Eco-Chick · The modern girl's guide to living green & fabulous.

Patriarchy of Pork

3 Comments

by Katie Kish · 09/06/06

While reading through my environmental ethics text book today (that will be used for a class called Philosophy and the Environment…woot!) I came across a section called “Patriarchy of Pork or Feminist Fuss” in a chapter called “Ethics and Animals”.

The section is only about a page long (a bit less, actually) but it goes on to outline a theory. The author of the book first pointed out that when asking his university classes who were vegitarians it was a majority of women that raised their hands. This isn’t an outlandish claim, and I believe that. What is wildly outlandish is his reasoning behind this.

Back-in-the-day, he says, women would cook for their family. The daughters and the mother would prepare the meal and set the table. The men would them come, and they would get the plates of food first. As they are passed around the table, all the men would take the meat, so that when it got to the women, there would be none left for them… So he argues that it is this patriarchial ritual that has made the women of today become vegitarians more so than men…

I fail to see the logic. Like, I understand how some women in these circumstances would just accept that fact they were probably not going to get any meat (oh why not just make more? or take some first? …whatever.) but as for this making people vegitarians now?…With the vegitarians I lived with last year it was a decision based on animal rights, health or the environment – not some internal pressure to release their oppressed past.

On that note of crazy feminist things, Feministing has the craziest anti-feminist quotes up, my favorite is:

I am not defending radical feminism, which I consider to be a minor mental illness…

animal rights, Animals, book, epa, ethics, Feminism, Food, health, meat, plates, skin, Theory, women