Read the MEAT issue

Our MEAT issue is concluding, and we’re here with our usual Letter from the Editors to discuss what we learned and felt. As always, it’s hard not to find ourselves trapped in the sappy treacle that is our nostalgia — we put our hearts and souls into every issue, from our call for pitches to commissions, edits, publication, and finally, these recaps. When we commissioned MEAT, it was in the early days of December 2023, a year that already feels remarkably distant.

We were overwhelmed by the volume of high-quality pitches we received and selecting our final lineup was no easy feat. There is so much to say about meat — how bodies are rendered into it and what it means to consume it — from intersectional feminist perspectives. We hope the content we chose for MEAT has surprised, challenged, and perhaps even changed you over these last five months. 

In our MEAT issue:

British Beef vs. French Foppery, an essay* by Annie Dabb

Engorged, a poem by A.J. Parker

Meat: The Four Futures, an essay* by Tamsin Blaxter to accompany a podcast by TABLE Debates

Manning the Grill, a podcast by Amirio Freeman

Mutually Assured, a poem by Natasha Matsaert

Not A Small Act, a podcast syndicated from Farmerama

Offal Conundrums, a podcast by FFJ editor Isabela Bonnevera

So Much Equity, That All Flesh Would Experience Salvation, an interview with pastor and organizer Aline Silva 

Tai, You Ate Her Face, an essay by Sadie Barker

To Speak In Two Tongues, an essay* by Mwinji Nakamba Siame

*Premium subscribers have access to audio versions of these written pieces, read by the authors themselves. Premium subscribers are the ones who keep FFJ going. Please consider becoming one if you can. It costs less than one cup of good coffee per month. 

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Having started to dabble in fiction and video with SEA, we are thrilled that MEAT featured poetry, another new format for us. MEAT also marks the first time we commissioned a podcast to be produced externally, which was a raging success!

As with all issues, we’re so grateful to the talented writers, poets, and podcast producers who chose to make FFJ a home for their work. Learning with and from them is one of the best things about running Feminist Food Journal.

Here are some highlights of what they shared with us.

Meat and consumption

MEAT came roaring out of the gate with evocative descriptions of a scene from the 2021 TV show Yellowjackets: a festive feast on human flesh reminiscent of a Greco-Roman bacchanalia. “Tai, you ate her face” by Sadie Barker uses cannibalism as a framework to ultimately unpick the ways taboos — and rules about who we consume, why and how — can be reified and instrumentalized by oppressors to expand or consolidate their power. In this piece, Sadie skillfully weaves nuanced arguments about the politics of consumption from gendered, colonial, racial, and geopolitical perspectives. “If cannibalism appears at the grotesque fringe of Western storytelling, it is no coincidence,” she writes. “Western storytelling has long been married to expansion, and colonialism has long relied on the construction of monstrous ‘Others’.” It was the perfect essay to open the issue with, as it raises many themes — consumption, inequality, and expectations of femininity — we see echoed in other pieces. 

After Sadie’s essay came poetry. With their own suggestively cannibalistic imagery, the poems “Engorged” and “Mutually Assured”, by A.J. Parker and Natasha Matsaert respectively, also offer feminist perspectives on the politics of consumption.

A.J.’s “Engorged” is powerful because how it depicts the violence of conforming to society’s ideas of what it means to be a woman. The poem evokes the visceral discomfort of tamping down those parts of ourselves that might, as Sadie writes of the impulses that take over Yellowjackets’ characters in the wilderness “defy expectations of girlhood and later, womanhood” —  expectations that, as A.J. puts it, form “the bone you choke on when no one is looking”. 

Natasha’s “Mutually Assured” offers an erotic exploration of flesh as meat. We appreciate the way it approaches the objectification of bodies, especially of women’s bodies, from an alternate perspective. There can be power in the process of being consumed, of rendering oneself ripe for consumption (“I want to desire you and make you fear me/It is central that you view me as less human following this colonising of form”). Indeed, many of us even take pleasure in it. 

Part of the beauty of poetry is that we each take something different from it, so we’d love to hear what these pieces brought up for you in the comments below. 

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Meat and identity

The rest of the pieces in our issue focus on meat more literally. Many explore what it means to eat, or not to eat, the flesh of other Animals. 

In her short audio story, “Offal Conundrums”, FFJ editor Isabela Bonnevera grapples with the impossibility of squaring her love of offal with her politics. Through a personal history of her experiences both eating meat and going vegetarian, she unpicks why eating organ meat feels so oddly foundation to who she is, and what it would mean to tear these foundations down. “I want to do my best in this world, but I also need to feel like me to do so,” she says. “Maybe it’s feeble to need chicken livers to prop me up, but in a way, they feel as vital as my own internal organs.”

Mwinji Nakamba Siame’s essay “To Speak in Two Tongues” touches on similar themes. Mwinji finds that eating meat is damaging to her sense of self, despite the fact that her culture encourages and values its consumption. We love her articulation of her journey towards finding comfort in living in a grey zone: 

So, I’ve decided to abstain from meat most of the time — except for important social occasions related to my Namwanga culture. To you, this might not be “vegetarianism” at all, and I have come to terms with that. To me, isolation from my culture and community would be as painful as having to fully deny my moral qualms about eating meat. I think my experience as an African meat-avoider has also shown me that in reality there are no simple answers to how to build a truly humane and egalitarian society for both humans and animals.

