Vegaphobia

Discourses relating to veganism are therefore presented as contravening commonsense, because they fall outside readily understood meat-eating discourses. Newspapers tend to discredit veganism through ridicule, or as being difficult or impossible to maintain in practice. Vegans are variously stereotyped as ascetics, faddists, sentimentalists, or in some cases, hostile extremists. The overall effect is of a derogatory portrayal of vegans and veganism that we interpret as ‘vegaphobia’.

The term vegaphobia has been used to describe a disparagement, dislike, or even a hatred of individuals who have chosen to follow a vegetarian or vegan diet. In that regard, as Chapter 1 showed, vegaphobia has been around for centuries. There have always been individuals (and sometimes groups) who regard a meatless diet as dangerous to one’s health, harmful to other people and society at large, abnormal, out of the mainstream, or undesirable for some other reason. […] A somewhat different expression of vegaphobia in the United States, although virtually never named as such, has been the opposition of major commercial organizations and governmental agencies to the promotion of vegetarian and vegan lifestyles.

Tofu and the Vegaphobia in Video Games […] Additionally, vegaphobic behaviors are present in some titles as the subject of derogatory humor.