Veganism & Masculinity: I’m Not Trying to Be an Aggressive Vegan, But What Does My Brother Have Against Vegetables?
My brother hates veganism, and really anything loosely associated with it, including, as it would seem, vegetables. He’s noticed cucumbers in the kitchen before and scoffed at them because, if he were to eat them, he would, for a brief moment in time, be vegan. I find this rather bizarre. Let’s talk about it.
Full disclosure: My perspective on this topic is rather biased. I’ve been plant-based (#myplantbasedjourney, @riceH&D) for five years now and truly enjoy it. And maybe it’s because I’m a vegan that my brother so fervently detests the lifestyle; we have never had the best relationship, so it makes sense that anything he associates with me would also be something he dislikes. However, I think there’s more there than just fraternal dislike – I think veganism threatens his masculinity.
It will come as no surprise that masculinity and meat share strong associations. If we were to be more specific, we could say that masculinity, meat, heterosexuality, and rape culture share strong associations. Now, my first inclination is to find a series of misogynistic advertisements from the likes of Carl Jrs. and Burger King, but then I’d be sharing something that most of us had seen before. Yes, we know that many meat advertisements have scantily clad women that appeal to the male gaze, and that these images have existed for a long time. But who developed them, I wonder, and why are men their target audience? They could have just as easily capitalized on other social phenomena, and meat could have just as easily taken on a wide variety of other connotations. Who decided that meat is equivalent to manliness?
According to Popular Science, the connection between meat and masculinity may be a result of four hypotheses: (1) that men were hunters, that hunters sought meat, and therefore that this association between men and meat remains in our subconscious; (2) that eating meat is inherently risky, and men use taking risks to demonstrate their courageousness and impress potential mates; (3) “meat is a symbol of white male privilege.” I’m not doubting Popular Science’s third conjecture, but it’s not exactly what I’m seeking. The first is interesting, but there’s reason to believe that nomadic societies weren’t as patriarchal as previously believed, and rather that it was the agricultural revolution that first created the foundation for sexual inequality by permitting the accumulation of capital and knowledge regarding who fathered whom, not hunter versus gatherer distinctions. The second, that men like meat because meat is risky, strikes me as the most interesting of the three, but I’m unsure. Even if there’s a connection between the male neurology and risk taking (which, according to the literature, there may be), at this point in time I wouldn’t exactly qualify eating steak for dinner as risky behavior… let’s keep looking.
An article in Past & Present: A Journal of Historical Studies named “Diets, Hunger and Living Standards During the British Industrial Revolution” reveals that it was during the British industrial revolution that Britain’s, and later Western Europe’s, meat supply increased, thereby increasing the need to convince people to eat more meat. This isn’t unusual; in the early 1900s the United States invested lots of capital into making people eat chicken via advertising, and I imagine that something similar occured in Britain. This example, in a way, directs us back to Popular Science‘s almost conjecture about capital accumulation, gender inequality, and meat; that meat reflects the ability to accumulate capital, often in societies that provide men greater access to wealth than women, and therefore meat is also connected to masculinity. In other words, wealth equates to meat and meat equates to man. And this makes sense; when meat industry profits decline, the advertising produced often points to a crisis of masculinity (See: Burger King’s “I Am Man” commercial). Even though I’m, in all honesty, not 100% satisfied with the strength of this historical connection between masculinity and meat, I’m comfortable leaving this part of the conversation here, effectively naming capital and socialization the culprits for meat-eating masculinity.
I’m back at the question of “What Does My Brother Have Against Vegetables?” It seems that what my brother has against vegetables is a concern that if he does eat vegetables, his masculinity (and therefore, according to hypotheses that men use risk taking to impress mates, very suggestive burger advertisements, and a semester’s-worth of readings on the connection between masculinity and heterosexuality) and therefore, his straightness, will be in peril. And I’m sure that there are thousands of teenage boys (and not-so-teenage men) who think exactly as he does, willing to sacrifice medical recommendations and the health of our planet for what they perceive to be a strong sense of masculinity. But with the changing conditions of our ever-warming planet, and with (hopefully) new norms regarding the way we depict female bodies in public media, I’m curious as to how much longer the Earth can stand this socially-constructed aversion herbivorism.
P.S. Want to read something wild? Check out this article on vegansexuality: Feminism & Psychology © 2010 SAGE (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC) http://fap.sagepub.com, Vol. 20(1): 53–72; 0959-3535 DOI: 10.1177/095935350935118.
Sources:
https://www.popsci.com/meat-masculinity-stereotype/
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/14/early-men-women-equal-scientists
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/147470490800600104
http://literaryculturaltheory.blogspot.com/2008/02/my-ad-analysis-i-am-man-burger-king-ad.html
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