Product Description

An examination of the historical, gender, race and class implications of meat culture, making the links between the practice of butchering/eating animals and the maintenance of male dominance. This tenth anniversary edition includes a new preface by Carol Adams that answers the question she is most often asked: why did you write this book? Adams also discusses new developments in feminist thought and animal rights, and updates the statistics and information provided.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #177088 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 276 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Many cultures equate meat-eating with virility, and in some societies women offer men the "best" (i.e., bloodiest) food at the expense of their own nutritional needs. Building upon these observations, feminist activist Adams detects intimate links between the slaughter of animals and violence directed against women. She ties the prevalence of a carnivorous diet to patriarchal attitudes, such as the idea that the end justifies the means, and the objectification of others. In Frankenstein , Mary Shelley made her Creature a vegetarian, a point Adams relates to the Romantics' radical politics and to visionary novels by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Dorothy Bryant and others. Adams, who teaches at Perkins School of Theology, Dallas, sketches the alliance of vegetarianism and feminism in antivivisection activism, the suffrage movement and 20th-century pacifism. Her original, provocative book makes a major contribution to the debate on animal rights.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Writer/activist/university lecturer Adams's important and provocative work compares myths about meat-eating with myths about manliness; and explores the literary, scientific, and social connections between meat-eating, male dominance, and war. Drawing on such diverse sources as butchering texts, cookbooks, Victorian "hygiene" manuals, and Alice Walker, the author provides a compelling case for inextricably linking feminist and vegetarian theory. This book is likely to both inspire and enrage readers across the political spectrum: we learn, for example, that veal was served at Gloria Steinem's 50th birthday, as well as of the atrocities of the slaughterhouse. One wishes Adams had been more careful about documenting some of her claims--her contention, for instance, that early humans were entirely vegetarian, requires scholarly support. Nevertheless this is recommended for both public and academic collections.
- Beverly Miller, Boise State Univ. Lib., Id.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ingram
In just over a year, the book with the strange title--and even strager ideas, some would say--has become the classic articulation of the hidden connections between meat eating and patriarchy, between vegetarianism and feminism. Now in paperback and widely available to readers everywhere, The Sexual Politics of Meat will have an even larger impact on the American public.

Customer Reviews

The Semiotics of Meat
Does eating rice bring "wholeness to our fragmented relationships"? Carol Adams believes that it can, and in this beautifully crafted work she lays out the entire argument. She does not minimize her personal revulsion toward the eating of meat, and the meat industry, but she ventures widely - from there.

This serious, disturbing, and well-researched book covers many interrelated topics, among them women, linguistics, animal rights, violence and terror, political resistance and patriarchy.

Food's meaning and importance to sustenance, spirituality, ritual and symbol and more - is undisputed. Adams' interesting, accessible, and scholarly polemic builds a solid foundation for her fervent wish that feminists embrace vegetarianism, or more accurately, veganism - the rejection of all animal-based foodstuffs.

But Hitler was a vegetarian and an animal lover; and until I got to Adams' deconstruction of that seemingly hideous contradiction, I thought, "There goes the notion of the moral weight of eating habits!" But Adams tackles the topic of Hitler's vegetarianism (for example)efficiently and convincingly, and in doing so removes him from the discussion.

This is a serious, disturbing, and well-researched book. Adams sounds a rational and convincing call for all people with control over what they may choose to consume - to live and eat deliberately and mindfully. Definitely worth reading.

This Book is Crucial
I could go on & on about this book. It is one the most inspiring and thought-provoking books I've ever read. I first read this book around the time I became a Vegan, developed a serious interest in Sociology, and earned a greater respect for Feminism. To truly appreciate and understand this book, one has to read it with an open mind. Some of the concepts and theories may seem extreme or abstract at first, but I suggest that people give Adams's text time to marinate.

Adams Gives Gives Voice to Historical Vegetarian Authors
Too long has vegetarian history been wrongfully called modern or faddish; Adams addresses this and explains how the messages of vegetarian authors have been muted, leading to these misconceptions. This book is a great help in giving historical examples of vegetarian authors (though mostly modern female writers) as well as how the writers assembled the messages in the texts. The first part of this book focuses on definitions and historical overviews of the treatment of animals and women. The second part gets to the literary examples, author techniques, and audience trivialization and/or dismissal of vegetarian messages. Now, when I read or hear someone discussing vegetarian authors such as Wells, Plato, Shelley, Shaw, etc., I will always have a historical and psychological awareness of how both their contemporaries and mine never had or will never have the entire messages acknowledged. I would especially recommend this book to any vegetarian and encourage him/her to read as many books by historical vegetarians as possble.