The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (Bloomsbury Revelations)

by Carol J Adams

  The patriarchal structure of the absent referent that renders women and animals absent as subjects, collapses referent points, and results in overlapping oppression, requires a combined challenge by feminism and vegetarianism. Yet, this oppression of women and animals, though unified by the structure of the absent referent, is experienced separately and differently by women and animals. Thus, it is an oppressive structure that, when perceived, is often perceived in fragments and attacked in fragmented ways, i.e., some women work for their liberation, other women and men challenge the oppression of animals.

  A sign that the oppression is of one piece exists whenever patriarchal culture experiences its control over women to be threatened by the choice of a meatless diet. On the domestic level this can be seen when men use the pretext of the absence of meat in committing violence against women, as we saw in chapter 1. Additionally, a threatened worldview evidences the unity of this oppression when it concludes that arguments for women’s rights will lead to arguments for animals’ rights. In response to the woman suffrage movement of the nineteenth century one man retorted, “What will they be doing next, educating cows?” It is almost to be expected that the first challenge to Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes. Yet, the parody relied on one of the classic vegetarian texts: Porphyry’s On Abstinence from Animal Food. Since the oppression of women and the other animals derives from one hierarchical structure, we can expect that at certain points in our history a few will have challenged the structure in a unified way; that is, we can expect to find the intersection of feminism and vegetarianism, the unifying of the arguments of Wollstonecraft and Porphyry. Thus Edith Ward in Shafts argues

  What, for example, could be more calculated to produce brutal wife-beaters than long practice of savage cruelty towards the other animals? And what, on the other hand, more likely to impress mankind with the necessity of justice for women than the awakening of the idea that justice was the right of even an ox or a sheep?10

  Vegetarianism was one way that many people, especially women, expressed a connection with specific animals—those destined to become meat—by affirming “I care about these creatures. I will not eat them.” Vegetarianism was one way to reject a male world that objectified both women and animals; women not only enunciated connections with animals but defined themselves as subjects with the right to act and make ethical decisions, and in doing so defined animals as subjects, not objects. Ethical vegetarianism became a symbolic as well as literal enaction of right relationships with animals.

  Elemental aspects of feminism and vegetarianism intersect. While vegetarians posit a fall from grace, a Golden Age that was vegetarian, many feminists hearken to a similar time in which women’s power was not restricted, a matriarchal period of human existence. When considered as a mythopoesis which motivates feminism, rather than as a historically validated period, its intersection with the Golden Age of vegetarianism is revealing. What, after all, were the great goddesses the great goddesses of? Grains and vegetables possess a long history of woman-association.

  Early in the twentieth century, we can find an equation of matriarchal power with vegetarianism and patriarchal power with meat eating, an association that is an intimate part of current feminist mythmaking. In 1903, when Jane Harrison published Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, she offered clues to the association of the worship of goddesses and vegetarianism. In her book we find Pausanias’s report on his sacrifice to the goddess Demeter according to local custom: “I sacrificed no victim to the goddess, such being the custom of the people of the country. They bring instead as offerings the fruit of the vine and of other trees they cultivate, and honey-combs and wool.” Harrison observes that this “was a service to content even Pythagoras.” The ingredients of one of the women’s festivals that Harrison describes would almost have satisfied Pythagoras’s standards as well: “The materials of the women’s feast are interesting. The diet prescribed is of cereals and of fish and possibly fowl, but clearly not of flesh. As such it is characteristic of the old Pelasgian population before the coming of the flesh-eating Achaeans.”11 She cannot be unequivocally claimed for the vegetarian side, this is true, but a further reference to Porphyry’s On Abstinence from Animal Food, her suggestions of the invasion of flesh-eating male-god worshippers who overcame vegetarian goddess worshippers, may have offered a sense of historical or mythological perspective to feminist vegetarians of the time. Were they picked up on? We know that Harrison influenced Virginia Woolf. Were there others she influenced specifically because of their interest in vegetarianism? Whether or not Harrison was absorbed into feminist-vegetarian thought of her time, she has been assimilated by the current movement. (Recall the discussion of June Brindel’s novel Ariadne in chapter 7.) Recent formulators of a matriarchal time period identify it as vegetarian as well.12