This passage — one of the most powerful of the issue — speaks to the tensions of making highly individual consumption decisions within the wider social contexts that sustain us. Mwinji refuses for her choices to be reduced to naught over any perceived incompatibility or hypocrisy. She rejects the pervasive modern urge to sort people into polarized and clearly demarcated camps. 

Mwinji’s piece also argues against using Western frameworks, such Carol J. Adam’s classic “absent referent”, to interpret the relationships between meat-eating and gender relations in African cultures. “In a dietary discourse largely dominated by the West, I have felt lonely in trying to navigate vegetarianism intellectually as an African who still draws a lot of my solutions philosophy and perspective from Africanist thought and experience,” she writes. Her use of African proverbs throughout the piece highlights the power of situated and lived knowledge in navigating dietary change. 

Meat and faith

When we talk about meat, we often talk about culture. But an under-explored dimension of our food systems and dietary choices is faith. It feels like most people in our personal bubbles of food writers and policy wonks would consider themselves to be agnostic or atheist, making it easy to overlook the fact that 80% of the global population identifies with a religious group. We are therefore excited to feature two pieces discussing faith and theology in relation to meat.  

“So Much Equity, That All Flesh Would Experience Salvation” is a written interview with Aline Silva, a queer, Black and Indigenous immigrant of Brasil to the US who works as an organizer, pastor, preacher, and life coach. In it, Aline explains her choice not to eat non-human animals, whom she considers “her fellow worshippers of God”. Aline illustrates powerful connections between industrial farming, meat-eating, and a tangle of social issues: the corporate control of agriculture, the treatment of (often racialized) workers in the meat industry, the hypocrisy of hormone use in animals in a country that denies trans folks access to adequate healthcare, and so much more. These connections are deeply gendered: “Black and Indigenous women are the foundation of the over-explored world’s agricultural economy,” Aline writes. “But we receive only a fraction of the land, training, and economic support that white cis heterosexual men…additionally, female animals farmed as food are the ones continuously impregnated for their milk while at the same time having their offspring kidnapped.” 

The podcast episode “Not A Small Act”, which Farmerama Radio generously let us syndicate from their recent Less and Better Series, conversely offers insights into faith-based reasons for eating meat. Hosted by Katie Revell and Olivia Oldham, the episode centers on the question of whether it can ever be morally right to farm, and kill, animals. In addition to their conversations with those who justify their consumption of animals through theology and faith, the hosts of the episode bring together a variety of other voices — from farmers to researchers, meat eaters to abstainers — to explore the various cultural and personal ways people relate to animals. It was powerful to hear such a range of perspectives together at once.

Meat and masculinity

FFJ’s body of work has often addressed the entanglements of food and masculinity more implicitly, considering it the undercurrent compelling the flow of many of our stories. In this issue, however, we had the chance to tackle the meat-masculinity nexus head-on.

“British Beef vs. French Foppery” by Annie Dabb traces the central role of beef in defining British masculinity, from the early days of the empire to our modern times of jacked-up muscles and online dating. Writes Annie:

As sociocultural contexts change, persistent meat-eating and communal muscle-building are ways of positioning masculinity as a real, necessary, and moreover achievable thing, rather than a conceptual myth. Perhaps this is because there’s a lot of room to be proudly feminine, with ways of emotionally and socially reaffirming that femininity. Whereas, in recent discourse, masculinity has unfortunately developed a lot more negative connotations. 

By pointing out the colonial and capitalist paradoxes embedded in the meat-masculinity link from the very beginning, Annie offers a fresh context in which to situate the current crisis of masculinity, which can be seen manifesting in incel culture, a rise in misogynistic rhetoric, as well as the disproportionate rates of suicide and alcoholism among men in Britain.

“Manning the Grill”, a podcast produced by Amirio Freeman and Joy Imani Bullock, analyzes meat and masculinity from another perspective. “I have yet to taste a burger that’s better than one grilled by my father and I cower at the thought of attempting to replicate his mastery,” says Amirio. “As the oldest of three boys, there’s a shared sense that I’m responsible for preserving this family tradition. However, the domain of grilling has always felt overly masculine and, therefore, incompatible with a queer Black boy like me.”

The podcast centers on an intimate conversation between Amirio and his father, and delicately weaves this family portrait into a broader analysis of race, gender, resistance, and barbecuing in the US. Amirio asks, “The link between grilling and men in America has always been smoke and mirrors. But where did the illusion come from?” The answers subvert the image of a cis-white man at the grill and present new possibilities for how we think about “traditionally” masculine food domains.

Meat in the future

The historical perspectives in MEAT, like those in Annie Dabb’s essay, provide important context for understanding the present moment. They also suggest taking steps into what we hope will be a more just and feminist future related to animal agriculture and meat consumption. “Meat: The Four Futures” by Tamsin Blaxter, a researcher at TABLE, investigates what this future could look like in reality.

“Meat: The Four Futures” offers a feminist analysis of four different meat “futures” (initially presented in TABLE’s eight-part podcast series of the same name): Efficient Meat 2.0, No Meat, Less Meat, and Alternative “Meat”. In it, Tamsin deftly connects strands of feminist and postcolonial history to examine why certain futures resonate differently with different folks. We appreciate this piece because it helped us to not only identify our own hopes for meat in the future, but to better understand the perspectives and motivations of those with whom we might disagree.

Coming up next: BODY, podcasts, and interviews

And with that, we say goodbye to MEAT. You can now find us hard at work on our next issue, BODY. To put on the finishing touches, we’ll be taking a short publishing break; in the meantime, we encourage you to dive into our back catalogue. Nearly one year to the date, we were sending our Letter from the Editors for our CITY issue, which is our issue that received the most engagement! Along with CITY, we have the popular SEA — with one piece on sea moss panna cotta that resonates strongly with MEAT — as well as MILK, WAR, SEX, EARTH.

