About Our Class

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"Anatomy of the Novel: Women, Meat, and Meaning," took place in Spring 2015 at Guilford College, and was led by Dr. Mylène Dressler. Students in the class came from a diverse background of diets, representing both meat-eaters and strict vegetarians. The theoretical foundation of our class was Carol J. Adams' The Sexual Politics of Meat.

Feminist-Vegetarian Theory

Introduced by Carol J. Adams in The Sexual Politics of Meat, feminist-vegetarian theory (a form of eco-feminist theory) is a ground-breaking way to consider the connection between women and non-human animals. With both historical and literary evidence, Adams exposes the manner in which western patriarchal systems affect women and non-human animals in similarly oppressive ways. Meat as a discourse is seen as "mighty," "masculine" and "necessary," while vegetables are seen as "feminine" and relegated to a position of "weakness," supporting meat both on the plate and in society. Adams argues that eating meat encourages violence towards women as well as non-human animals. In addition, western society, according to Adams, has developed ways to separate the live non-human animal from the meat which ends up on our plates. This is accomplished through language, physical fragmentation and psychic distance.

Since this book was first published in 1990, many other voices have joined the debate both for and against the idea that meat eating hurts, voices which have helped to shape the terms that underlie discussions about feminist vegetarian theory. In order to understand this theory as well as the scholarly abstracts which can be found on the Participants page, a few key terms and concepts will be helpful:

Speciesism: a prejudice towards other creatures because of their species, based upon the idea that humans are supreme and have rights over other animals.

The Story of Meat: the narrative process by which a living, non-human animal becomes meat on a plate waiting to be consumed. The climax in this narrative is the slaughter of the animal.

The Text of Meat: the dominant discourse of meat, which privileges meat and meat eating. It can include the language used to discuss meat, the way meat is arranged on a plate, or the way it is represented in advertisements for restaurants, among other examples.

Absent Referent: refers to the elimination of the live animal from our consciousness of what meat is, rendering the animal absent both literally and figuratively.

Fragmentation: physical and linguistic division. Animals and women are divided into different parts, rendering them as disconnected pieces rather than as a whole. This process allows for easier objectification, distancing and consumption.

Another significant text in this class was Sister Species, a compliation of essays written by women sharing their personal experiences with the intersection of oppression of speciesism, racism, classism, and sexism. Using Sister Species as inspiration, the class wrote creative essays about their experiences with meat.

In order to explore the lens of feminist-vegetarian theory, the class also looked at images that connected women, meat, and animals and how they are portrayed in our society through advertisments. Research teams discovered a wealth of images and clips that reflect the problematics Adams and other theorists have identified in meat-eating culture. Here are a few examples of the images the teams found:

These advertisements show women highly sexualized in relation to meat. In the first image, for example,the male figure is centered between the "racks" to show his dominance and acquired status, exemplifying patriarchal consumption. Animals in advertising are also often presented as both feminized and sexualized, and as eager to be consumed.