Carol J. Adams - The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory

The Sexual Politics of Meat

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The Sexual Politics of Meat

A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory

Carol J. Adams

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

In memory of

56 billion each year,

153.4 million each day,

6.4 million each hour,

106,546 each minute

It is not possible now, and never will be, to say I renounce. Nor would it be a good thing for literature were it possible. This generation must break its neck in order that the next may have smooth going. For I agree with you that nothing is going to be achieved by us. Fragmentsparagraphsa page perhaps: but no more.... The human soul, it seems to me, orientates itself afresh every now and then. It is doing so now. No one can see it whole, therefore. The best of us catch a glimpse of a nose, a shoulder, something turning away, always in movement. Still it seems better to me to catch this glimpse.

Virginia Woolf to Gerald Brenan Christmas Day, 1922

We have learned to use anger as we have learned to use the dead flesh of animals, and bruised, battered and changing, we have survived and grown and, in Angela Wilsons words, we are moving on.

Audre Lorde

The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism

Say Stella, when you copy next,

Will you keep strictly to the text?

Jonathan Swift

To Stella, Who Collected and Transcribed His Poems

Contents

Imagine the day when women walk down streets and are not harassed, stalked, or attacked. Imagine the day when we dont need battered womens shelters. Imagine the day when the most frequent mass murderers in our culture are NOT those who kill their families.

Better yet, imagine the day when we live in a world where women are safe wherever they are, family members are safe within their homes, and we dont have mass murderers.

Imagine the day when people respond to someone who says but I need my sausage in the morning, by saying, oh thats so twentieth century. You know, the century when some of the earliest people talking about climate change were animal activists who understood the interconnections between environmental destruction and animal agriculture

Better yet, imagine the day when people no longer feel they need a sausage in the morning.

Imagine the day when women and children are not sold into sexual slavery or prostituted or pornographed.

Better yet, imagine the day when equality, rather than dominance, is sexy.

Equality isnt an idea; it is a practice. We practice it when we dont treat other people or other animals as objects. We practice it when we ask what are you going through? and understand that we ask the question because it matters to all of us what some are experiencing.

Once upon a time, people thought vegan food wasnt tasty and that feminists were puritans. They thought that if you accepted the logic of The Sexual Politics of Meat it meant you had to give up things, you had to sacrifice. The entire point of the sexual politics of meat is that there is something on the other side of this culture of oppressionand that something is better, better for us, better for the environment, better for relationships, better for the animals.

As I explain in the preface to the tenth anniversary edition, The Sexual Politics of Meat exists because of activism. It is engaged theory, theory that arises from anger at what is; theory that envisions what is possible. Engaged theory makes change possible. It doesnt just sit down next to you at a dining table and ask, Do you know what you are participating in as you choose what to eat? It also says, There is something more exciting, more fulfilling, more honest than eating a dead animal as hamburger or pork loin. It doesnt only offer a critiquea critique of sexist ads on behalf of animal activism or a vegan strip club, or sexist ads from Burger King, or a Gentlemens steak club. It affirms: There is a life of integrity that you can live when you recognize womens equality. Engaged theory exposes problems, but also offers solutions.

Engaged theory makes resistance empowering. We are creating a new culturea culture not of top down thought or top down actions. We dont need deciders who abdicate principles; we need engagers who understand that everything is connected.

The Sexual Politics of Meat