Woman dumps boyfriend because he eats meat

A NY Times article features a woman who dumped her boyfriend because he likes to grill meat:

Lisa Romano, 31, a vegan and school psychologist in Belleville, N.Y., said she recently ended a relationship with a man who enjoyed backyard grilling. He had no problem searing her vegan burgers alongside his beef patties, but she found the practice unenlightened and disturbing.

Her disapproval “would have become an issue later even if it wasn’t in the beginning,” Ms. Romano said. “I need someone who is ethically on the same page.”

I guess that explains why she's 31 and still unmarried.

Comments

[Peter]

Two women are pictured in the article. Denyse Balcavage the vegan looks anorectic, while Shauna James the non-gluten-eater is what the personals ads call "curvy." Perhaps not good choices to illustrate an article on dietary practices.

I guess that explains why she's 31 and still unmarried.

She'll be 61 and unmarried too. Cats don't count. I'll bet she ends up living next to Maureen Dowd.

[roissy]

this is what happens when women don't have a firm grasp of the reality of the sexual market. at 31 she can ill afford to include veganism on her checklist of suitable traits in a partner.

[trumwill]

Well, everyone has a right to their preferences. I can understand non-meat-eaters choosing not to get together with meat-eaters, but that lady who dumped the guy is more puzzling... did she just assume that he was naturally a fellow vegan? Isn't that something to inquire about before getting together if it's that important?

[The Engineer]

Dude, people living in Belleville, NY should not be rejecting ANYONE. The pool is pretty small up there.

They get like 200" of snow a year. They're all a bunch of nutjobs as a result.

[bbartlog]

You'd think if she were actually picky about the meat thing she would have inquired up front. I think it's far more likely that she decided to dump the guy for some other, less socially mentionable reason (sex, money), but figured she could score points by chalking it up to her high vegan ideals.

[Turambar]

It is fascinating how the New York Times manages to find these people who manage to make themselves undateable because of their oddball rules. I still remember that story about people being dumped because their art work was cliche.

In this case, Denyse Balcavage, vegan, appears to be selling at a significant discount off list to the older, bald, ugly John Gatti, omnivore.

[Carl Spackler]

I'm still surprised that people would give interviews to a paper about their personal lives, it sounds too much like The Onion. Shit, like this story seems so unreal that I wonder if the reporter has been had. That story about someone being dumped for their cliched art sounds like that to me as well. If the NYT came to interview me, I'd spin a real yarn: "So after I jumped ship in Shanghai, I ended up caddying for the Dalai Lama. The Lama is a big hitter..."

[slwerner]

“…she found the practice unenlightened and disturbing. & “I need someone who is ethically on the same page.”

Nothing better than the arrogance of pompous people who like to point out how much more enlighten and ethical they are based on their lifestyle choices. “Nah, Nah, I’m better than you because I…”

[miles]

This will sound cruel, and Im sorry....

I looked at the picture. Looks dont seem to mean anything to this woman. She's decent looking, but that guy is well.........................extremely ordinary-looking, and quite a bit older than her. Thats her preference though, thats fine.

Its a shame that she might be staring her late thirties right in the face with no children though. She will regret that for the rest of her life.

[slwerner]

”Its a shame that she might be staring her late thirties right in the face with no children though.”

Too late to worry about that…

”Dynise Balcavage, 42, an associate creative director at an advertising agency and vegan who lives in Philadelphia, said she has been happily married to her omnivorous husband, John Gatti, 53, for seven years.”

[Canson]

Vegans are the generally of the self-rightious ilk. When I used to cook they always had to append "I'm a vegan" after requesting no cheese or sour cream on a menu item. This while they could plainly see me correctly writing down their order. Which was usually the same as they had had weeks running invariably without any foul ups. Like I said a bunch of halo polishers.

Canson,
Let me guess, they drove hybrids and said so at every chance they got. I remember those types in college. They drove Range Rovers with "Visualize World Peace" and "Free Mumia" bumper stickers.

[Canson]

Well this was some time before the hybrid was availible. I have noticed that a hybrid + a middled aged woman = the most conspicious bad driving in these parts. I haven't decided if it's a result of poor visability or just loosey-goosey inattentiveness or both. Seriously, I noticed this for 6 months or more before it gelled as a working hypothesis.