If you’re looking for more resonances with our MEAT issue, options abound: ḥačatakma c̓awaak (Everything is interconnected) is a podcast interview from EARTH with First Nations scholar Charlotte Coté that emphasizes the deep relationships between Indigenous peoples and animals in the context of the food system. In MILK, The Future of Cultivated Milk by Ingrid L. Taylor unpicks tricky questions about capital, patents, and food justice related to animal-free milk that echo those posed around animal-free meats. Our 2022 interview with activist Harley McDonald-Erckersall is also highly relevant.

Otherwise, we’ll be back in your inboxes with some non-themed content to keep you occupied until BODY is ready. We will soon be able to share an exciting podcast interview — with us as guests, rather than hosts — and we’re also hoping to publish an interview on school food programs with the authors of a great new book. We’re also eagerly looking forward to the release of our RICE zine made with Wedu Global and the 2024 U.S.-ASEAN Women’s Leadership Academy for YSEALI.

Stay tuned and see you soon!

What did you learn from our MEAT issue? Let us know in the comments!

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Gratefully,

Isabela & Zoë

I connected with Aline two years ago for a research project on faith-based approaches to fighting ‘Big Meat’, i.e., industrial animal agriculture. At that time, she was the executive director of a farmed animal welfare organization where she founded and led an intensive and selective fellowship for environmentalists, Christian animal advocates, food/seed/land sovereignty activists, and food security advocates seeking to care for the well-being of animals farmed as food.

I was deeply inspired by our conversation; long-time FFJ readers will know that I grew up in a culturally Jewish yet spiritually ambivalent household, and the links between theology and human and non-human animal liberation were not something that had previously been on my radar. It’s so easy to get stuck in our own bubbles, and speaking to Aline reminded me of the power of faith to inspire communities to walk new and different paths together.

We’re thrilled to feature an interview with Aline on plant-based eating, intersectionality, and faith. Aline shares herself as a queer, Black & Indigenous immigrant of Brasil to the US, and chooses not to eat non-human animals, whom she considers her fellow worshippers of God. – Isabela

Aline, it’s so wonderful to reconnect. Can you tell us about your background and work?

I was born in Sao Paulo, Brasil to a Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) and Roman Catholic (RC) family and grew up between the cities of Cotia and Itapevi, just on the outskirts of the city of Sao Paulo. They taught me everything about religious eating, caring for animals, and loving the natural world. While my SDA family taught me about vegetarianism for health reasons, my RC family taught me about fasting and eating salted cod on Holy Fridays.

In my experience, Christian leadership and ministry have taken many forms. But perhaps the most significant has taken place on my plate and in my work centering non-human animals. I have found that honestly thinking about my plate as Christian praxis in a world of disordered eating, food insecurity, and climate change is an integral part of doing church ministry that is relevant for this time and place. I have taken as a spiritual practice to abstain from eating animals or commodifying any fruits of their labour. As such I have fasted and I have been plant-based since 2010 when I suddenly became aware of our current industrial agriculture practices and how they prevent non-human creatures from worshiping the Creator while at the same time oppressing humans who work in the industry, polluting communities with desecrating operations, and exacerbating food insecurity and apartheid. As I will further unpack, the farming of animals has permeated many areas of my and my community's lives due to colonization and a theology of domination.

What does being plant-based mean to you?

As a first-generation immigrant from Brasil to the United States, boycotting Big Meat, Big Ag, and Big Dairy is a way for me to take loving action for my community with every meal. Most field workers are people of colour living in rural, low-income communities. Around 75% of field workers come from south of the US border and have either obtained a visa or are undocumented.1 These beloved siblings of mine are responsible for feeding people in North America and all over the world. They work in harsh conditions and are unable to demand safety because of their vulnerable, marginalized status. In the US, we can name numerous examples of this — one being the Immigration Customs Enforcement raid of a Mississippi chicken plant after migrant workers filed a sexual harassment complaint against their supervisor. 

Similarly, in my native land of Brasil, COVID-19 cases can be traced to the meatpacking industry, which is mostly staffed by Indigenous persons who are also disproportionately affected by this virus and other disparities. Additionally, we know that as the largest producer of livestock in the Americas and the second-largest producer in the world, Brasil is responsible for the deforestation of the Amazon and Pantanal, the displacement of millions of Indigenous peoples, and the endangerment of many protected wild animal species. Notably, Big Ag in Brazil, with the support of 300 out of 500 congresspersons, is attempting to override the Supreme Court’s decision to support Indigenous land rights.

Writers and thinkers like Astra and Sunaura Taylor have noted the links between gender-based oppression and the subordination of non-human animals. How do these links come to life for you?

As a Woman of Colour, especially of African and Native American descent born in Brasil, being plant-based and advocating for the welfare of animals farmed as food means caring for my sisters here and all over the world. Black and Indigenous women are the foundation of the church and the over-explored2 world’s agricultural economy. But we receive only a fraction of the land, training, and economic support that white cis heterosexual men. Women comprise 43% of agricultural labour worldwide (75% in Africa) and produce more than 80% of the foods required in food-insecure households and regions.3 Additionally, female animals farmed as food are the ones continuously impregnated for their milk while at the same time having their offspring kidnapped. Female animals are continuously measured and groped for larger breasts, thicker thighs, and efficient reproductive organs, while their male counterparts are either discarded or raised in total isolation. It is also interesting to note that the standards for good quality meat — including breast size — are set by wealthy, cis heterosexual, white men, and the industries they fund.4

Some insightful articles came out this year about the links between queerness and plant-based eating. What connections do you see between Queer lives and politics and industrial animal agriculture?