  The recent history of feminism and vegetarianism also offers points of intersection. Both experienced a rebirth through books in the years after the French Revolution. Each considers a meeting held in the 1840s as very important: the 1847 Ramsgate meeting at which the term vegetarian was either coined or ratified; the 1848 meeting at Seneca Falls in which American women’s rights demands were outlined. According to certain historical analyses, each has been viewed as lapsing into obscurity; feminism after the achievement of suffrage in 1920, vegetarianism practically from the moment it began as a self-identified movement.

  Reconstructing feminist-vegetarian history requires heightened attention to meanings hidden within statements about health and diet. For instance, in a book of oral interviews with surviving suffragists, we can discover a statement with clues that point to vegetarianism. Jessie Haver Butler in describing her childhood states: “But my mother was very smart. She had a great big health book with which she was thoroughly familiar. She was also a faddist, so it’s natural that I’ve been somewhat of a faddist all my life. She had all the books of a man named Dr. Jackson, who started a whole new system of eating.”13 Clues that she is describing a vegetarian diet include her reference to the “faddishness” of her mother, as vegetarianism has been saddled with that label. Corroborating this is her reference to “a new system of eating.” The final confirmation comes from her invocation of the name of Dr. Jackson. James Caleb Jackson ran a hydropathic health institute in Dansville, New York.

  Jackson encouraged meatless diets. Ellen G. White who frequented Jackson’s “Home on the Hillside” reported, “Dr. Jackson carries out his principles in regard to diet to the letter. He places no butter or salt upon his table, no meat or any kind of grease.”14 Clara Barton’s “entire philosophy of living underwent a change in this environment” of Jackson’s Home on the Hillside, so much so that she moved to Dansville and adopted vegetarianism.15

  Jackson adhered to Sylvester Graham’s principles concerning food. Graham, for instance, recommended that meals be no more frequent than every six hours and never before retiring. At Dansville there were only two meals a day: breakfast at eight and dinner at 2:30. Butler remarked that Jackson “had some strange ideas that didn’t fit with farm life very well. One of them was there was to be no supper.” Yet Butler’s mother followed Jackson’s recommendations to the letter, as Butler recalls the situation of the farm workers: “To go without supper until breakfast, from the dinner meal until breakfast, must have been a great strain”

  Jackson’s influence through his popular book, How to Treat the Sick without Medicine, reached all the way to Butler’s mother in Colorado. Butler was right when she called it “a great big health book”—it was 537 pages long. A common measure prevails for healing the diseases he discusses in his book whether it be scald head, measles, inflammation of the eyes, insanity, diabetes, or alcoholism: omitting flesh foods. And there in Colorado, on a prairie farm, removed from conventions and the wide circle of support for these reforms in the East, in the midst of feeding the workhands, raising four children and stumping for suffrage, Jessie Haver
Butler’s mother felt it was important to find the time to learn about Dr. Jackson’s ideas, own all of his books, and be so thoroughly familiar with one of them that her daughter knew about its recommendations for proper diet.

  In fact, it may be because she was stumping for suffrage that she learned of Dr. Jackson. Jackson was a good friend of numerous suffragists. Amelia Bloomer lectured at Dansville. Elizabeth Cady Stanton retreated to Dansville for rest and restoration16; the residents of Dansville raised money for Susan B. Anthony’s trial when she was charged with voting illegally in 1872. Jackson faithfully sent messages to suffrage conventions; tribute was paid to him during the memorial services of the 1896 convention.

