The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory

20th Anniversary Edition includes a new preface by the author, a foreword by Nellie McKay, and eight pages of recent examples that illustrate Adams' argument.

In just over a year, the book with the strange title--and even strager ideas, some would say--has become the classic articulation of the hidden connections between meat eating and patriarchy, between vegetarianism and feminism. Now in paperback and widely available to readers everywhere, The Sexual Politics of Meat will have an even larger impact on the American public.

20th Anniversary Edition includes a new preface by the author, a foreword by Nellie McKay, and eight pages of recent examples that illustrate Adams' argument. 

Publishers Weekly

Many cultures equate meat-eating with virility, and in some societies women offer men the ``best'' (i.e., bloodiest) food at the expense of their own nutritional needs. Building upon these observations, feminist activist Adams detects intimate links between the slaughter of animals and violence directed against women. She ties the prevalence of a carnivorous diet to patriarchal attitudes, such as the idea that the end justifies the means, and the objectification of others. In Frankenstein , Mary Shelley made her Creature a vegetarian, a point Adams relates to the Romantics' radical politics and to visionary novels by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Dorothy Bryant and others. Adams, who teaches at Perkins School of Theology, Dallas, sketches the alliance of vegetarianism and feminism in antivivisection activism, the suffrage movement and 20th-century pacifism. Her original, provocative book makes a major contribution to the debate on animal rights. (Jan.)

Carol J. Adams is an activist and author of The Pornography of Meat, Living Among Meat Eaters, and many other books challenging a sexist, meat-eating world. She is a sought-after speaker throughout North America and Europe, and has been invited to more than 100 campuses to show "The Sexual Politics of Meat Slide Show," which is always being updated to include contemporary cultural representations.