Many thanks to Cindi for bringing Carol Adams' book The Sexual Politics of Meat to my attention. Judging this book by its cover, surely you can see why it's right up my alley.
In the fact that it focuses on sexuality in the marketing of animal food products, I'm quite interested in Adams' thesis. In the fact that it draws a connection between eating and fucking, well, this is not new news and I'm unimpressed. After all, both action verbs tend to dangle from the handle of the Bodily Delights Umbrella, right? In and of itself, though, this connection is juicy and complex and well worth exploring. The notion that the eating of meat is macho and associated with driving big (non-renewable resource consuming) vehicles and other manly activities, while the meat itself is depicted as female and consumable is an important, though obvious, revelation.
But it seems Adams is putting her observations of that relationship in a slightly paleolithic feminist context. I have also grown tired of the concept of "objectification of the female." I mean, I do not feel victimized by a picture of a pig with eyelashes and I'm sick to death of this model of feminism in which every little thing is supposed to creep under the skin of all of womankind. It's coming out of an oversensitive mindset and it's--here's that word again--disempowering. This is kiddie-pool feminism. Surely, by now, we've established a thick enough skin such that a chicken breast joke isn't gonna send us straight into litigation. And surely, by now, we've stopped being appalled that men look at women and sometimes find their outward presentation to be attractive.
Beyond that, it appears Adams has delved into a line of thinking about a dubious concept called "speciesism." While I certainly do not think animals should be abused prior to their journeying down the path to the grocery store, but this notion that animals are somehow oppressed simply because humans eat them? That's taking it a little farther than I want to go. I mean, we're sitting at the top of the food chain for a reason, folks. We're smarter than they are and they don't stand a chance against us. And after all, the human animal is an omnivorous one by design.
In my MFA manuscript, there's a series of poems about proximity to the food chain. The closest most of us get to the food chain is going to Fuddrucker's, where you get to pick your slab of beef yourself (is this still the case? I haven't actually been to a Fuddrucker's in MANY years.). But when I was a kid living in West Tennessee, I got to see, first hand, a couple animal slaughters. My dad got a wild hair to drain the biggest lake, full of catfish, on our farm once. My parents both helped out with a neighbor's pig slaughter once. We've got some amusing pictures of my Chicago Jew dad and a decapitated pig head (I'm so not kidding!). And then there was Dinky, the cow we raised, who tasted just awful. The thing is, I know that it can be done in a manner that provides a great deal of both food and profit and also does not mistreat the animals prior to or during the slaughter because I saw it-- though, to be fair, I saw it all before the age of 9, so my memories might be a touch hazy. I do not eat meat, not because I think eating meat is cruel to animals. It doesn't have to be cruel at all.
There are two primary reasons why I've stopped eating meat. Firstly, digesting animal products is difficult for even a well-functioning human body-- more difficult, anyway, than digesting all the roughage, legumes, fruits, nuts and berries that I do eat. Secondly, the more I learn about the environmental impact of animal agriculture, the less I want to contribute to that system. So, what I'm saying here is, aren't there enough reasons for us to cut back on our animal consumption without having to resort to manipulative, heartstring-tugging notions that allot the ideas of cow- and pig-sentience more credence than they are due?
So, here, I've done something truly reprehensible-- I've torn apart a book, basing my arguments solely on what I gleaned from its website, rather than actually reading the book. To be fair, I don't actually disagree with very many of Adams' arguments-- it's just that the ones with which I do take issue really just stick in my craw. And to continue to be fair, I've zeroed in on some rather small points in her thesis, on the grounds that her overriding sentiment is both valid and sympathetic. I mean, really, what she's getting at is that food marketing is one prominent, fringed rhizoid on the root of all evil. And there's not much with which I can argue there.
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