As a member of the queer community, I stand against all forms of oppression and violence. This includes abstaining from consuming products from large meat, agriculture, and dairy companies, and advocating for the well-being of farm and food workers as well as animals raised as food. By doing so, one thing I am doing is showing care for animals that are often mistreated and disposed of shortly after birth for not conforming to societal gender norms. Another thing I also do is challenge the industry's widespread use of hormones and antibiotics, which are readily available for cents on the dollar for the mass production of 74+ billion land animals annually, while necessary healthcare like hormone therapy for transgender individuals and universal healthcare for all remain inaccessible.

You’re a pastor. How do you bring your liberatory politics into your faith work?

I believe that my salvation and liberation from the evils of this world are interconnected with the salvation and liberation of others. This means that my well-being and ability to flourish, love myself and Creator are tied to others' ability to do the same. Looking at this through a power analysis, it's clear that Jesus deeply cared for those at the bottom of the social hierarchy of his time, and so were others when we examine the biblical narrative through a decolonial, anti-oppressive, pro-liberation lens. For example, Amos prophesied good news to the agrarian and the land, the lowest castes of his time. Similarly, the author of Luke, aware of the misuse of power and the ruling class's connection to the prevailing Empire, emphasized the need for repentance and the establishment of an equitable society. So much equity, that all created flesh would experience salvation (Luke 3:1-6). 

While I don't read the Bible literally, this narrative excites me because it suggests that even the creatures on the bottom of God’s overfished seas, or the baby shrimps in the pet stores locked up behind plastic tanks, or the billions of animals we slaughter for food each year while creating a massively inequitable food growing, harvesting, distribution, and access system — even they and the land itself, will experience salvation and liberation from oppression when we build an equitable society.

There is an urgent need for the liberation of both animals and the people who work with them, as well as those who live in areas where these animals are overfished, raised in horrific conditions, improperly fed, mishandled, and subjected to inhumane transportation and slaughter. The environment is also desecrated in the process. This liberation is crucial for our survival and the well-being of current and future generations. Because of its urgency, I am focused on ministering to the care of animals, people, and the entirety of God's creation. If the Gospel is truly Good News, then it must be beneficial for everybody. As such, I enjoy engaging with the community to discern how our following of Jesus can inform the way we care for animals, the environment, and each other, particularly those affected by the actions of large-scale meat, dairy, and agriculture industries, here and all over the world. Together, we can dismantle oppressive systems so that the flesh can start to experience liberation, even now as we strive for an equitable society.

Aline Silva is the Senior Director of Environmental Justice & Policy and Housing Specialist at CARE, America’s first national Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Animal Welfare organization. She graduated from the University of Kansas and Central Baptist Theological Seminary, in Kansas, where she earned her BA in religious studies and MDiv respectively. In 2010 she earned the Outstanding Woman Student in Community Service Award from the University of Kansas. In 2017, she was the keynote speaker at Graduate Students Program and Convocation at Central Philippine University, Iloilo. Most recently, she was named one of Seven Spiritual Radicals to Follow Now by Spirituality and Health Magazine, 2021. When she is not at work you can find her dancing, and sharing life at the beach with her service animal, Paçoca (pa-saw-kah), and new rescue, Panda. 

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By Tamsin Blaxter | All subscribers have access to an audio reading of this piece on our podcast.

In a world of climate crisis, disappearing species, deepening inequality and rising malnutrition, can meat only be part of the problem — or is it also a potential solution?

Last year, our team at TABLE spoke to farmers, tech investors, food scientists, nutritionists, sociologists and more to try to answer these questions. Our eight-part podcast series, Meat: the Four Futures, painted and peered into their visions in the ever more acrimonious debate over the future of meat eating. Broadly, we identified four different views of the way forward:

1. Efficient Meat 2.0. In this vision, we’re already on the right track. The world population is growing and people need and enjoy meat. We need to keep making animal agriculture bigger to solve the decades-long crisis of global malnutrition, while making it cleaner and more efficient to address its environmental impacts.

2. Less Meat. Here, we shift away from the industrial farming model of the 20th century. We farm far fewer animals but in more natural settings, to the benefit of animals, people, and the planet.

3. No Meat. This puts the suffering and killing of non-human animals at the centre of the conversation. Proponents point out that we can live healthy, happy lives on just plant-based foods, which are a far more efficient use of resources in any case. 

4. Alternative “Meat”. Proponents of this one think we’ll never persuade everyone to stop eating meat. In this future, we stop farming animals because we’ve learnt to make meat in factories and labs—with near-perfect efficiency and no suffering involved.

Each of these futures is persuasive to someone. The strength of their scientific claims might vary, but each is a story that voices particular values and aspirations. Each one has its backers. 

Analyzing them through a feminist lens can show us quite a lot about why. Why is meat so rich in symbols, so easily connected with deep-rooted beliefs about what is good and bad in the world? How can two people from the same community who share many of the same influences find they have instincts so utterly in conflict in this space? We didn’t get the chance to fully unpack the gendered dimensions of these futures on our podcast — but doing so offers insights on potential opportunities and challenges with any path taken.

