The Sexual Politics of Meat: 9 Feminist-Vegan Points from Carol J. Adams

 On Monday, I went with some friends to UW-Milwaukee to hear Carol J. Adams speak on the intersections of speciesism and sexism. It was a random, impromptu decision, but I enjoyed it. Here are the main points of her presentation:

1. Meat-eating is associated with virility, masculinity. Meat eating societies gain mail identification by their choice of food.

2. Animals are the absent referents in the consumption of meat. The function of the absent referent is to allow for the moral abandonment of a being.

3. A process of objectification/fragmentation/consumption connects women and animals in a patriarchal culture. The visual joke that substitutes one fragmented object for another can be found throughout our culture.

4. As an ecofeminist theory, it recognizes the environmental costs of animalizing protein. All protein is from plants; animalized protein requires that a living animal process the protein and then be killed. Meat production continues to water pollution, climate change, habit fragmentation and desertification of arable land.

5. Female animals are the absent referents in meat eating and in the consumption of dairy/eggs. There would be no meat eating if female animals weren't constantly made pregnant. Female animals are forced to produce feminized protein (plant protein produced through the abuse of the reproductive cycle of female animals i.e., dairy & eggs).

6. Women are animalized/animals are sexualized and feminized

7. Anthropornography naturalizes sexual traffficking in & use of women.

8. Carnophallogocentrism & the construction of the (male-identified) subject. A term coined by French theorist Derrida in an attempt to name the primary social, linguistic and material practices that go into becoming a subject within the West; Derrida was showing how explicit carnivorism lies at the heart of classical notions of male subjectivity.

9. Resistance through a feminist ethics of care. Feminist ethics of care is a political ethic: it understands that ideology influences how we choose whom to care about. It also helps us recognize how images/representations are working.