Carol Adams, feminist activist and author, spoke to a crowd of approximately 300 people Monday night about the connection between feminism and vegetarianism.
Adams, who authored “The Sexual Politics of Meat” and most recently “The Pornography of Meat,” presented a slide show that emphasized the connection between women portrayed as animals and animals personified as feminine, demonstrating how the two groups are oppressed in similar ways.
Many student groups, including Madison Coalition for Animal Rights, Campus Vegetarian Society, and Campus Women’s Center, invited Adams to Madison to discuss her views on how vegetarianism and veganism will lead to the liberation of both animals and women.
“It’s amazing how advertisements can make people believe that cows exist for food. That they don’t suffer. That they want to be your food,” Adams said during her presentation. “I watched my local butcher while growing up, and I saw how they shot the cow, drained its blood, skinned it, and beheaded it.”
Adams herself became a vegetarian after her pony was shot. As she bit into a hamburger after encountering the body of her dead horse, she realized that there was no difference between the pony she loved and the cow she was eating.
“That’s when I realized I had to give it up,” Adams said.
The slide show was filled with images of pigs and cows dressed in women’s clothing, posing provocatively. It was also filled with images of women being posed as meat, from a fast food advertisement with legs on a hamburger, to half a woman sticking out of a meat grinder in Hustler, to a naked women reduced to body parts in a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals ad, in which the ad marked her with labels such as breast, thigh, and ribs.
“Through these images, men are reducing women to body parts. These women substitute for the butchered animal in many of these ads,” Adams said. “Women are transformed into pieces of meat.
“Women are taught to look at themselves as pieces of meat who have to be pleasing to men. Men look at women and women look at men looking at women. It’s a cycle,” Adams said.
Adams also went into how grain is fed to animals instead of to starving children, as well as the health benefits of being a vegan.
“Six out of 10 deaths in the United States can be attributed to meat and dairy consumption. Meat eating can be connected to cancer and heart disease.” Adams said.
“This show really had an effect on me,” senior Lauren Winter said. “But I was already on my way to becoming a vegetarian, mostly because of the waste associated with butchering animals more than how animals are made to look like women.”
The discussion also touched on some other issues such as racism and homophobia, with a slide of a t-shirt that read, “I’m proud to be homophobic. Beat Faggots, not Seals.”
UW senior Andrea Kirschner said the presentation was enlightening.
“This talk really lit into the parallels between the consumer industry and the meat-eating world,” Kirschner said. “It’s a good way to see culturally why we eat meat. It’s totally propaganda-centered.”
Carol Adams has toured the country with her slide show, presenting at campuses including Cornell University and the University of Michigan. Adams received her Master’s of Divinity at Yale University in the 1970s. To learn more about Adams and her cause, visit her website at Caroljadams.com.
