the sexual politics of meat thread

[dhex]

finally finished both books.

spom is what it is. a clarion call for those who can hear its dogwhistle. i am tone deaf in that regard, but i am not the one for whom this bell tolls. and other mixed metaphors.

the dreaded comparison is a much odder book. it's so much more well-written after the shotgun style of spom that it was a pleasure to read, regardless of what i felt about the book. yes, it's cheaply metaphorical in a lot of areas and the pictures of, for example, a harnessed slave and a harnessed cow are not particularly convincing, but until about 3/4ths of the way through i could at least get a coherent argument from it. then it went all freudian nutjobby (i.e. all scientists, vivisectionists, ranchers, butchers, etc are power-hungry sadist-pornographers) and spent some time waffling about "oriental medicines" and the like. which makes sense, having done some research on the author and her group, but it's still pretty retarded.

what would be interesting (to me) would be to see how these two authors deal with the issue of abortion, since all of their arguments would apply to both animals and fetuses. well, i presume it'd be exactly as you would expect it would be:

http://caroljadams.blogspot.com/2009/06/in-may-1995-i-bought-at-auction-office.html

[dhex]

another angle that isn't addressed - for obvious and not so obvious reasons - is humanity's relationship to insects. now, we generally don't use insects for food (in the west) but we do use them for some clothing (silk) and chemicals/food additives. but mostly we wage a campaign of genocide against those species that cross our paths too frequently indoors.

insects do seem to feel some kind of pain, or at least react negatively to sensations and generally avoid being eaten, crushed or otherwise killed. (as a sidenote i can't remember if the jury is still on lobsters and other crustaceans and arthropods and whether they feel anything approaching pain as we understand it.)

perhaps it comes down to a dividing line - something which is never actually communicated in either book - about what makes something a "being" in the first place. so cows, pigs, horses, etc are obviously on the being side. trees and plants are non-beings (though speigel might disagree on that) and cockroaches are probably not beings either (as far as this particular exercise is concerned).

but what about shrimp? and if shrimp count, why don't fetuses?

[scratchmonkey]

There's a good DFW essay on the lobster question in his essay collection Consider The Lobster.

As well as his (mostly misguided) essay on "linguistics".

[dhex]

lobster is gross. (caveat: i don't care for seafood)

in the spirit of this exchange i want to loan joe two books: the future and its enemies by virginia postrel and the myth of the rational voter by bryan caplan.

[dhex]

as an aside, i forgot to mention one my pet peeves from both these books and most anything i've read online.

the red liquid that comes out of beef when you cook it is NOT BLOOD. it's water with proteins in it. i realize they're using it for effect (because their moral horror is, in their minds, the crux of their argument) but it isn't true.