© Getty Images / Roman Larin / EyeEmThe suggestion by a feminist vegan that meat consumption is misogynistic and xenophobic is as risible as it sounds
In November, the Oxford Union held a debate about meat consumption called "This House Would Move Beyond Meat," presented by vegan feminist Carol J. Adams, and the farcical proceedings went viral in February after clips surfaced on social media. Adams, the writer of 'The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory' and 'The Pornography of Meat', regurgitated the decades-old argument that meat consumption is not only problematic in the sense that it exploits animals for the purposes of basic sustenance (as often repeated by vegans in general), but also that meat consumption has gendered and racialized components.
In 'The Pornography of Meat', Adams "draws the visual comparison between meat advertised on a shelf and women portrayed in particular advertisements or magazines." And she "advises that the idea of consumption plays a significant role in a culture that compares women to products."
While the metaphor may work to explain sexual objectification, Adams' arguments take a very literal dimension in her attack on meat consumption at the Oxford Union debate. Indeed, meat eating is racist, sexist, and xenophobic.
"21st century animal eating requires a new complicity in a new colonialism," claims Adams. "These events especially affect girls and young women. Your hamburger comes with a dose of misogyny."
"The assumption that the best protein comes from corpses is a racist belief," she continues, arming the "problematic" ramifications of meat consumption with political buzzwords to make it seem worthy of a cause.
No, it's a fact that the best protein comes from animal sources. Without modern pharmaceuticals and vitamin supplements, it is impossible to maintain a purely vegan diet. As noted by the Vegan Society, "it is difficult for anyone to get a daily vitamin D intake of 10mcg from food."
There is simply no reliable source of vitamin D aside from supplements or fortified foods, for vegans, at least. For everyone else, there are fish, eggs, and red meat.
The same goes for Vitamin B12. Vegans and vegetarians who do not take supplements suffer from a high risk of deficiency of the vitamin required for the function of many bodily processes, including protein metabolism and the formation of red blood cells. That, too, comes from meat.
Comment: There's also the issue of the optimal fats that the body need to function optimally. One common complaint from vegans and those that have recovered from similarly detrimental diets are the various seemingly innocuous cognitive issues, like brain fog. With the brain being 60% it's obvious why, when we replace our diets with inadequate and even harmful fats, this is problematic. It may also explain why those pushing these kinds of abnormal diets can appear both irrational and extreme. See Adam's comments below for examples.
Adams asks, "How do you know the animal would have picked you to feed off its corpse?" Clearly, no animal would choose someone to feed off its corpse. An animal's instinct is to survive and sustain its life - just as humans, who are also animals, must consume meat. Not only to live, but to thrive. We cannot deny our evolutionary adaptations.
Further along in the debate, Adams remarks that meat consumption is sexist, citing how popular culture is "flooded with references to sexy cows, sexy pigs, sexy chickens, sexy fishes, who all just wanna have fun."
Halloween costumes aside, which could include an endless variation of "sexy" outfits, there is no place on earth where animals are considered "sexy." Indeed, bestiality is not only illegal in most parts of the world, but the recommended punishment for having sex with animals is death - in two sections of the Bible. Hardly the norm Adams makes it out to be.
Perhaps running out of talking points, she also argues, "Masculinity, a construct of the gender binary, facing constant destabilization feels always under threat and eating animals is its protection racket."
It's hardly the salient point she thinks it is. A subjective value judgment does not make for an objective argument. Spitting buzzwords and making political issues out of something humans and their primate ancestors have done for hundreds of thousands of years does her argument no favors.
Bizarrely, despite the heckling and raucous laughter Adams faced throughout the debate, the vegan won by a count of 115 votes to 105 - once and for all proving that feelings don't care about facts. One can only hope that the verdict was rendered out of pity.
Comment: A rather startling indictment on the people in attendance, some of whom, one would assume, attend Oxford University, which is worrying because these same people are often touted as the next generation of leaders.
Worryingly, the same ideologues are working with governments to concoct various schemes to enforce these harmful diets on the public through meat taxes, and on children by reducing the consumption of meat in school meals.
Ultimately, the Oxford Union debate is just one of many pointless, academic arguments being held across universities and colleges throughout the West - the product of social elites indifferent to common, everyday issues faced by the working class who don't have the luxury of consuming overpriced supplements and almond milk.
Ian Miles Cheong is a political and cultural commentator. His work has been featured on The Rebel, Penthouse, Human Events, and The Post Millennial.@stillgray @CultureWarRoom
People have eaten, eat and will eat whatever they see fit ....... ..., each with its traditions..........,
each with its own traditions, if in the USA they eat burgers and fries from morning to evening, in China they eat insects, in Tibet they eat 4 grains of rice, in Italy everything has been magic for 2500 years, where food is the BEST OF THE WORLD, and nothing will change with all these treats ...................