The United States and Japan are countries that have both embraced the prevalence

 

of patriarchal control, and have perpetuated certain gendered stereotypes based on the

 

actuality of this dominance. A stereotype that has been customarily associated as a part of

 

a woman’s role in this kind of culture is her responsibility to reproduce. Women have

 

begun to more outwardly rebel against this inequitable expectation, and have attempted to

 

ostensibly establish themselves as being made up of more than their capacities for

 

reproduction. I will specifically look at how two women, Jane and Akiko, attempt to

 

reject these traditional gendered expectations in Ruth L. Ozeki’s My Year of Meats. Both

 

of these women have felt pressured by male presences in their lives to embrace their

 

fertility and role as reproducer, and both women have hit roadblocks when, for different

 

reasons, they discover that they are physically unable to fulfill their presumed duties.

 

A direct correlation can be made between the ways in which women’s bodies are

 

viewed as objects necessary for reproduction and the ways in which animals bodies are

 

also used. Livestock are used in mass-breeding facilities, cows are abused for their milk-

 

making abilities, chickens are exploited for their eggs and numerous other  animals are

 

injected with hormones and other drugs to enhance their bodies’ capabilities. By utilizing

 

scholarship from individuals who have in some way addressed this problematic reality, I

 

will highlight the parallel between the reproductive experiences of women and animals in

 

a dominant patriarchal society.