Less and No Meat: A gendered and colonial divide

One deep dividing line between the different meat futures concerns views on animal suffering. The histories of feminism and animal liberation are deeply intertwined, as we see when we look at the origins of modern secular vegetarianism and its relationship with the women’s suffrage movement in the 19th century.1 

One scholar who advanced our understanding of the link between the suffering of women under patriarchy and that of non-human animals under speciesism is, of course, Carol J. Adams, whose book The Sexual Politics of Meat remains an influential text three decades after its publication. For Adams, the consumption of non-human animals and the sexual domination of women each stands as a reinforcing analogue of the other. Female bodies and animal bodies are both depersonalized, with the “referent” — the experiencing self — removed, and desire focused on disembodied body parts — breast, leg, and back. Adams notes how the metaphor of meat-eating is often used to describe male sexual desire and violence and the metaphor of meat to describe sexualized bodies. Meat, in turn, is often advertised with sexual imagery.2 

In this cultural context, it is unsurprising that the argument that we should consider human violence towards animals as ethically similar to violence towards other humans lands very differently for different people. (The TABLE blog Use, Misuse and Abuse - a vet reflects on animal exploitation further explores the links between domestic violence and violence towards animals.)

But for some thinkers, the social liberation movements of the last two centuries — feminism, racial justice, socialism, queer liberation, animal liberation — all share a fundamental argument: we should grow our definition of who counts. Whose perspective matters? Whose suffering matters? All these movements ask us to expand our circle of care. Yet the concept of care itself is gendered as feminine in our cultural discourse, making arguments based on an ethic of care potentially threatening to masculine identity. This has consequences for the discussion of animal suffering and meat eating. In one study, psychologist Carolyn Semmelor divided 230 participants into two groups to observe reactions to learning more about a lamb dish. While one group received information about meat quality, nutrition and health, the other learned about the lambs' upbringing and slaughter. Women's perceptions of the lamb dish worsened after connecting it to the once-living animals. However, men's reactions varied, with some growing defensive and even doubling down on their “meat identity” by vowing to eat more meat.

A consequence of this is that women are more likely to be engaged in animal activism and more likely to be vegetarian or vegan than men — i.e. women are more likely to be convinced by the arguments of the No Meat future. Yet the connection between masculinity and meat goes far beyond the gendering of care or consideration of animal subjectivity. It has deep historical roots and is bound up in the history of colonialism. 

We find recurring entanglements between masculinity and meat-eating again and again in the history of European literature. Men in ancient Greece got preferential shares of meat from, and special roles in, ritual slaughter throughout much of the year in Ancient Greece. In what we now know as the UK, male Anglo-Saxon slaves received more meat than female slaves. The ability to hunt and kill was seen as a symbol of the right to rule among French nobles in the court  of Charlemagne. Even in Shakespeare, we see extensive symbolic connections between meat-eating and masculinity, where the shrew is tamed partly by being starved of meat.

These links are made on the backdrop of an even more consistent cultural pattern: the idea that meat is the food of the wealthy and powerful. This association was particularly strong in 19th-century Europe. To early nutritionists, meat was the ideal source of sustenance, flesh made food in order to make flesh anew. It was inevitable and right that it be the most valuable foodstuff and so, eaten by the wealthiest. Meat was the dish of power and the upper classes. 

Accordingly, one reason you might want to emigrate to the colonies was the promise of greater space, freedom and wealth — partly in the form of regular meat-eating. Countries like the US, Argentina, and Australia achieved extremely high levels of popular meat consumption far earlier than European countries. Farming animals for meat in settler-colonial states was a key justifier of stealing land from Indigenous populations. Meat-eating also became a symbol of whiteness, an explanation for the success of European powers in dominating the world, a way of dividing other cultures into meat-eating “noble savages” (fetishized for their virility even while they were vilified for every other reason) and simply “backward tribes”.3 

They feel regressive, but most of these connotative links have survived into our culture today. We can see them expressed in anti-veganism, alt-right dietary discourse and fad diets like the carnivore diet. Online right-wing provocateurs dub their enemies “soyboys” in reference to racist-sexist ideas about non-meat consumption, Asian people and effeminacy; they use the slogan ‘Heil milk’ to invoke the claim that diet explains the domination of the world by colonial powers.4 In the largely male and very online world of fad diets, pseudoscientific claims come into contact with male supremacist conspiracy theories about exposure to estrogen through elements of modern lifestyles. The resulting discourse implores men to reclaim a ‘natural’ dominating masculinity by consuming more (or only) meat, through paleo or “carnivore” diets.5 Such examples may be extreme, but they are simply exaggerated versions of messages propagated through everyday advertising, entertainment and politics.

With all this context, it should be no surprise that different people have sharply differing intuitions on the ethics of killing and consuming animals and that gendered factors play into these viewpoints.6

Efficient Meat 2.0 and the Alternative “Meat”: the techno-futures

The role of technology is another deep split in the different meat futures, and here too feminism can illuminate important elements of the debate we might otherwise miss. The Efficient Meat 2.0 and the Alternative “Meat” futures put great faith in technology to give us more of what we want and need with less labour and less harm to the world. Much has been written on the gendered nature of food labour — women do most food preparation at home and make up most of the workforce in the food sector.7 (This is despite the fact that the role of the ‘farmer’ is still strongly coded as male.) Much has also been written on the emancipatory power of home technologies: women, it is often imagined, were liberated as much by the washing machine and the dishwasher as by activism and protest.8 So are these technological meat futures feminist futures?

