Carol J. Adams explores the links between gender and veganism this Veganuary

Veganism and gender

Words by Carol J. Adams

Since 2014, the veganuary campaign has offered a gentle way for people to adopt veganism during the first month of the new year. Following on from that, the AfroVegan Society developed veguary for the 28 days of February; it highlights the contributions and diversity of Black culture in the context of veganism. For it is true that often the media, and vegans themselves, focus on white vegans, when in fact veganism has grown more quickly in communities of color. And often, the vegans who are embraced as symbols are male athletes—summoned, in a sense, to prove that one can be strong, masculine, and vegan.

Veganism does not exist separate from the culture in which it is practiced. In cultures still invested in race and gender hierarchies, (despite lip service that might suggest otherwise) veganism troubles these hierarchies.

In The Sexual Politics of Meat, I show how in the nineteenth century, meat eating became associated with colonial expansion by Western countries; and how these attitudes masculinized the white colonizers, and abjected and feminized the colonized people of color. Since cereals and fruits were lower than meat on the scale of evolution in the eyes of the colonizers, this explained the success of the British: meat eaters defeated rice eaters. Cereals and fruit were fine for those who appeared to be lower on the scale of evolution (the other, colonized races, and women). Meanwhile, as European colonizers came to the land we know of as North America, so too did cows, and with them, assumptions about dairy consumption.

A cultural fixation on upholding white manhood includes urging the consumption of meat. Anti-immigrant fervor at the turn into the twentieth century in the United States could be found in pamphlets like the 1902 one from the American Federation of Labor, “Meat versus Rice: American Manhood Against Asiatic Coolieism.” Here was an early example of “manning up.” Throughout the twentieth century, protein from dead animal muscle was identified as the best protein, contributing to strength and virility, even though, historically, most cultures did not rely on meat protein, but on grains, beans, and vegetables: think of falafels, or rice and tofu, or dal, or rice and beans. The cultural faith in animal protein is at odds with history and with nutrition, but what it has going for it is the vigorously held belief that eating meat contributes to one’s masculinity.

As masculinity, a construct of a false system of gender binaries, endures continual destabilization, it will feel under threat. The presence of flesh foods at a meal functions to forestall further instability. That’s why one would find corned beef on rye and meatloaf at Bergdorf Goodman’s men’s store in 1993 but not in their women’s store.

A masculinity made anxious and unsettled seeks to re-establish Itself through meat consumption. If men are expected to eat meat, what about men who do not? Men who reject meat eating have been seen as repudiating one of their masculine privileges and are deemed to be “wimpish” or (reflecting the homophobia still rampant in culture) seen as gay. Once again, the point I made in 1990, how in a patriarchal culture, one’s virility was brought into doubt if one did not eat meat, was enacted in popular culture in subsequent years. In 1995, a Jerry Seinfeld episode (“The Wink”) aired, in which Jerry tries to hide from his date the fact that he is not eating flesh foods because he does not want her to view him as a “wimp.”

Meat eating functions as a marker that legitimates the gender binary system. And the gender binary system uses the sexual politics of meat to define who men should be, meat eaters. Men are often advised that one can “restore” something—manhood, masculinity, well-being—that has been lost. Where? In places, like steakhouses. How? By eating meat. Why not just come out and say it, like the 2006 Hummer commercial, “Restore your manhood”? In the video, a white man buying groceries places super large tofu containers on the conveyor belt but exhibits insecurity upon seeing the cart of the white man behind him filled with red meat. What must the tofu-buying white man do to offset the masculine anxiety created by that purchased tofu? Buy a Hummer. “Restore your manhood,” the tagline read. Met with criticism, the line was changed to “Restore your balance.”

And so it continued:

• “Waving the blood-red banner high,” the New York Times subtitled its “Real Men Eat Meat” article in 2008, about restoring manhood.
• In 2009, the German ad agency Scholz & Friends won a prize for an ad they designed for a restaurant chain. The image showed a piece of steak being branded with the words “Tofu ist schwules fleisch” (“tofu is gay meat”).
• “Man Up for 2 times the bacon,” Carl’s Jr.’s 2014 ad exhorted, featuring the shape-shifting Marvel comics character Mystique. Unable, in female form, to consume the “Western X-tra Bacon Thickburger,” Mystique changes into a man in order to eat it.
• The Wall Street Journal describes “Man Seders” in 2015 that “Flow with Steak and Scotch”.
• In 2016: the “manly” steakhouse Flank in Boston was described as offering “testosterone wrapped in bacon.”
• Reminiscent of the homophobic attempts to find “cures” for gayness, the 2019 poster campaign by Sweet Baby Ray’s, a barbecue sauce includes: “At Long Last: The cure for veganism.” (As though barbecue sauce can’t be used on vegan foods.)
• In 2023, Manver Singh in The New Yorker described a new fad meat diet, calling it “The New Carnivory.” What’s the common theme? Anxious manhood and a belief that men are endangered.

The message is that to avoid being abjected and feminized, to protect a shriveling birthright, eat flesh and drink cow’s milk daily. Gender bending, gender nonconformity, gender queer living, gender plurality are touching all areas of life, but not that dead cow’s muscle or mammalian milk.

The continual rearticulation of meat eating as an aspect of heterosexual, white masculinity actually suggests how unsettled an identity it is. Doesn’t the anxiety to assert the connection in the twenty-first century indicate it has already frayed? Aren’t the gender binary and the foods assigned within the binary erupting into multiplicity? Yet, in the binary world of meat versus tofu and what “real” men need, veganism is as much a threat as gender fluidity, so raise the blood-red flag high.





Other examples focusing on gender and meat eating and veganism can be found in Carol J. Adams’ books, especially The Sexual Politics of Meat, now in a 35th anniversary edition, and the updated The Pornography of Meat, both available on Bloomsbury Food Library. Additionally, hear from Carol about the cultural relevance of The Sexual Politics of Meat 35 years on from its initial publication over on the Bloomsbury Academic Blog here.