The U. J. Noblet Forestry and Wood Products Building, room G002 was packed to the brim on Wednesday Oct. 26 at 5 p.m. with a curious audience who wanted to know what “the sexual politics of meat” will look like and who might be the politicians in this case. While some might think of professional politicians as the players in this field of politics, the presenter on the topic revealed that everyone in the room is involved at some level. The speaker for the day was Carol Adams. Adams is a renowned ecofeminist who has spoken on diverse platforms from gender activism to animal rights and veganism. She has authored different books including “The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory” published in 1990, “God listens to your love: prayers for living with animal friends” published in 2005 and “The Pornography of Meat” published in 2004.
Adam’s presentation at Michigan Tech was based on her 1990 book. In her presentation, Adams criticized how popular culture represents meat in ways which “draw upon dominant Western philosophical viewpoints regarding race, gender and species and contribute to the interconnected oppressions of sexism, racism and speciesism.” She pointed out that there is a clear association “between the oppression of women and that of animals, domestic violence, sexual assault” where the same portrayals of women that denigrate them is transferred to meat.
Using diverse print and video advertisements, Adams demonstrated how meat-producing companies use animals to invite humans to eat them. While some adverts made animals dress in sexual female-like costumes with make-up, heels, red-lipstick, half-naked etc., others involved some chickens singing in a video advertisement inviting humans to consume them. She juxtaposes these advertisements to those of some magazines that portray women in similar ways.
In some other instances, men mocked women by remixing a women-liberation song with talk about how eating meat is a kind of empowerment. Some of the men in this advertisement even burned their shirts in a demonstration just as some women-liberation movements engaged in similar acts in the history of America. Speaking on some of the adverts, Adams said meat represents male dominance over females as “men who batter women have often used the absence of meat as a pretext for violence against women.”
She sees popular meat culture as linking feminism and vegetarianism, and patriarchy where there is an “absent referent” that “separates the meat eater from the animal and the animal from the end product.” The presentation advocated for veganism as the most appropriate way to respect the rights, emotions and values of animals. The presentation was followed by interaction with audience and eating of vegetarian food. Adams also did book signing for audience during the interaction.
A third year PhD student of the Department of Humanities, Silke Feltz, was the main person who made it possible for the presentation to happen. She was credited with bringing Carol Adams and with organizing the event. Silke was happy about the success of the program. “We had a fantastic turnout…Thanks for coming, everybody!” she said.
Aaron Hoover, a first year PhD student in the Department of Humanities remarked that “it was a great talk” that was also “very thought-provoking.” Syd Johnson, an assistant professor of philosophy in the department of Humanities and adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology chaired the event.
The presentation was sponsored by the Departments of Humanities, Cognitive and Learning Sciences, and Social Sciences of Michigan Tech. The other sponsors were Women’s Programming Committee, the Visiting Women and Minority Lecture/Scholar Series, Northern Michigan University, and VegFund.