Broadly, the consensus seems to be “no”, or at least “it’s complicated”. But one thing that has been absent from our discussion so far is a view of nature. Instead of seeing the split between our scenarios as one about attitudes to technology, we could instead frame it as being a split in attitudes to nature: proponents of Less Meat tend to advocate more “natural” (extensive, low-density, agroecological, regenerative) farming systems. On the other hand, supporters of Efficient Meat 2.0 are more interested in the purported “naturalness” of human meat consumption. Scholars often divide views on nature into two broad categories: the Romantic/pastoral/agrarian and the industrial/rational/Darwinian. A Romantic view of food and nature might lead one towards pro-animal positions but also “pro-natural” (however loosely defined) positions. An industrial view might instead view nature in terms of competition for resources, the conquest of amoral, harmful forces by human progress.

These views of nature, too, are tangled up with gender. Although food labour might be coded as “women’s work”, boardrooms and other positions of power in the food industry are still disproportionately occupied by men. Technological visions of the future generally require a lot of capital: they are visions in which big companies save the world and make a lot of money along the way. If feminism is a philosophy of equality and ending domination, strategies that require strengthening corporate power are at best uncomfortable. Additionally, it is interesting to note that in the much-hyped, sci-fi world of cultured meat, most of the prominent investors and CEOs are men. One exception to this is Isha Datar, a well-known face in the alt-meat room and a pioneer of cellular agriculture (she, in fact, coined the term). Datar is the executive director of New Harvest, a research institute funding a more democratic vision of these technologies, in which they are developed and held in public hands. This type of justice-minded ethos, however, remains a minority in the field.

Thinking through a way forward

We’ve spent a lot of words here on meat, what it means and where it comes from — but not as many on the needs it is eaten to satisfy. Meat — or animal source food generally — is argued by many to be the most convenient package with which to address problems of food poverty, mal- and under-nutrition, since it is both calorie-dense and rich in a wide range of micronutrients. This dietary multifunctionality makes animal-source foods an appealing solution when facing complex nutritional needs across a food-insecure population. 

It’s true that the global burden of malnutrition is immense. Menstruating people and children, two groups with higher micronutrient needs and yet typically lower consumption of animal-source foods, suffer especially. Here, then, we find a convincing feminist critique of how meat is currently distributed, both between countries and within populations. And we might see a just way forward: decreasing meat consumption in wealthy countries where emissions are high and problems of under-nutrition are rare, while increasing per-capita consumption in the Majority World.9

Squaring this neat solution with environmental pressures, concerns for animal suffering, and cultural contexts is more difficult. It’s worth reiterating that the acts of producing and eating any food tend to be deeply embedded in culture. A cow might be a store of family wealth, a symbol of prestige, or a religious icon, in addition to being a source of calories and micronutrients and a living, feeling being. Visions for the future that pivot around a handful of numbers tend to flounder when they encounter the complexity of the human world.

All four visions of the future we explored in our series had gendered dimensions, and there is far more to say than we have space to write here. At TABLE, our conviction is that to move the food system towards a more sustainable place we need to understand both the meaning ascribed to food and farming, and the science. If you’re interested in learning more — about the scenarios, the arguments made for them and the people pushing for them, the science behind it all and whether it holds up — listen to Meat: the Four Futures. 

Listen to 'Meat: The Four Futures' now

Tamsin Blaxter is a writer for TABLE, where she explores perspectives and evidence in debates about the future of food. Her background is in linguistics, and before coming to food she published on the history of Norwegian, statistical methods in dialectology, and queer poetics, among other things.

By Annie Dabb | Premium subscribers have access to an audio reading of this piece on our podcast.

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A slab of British beef on a plate for a Sunday roast dinner, or a traditional three fish and three meat course: plain, simple, and meaty. These cornerstones of English cuisine have endured for centuries.

Although they were at first glutinous indulgences for the wealthy Englishmen who could afford them, the intensification of domestic livestock production in the sixteenth century led such dishes to evolve into more class-redundant weekly traditions. The rise of “British Beef” created the self-perception that suddenly, England was not — as Napoleon would have it — a nation of shopkeepers, but of meat eaters. It was a self-perception that would indelibly configure British masculinity.

“For centuries, nation-building and national identity projects have focused on meat as a symbol of masculine virility and national strength,” writes Jack Hanlon. For the British, who conceived — and perhaps still conceive — of themselves as an “essentially ‘masculine’ culture”, concerned with forthrightness and rationality, this symbolism manifests in the “common sense” approach to how the British produce, prepare, and consume their meat.

Throughout the eighteenth century, the complex flavours and techniques of peasant dishes such as beef bourguignon or charcuterie were already earning the delectable French cuisine global prestige. But rather than admire France for the flavourful nuances of its gastronomy and its domestic dedication to the creation of culinary delights, Linda Colley has identified how, at this time, the other (and othered) European nation was constructed in British popular culture as essentially “effeminate”: too “preoccupied with high fashion, fine cuisine and etiquette” to achieve the same degree of industrial success to which Britain had long been aspiring.

In part, this construction was an obvious strategy to undermine any advantages France may have had in the nations’ ongoing geopolitical rivalry related to foreign commerce. Britain dealt in the brutal and lucrative trade of slaves and sugar, while France fared better in the fur trade. As a trading nation, Britain was rational and detached; French merchants, on the other hand, often traded, lived with, and married into Indigenous communities. This perceived despondency towards domination and exploitation was one that lent itself to associations with the softer female. And despite the undeniable presence of meat in French cuisine, British elites were determined to paint them as suffering from lack: William Hogarth, a well-known English painter and engraver, “depicted the French as famished from their vegetarian diet”.

