The Pornography of Meat

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday June 06, 2003 12:46 by Sean Dunne - Department of Sociology, Trinity College sddunne at tcd dot ie

Slide Show Presentation by Carol Adams

Feminist-Vegetarian author, Carol Adams, will be giving a visiting seminar titled, The Pornography of Meat, on Friday, June 13th, 5PM-7PM, in the Swift Theatre, in the Arts Building of Trinity College. Please see Full Textbox for a review of both her slide show presentation, as well as her latest book. You can also go to her website, www.caroljadams.com, for more information.

Review of the Slide Show:

The Sexual Politics of Meat Slide Show
An evolving 1 and 1/4 hour dynamic and challenging presentation that discusses the images of women and animals in contemporary popular culture by drawing upon the ideas found in The Sexual Politics of Meat and Neither Man nor Beast. It introduces the concept of the absent referent through autobiography and then systematically applies an analysis of how it functions to explain the animalizing of women in contemporary cultural images and the sexualizing of animals used for food. It draws upon images that have been sent from around the world and is constantly being updated as it tracks changes in popular culture.
The Slide Show provides an ecofeminist analysis of the interconnected oppressions of sexism, racism, and speciesism by exploring the way popular culture presents images of race, gender, and species to further oppressive attitudes. It also suggests forms of resistance against the construction of individuals, human or non-human, as "meat."
Drawing upon images from popular culture, it answers the question: how does someone become a piece of meat? The slide show demonstrates how a trinity of interrelated forces--objectification, fragmentation, and consumption--impact our cultural and personal consciousness about women and animals.
The Sexual Politics of Meat Slide Show has been presented on campuses across the country. From Oregon to Maine, from experimental schools to universities with slaughterhouses on their campus, the slide show attracts a diverse audience and prompts spirited discussions.

Student’s comments on the Sexual Politics of Meat Slide Show
"[I] liked the fact that [Adams] discussed the connections not only between feminism and vegetarianism, but also between racism, homophobia, and anthropocentrism."
--Student at the University of Rochester, quoted in the Campus Times

"I think Carol Adams is a phenomenal speaker…I think she says lots of relevant things that concern all people, not only vegetarians."
--Student at University of North Texas, quoted in the NT Daily

"A lot of the analogies she made…they seem like things that were always out there we just never connected them in our minds."
--Student at the University of Michigan, quoted in the Michigan Daily.

Among the issues the slide show addresses are:

· Sexualized fragmentation. Fragmented body parts of animals who will be eaten depicted in such a way that thoughts of women as sex objects are clearly evoked as well. Breast and thighs advertised on menus, as well as specific examples like "We serve the best legs in town," draw upon the patriarchal fixation on women's bodyparts.
· Animals feminized/sexualized. Animals presented in poses and clothes human females are represented in our culture (svelte legs, a "chick" in high heels, often animals posed like women, animals who are four-legged made to appear both "sexy" and bipedal, animals in bikinis). "I ate a pig..." Exactly who are they referring to?
· Back-entry shots of both animals and women. In pornography, back entry shots are constructed to convey both women's accessibility and imputes to them an "animal-like" nature, that is, "animal-like" in a speciesist culture, a view that sees women as desiring being sodomized; sometimes animals who are seen as consumable are positioned that way as an invitation to consumption.
· Connecting flesh eating and other forms of animal oppression to prostitution and pornography ("strip", "buck-naked", "Live Nude Lobsters!", and the "Happy Hooker," etc.).
In all of this, we encounter the underlying hostility to women that is conveyed, through the supposed neutral medium of meat eating. The connections--and images--are everywhere. Through the sexual politics of meat, consuming images such as these provide a way for our culture to talk openly about and joke about the objectification of women without having to acknowledge that this is what they are doing. These issues are "in our face" all the time. We do not perceive them as problematic because we are so used to having our dominant culture mirror these attitudes. We become shaped by and participants in the structure of the absent referent.

book review of Carol's latest book:

BOOK REVIEWS; Social Sciences; Pg. 110

The Pornography of Meat

M.C. Duhig

Adams, Carol J.. Continuum. May 2003. c.192p. illus. bibliog. LC 2002155480.
ISBN 0-8264-1448-6. $24.95. SOC SCI

Is meat consumption linked to physical and sexual violence? Feminist,
vegetarian, and activist Adams (The Sexual Politics of Meat) thinks so, and
in 16 provocative essays she tells us why. These essays explore such diverse
topics as the objectification of animals and women, the power of
exploitative language to devalue, female bodies and body parts as
advertisements for meat products, and the sexist aspects of lynching. In the
especially controversial "Male Chauvinist Pig?" Adams deplores PETA's
(People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) use of nude photographs and
posters and argues that there is no need to exploit women to save animals.
Each essay is supported by documentation, including a dazzling array of
visual images that reproduce cartoons, posters, magazine covers, restaurant
menus, advertisements, etc. These images, some of which are disturbing and
difficult to view, significantly heighten the book's impact and are its best
feature. Even readers who do not share Adams's views should find themselves
challenged and perhaps even enlightened by this unique work. Highly
recommended for academic libraries and for public libraries with collections
in vegetarianism. - M.C. Duhig, Lib. Ctr. of Point Park Coll. & Carnegie
Lib. of Pittsburgh