the sexual politics of meat thread

[dhex]

so joe - presumably in the spirit of the native american trickster archetype coyote - loaned me two books:

the sexual politics of meat by carol adams (hereafter "spom)
the dreaded comparison by marjorie spiegel

and this will be the thread where i discuss them.

i'm only about halfway through spom. generally speaking, it's a disjointed text. it seems to be written, despite her protests to the contrary, for an academic audience. or at least one that is familiar with literary and feminist criticism, as there are constant references to "absent referents" and "meat as text" and whatnot. it's not particularly heavy on footnotes or scholarship - minus some segments about mary shelley's family and frankenstein - and it's ADD style of argument is probably best reserved for the audience it intends to preach to - the choir.

it is tempting at this point to compare it to the general style of fringe argumentation - i.e. scattershot connections and assertions already accepted, if not agreed upon, by the target audience. (a simple comparison here would be the big-L Libertarian argument that "taxation is theft"; if you're inclined to believe this or are at least familiar with the slogan, at the very least the comparison makes sense to you. if not, it sounds completely looney, akin to arguing that "blue is green".)

the most obvious and apt comparison is contrasting it with anti-abortion works, albeit with far less literary comparisons. both tend to be polemical, and rely upon the idea that if people could look beyond the magic of words ("choice" / "meat" versus "baby" / "animal"), they would come around to the painfully clear and moral viewpoint the author is advocating. of course, were that true these books would not need to be written, but i would argue that both traditions have a heavy dose of evangelism in them. evangelism is most effective with folks on the fence who have some willingness to be emotionally pushed in one direction or another. this is an adaptive strength for these kinds of outreaches, but plainly narrows the appeal to a small category of people.

but beyond the author's general inability to focus on a single point (which may be by both style and design, rather than just a genuine weakness on her part) and make that point without jumping back to cheap tactics (namely logomancy), there are some major gaps in her reasoning and language that go a long way to making this work seem more like a right-wing parody of what they think feminists and vegans would write about rather than something more serious. that the book is taken so seriously by many people - and with few caveats, despite the reliance on equating human rape with animal consumption - is something i find very disturbing, especially as i read references to the book and the author in other contexts.

[liz]

For any of you even slightly familiar with Lacan, whole passages of spom read like she just lifted them from his Lectures on Sexuality and replaced "the phallus" with "meat." It's pretty bad.

[isfet]

i have been long awaiting this thread!  i find it encouraging/disappointing that your reaction is reasonable, though, and not filled with outright rage.

but hey, good times!

anyway, truth be told i probably haven't read this book in about eight years.  while it certainly contributed somewhat to my 18-year-old Joseph decision to quit the meat eating, i'd say it was not really until i watched factory farm footage and some other things of that nature that i said "ok, i think i'm going to not eat meat."  it was partially a challenge to myself and partly a conviction on my part.

i'd say you hit the nail on the head, though, in that the book is absolutely meant for academics/literarians.  the book is more in line with literary theory, which is something i really enjoy, but that isn't quite the same as a true anthopological survey/essay.

when it comes to the arguments of words = power, i find myself split.  obviously just creating euphemisms never quite fixes anything, but what i remember of her argument is that the words used to describe the food we eat purposely distance the animal from the act.  while knowing the animal's name and family history would probably not necessarily deter all people from eating it, i think there are at least some people, who, when confronted with the idea that the hamburger comes from something conscious (in a way), may (rationally or not) decline to eat it.  at the very least, i think it's safe to say that the majority of people do not like to eat things in this country when the head is still attached ("i don't like my food looking at me").

then there's the issue of where words come from, their initial meaning, their usage and how this translates to the present.  i would say 98% of my students, when describing something stupid or "not cool," would say that it's "gay."  essentially gay is substituted in the place of dumb or bad and it's difficult to discern (for me) whether or not that unconscious connection has any influence on how these kids view homosexuals.  now, i'm sure there are kids who say something is gay who aren't homophobic, but the general consensus among teenage america, in my limited experience of it, is that gay is very, very bad.  i guess it's a question of "what came first:  the homophobia or the fag?" (that was a silly pun).  but, i suppose, for a kid who's already homophobic, saying that things are gay wouldn't necessarily help him see the light any quicker?

[isfet]

For any of you even slightly familiar with Lacan, whole passages of spom read like she just lifted them from his Lectures on Sexuality and replaced "the phallus" with "meat." It's pretty bad.

didn't recall this, but that's cute.

but academics biting off each other seems to be de rigueur at times.

[scratchmonkey]

when it comes to the arguments of words = power, i find myself split.  obviously just creating euphemisms never quite fixes anything, but what i remember of her argument is that the words used to describe the food we eat purposely distance the animal from the act.

