The New York Times runs an essay contest on the ethics of meat eating. The judges are animal rights advocates and plant-based nutrition gurus. They are all men.
Carol J. Adams wrote "The Sexual Politics of Ethics" and questioned the choice of an all male panel. Why wasn't a single female included (Karen Davis, Pattrice Jones, Lauren Ornelas, Erica Meier, Josephine Donovan, Greta Gaard, Lori Gruen, Marla Rose, Laura Wright, Kim Socha, Breeze Harper, Jasmin Singer or Mariann Sullivan for example)?
Why not Carol J. Adams?
I looked up from the article. A lot of my own animal rights and plant-based diet role models and heroes are men. Wait, all men. And I hadn't heard of most of these women. Uh oh.
There are some thoughtful ideas about "What’s Wrong with Only White Men Judging a Contest Defending Meat-Eating?"
But the source of my "uh oh" was discomfiting de ja vu — when I'm not reading the women I'm missing out.
I bought the 20th Anniversary Edition of The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory and started reading. There are three prefaces — to the original book (1990), to the 10th anniversary edition, and to the 20th edition — and a foreword before the actual book begins.
The book describes the intersection between feminism, pacifism and vegetarianism (conversely male dominance, war, and meat-eating).
The early chapters such as, "The Rape of Animals, the Butchering of Women," link the consumption of animals and women. They are painful reading. Adams draws attention to gut-churning abuses that mirror modern news headlines i.e. Georgia Republican Compares Women to Cows, Pigs, And Chickens (His thinking: Pigs must carry dead fetuses to term and so must women. Sad, but that's life. Abortion is unethical).
It's reading a book about an atrocity during the atrocity — reading about the dystopia you inhabit.
When I read news like this I think, "We shouldn't treat animals like that either." and "If we raised the bar for how we treat animals, we'd treat ourselves better."
This idea of including animals "within the moral circle of consideration" is part of a vegetarian body of thought and literature. Vegetarians have been expressing this idea before the word vegetarian was coined in 1847 (They were called Pythagoreans before. The followers of Pythagoras had religious and ethical beliefs including metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls into the bodies of other animals, which excluded the eating of animals).
Adams dives into this discussion in the middle of the book and the chapter "The Word Made Flesh" where she talks about how, "Meat eating is a story applied to animals, it gives meaning to animals' existence." and the alternate vegetarian narrative. Instead of a hero's journey, she describes a "vegetarian quest" wherein dietary choices conflict with the dominant culture.
By the final chapters, I was wildly adding to my to-read list. In the last chapter, "Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory," Adams lists numerous works of fiction with feminist-vegetarian themes.
The book ends on a utopian note, "Feminist-vegetarian activity declares that an alternative worldview exists, one which celebrates life rather than consuming death; one which does not rely on resurrected animals but empowered people." and with a call for the "creation of vegetarian rituals that celebrate the grace of eating plants" and help counter patriarchal consumption.
Of note, some feminist science fiction and utopian connections: the chapter "Frankenstein's Vegetarian Monster" explores the Creature's vegetarianism and notes other works by Romantic vegetarians including Percy Shelley's Queen Mab (arguably the first feminist, vegetarian, pacifist Utopia, Adams says)
Fact: the average American eats 43 pigs, three lambs, 11 cows, four calves, 2,555 chickens and turkeys and 861 fishes in a lifetime
Pairs well with: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle; Percy Shelley's Queen Mab; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; "Eat Rice Have Faith in Women," Fran Winart
Quotes:
"It's a difficult task, o citizens, to make speeches to the belly which has no ears." — Cato
"The men were better hunters than the women, but only because the women had found that they could live quite well on foods other than meats. — Alice Walker, The Temple of My Familiar
"[The slaughterhouse] carries out its business in secret and decides what you will see, hides from you what it chooses." — Richard Selzer
"If the words which tell the truth about meat as food are unfit for our ears, the meat itself is not fit for our mouths." — Emarel Freshel
"As long as man kills the lower races for food or sport, he will be ready to kill his own race for enmity. It is not this bloodshed or that bloodshed, that must cease, but all needless bloodshed — all wanton infliction of pain or death upon our fellow beings." — Henry Salt
"May the fairies be vegetarian!" — Judy Grahn, "The Queen of Swords"
Carol J. Adams wrote "The Sexual Politics of Ethics" and questioned the choice of an all male panel. Why wasn't a single female included (Karen Davis, Pattrice Jones, Lauren Ornelas, Erica Meier, Josephine Donovan, Greta Gaard, Lori Gruen, Marla Rose, Laura Wright, Kim Socha, Breeze Harper, Jasmin Singer or Mariann Sullivan for example)?