For a while then, a heavily meat-based diet (of British beef in particular) was seen as fundamental to Britain’s imperial — and empirical — growth. It allowed the nation to define itself against what it was not: namely, France, with its lack of political liberty and abundance of vegetarian dandies. Essentially, imperial masculinity was anchored by British beef. 

***

But as Britain’s population, power, and wealth continued to grow, so did the country’s demand for meat — so much so that it surpassed the island nations’ capacity to produce it. By the nineteenth century, advancements in mechanical refrigeration meant that “dead meat” could be frozen and imported to Britain. It was first thought that this lower-quality (on account of its foreign origin) imported meat would satiate the working class, “while the middle and upper classes would continue to feast on British meat”; however, many working-class Brits rejected the imported meat based on the perception that “home-killed” produce was superior — just like Britain’s national character. 

Nonetheless, by the 1930s, Britain had come to rely on imports to satiate more than half of its meat consumption. These products did indeed become the fuel of the working classes since the “economics of empire” made imported meat incredibly cheap. This hypocritical reliance on “inferior” imported produce as fuel for the labouring bodies responsible for the nation’s industrial growth exposes the lie that “British beef” was the source of the country’s strength. British national elitism relied on oppressed and exploited working-class bodies to sustain itself as an industrial and imperial superpower — yet its workers were exempt from the spoils of Britain’s economic growth and colonial expansion. This included working-class women who were doubly exploited in Britain’s drive to grow its empire; not only were women often wage earners in their own right, but also required to perform the role of “dutiful wives”, responsible for maintaining an orderly household and for conceiving, birthing, and rearing disciplined children who would go on to become the next generations of workers. All this, without the "reward" of "proper British beef".

***

These days, for British women, beef might not be considered as much of a reward after all. It’s well-documented that the number of women opting for a vegetarian diet is on the rise. As Alexandra Sexton notes, far from a symbol of national progress and supremacy, meat has become “the stuff of climate change, food scares, cancer risks, and corporate cover-up in recent discourses.” Despite the slight shift in focus towards plant-based protein sources, the correlation between meat protein and a physically stronger body persists in modern-day Britain, including among athletes and gym-goers, in part because of the higher quality of animal protein compared to plant protein and the presence of creatine in meat products. 

There’s somewhat of a subtext that meat=muscles, and muscles=sex. The emphasis on gendered ideals of aesthetic appearance in modern (sex) culture in particular has been exacerbated by capitalist dating apps, which operate a glance-and-swipe approach to human communication — what we might call dehumanized miscommunication for the purposes of efficient intercourse. This emphasis on sexualized aesthetic appearance also provides a link between sexuality and the modern meat market in the way that people present themselves to be efficiently consumed by one another. As a society, we presume that abstention from this corporeal trade, (like going out for dinner in a group as the sole vegan) makes you not only a bit awkward but also drastically limits your choice of partner (or dish, to extend the metaphor). Particularly if the restaurant you’re in, like straight Tinder, tends to be a bit of an unappealing sausage factory. 

But if the sole purpose of men building muscle was to attract and protect women, then why have there been weightlifting competitions in the Royal Navy longer than there have been women in the armed forces? Eve Kofosky Sedgewick suggests that many men might build muscle (especially in extreme cases such as body building), to promote homosocial bonding, which allows them to build, maintain and protect the networks of power as a means of sustaining patriarchal privilege. In this way, masculine musculature can be regarded as a representation of men’s exceptionality. The muscles themselves are an achievement, which enables men to remain dominant over women through the establishment of an oppressive hierarchy — one literally defended by strong men. After all, conceptions of British masculinity — rooted in the phallic, virile, and meat-fuelled English body — rely on the idea of an antithetical, inferior female body. 

As sociocultural contexts change, persistent meat-eating and communal muscle-building may be the final grandstands, the last attempts for British masculinity to dig in its heels. They are ways of positioning masculinity as a real, necessary, and moreover achievable (if you both consume and exert enough energy) thing, rather than a conceptual myth. Perhaps this is because there’s a lot of room to be proudly feminine, with ways of emotionally and socially reaffirming that femininity. Whereas, in recent discourse, masculinity has unfortunately developed a lot more negative connotations. 

***

Similarly to meat, many women are also eschewing white, beef-fuelled versions of British masculinity. More and more women are engaging in queer, interracial, or no relationships at all. These are, in a way, radical choices: they trouble the previous expectation that women would continue to participate in a “compulsory heterosexuality masquerading as erotic choice, in which not only personal relationships but an entire social order required women to function in complementary and symbiotic relation to men”.

As a larger cultural shift, this challenges a conception of British masculinity that has always been, and largely remains, predicated upon a binary social expectation of female subservience and attraction, in exchange for unsolicited male protection. Ever since men have fought wars with other men to access other countries’ resources (including women) while preventing other men from accessing their own, British men have built their identities around the protectionism of both queen (women) and country. But many women do not feel protected by this so-called “forthrightness and rational” masculine identity; they instead feel oppressed by the limitation this unsolicited protection entails. The most twisted version of this “protection” — male violence against women — is the biggest risk to women’s survival. 