  Other suffrage workers adopted vegetarianism as well. The obituary of Jessica Henderson, suffragist and vegetarian, can be found in Agnes Ryan’s papers. Gloria Steinem describes her vegetarian suffragist grandmother who continued to serve meat to her meat-eating and anti-feminist sons.17 Socialist Anna Gvinter, imprisoned with other suffragists in 1917, wrote from jail that she did not eat meat.18 The Canadian suffragists who opened a vegetarian restaurant in 1910 certainly thought that there would be customers for such a venture.

  The confrontation at the 1907 meeting of the National American Woman Suffrage Association reveals the challenge of reconstructing feminist-vegetarian history. As I indicated in the last chapter, this confrontation was omitted from the official record, The History of Woman Suffrage, yet it reveals the demand some were making at the time to unify reform issues. During an appeal for funds, Harriet Taylor Upton, the national treasurer, reported that she had been asked to promise not to wear the aigretted hat she had worn during the convention. To which she responded “Nobody who will eat a chicken or a cow or a fish has any right to say a word when anybody else kills a parrot or a fox or a seal. It’s just as bad, one way or another, and I guess we have all eaten chickens!” It was at this point that the feminist vegetarian milliner interrupted the meeting, trembling with indignation and anger. “I must protest,” she said, “against being included in such a sweeping statement. Nothing would persuade me to eat a chicken, or to connive at the horror of trapping innocent animals for their fur. It causes a thrill of horror to pass through me when I attend a woman’s suffrage convention and see women with ghastly trophies of slaughter upon their persons.” In her response, she countered the challenge of inconsistency that Upton invoked to deflect criticism.

  The overlap of feminism and vegetarianism becomes more complex when considering temperance. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union Department of Health and Hygiene was headed by Mrs. Ella Kellogg, a vegetarian. Hydropathists such as her husband, Dr. J. Kellogg, and Dr. Jackson held that the stimulating influence of meat contributed to alcoholism. Consequently vegetarianism was needed to cure alcoholism. Jackson exhorted: “I do not believe reformed inebriates, generally, can be kept sober after they are pronounced cured, if they are permitted to eat largely of flesh meats seasoned with the various spices in common use with our people.”19 How did this perspective influence, if it did, the activities of the WCTU? Both Frances Willard, WCTU President, and her successor, Lillian Stevens, were vegetarians. When the World Temperance Organization met in London in 1895, their reception was a vegetarian one organized by the Women’s Vegetarian Union.

  What of feminist-vegetarian-lesbian (or homosocial) connections? Historically, homosocial relationships often included vegetarianism.20 Thus, besides “The Historical Denial of Lesbianism” which Blanche Cook identifies, there is a historical denial of vegetarianism as it was shared within lesbian relationships. For instance, Cook notes that Anna Mary Well’s Miss Marks and Miss Woolley denies the possibility of sexuality in the lives of these two women who had a forty-seven-year-long relationship. Because of this denial, Wells “inevitably diminishes the quality of their life together.” Cook notes in addition, “The entire political dimension of their lives, the nature of their socialism, feminism, and internationalism remains unexplored.”21 Cook falls into the same trap as Wells—failing to recognize the importance and legitimacy of private behavior—because Cook omits vegetarianism in her listing of this couple’s interests. When Jeanette Marks returned from Battle Creek sanitarium, operated by John Harvey Kellogg, Miss Woolley “ordered nuts, raisins, and whole-grain cereals from the S. S. Pierce Co. in Boston.”22

  Other close female friendships may have included a shared concern for vegetarianism. Mary Walker, feminist, dress reformer, Civil War hero, was a vegetarian. Was her “Adamless Eden,” a retreat for women, vegetarian, as most people viewed the original Eden to be? Did feminist lawyer Belva Lockwood, who lived with Mary Walker for a while, try vegetarianism as a result? Did Clara Barton’s close friendship with Harriet Austin, a hydropathic doctor and vegetarian at Dr. Jackson’s institute influence her decision to live in Dansville and adopt vegetarianism? In 1893 Frances Willard met Lady Somerset, head of the British WCTU, and joined the Fabian Society and the London Vegetarian society. Was vegetarianism a part of her relationship with Lady Somerset, and did the homosocial world of British temperance and feminist workers accentuate vegetarianism in a way that attracted Willard? Were the Grimké sisters able to sustain their vegetarianism because they were two, not one, and had a built-in support of it?

