Women, meat oppressed

Displaying graphic slides and voicing interesting perspectives, Carol Adams, an activist working for justice on issues including sexism, racism, environmentalism, class discrimination and animal abuse, presented "The Sexual Politics of Meat" slideshow last night to a captivated audience.

The lecture presented slides - from advertisements, newspapers, magazines, cartoons, pornography and others - depicting pictures of hanging, fleshy animals, Betty Boop and slabs of meat. The slides, Adams said, were intended to expose the extreme hostility to women and animals, which serves as an example of oppression in society.

DARBY FRIEDLIS/Daily Activist Carol Adams presents a slideshow last night depicting the "Sexual Politics of Meat"

"How does someone become a piece of meat?" Adams asked. She answered her own question by explaining that before someone can be "used" they must be seen as "usable" and "consumable."

Adams said there are three problems with images and society that create the problems of animal rights and sexism- consumption, fragmentation and absent referent.

Although humans believe themselves to be superior to animals, they are animals, Adams said, adding that by eating meat humans are practicing a belief of superiority.

"Just as women can be animalized, animals can be feminized," Adams said, using two examples to prove her point.

Adams displayed two slides - one an advertisement for smooth women's stocking and the other a picture of a deer's legs. Adams compared the two pairs of legs, explaining that the women's legs were similar to that of the deer.

The other image was of a pig lying on a couch with painted toe-nails and pink panties. "Animals are not only depicted as free, but sexually free," Adams said.

The big shift between humans and animals occurred when humans became bipedal and were no longer on all fours, Adams said.

Another theme brought out in the lecture was "fragmentation." "Pornography fragments women into body parts," Adams said, adding that meat-eaters think of meat in terms of food or parts rather than in terms of a whole animal.

Absent referent, - the absence of acknowledging that the meat was ever an animal - is another problem within society, Adams said. She also used the example that rapists separate females from people.

"Consuming images are in our face all the time," Adams said, while showing slides that depict women as animals or animal-like. Society often fails to realize the connection between sexism and animal abuse to these images, Adams said. Adams said there are several solutions to resist the oppression that is caused by creating such images- consciousness of the problem, new images, restoring the absent referent and direct action.

Students and members of the Ann Arbor community agreed with Adams.

"A lot of the analogies she made ... they seem like things that were always out there we just never connected them in our minds," Engineering junior Ami Shah said.

"A lot of people don't take animal rights seriously" and there are similarities to human rights as well, said LSA junior Rodolfo Palm-Lulion, the event's publicity chair.

"Whether or not you agree, a dialogue furthers truth," Palm-Lulion said.

But Engineering first-year student Shawn Buchanan said he felt Adams did not address the problem men are facing with the same issues. Men are also exploited, he said.

03-24-99