Let me guess, you're in Vermont?

[DAJ]

Look at the career choices of most of the people from the NYT article.

Ms. James, who is non-gluten, is a writer.

Ms. Romano, a vegan, is a school psychologist.

Ms. Balcavage, a vegan, is an associate creative director. Notice that she did not take the surname of her husband, Mr. Gatti.

Ms. Koenig, a vegetarian, works for a nonprofit environmental group.

Mr. Benson, a vegetarian, is a college mathematics professor.

These jobs would probably be perceived as high-status positions that are admired by the upper-middle and upper classes. Where are the computer programmers, accountants, and nurses? Notice that most of them live in blue-state areas like NY, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Cambridge, Mass.

The obvious exception is vegetarian Mr. Abdalla, a real estate agent from Florida. To be fair, from my personal experience, I had a former boss who was a red-state vegetarian and an engineer.

[Canson]

Nice try. Indeed, close but no cigar...Left coast. PDX. We have grown so much!!!

WTF is an associate creative director? None of these people do anything that I would remotely consider useful, except maybe the math professor.

[Canson]

To be fair I know plenty of vegetarians that are not prats, although the majority are.
Try this on for size.

Q. If vegetarians eat vegetables what do humanitarians eat?

A.Suffering.

Hah! My brother used to live out that way. It might as well be Vermont in some places, there are so many right thinking people out there who love to let you know how right they are.
BTW, if you used to work in the restaurant biz, ever been to Ring of Fire in Eugene? Great place.

[GOP Lurker]

I like how the NYT offloaded the "Hezbollah" remark to Anthony Bourdain. Heh.

Um, there ARE medical reasons for certain people not eating gluten, and I think the excuse about bread was a cop out. It's not like there are any ethical hang-ups involved.

It's not like there are any ethical hang-ups involved.

No ethical hang-ups?! Ever see how they make flour, you savage?

[Canson]

I don't enjoy dining out much any more. Usually entertaining at home is far more relaxing. Portland does have some good restuarants though, Wildwood is a fave and they have a great cellar. Service is above par for Portland too. Most of the time people are too cool to serve well, although they can always find the humility to pick up the tip.

[Gannon]

That guy looks definitively old, and that is from a guy who believes in 10 year age differences between men and women.

[John Smith]

Vegans and vegetarians are TERRIBLE people. After all, we refuse to subsidize and industry that treats animals with care and attention .

HS, given that Africans are of much lower intelligence, someone could theoretically recruit a large number of high IQ people (maybe 20-50,000) to go to Africa and capture a hundred thousand low IQ Africans and employ them in slave labor. Hey, if we can slaughter animals and eat them because of their low intelligence, why not do the same to people with low intelligence? After all, I'm an atheist, so the concept of inherent human dignity means little to me.

I know we all here dislike man hating feminists, but the bashing of liberals on this blog has taken on a dogmatic fervor beyond the usual quality reporting of touchy subjects.

I much more enjoy your criticism of Islam, race denial, status-whoring, the 2008 elections, and other quantitative social analysis.

HBD - animal rights - dogmatic religion = Goodbye human decency

[Canson]

JS,
I don't dislike the dietary practices/ethical stances per se, although I do take exception to the meat is murder line, it's the status whoring that invites derision.

[slwerner]

” It's not like there are any ethical hang-ups involved.

Sure there are. There must be. You’re just not thinking outside the box.

It's an integral part of "the game". By invoking an ethical framework - by simply implying that they do "anything" for an ethical reason - any alternate choice is de facto unethical; and, hence, they are a superior human being.

With only a little creative effort (these people are, after all, noticeably of the “creative” set), many of life’s choice can be BS’ed up to “ethical” considerations, gaining far more elite status points than admitting they were economical, convenience or even medical motivations.

Perhaps she’s gone gluten-free to protest the sending (by evil corporations, of course) of high-gluten wheat to third-world countries – thereby poisoning the native population. Oh, the horrors of imposing our western-gluten ideals down their throats (literally).

[tvoh]

Country Western Song,

"Don't slay that broccoli, it never did nuthin to you."