I haven't read the book itself; I hope that she's not making this argument based on "beef" vs. "cow", "pork" vs. pig", "mutton" vs. "sheep" though, because that's a reasonably well-known split in historical linguistics where the name for the creature as it was raised was Germanic and the name for the creature as it was eaten was French, because those were the languages of the peasants and the aristocracy in Ye Olde Englande.

[dhex]

sort of? i'll look up some of the relevant passages.

i wonder what she'd make of headcheese?

[Fitz]

I haven't read the book itself; I hope that she's not making this argument based on "beef" vs. "cow", "pork" vs. pig", "mutton" vs. "sheep" though, because that's a reasonably well-known split in historical linguistics where the name for the creature as it was raised was Germanic and the name for the creature as it was eaten was French, because those were the languages of the peasants and the aristocracy in Ye Olde Englande.

Anglo-Saxon and Norman French actually, but you're on the right path.  It does have relevance however as the split came as a result of those intimately involved in the raising and slaughter of animals v. those whose primary contact with them was at the dinner plate.

Linguistic history is filled with layers of social and political artifacts like that.

[Fitz]

On the general topic but not on the book I witnessed a great little moment of gender and food in a Friendly's in CT over the weekend.  In the booth behind me was a young girl and presumably her mother. When their food came the young girl looked at her mother's choice and said "Why is it that grown up women only eat salads?"

And along similar lines in the other direction

How to Make a Meal for a Man

[scratchmonkey]

Anglo-Saxon and Norman French actually, but you're on the right path.  It does have relevance however as the split came as a result of those intimately involved in the raising and slaughter of animals v. those whose primary contact with them was at the dinner plate.

Linguistic history is filled with layers of social and political artifacts like that.

Yeah, I meant "Germanic" and "French" in the very broad sense. And you're right in that the word choice referenced a socio-economic split; I'm skeptical though that it's indicative of a desire to distance eating meat from "the sin" of slaughter. That seems a little too much like back-projecting a 20th/21st concept to make a complex situation more simple.

And yeah, as a linguist, that's one of the reasons I got into the field.

[Fitz]

Yeah, I meant "Germanic" and "French" in the very broad sense. And you're right in that the word choice referenced a socio-economic split; I'm skeptical though that it's indicative of a desire to distance eating meat from "the sin" of slaughter. That seems a little too much like back-projecting a 20th/21st concept to make a complex situation more simple.

The sin of slaughter thing is likely back projection.  Most of the Indo-European nations that were Christianized, don't have those kind of issues in their cultural framework.

[dhex]

apropos of very little, but re: friendly's, never has a restaurant's name been less indicative of the food found within.

[Fitz]

It's a weird little joint, but I have a love for Plastic Americana since it always feels like its from some other planet.

Having spent a fair bit of time on high ways the last few months I've been wondering what would happen if someone took the pretty remarkable delivery systems for franchise operations and sold actual palatable food through them what would happen.

[dhex]

quiznos is probably the closest you can come to that. they're not terrible, especially compared with other road food choices. i think hale & hearty, were they that kind of market (and if the economy was still on a meteoric swing upwards) could pull it off as well, though having to regionally source that much fresh produce would be an interesting challenge.

back to spom: this work is strongest when she's writing about the historical antinomian connection between vegetarianism, universal suffrage and women's rights movements.

her odd reliance on the naturalistic fallacy for a lot of her arguments is understandable, if disconnected. animals do not cook or use forks. they also don't practice agriculture. the degree to which fruits and vegetables have been engineered by humans to be palatable and easily reproduced over thousands of years is fairly remarkable, though also "unnatural" by her standards.

[isfet]

Fitz:  good link on the "Meal for a Man" thing.

yea, i think overall, regardless of the other arguments, i think it's safe to say that there are certain foods designated as "manly" while others are for the ladies.  i think it's fairly recent that a man could say he's vegan and not immediately have the assumption that he's gay prescribed to him.  though maybe i'm wrong and that's still fairly common.

but yea, i remember, many years ago, i ordered a vegetarian dish at an Applebee's and the waiter "made fun of me" in that apparently women really liked the dish.  but later, i got to "make fun of him" by leaving a shitty tip.

even a few years ago, i remember seeing commercials for the male version of weight watchers, declaring that, finally, there were diet foods made FOR MEN!  and it was all the general meat and potatoes type bullshit. 

[Fitz]

Never really got the Vegan=Gay thing but most Brooklyn Vegans I knew were current or former Skinheads or otherwise part of the Hardcore scene. Tough to call guys prone to roving in semi-violent packs gay without something coming of it.

There's definitely a big gendering of food in American surface culture particularly around beef. It isn't nearly as serious as the beef taboos surrounding women among Nilotic people but it is still there. Probably one of the best charters of aspects of it was oddly enough "Married With Children."