  If the woman of the past ate a vegetarian meal we need to ask:

  •Where did she eat it? At the vegetarian restaurant run by suffragists at their headquarters in Toronto? The Wheatsheaf or the Orange Grove in London, John Maxwell’s in Chicago, or Bernarr Macfadden’s Physical Culture and Strength Food Restaurant in New York City?

  •What were her resources? A vegetarian-feminist magazine like Shafts? Membership in the Millennium Guild? The Vegetarian Magazine? Vegetarian cookbooks? Dr. Jackson’s great big health book?

  •What was her context? Animal rights? A utopian society? The WCTU? The time-saving nature of vegetarianism?

  Vegetarianism was an integral part of autonomous female identity. It was de facto a rebellion against a dominant culture regardless of whether it was claimed to be a rebellion. But many women did claim its rebellious aspects. Recall that Mary Alden Hopkins, writing in the 1920s, reported that at one point in her life she reacted “against all established institutions, like marriage, spanking, meat diet, prison, war, public schools and our form of government.”23

  The vegetarian quest

  May 1, 1922:

  Should like to talk diet with you both—but I hereby warn you—that all vegetarians but me place vegetarian diet all out of proportion—(it is 100% of life’s aims—meat is 100% of mistakes—no causes operating on the human frame but diet.) I deny the “foul aspersion.” There are some causes in the universe beside meat and vegetarianism.

  December 31, 1936:

  But as to propaganda and agitation—I always choose feminism first. I’d like a chance to argue with you on that point.

  February 5, 1941:

  But beware of the almost universal bigotry of vegetarians that meat is the biggest or only devil—

  —Alice Park, feminist, pacifist, vegetarian, author of “The Circle of Women’s Enfranchisement” in The Vegetarian Magazine, letters to Agnes Ryan and Henry Bailey Stevens24

  Carol Christ in Diving Deep and Surfacing describes a typology for women’s spiritual quest.25 In adopting vegetarianism, certain patterns I call “the vegetarian quest” are evident. It consists of three parts: an awakening in which the revelation of the nothingness of meat occurs, naming the relationships one sees with animals, and rebuking a meat-eating world.

  The first step in the vegetarian quest is experiencing the revelation of the nothingness of meat as an item of food. The nothingness of meat arises because one sees that it came from something, or rather someone, and it has been made into no-thing, no-body. The revelation involves recognizing the structure of the absent referent. The revelation can also be catalyzed when meat has been divested of any positive qualities with which it is usually associated. After the awakening to meat’s nothingness on
e sees that its sumptuousness derives from the disguises of sauces, gravies, marinades, and cooking, that its protein offerings are not unique nor irreplaceable. In experiencing the nothingness of meat, one realizes that one is not eating food but dead bodies. Thus, George Sand stopped eating red meat for two weeks after a grisly battle left human corpses rotting within view of her window.26 Many writers describe an epiphanal experience that locks them into movement away from meat. It is a moment of realization in which they say, “What am I doing eating meat?” Barbara Cook ascribes her “awakening to love” and animal rights activism to a time when she held a small calf in her arms, who “seemed the symbol of every new creature ever brought into the world.” But she learned that this symbol often became veal. Thus, the nothingness of meat was revealed to her: “For months afterward I cried when I thought of the calf. I cried when I saw milk-fed veal on a menu. The piece of pale flesh wrapped neatly in cellophane in the supermarket would never again be faceless masses.”27

  Agnes Ryan’s unpublished autobiography discusses her vegetarianism in a chapter called “I Meet a New Force.” Her recollections of this event provide an excellent case study for describing the revelation of the nothingness of meat. When she began to prepare some meat, she realized that it was rotten.