The visual which accompanied this week’s readings is of a little faceless presumably male chef, similar to the Pillsbury Dough Boy, this dough boy is carving a piece of meat and another knife stabs the uncut part of the meat, to beat a dead horse. The connection between that of the visual and the readings from Eisenberg, Curtin and Gaard are the similarities between the oppression of women and the oppression of animals specifically in a patriarchal food chain, and how men perceive both women and meat.
According to Curtin, one such example of the connection between women and meat and how men perceive both is how each can be sexualized or used to stroke the male ego,“the connection of women and animals through pornographic representations of women as ‘meat’ ready to be carved up” (Curtin), which perfectly describes the visual for this week. Also, in the article by Eisenberg, one study showed that simply the availability of a meat dish after “a threat to [a man’s] masculinity… lowered their anxiety back to the level of an unthreatened group.” This connection, in my opinion, highlights the need men feel to hold tightly onto their masculinity through the nutrition of meat and its perceived symbol of manliness, and also the nurture of a woman, which often crosses a line into the oppression of said women, which intersects within ecofeminism to bring the discussion full circle.
Another phenomena about men and women when it comes to eating habits is that food is gendered, and it’s based in some truth- typically, men are expected to order the steak or a burger, and women are often expected to order a salad. “This visual paints the picture that plant food is for ladies, and perhaps cows, but men? Not so much. For many men, meat is an inarguable symbol of masculinity. We’ve been fed this idea for decades. If you are what you (m)eat, and you’re a man, then you eat meat” (Eisenberg). Women are oppressed by a patriarchal society which body-shames them and uses propaganda to control the narrative of what foods women should and should not eat, “the experiences of women in patriarchal cultures are especially valuable because women, more than men, experience the effects of culturally sanctioned oppressive attitudes toward the appropriate shape of the body” (Curtin). In almost every way, women face oppression from men and male gendered aspects from the food we eat to the workplace.
This oppression women experience is not so different from the oppression we put nonhuman animals through everyday. Whether its a domesticated animal or an animal raised in captivity, as humans we perceive ourselves as the top of the food chain (although put me in an African safari with a pack of hyenas and i’m sure I would quickly fall to the bottom of that food chain) and so we believe it is up to us to make decisions for nonhuman animals in many ways. This is extremely similar to the patriarchal society, especially our government, in the ways that it controls women, one example being the struggle for the right to bodily autonomy. “Zoo animals also experience powerlessness, as do most other nonhuman animals who are powerless at the hands of humans, who hold life-or-death decision making power over them on multiple levels” (Gaard, 20). This connection is central to ecofeminism since women and nature are both oppressed by men. Ecofeminism where vegetarianism intersects is interesting in Curtin’s essay about what we are willing to count as food. Curtin begins by highlighting the fact that vegetarianism is a form of “moral obligation that results from rights that nonhuman animals have in virtue of being sentient beings” (Curtin). This perspective is a humane and ecofeminist one because it is inclusive of the rights of nonhuman animals and the cruelty and oppression that they face in order to satiate the never ending human hunger and over consumption. ‘Moral vegetarianism’ which Curtin is committed to, does not exclude all instances of meat eating such as in the case of life or death for herself or a loved one. As someone who eats meat myself, I do not condemn meat eaters or the eating of meat as protein because I was raised on it, but instead something that resonates with me which Curtin writes about is the Ihalmuit people whose terrain does not allow for them to forgo eating meat, so their tradition is to thank the animals whom they hunt and kill as a ‘gift’ of a meal for them. In the modern capitalist world, not many of us witness the entire process of the meat which we consume. This sort of desensitization has led to an over consumption of meat and further separates and oppresses the nonhuman animal as things to be used by humans.
