Wednesday 6 October 2010

I’m a rapist


I have a confession to make: I’m a rapist; yes, I am. Perhaps you are as well? It’s easy to accept if you are a man but, as a woman, I find it hard to conceive of such a thing. It’s just that in my sexist way of looking at life I rather naively thought of rape as a uniquely male crime. But no, I’m a rapist. Why? That's simple: I eat meat.

Who says so, who levels this accusation? It comes from one Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory, a twentieth anniversary edition of which was recently published. I have a further confession: I’ve never heard of this woman or this book, though it says in an Amazon review that it’s a “vegetarian literature classic”, and if it says so on Amazon it must be true.

I, in contrast, thought it was a joke, really, I did, some kind of parody, an anti-feminist spoof, after I read a brief piece in Prospect by Digby Anderson (In the loopy). I went to Amazon in the first place to discover if it actually existed, not to look for reviews. I’m always casting my eyes over the wilder shores of weirdness, but this Adams woman is weird beyond weird. I begin to understand the mentality of people like her who are attracted to organisations like PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a sort of asylum for all the loopy-loos.

Oh, there is more than meat is rape, meat is murder, in her magnum opus, much more. Now I have to take Anderson’s word here, have to assume that he is not piling porky upon porky, because I’ve not the least intention of wasting money on a book that preaches that socialism, feminism, lesbianism and vegetarianism have an “elective affinity” for each other. Adams has apparently trawled through history finding feminists, easy enough to do, only to announce to the world that they were also lesbians, socialists and vegetarians, a bit like Adolf Hitler, then. Sorry; I’m being facetious - he wasn’t a socialist!

So, as Anderson reveals, in the Adam’s scheme of things, in her scheme of ‘critical theory’, to be a really pukka lesbian one also has to be a red-hot socialist, a militant feminist and an obsessive vegetarian, an all-round crank, in other words. “Eat rice, have faith in women”, the battle-cry emerges from the final page of The Sexual Politics of Meat: A feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory.

What a pity that trees had to be cut down to allow this rubbish to be published in the first place; what a pity even more have been sacrificed for the twentieth anniversary edition. I would say more but I’ve been gripped by an uncontrollable lust, an urge to rape a particularly bloody steak. I might even go so far as a spot of steak tartare, a measure of the depth of my depravity.

34 comments:

  1. For the ultimate depravity try cannibalism and eat them alive! On dairy, soy milk is healthier for you than whole milk. Humans are the only critters that continue drinking milk after they are weaned. Whole milk is hard on the digestive system.

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  2. Those whom the gods wish to destroy....when eating was leant a political aspect by these people, it was a sign of how we'd degenerated into a society that became obsessed by minutiae of the most irrelevant order. Brilliantly stated.

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  3. So far, this year, my neighbour and good friend has taken a mule deer, a pronghorn, and an elk - all with a traditional longbow and woodshafted arrows. If things go to plan, he will hunt bison in BC in a fortnight. More power to him.

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  4. Well, you know, on a more serious note, is murder really always bad? I mean, it just, it seems to me that there are some people in this world who if someone killed them it would be a huge service to all of us. Maybe they would taste good with the right marinade too...

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  5. Anthony, now there's a thought. :-)

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  6. Thanks, Adam. This is all part of the invasion of personal liberty, a sign of a particularly degenerate form of left-wing politics. They lost all of the big arguments so they move in tighter and tighter circles.

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  7. Calvin, archery, now that's a sport that I'm seriously considering taking up. It's so interesting to know that your friend has skills with a traditional longbow, not an easy weapon to use. Judging by his bag he's clearly an expert woodsman.

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  8. Jeremy, I can't tell you how often I've had similar thoughts. :-))

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  9. Indeed, although Alan Clark once said that he has no problem with violence against people, whilst he believes eating meat is cruel. What these people fail to see is that the human cultivation of domesticated meat as well as the hunting of the finest meat(game) is part of the natural change that humans hold over their environment.

    Only subservient animals do not eat meat--and yes, we need subservient animals. But I do not wish to be a subservient animal...that and, bloody hell, it tastes nice.

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  10. The left may have lost the arguments but they've won the war. Civil liberties have gone from being the un-spoken foundation of our Constitution, to being things we have to fight to retain when they should never have been tampered with in the first place.

