Gender and Meat: Making the Connection

‘So the cultural myth of the hamburger is buttressed by masculinity and affirms, in turn, the recurring connection between meat and masculinity.' – Reeser
  

‘The word vegetable acts as a synonym for women’s passivity because women are supposedly like plants.’ – Adams

‘According to the mythology of patriarchal culture, meat promotes strength; the attributes of masculinity are achieved through eating these masculine foods.’ – Adams

‘Forbidding meat to women in non-technological cultures increases its prestige.’ – Adams

Meat eating is a very personal topic to me and hence writing on this topic requires a lot of self-restraint; I've therefore decided to touch on a few key issues surrounding gender and meat. The connection between diet and gender without any ethnographic or qualitative research yields some interesting trends: in all societies, even where meat consumption is low, men consume more meat than women and more women are vegetarians. Behind this then, a gender analysis would consider the way in which there is a connection between meat and constructs of gender. As Adam in 'The Sexual Politics of Meat' posits, vegetables become associated with women and passivity; forbidding meat to women increases its prestige as a masculine food that promotes strength. This is important since Hutchings argues that masculinity is based upon a hierarchical logic of exclusion and associated with degradation of the feminine. If animals are included in this hierarchy, they would be placed at the bottom as the most feminine, the most passive in this structure. Their degradation is the most extreme in form in that they are commodified to the extent that they become non-entities, reflected a) in the way that language transforms them from beings (pig) to objects/commodities (bacon) and; b) in the way in which the vast majority of animal protein we consume is feminine (eggs, milk, beef).

It is important to consider the way in which masculinity is not always tied to men. Where masculinity appears at the top of this hierarchy, all values, practices and customs associated with it become desirable and therefore those who are feminised within this hierarchy (for example, lower-castes/classes could be considered feminised/emasculated relative to upper-caste/class groups) seek to emulate and attain such a status; it must not be assumed that they agree with such an exclusionary and oppressive structure, rather it may be seen that this is the model that society is predicated upon and that they are working within this structure to increase their status. It then may be seen that the increase in meat consumption world wide, particularly in countries like India where upper-caste Brahmins have often been vegetarian, is the result of transnational, globalised masculinities and the way in which people seek to emulate them. The increase in meat consumption can not only be connected to the masculine nature of capitalism and how it cares only for the quantitative (and therefore commodification and profit), but also the way in which society at the local level becomes masculinised and even women adopt these 'masculine' traits in order to improve their status/position within this heirarchy. The problem of using this methodology points to some larger issues that will not be discussed in detail here, but simply: it is important to consider the extent to which using this structure, which requires degradation in order to maintain and reproduce itself, creates greater polarisation and oppression of those at the bottom, squeezing them further and creating greater polarisation within this heirarchy.

Ethical vegetarian/vegan movements in the west present a challenge to the hegemonic connection between meat and masculinity. There are several vegan sportsmen such as strongman Patrik Baboumian, Boxer Mike Tyson, Noel vegan fitness star which attempt to subvert the notion that meat is connected to masculinity. It is then pertinent to note the sensationalist reports that claim that vegetarianism (which is perceived to be a soy-heavy diet in the west) 'turns children gay'. As discussed in previous posts, heterosexuality is the pinnacle of hegemonic masculinity, and thus associating homosexuality with a food that is perceived to be a staple of vegetarian diets implies that 'meat is not masculine'. The attempts by vegan male sport stars then is interesting: it uses various forms of hegemonic masculinity such as physical strength (which is associated with meat) to masculinise vegetarian/vegan-ism and to some extent feminise meat-eating through slogans like 'real men don't eat animals'. The problem here is that rather than rejecting the notion of masculinity all together, they wish to retain the concept and reinvent it in a vegan form. Since masculinity is a real construct in society, the attempt to challenge its definitions and reinvent in this it may serve to subvert the way in which hegemonic masculinity can facilitate violence and risk taking behaviour. However this does not address other forms of subordination that the structure may encourage, and therefore it is pertinent to consider the way in which this approach serves simply to improve conditions for those lower in the structure without addressing the structure that leads to such degradation in the first place.

‘People with power have always eaten meat… Dietary habits proclaim class distinctions, but they proclaim patriarchal distinctions as well. Women, second-class citizens, are more likely to eat what are considered to be second-class foods in a patriarchal culture: vegetables, fruits, and grains rather than meat.’ – Adams