Marriage becoming legal caused the bad flooding earlier this year. This is not the first case of this and I doubt it will be the last, especially when UKIP is becoming a more and more popular party (god help us)

Racism

Oh look, another bullet to bite.

This one is perhaps the oldest form on the list. While mental illness and LGBT have been around for just as long, these were just passed off as madness and forgotten about, while the stigma of the colour of your skin has been self-aware for as long as anyone can remember. Even in the stone-age, anyone different looking was seen as wrong and dangerous, but nowadays there should really be no excuse. Why should a simple difference in melanin pigments (to help absorb the UV in the sun’s rays in hotter parts of the planet) in our skin change our value or intelligence? Unfortunately, this didn’t stop slavery of the black community. Luckily, after it’s abolishment and subsequent abolishment of segregation in the 40’s, we began to live as equals, with the stigma and bullying slowly diminishing over the years.

Unfortunately, racism has yet to fully go away. It’s resurfacing on the sports-field has caused a huge rift between people who say it is wrong and those who think it’s ok. Another UKIP member (they seem to be cropping up quite a lot in this article, don’t they?) said comedian Lenny Henry should go back to a ‘Black Country’, while another one called foreign countries ‘Bongo-Bongo Land’, and a few others have been accused of posting racist comments on Twitter and other social networking sites.

Can I just urge people to watch what they say, as someone around you may find what you say to be offensive or uncomfortable for them, either due to something that happened to them or someone they know. Also, I apologies for all the anti-UKIP notes in this article if it offended anyone.