SL 29
Hank Rothgerber, professor of psychology at Bellarmine University, told NBC News he believes meat is deeply ingrained in American men as a perception of masculinity. He explained: “Meat consumption is a symbol of patriarchy resulting from its long-held alliance with manhood, power and virility.” Rothgerber penned an article titled “Real Men Don’t Eat (Vegetable) Quiche: Masculinity and the Justification of Meat Consumption” in the journal “Psychology of Men & Masculinity.” In this article, he conducted a survey to find out why people continue to eat meat despite the growing knowledge of its negative effects on health and the environment. He found that men justified eating meat through a denial of animal suffering and a more hierarchical view on humans over animals in the world. In Rothgerber’s article, he refers back to Carol J. Adams as the founder of the connection between vegetarianism and feminism. Adams laid the groundwork for Rothgerber’s theory in her book “The Sexual Politics of Meat” published in 1990. The New York Times later referred to her book as “a bible of the vegan community,” and praised it for its new outlook on meat, sexism and the interrelation between the two. Adams’ website states, “The Sexual Politics of Meat argues that male dominance and animals’ oppression are linked by the way that both women and animals function as absent referents in meat eating and dairy production, and that feminist theory logically contains a vegan critique...just as veganism covertly challenges patriarchal society.” The book discusses the theory of “the absent referents,” in which the human separates the violence of meat eating with the pleasure of meat eating by not seeing the meat on their plate as what it is: meat on a plate. This is similar to the theory of cognitive dissonance, where humans know the facts of certain things, but choose to turn a blind eye. I think it’s safe to say that everyone knows a hamburger was once a cow and that chicken nuggets were once a chicken, but meat-eaters don’t want to acknowledge that connection, perhaps out of discomfort.