The Red and Black

Issue date: 3/4/09 Section: Variety

It's hard to ignore a title like "The Sexual Politics of Meat."

Feminist author Carol J. Adams included so many buzz words - sex, politics, meat - that people are bound to talk before even picking up her book.

That is precisely the idea behind the provocative posters adorning campus, Adams' lecture tonight and the book that started it all: "The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory."

Adams wants to make people think about and discuss the "animalizing of women in culture" and the "sexualizing of animals used for food."

She began working as a feminist activist after receiving her master's in divinity from Yale University in 1976. She moved to New York City where she started a hot line for battered women in Chautauqua County.

The idea for "The Sexual Politics of Meat" came to Adams when she became a vegetarian.

"After the death of a horse, the fact of meat eating became a contradiction: I asked myself, 'how can I eat someone who was once living?' I knew I had to become a vegetarian," Adams said. "Within a month, I realized that feminism and vegetarianism were connected, that in patriarchal cultures, others - nonwhites, women, the other animals - became means to ends rather than ends in themselves."

Busy working with abused and impoverished women in New York, Adams did not begin writing her book until she moved to Dallas 11 years after her revelation.

She feels that her experiences with racism, sexism and speciesism on the streets of New York helped her to better formulate her theories and facilitated writing the book in just two years.

Since its publication, Adams has written nearly 100 articles in journals and magazines as well as multiple other books.

Adams has presented "The Sexual Politics of Meat Slide Show" to universities all over the country - from liberal-minded ones such as the University of California, Berkley, to Virginia Tech, which has a slaughterhouse on campus.

No matter the audience, Adams finds students to be receptive to her ideas.

She said one student contacted her after the talk and said, "'As a white male in the audience, I did not feel attacked or blamed, but rather encouraged to change.'"

Adams has high hopes for those who see her presentation and take her ideas to heart. She encourages those who are now aware of oppression in our society to be more vocal.

"Notice how advertising demeans women, people of color, gays and lesbians and animals. Write letters to advertisers and those who carry the advertisements; challenge friends who speak in ways that objectify others. Think about how you would like to be treated and apply it to others, including animals. Stop benefiting from inequality."

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