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  11. The advantage of such people, is that they will (un)breed themselves out of existance.
    Until then, they are humourous.

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  12. Truth is that PETA and alikes are mere money-making (money-milking?) organizations. They make huge amounts of cash by exploiting the most profitable natural resource ever: human stupidity.

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  13. `Scratch an "animal lover" and you find a human-hater', sadly , seems often to be about right.

    Peter Singer, who LURVES the animals and who wouldn't hurt a fly, but who also supports voluntary euthanasia, is the high priest of this perverted morality, and really warrants a very high place on the ranking of contemporary societal menaces.

    This formerly teetotal, former vegetarian says
    "Eat steak, drink wine. "

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  14. Duot and Dominic, I wrote a piece here last year, announcing to the world that I wore fur, real fur, and delighted in doing so. I got a flurry of "I hope you die young" comments. I decided not to publish - a decision I rather regret now - because it revealed so much about the murderous intolerance of the animal rights crowd. Oh, but the spelling and grammar were too, too awful. :-))

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  15. I wear real fur and I know I'll die young. Is that the best they can muster?

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  16. Good because winters coming, and whilst I shall die young, I doubt it shall be of frost bite.

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  17. @Dominic: "Scratch an "animal lover" and you find a human-hater" Well you know Dominic, I love animals, I really do. I especially love wolves and siberian huskies, and horses too. But that doesn't mean I'm running off to join PETA - far from it, attrition is part of nature, and I'm not going to question this. Everything gets eaten by something. Decomposition is caused in part by your stomach bacteria eating you after you die.

    @Ana, fur: I've often told myself that as soon as I'm in a really serious relationship with a girl I'm going to learn how to hunt so I can bring her home furs. I think it's a great gift for my lady, though I will confess, this may be partially my Scottish Highlander side coming out.

    @MGON: Hippopotami aren't especially subservient, in fact they're really quite dangerous and assertive. They kill more people in Africa then all the predatory animals put together, mind you not to eat. Also, in the American West Elk and Moose kill more people then Cougars do.

    This said, they're also not human beings.

    @Calvin: Awesome. I would too but my mother hates guns.

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  18. I had the bull variety in Spain, Rehan. :-)

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  19. Jeremy, precisely my point. Hence the quotation marks around "animal lover". But tone does not translate well to the internet, I fear.

    To clarify, I was referring not to those who actually know the realities of wild life and love animals unsentimentally (as even this briefest of comments suggest you clearly do - and it's clear from things than Ana has written that she might be described thus, too), but rather the (often very metropolitan) hairshirt, vegan, proponents of "animal rights" who simultaneously anthropomorthise non-human creatures while having a remarkably low opinion of humans. I would have said that they seem to be a peculiarly English phenomenon, but the presence of PETA proves otherwise.

    Fur, oh yes. Living in Ukraine in wintertime was like being in a perpetual fashion parade. Proper, intensely, beautiful clothing as well as supremely practical.

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  20. Meat is murder... O.K.
    Dairy is rape?????

    I like offal. What does this make me? Hannibal Lector?

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  21. @Dominic: Yeah the Californicators can be every bit as bad in that regard.

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  22. @MGON: "Good because winters coming, and whilst I shall die young, I doubt it shall be of frost bite."

    I've always wanted to make myself a giant elkfur comforter and sleep under it every night. It seems like it would be so COMFY! Besides, if God didn't want us to use our guns to get some fur, he should've given us some to begin with!

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  23. @Anthony: And yet Whey of Milk is supposed to be one of the best sources of protein.

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  24. You evil witch! I was really excited by that first paragraph (excluding last line of course).

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  25. Levent, only if you enjoy your kidneys or liver with a decent chanti. :-)

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  26. There was a letter on to-day's Telegraph stating that humans are naturally suited not to eat a great deal of meat because we've not got acidic saliva. He also postulated this as a reason we typically don't eat raw meat(though on occasion I eat raw bits of fillet steaks. When scientists fulfil their duty and genetically engineer a super human, acidic saliva ought to be in order.

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  27. Though I thought you were opposed to employing science to improve the slow pace of the evolutionary process?

    Raw meat tastes vastly better than the cooked variety, but our digestive frailties prohibits us from regularly enjoying such pleasures.

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