Month: February 2020

Sexism is rampant in the meat industry.  We know this from our readings last week, but this week in Carol J. Adams’ The Politics of Meat, we can understand this idea, and develop a framework around it through understanding her key ideas.  The most important ideas from her reading include, “Meat-eating is associated with virility, masculinity. Meat eating societies gain male identification by their choice of food.” and “Women are animalized and animals are sexualized and feminized.”  These ideas a fairly simple to understand and see, so let’s look at a few examples. From the list provided, I chose three examples of meat being sexualized that I thought were the strangest and funniest. First, there is this feminized cow. What I thought was most interesting about this image is the emphasis on how thin the cow is.  This is a huge juxtaposition between how we view women and how we view meat. Sexualized women are often glamorized for being thin, but cows are glamorized for being fat and providing more meat. This ad juxtaposes these ideas in a way that makes me uncomfortable. In Lisa Kemmerer’s The Pornography of Meat, an analysis of Carol J. Adams’ work, she states that “Animals are assumed to want it like women. One can consume either a pig or a woman. One can exploit and destroy a calf or a woman. ‘Because women are not being depicted, no one is seen as being harmed and so no one has to be accountable. Everyone can enjoy the degradation of women without being honest about it’” This is exactly what this image is doing, and it’s much creepier than what ‘meats’ the eye. 

My second image takes this idea in another strange direction, depicting the burger as a child, and the doctor as a lucky man who ‘delivered’ (?) it, and now gets to eat it.  There is also this strange undertone of sexualization of birth, which again feels very strange here.

Finally, the third image I chose from the list is a Twitter post from ‘butt praxis’, questioning the validity of the sexyness of meat.  I think that butt praxis makes a good point here, that this sexiness does not seem real when we think about it critically. What about meat makes men sexy?  I would like a second opinion as well, preferably not affiliated with Fox News.

When I went to look for examples of this in my day to day life, I looked up the #meat on Instagram.  Here are my search results:

There are two images that stand out here.  There are four images of actual meat, but then a lingerie ad, as well as a picture of a regular man.  I think this set of images is a perfect answer to the question ‘Who is consumed and who is the consumer?’  This average man clearly is in a dominant position, and in my search of photos of meat, there were no photos of women, but there was this ad for lingerie.  As our quotes explained, women depicted to be consumed, or ‘conquered’ which results in these, frankly disgusting, and strange advertisements.

 

Today, I’d like to open with a quote from Gaard’s Ecofeminism on the Wing: Perspectives on Human-Animal Relations, she states that “we live in paradoxical times.  We don’t have good choices, choices that allow us to live in this culture and maintain our relationship with other animals without violating their integrity.”  I do believe there is a huge amount of truth to this quote. When thinking about veganism, it is really important to keep this philosophy in mind. Many vegans that people imagine when they think of vegans, are hardcore people that never even look at meat.  When I think of a vegan, I think of my roommate. My roommate embodies what Curtin defines as ‘moral veganism.’ Deane Curtin explains this idea in his article, Contextual Moral Vegetarianism where she states “The injunction to care, considered as an issue of moral and political development, should be understood to include the injunction to eliminate needless suffering wherever possible, and particularly the suffering of those whose suffering is conceptually connected to one’s own.”  Being a vegan means understanding the suffering that animals face, and aligning your life with that suffering to a point that you make huge sacrifices to support them.

That’s right, you CAN be vegan and a reasonable person.  This, at first, was a crazy idea to me. What’s the point in being vegan if you aren’t going to follow the rules?  It’s all about being a reasonable person and still making small choices when you can to help the environment. Sometimes you’re in a situation where there are no vegan options, or you order food without animal byproducts and the Burger King worker puts the mayonnaise on the Impossible Whopper anyway.  The most important part of being vegan, as I see it, is reducing waste, and that means breaking the rules rather than complaining and ordering a new Impossible Whopper.   

Thinking about these ideas in compilation with gender, we get an article like Meat Heads: New Study Focuses on How Meat Consumption Alters Men’s Self-Perceived Levels of Masculinity, by Zoe Eisenberg.  This article discusses the way that eating has been gendered, and how the vegan diet appeals more to women, as meats are typically branded as masculine.  An example of this is through We can see an example of this in Bloomberg’s recent ad against Trump. This ad is hilarious. Bloomberg is a disgusting excuse for a person, and this billboard highlights that through the absurd idea that the way you eat your steak reflects on masculinity.  These two men are both terrible, without a doubt. They remind me of the image that was chosen for this week, of a man cutting up some meat for some more men, presumably. There isn’t a huge amount of substance to this image, but it does create a disconnect between the consumer and the animals that were killed to result in that meal.  Two huge examples of gendered food are meat for masculinity, and plant based foods for femininity. This is arbitrary and stupid, but can be seen in media, like this Bloomberg ad.

 

I picked an image of my barn in the middle of winter last year.  I live in Western Massachusetts, so our winters are much worse than here.  I live in the middle of nowhere, so when we get snowed in like this we are unable to get to a grocery store for multiple days.  This also means we do a lot of activities relating to nature. For example, we cut all of our own wood and heat our house with a wood stove.  Living on a farm, we tend to a variety of animals, who graze and fertilize the ground.  Reading Barbara Kingsolver’s description of her walking up the driveway made me feel quite nostalgic, as she experienced many of the same things I do.  This has given me a personal connection to the environment and weather that feels fairly unique.  I’ve lived there most of my life, resulting in many memories and feelings associated with the wilderness.  