Why not Carol J. Adams?
I looked up from the article. A lot of my own animal rights and plant-based diet role models and heroes are men. Wait, all men. And I hadn't heard of most of these women. Uh oh.
There are some thoughtful ideas about "What’s Wrong with Only White Men Judging a Contest Defending Meat-Eating?"
But the source of my "uh oh" was discomfiting de ja vu — when I'm not reading the women I'm missing out.
I bought the 20th Anniversary Edition of The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory and started reading. There are three prefaces — to the original book (1990), to the 10th anniversary edition, and to the 20th edition — and a foreword before the actual book begins.
The book describes the intersection between feminism, pacifism and vegetarianism (conversely male dominance, war, and meat-eating).
The early chapters such as, "The Rape of Animals, the Butchering of Women," link the consumption of animals and women. They are painful reading. Adams draws attention to gut-churning abuses that mirror modern news headlines i.e. Georgia Republican Compares Women to Cows, Pigs, And Chickens (His thinking: Pigs must carry dead fetuses to term and so must women. Sad, but that's life. Abortion is unethical).
It's reading a book about an atrocity during the atrocity — reading about the dystopia you inhabit.
When I read news like this I think, "We shouldn't treat animals like that either." and "If we raised the bar for how we treat animals, we'd treat ourselves better."
This idea of including animals "within the moral circle of consideration" is part of a vegetarian body of thought and literature. Vegetarians have been expressing this idea before the word vegetarian was coined in 1847 (They were called Pythagoreans before. The followers of Pythagoras had religious and ethical beliefs including metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls into the bodies of other animals, which excluded the eating of animals).
Adams dives into this discussion in the middle of the book and the chapter "The Word Made Flesh" where she talks about how, "Meat eating is a story applied to animals, it gives meaning to animals' existence." and the alternate vegetarian narrative. Instead of a hero's journey, she describes a "vegetarian quest" wherein dietary choices conflict with the dominant culture.
By the final chapters, I was wildly adding to my to-read list. In the last chapter, "Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory," Adams lists numerous works of fiction with feminist-vegetarian themes.
The book ends on a utopian note, "Feminist-vegetarian activity declares that an alternative worldview exists, one which celebrates life rather than consuming death; one which does not rely on resurrected animals but empowered people." and with a call for the "creation of vegetarian rituals that celebrate the grace of eating plants" and help counter patriarchal consumption.
Of note, some feminist science fiction and utopian connections: the chapter "Frankenstein's Vegetarian Monster" explores the Creature's vegetarianism and notes other works by Romantic vegetarians including Percy Shelley's Queen Mab (arguably the first feminist, vegetarian, pacifist Utopia, Adams says)
Fact: the average American eats 43 pigs, three lambs, 11 cows, four calves, 2,555 chickens and turkeys and 861 fishes in a lifetime
Pairs well with: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle; Percy Shelley's Queen Mab; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; "Eat Rice Have Faith in Women," Fran Winart
Quotes:
"It's a difficult task, o citizens, to make speeches to the belly which has no ears." — Cato
"The men were better hunters than the women, but only because the women had found that they could live quite well on foods other than meats. — Alice Walker, The Temple of My Familiar
"[The slaughterhouse] carries out its business in secret and decides what you will see, hides from you what it chooses." — Richard Selzer
"If the words which tell the truth about meat as food are unfit for our ears, the meat itself is not fit for our mouths." — Emarel Freshel
"As long as man kills the lower races for food or sport, he will be ready to kill his own race for enmity. It is not this bloodshed or that bloodshed, that must cease, but all needless bloodshed — all wanton infliction of pain or death upon our fellow beings." — Henry Salt
"May the fairies be vegetarian!" — Judy Grahn, "The Queen of Swords"
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