Meat eating is tightly connected to manliness. Also ideas of freedom. People think doing away with meat would mean more austerity and an attack on their individuality. You could sit someone down, join the dots for them linking meat to environmental catastrophe that affects them and they will still laugh it off with a vapid joke like in the meme.
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1290
The idea isn’t new or obscure but there is an academic source. Have you never heard of alt-right idiots complaining about soy boys? You know they are referring to men who have been emasculated because of aversion to meat and consumption of estrogen-like soy products?