John,
Nobody here has a problem with vegans or whatever(as far as I can tell) and nobody here has said that the agricultural industry is beyond reproach. But I may have missed HS shilling for Hormel, ConAgra , etc...
Why do they(or at least very many) vegans have to be so self-righteous about it and always remind everyone of their supposed superiority, intelligence and goodness? It is annoying and arrogant, to say the least. I don't subsidize Big Ag for a variety of reasons, not just the way they treat animals on many occasions. I hunt and I eat what I shoot. I believe it is humane and I'm a pretty good shot. When I do something that I believe is the right thing for people, animals, whatever, I don't feel the need to broadcast it to everyone to one-up them in the goodness department. The problem is that these people just can't STFU about it.

[Canson]

Ol' Blankity Blank Blank is a good shot. Dead on the mark Blanky, dead on.

[Jack]

Gannon - he looks old because he IS old. He's 53. His wife is 42 - it's not like she can afford to be that picky. It's pretty much now or never at 40 for women.

[slwerner]

Gannon,

I've forgotten. Is it on their 35th birthday or on their 40th birthdays that women's ovaries auto-desiccate?

[Peter]

Gannon,
I've forgotten. Is it on their 35th birthday or on their 40th birthdays that women's ovaries auto-desiccate?

In Gannon's world? More like sixteen.

[Spungen]

I guess that explains why she's 31 and still unmarried.

Yes, people over 30 looking for romantic partners would do well to avoid fringe beliefs unpopular with the opposite sex. Right, guys? Anyone? Sigma?

[Kirk]

All physical differences between plants and animals boil down to movement. Even at a cellular level, animal cells have flexible membranes, while plants have rigid walls.

So, vegetarians eat non-mobile organisms. Carnivores eat mobile organisms. Seen at this level, it's silly and arbitrary to insist that there's some sort of moral difference between the two.

[Gil]

"she's 31 and single . . ."

Well at least you can say there's high probability that she won't propagating any vegan genes into the next generation especially if she's that picky. But a similar question is how nerd genes get propagated from generation to generation? Nerd genes are hardly considered desirable in the modern hi-tech era, so how would a nerd get a chance to propagate his genes in a traditional low-tech era where physical ability counts for a lot more? Therefore the only conclusion is that these aren't naturally inherited genes but horrible mutations of would have been otherwise normal genes. At least H.S. & friends can feel relieved that the well-to-do puncy left-wing types are the least likely to form relationships and, even if they do, are the least likely to have children . . .

[Gannon]

Gannon,

I've forgotten. Is it on their 35th birthday or on their 40th birthdays that women's ovaries auto-desiccate?

Women's fertility starts to drop at around 27 and disappears on average at around 35, although some women are still fertil into their early forties.
16 is probably the age when women start to become marrieageable, until they are 26 or so.

[slwerner]

Yes, people over 30 looking for romantic partners would do well to avoid fringe beliefs unpopular with the opposite sex. Right, guys?

I believe this is highly dependent on the individual involved. For instance, I doubt most women are into brutally murdering defenseless poor people. But, in the case of Che Guevara, women seem to love him, despite the fact that he spent most of his 30's as a brutal murdering thug. Apparently the same sort of ding-bat women who are all atwitter over Obama also swoon for Che - as evidenced by the idiot who had his face on a Cuba flag hanging in Obama's new Houston office.

[Gil]

Yessirbob, there must some sort of lingering evolutionary trait amongst women such that they will take an aggressive male over a nice guy every time. Maybe it's similar to the way obese store fat - people with a tendency towards obesity were the people who survived in the days of hunting/gathering and simple farming whereby food was hard to come by and excess food had to be quickly stored as fat to help the body survive during the lean times which unfortunately is a health detriment in well-fed times. However, maybe such people may be genetically lucky should modern society come crashing down and people find themselves going back to ye olde standards of living where food is relatively scarce . . .

Perhaps the female desire for aggressive males harkens to the hunting/tribal warfare days when the aggressive males were the providers and skinny weak males were either cast out or killed for being a burden on the tribe. Such aggressive traits that were highly productive in ye olde times are destructive traits in modern times such that aggressive behaviour will land a guy in prison. Yet perhaps these guys are genetically gifted in a way that should modern society crumble and cease to exist and people have to live in hunting/gathering tribes with occasional outbreaks of warfare then they'll go from violent thug to valiant hero and defender.