The importance of this concept can be analyzed all throughout ecofeminist theory.  Ecofeminist theorists believe that the connections that humans have with nature is important, and is influenced by a variety of factors.  For example, in Terry Tempest Williams’ Homework, she defines the bedrock of democracy, and in her definition he states,”in each of these places, home work is required, a participation in public life to make certain all is not destroyed under the banner of progress.” (Williams, 19)  This idea, of the bedrock of democracy, works really well in my personal relationship with the planet through my home. We do a lot of work to keep ourselves warm and alive that really connects us with the planet, and the environment around us.  This idea immediately plays into Barbra Kingslover’s Small Wonder, where she discusses the importance of the ‘wildness’.  She states that, “What we lose in our great human exodus from the land is a rooted sense, as deep and intangible as religious faith, of why we need to hold on to the wild and beautiful places that once surrounded us.”  Wildness as a concept has an indescribable value.  Each person has their own relationship to the environment that is reflected in our own pasts. Something about the connection we hold to the planet as ecofeminists keeps the value of the environment high, and that helps us keep the connection we have with it.

Being connected to nature makes us feel like we are part of a community.  The connection that we get with the Earth can be strengthened through the work that we do with the environment, which is an important principle to ecofeminism, that there should be a balance between nature and humanity.  Again I feel myself sympathizing with Barbara Kingsolver, as in her conclusion she struggles to describe why we need wilderness as much as we do, but I believe that bellhooks put it best in Touching The Earth, as she states her thesis, that,  ”When we love the Earth, we are able to love ourselves more fully.”  (bellhooks, 363)

Throughout the readings I’ve done over my various classes, in general the Global South typically has a more intense relationship with problematic ideologies than the northern hemisphere.  Using ecofeminism, we can analyze these types of activisms and ideologies to compare and contrast our situations.

We can start understanding the south’s interaction with ‘environmental degradation’ by looking at Scott London’s interview with Vandana Shiva.  In the interview, Shiva states that, “I’ve just been told that Nestle has taken out patents on the making of pullao. (Pullao is the way we make our rice in India, with either vegetables or meat or whatever.) Before you know it, every common use of plants will be patented by a Western corporation.”  Shiva’s point here is that capitalism is clearly negatively affecting many parts of the planet.  

We can use this anti capitalism ideology to look at some ways that ecofeminism excels in the western world.  The Green New Deal is a perfect example of ecofeminism making strides to limit corporation’s carbon footprint.  I’ve included a picture of me at a protest on campus, hosted by the Sunrise Movement. The Sunrise Movement is a large group with an on campus chapter.  We organized the climate walk out last semester, and are working this semester to support Ed Markey and Bernie Sander’s campaigns. I believe that the Sunrise Movement embodies some of the most important things that ecofeminism stands for.  

Comparing this week’s spotlighted ecofeminist, Bina Agarwal, with last week’s, Hobgood-Oster, we can compare the way they talk about ecofeminism to analyze topics, like corporations, with differing frameworks.  Starting with this week’s reading, Agarwal’s The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India looks at the global south’s ecofeminism through agriculture, stating, “The Green Revolution embodies a technological mix which gives primacy to laboratory-based research and manufactured inputs and treats agriculture as an isolated production system.” (pg135)  Agarwal’s description of the agriculture industry in the south is a discussion that has many different factors than that of the traditional western ecofeminism, as there is a large disparity in the access to resources that we have in the western world. Then, we can look at Hobgood-Oster’s Ecofeminism: Historic and International Evolution, “Combining feminist and deep ecological perspectives — in and of themselves extremely varied ways of thinking about reality — is a complex, transgressive process that is often in flux.”  Hobgood-Oster’s perspective looks at more theoretical discussion. While Agarwal looks at serious physical problems effecting her reality, Hobgood-Oster looks at theory, and how feminist perspectives change.   Both of these types of ecofeminism are important to utilizing ecofeminism to its maximum potential.

Overall, I found the traditionally western ecofeminists to be relatable, which made their content more engaging for me.  I do believe there is a huge amount of value in comparing and contrasting these different mindsets, as they allow for more types of solutions.  The involvement I’ve had with ecofeminism and social justice has been liberating and fulfilling for me, which has made ecofeminism an even more valuable ideology for me.

 

The Green New Deal:

<https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres109/BILLS-116hres109ih.pdf>

Last week reading:

http://users.clas.ufl.edu/bron/pdf–christianity/Hobgood-Oster–Ecofeminism-International%20Evolution.pdf

This week’s reading:

<https://www-jstor-org.libproxy.umassd.edu/stable/3178217?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=Bina&searchText=Agarwal&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DBina%2BAgarwal%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff&seq=4#page_scan_tab_contents>

<https://www.globalresearch.ca/in-the-footsteps-of-gandhi-an-interview-with-vandana-shiva/5505135>