Don’t Get Barking Mad Over Dog Meat

I am not much of a cultural relativist.  It’s used to excuse terrible, terrible things.  For instance, I am not a big fan of the way religions, and especially Islam, treat women. Would you expect a black American man to respect slavery?  Of course not. And I don’t want to live in or defend (philosophically) any culture that relegates women to second class citizens. I was looking at teaching in Dubai, and a woman cannot leave the country without permission from a male guardian.

My disregard for one set of ideas doesn’t mean that I suffer under the delusion that my culture is exemplary. To paraphrase Sam Harris (which I just love to do), how can educated, moral people look on some of these practices and not condemn them? To pretend that we know so little about the human condition?   End of paraphrasing. In the 2010 Global Gender Gap report, the highest ranking nation for the equal distribution of resources between men and women is Iceland – America isn’t even on the top ten – and even the best country doesn’t have perfect equality. Perfect equality would be 100%, and Iceland, the very best, has 85%.

Despite not being a cultural relativist, and despite being a sometimes cantankerous ex-pat in Korea (stop leaving the doors open in the winter!) I cannot wag my finger at Korean culture for eating dog meat.  I am not a vegetarian, though limiting my consumption of meat is becoming appealing for many reasons, though ultimately difficult to do from both my own gluttony and laziness, and from my limited cuisine choices here.

So, what makes dog meat so appalling to many Westerners?  Dogs are pets, our cuddly little buddies, our companions.  It’s culture, and it’s a fairly black and white example of hypocrisy to think eating pigs is okay, but eating dogs is cruel. Don’t eat your bacon (pigs, by the way, are quite intelligent, social animals) and think you’re any better.  I certainly don’t.  God damn, breakfast meat. I’d have little success being a staunch vegetarian.

I’ve heard reports that the conditions the dogs are kept in are very bad, but are they any worse than the conditions of other livestock?  I think they may strike us as worse because of our emotional attachment.  But if someone were to present me with some data and say, see, it’s worse, then it’s worse and I’m wrong.  But I highly suspect it’s because of our emotional attachment.

Dog meat dog meat dog meat…I have not had much experience with this particularly unappealing food.  Once I saw a former vegetarian chow down on some dog meat.  I ordered the chicken.  One day, after a walk in a park, some pals and I stopped into a restaurant only to run away quickly when we found out they were a boshintang (dog soup) restaurant.  And in my second week in Seoul, while spooning food onto my tray in a cafeteria, another foreigner – a slightly anxious one, perhaps- asked if the meat was dog meat. I said, “I don’t hear it barking.”  An older woman, a Korean-American, scolded me gently.  Pft!  It was funny.  But I did learn that it’s considered low-class to eat dog meat.  They’ve certainly never served it at my school cafeteria.

I say to anyone, including myself, that if eating dog meat is revolting, we should consider eating less meat in general.

Boshintang? None For Me, Thanks.

The student’s exams end early on Friday and the teachers will be taking a trip to some island in the afternoon.  We’ll leave around noon.  I can’t recall the name of the island at the moment, but Ms. Choi said she’d never been there.  I imagine that a coastal island is at least an hour drive away from central Seoul.  I’ve been told we will be back in the city by 6 pm.  That doesn’t leave ample time for tromping around in natural beauty.  Over lunch today Ms. Choi told me some of the afternoon’s activites, like observing a river and biking.  And, of course, eating dinner together.  She said, “We’re going to eat dog.”

I'll just have some kimchi, but thanks.

Boshintang, or dog soup, is a dish I’ve had the opportunity to try, but I had the chicken soup instead.  Some of the foreigners in my taekwondo class, which I quit ages ago, went out for it one night.  One of the girls was a former vegetarian.  (It’s damned hard to be a vegetarian in Korea.)  I don’t have any desire to try boshintang, ever.  (I don’t think eating dog is necessarily more morally reprehensible than eating anything else I’m accustomed to, but I can’t abide it culturally.) I like to rub dog’s bellies, not put them in mine.  Ms. Choi said that dog is good, that it’s an oily meat.  (Often Asian cultures describe food in really unappealing ways.  Things are often described as glutinous on menus.)  Then she asked me, “Do you know Peking dog?” I didn’t.  Then she says, “Really?  It’s very famous.”  Then, more to herself than to me, “Dog…dock…duck.”  She’d misspoken.  We’ll be having duck, an animal famous (to me) for it’s strange sexual strategies.  The male ducks rampantly rape the female ducks, and the female ducks have several vaginal canals.  Anyway, during my brief trip to Beijing last year I definitely had Peking duck, and it was delicious.