Then again when guys instinctively judge women solely on their looks they are invertedly selecting women who should be genetically superior and most likely to healthy and fertile yet such if a guy isn't after making babies but rather plain sex then it shouldn't matter yet it does. Of course, women could be hedging their bets on the grounds that society is on the verge of collapse . . .

[roissy]

Then again when guys instinctively judge women solely on their looks they are invertedly selecting women who should be genetically superior and most likely to healthy and fertile yet such if a guy isn't after making babies but rather plain sex then it shouldn't matter yet it does.

gil, you are forgetting that sex feels better with better looking women. that is why it matters to us what she looks like.

gil, you are forgetting that sex feels better with better looking women. that is why it matters to us what she looks like.

Just turn out the lights.

[Canson]

Blank is so right about so much.

Yes, beauty is just a light switch away...

[slwerner]

”that is why it matters to us what she looks like.”

Wow, this thread sure has veered off into a ditch!

It’s probably my fault for taking a shot at leftists and their icons, Smart asked that I am.

Still, perhaps there is something to be salvaged here in addressing the original questions of the thread.

Spungen and had asked if it were wise for persons over the age of 30 to engage in habits which could be unpopular with those of the opposite sex. Unfortunately, we are not given a picture of Ms. Romano in the article; but, one can easily read between the lines. The fact that her boyfriend was unwilling to change his unenlightened and unethical ways in order to keep her would seem to clearly indicate that he did not feel that Ms. Romano was worth such an effort. Had Ms. Romano been a more attractive woman, any man might well have changed his habits in order to stay with her.

Since that is obviously not what has happened in the case we are told of, in answer to Spungen’s question, perhaps a more honest answer would have been that, even as unfair as it seems, women will need to be much more careful in considering their demands and expectations of a man in terms of what habits they will accept of him and expect him to accept of her, especially in the light of a sober and honest examination of her own ability to attract and keep men one they reach the age of 30.

As a woman’s beauty fades with age she will have less power to dictate the behaviors of men. Given this, women in Ms. Romano’s position might do well to lessen their expectation of men and how they should respond to her proclivities.

[slwerner]

"Smart asked"???

Obviously, I meant "smart-ass". Damn voice recognition software.

As a woman’s beauty fades with age she will have less power to dictate the behaviors of men.

What matters is the relative difference in quality between the two. The "better" she is compared to him & what he can usually expect to get, the more power she has. And of course there are a bunch of other intangibles at work. Which might explain why plain women successfully demand things & lead men around by the nose all the time.

Pussy-whipping guys has never been the sole province of beautiful women, not even close.

[slwerner]

”Pussy-whipping guys has never been the sole province of beautiful women, not even close.”

What you say is true however, it doesn’t change the fact that any given woman’s position of power over any given man will decrease as her perceived beauty decreases. Decreases in a woman’s beauty may be the result of age, the result of weight gain, or simply a matter of them not taking as good of care with their appearance.

While there are many intangibles at work that affect the relationship between men and women one that we might specifically mention is the “biological clock” issue that we see in women as they pass 30 and approach 40. Some women, not all, develop a certain desperation to get married and have children before it’s “too late”. When this occurs, such women are going to find it necessary to lower their expectations of a man.

The real question is not one of should people engage in activities which might make them less desirable for the opposite sex, but rather whether they should be willing to accept that other people will not hold their views as dearly as they do.

[roissy]

Just turn out the lights.

what, you never have sex during the day? personally, i like to see the woman i'm banging. if i didn't, i'd just save myself the trouble of picking her up and settle for the nearest glory hole.

roissy,
During the day I use a paper bag.

[slwerner]

"...settle for the nearest glory hole."

Well, I suppose getting this back "on-track" was a long shot.

So, Roissy, since this was once about a woman dumping a man because he ate meat, can we assume that you like women who "eat meat"? I'm assuming I know where you stand at (sic) glory holes - sorry if I've misrepresented your (um, er..) position:)

but rather whether they should be willing to accept that other people will not hold their views as dearly as they do.

If it's a serious difference over a dearly held moral view (and we all know how we tend to view those who oppose our dearly held moral beliefs) - well, that's not papered over so easily. Maybe avoidance now is better than an acrimonious divorce later.