Yet access to meat and women’s bodies remain central reifiers of modern British masculinity. In 2023, a study into the meat-masculinity link highlighted how the consumption of meat and women are linked within traditional heterosexual frameworks of masculinity: one finding included that “men who believe it is acceptable to use violence and who place a high importance on sexual virility were the heaviest meat-eaters, whereas men who hold gender egalitarian views ate the least meat”. But the study further showed that even men who have transitioned to a completely plant-based diet — and rebuke the notion that a vegan diet is less masculine than a meat-based one — still seem to hold a narrow conceptualization of masculinity measured in terms of normative stereotypes, including the importance of straight men’s ability to protect, attract, and sexually perform for/with women. 

These shallow lanes for expressing British masculinity result in fears of social emasculation that correlate with male body dysmorphia, incel culture, and harmful male emotional repression in modern society. All of these patriarchal pressures which men continue to face contribute to the ongoing “crisis of masculinity”. 

One of the main culprits for the crisis of masculinity? The attempt to individually define oneself as a productive contributor in a fast-paced neoliberal society. Many men do this by misguidedly upholding the idea that masculinity rests on one’s ability to be a provider and protector. This idea is not only out of step with more modern and fluid forms of gender identity and expression, but it’s also unachievable for many men in Britain because of shifting economic and social realities. In this sense, the crisis is not a wholly new phenomenon, but rather the product of many decades of capitalist exploitation and points at which men have been made to feel like individual failures for being unable to live up to this “ideal”. However misguided, the idea that men’s purpose is to provide and protect is deeply embedded in British culture — as the history of how British national identity has been shaped around an inexorable link between rational masculinity and “progress” shows us.

In the UK, the crisis of masculinity manifests not only in the disproportionate rates of suicide and alcoholism among men but also in the rise in misogynistic rhetoric. For example, in the “manosphere” (an alt-right online men’s space), headed by the likes of Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson, misogyny is masqueraded under the guise of “being simply pro-male”. These men promote a specifically muscular, meat-fuelled mould of manhood. The “manosphere” provides men not only with a sense of purpose but with a structure and direction through the dual sexualization and scapegoating of women as a way of reinforcing a “strong masculinity” in response to the ongoing economic crisis. 

At the same time, women — many of whom have had no other option but to cultivate their gender identity based on social networks and emotional connection, due to women’s historical exclusion from the public sphere — are demonstrating what many men need to understand: Being comfortable in your gender identity has more to do with values exterior to capitalist production, rather than how many steaks you can eat or women you can sleep with to demonstrate your industrial-style efficiency and prowess.

***

It’s not the first time that British masculinity has found itself in crisis. The anxiety around the performance of authentic English masculinity was largely derived, as Leslie Jansen writes, from the British preoccupation with other nations’ perception of England, and the feared importation of “French fopperies” following a peace deal struck between France and Britain in 1802. This dissolving of divisions which had previously contributed to the construction of British masculinity on ideas of national pride, meat importation, and colonial domination, created — for at least the 14 months of peace that the treaty designated — an absence of antithetical trade power, making it more difficult for Britain to establish its national fortitude without an appropriate (inferior) comparison. What’s more, France’s equal trading power during this pause in the conflict also exposed the invalidity of supposed national “feminization” as a marker of weakness or inferiority. 

The meat-masculinity nexus survived a few hundred years on shaky ground. But now, profound cultural shifts threaten not just a proprietorial loss for (white) men, but also a renunciation of the masculine identity dependent on antithetical female subjectivity and imperial domination of feminized nations. Men’s failure to carry out (unsolicited) protection, to attract, or even to access the bodies of women who prefer a vegetarian to a protein-powered English muffin, not only troubles the essentialism of an intentionally desirable and protective masculine body. It also calls into question English men’s homosocial relationships with other men who are capable of this. We can therefore see the high stakes — or should we say, steaks — of this conceptualization of meat-fuelled British masculinity, both for national identity and socialization.

Ironically, the disturbance of unsustainable British masculinity bears similarity to how the characterization of Englishmen as voracious meat consumers was impossible to sustain without the importation of foreign produce. If Britain has always relied on the oppression of other nations and identities to produce not only the materials needed to sustain imperial modernity but also its own gender identity, and if this identity ultimately relies on the exploitation of its working classes through the conversion of animal protein into productive industrial labour, then what about British national identity is British exactly? The answer: the reliance on not just the blood of animals, but also of other nations — and of its workers, including women, whose bodies (re)produce the labouring class. 

We see, then, the lie of a British masculine identity based on an archaic sense of national pride, born out of patriotic integrity and sustained through a voracious appetite. Instead, what presents itself is a masculine gender identity constructed not on essential protectionism of British property, but one which has more to do with Britain’s ability to access and dominate international resources — from meat to women’s bodies. But the nationalistic valorization of men as both protectors of women and colonial predators of the British empire has ultimately backfired. England finds itself in a crisis, not only of individual masculinity but, by extension of the association between masculine virility and national fortitude, of its heavily gendered national cultural identity. The idea that a skinny vegetarian male, someone who in the eyes of British colonial-industrial expansion isn’t even trying to match up to British masculinity, could be content with themselves, their relationships, and their gender representation, throws up the devastating possibility that perhaps these metrics aren’t what “make the man” after all. 

This so-called crisis is therefore also a moment of opportunity. Some men are going their own way, and women are too. Just like female subservience and vulnerability have been used to construct the British masculine protectorate identity, women’s autonomy over their own relationships and dietary preferences has also become the undoing of this heteronormative, nationally reinforced masculinity. By separating exploitative meat consumption from national progress, women and progressive men are pioneering a more fluid future. 

Annie Dabb is a student and writer from Newcastle Upon-Tyne, England. She is currently procrastinating finishing her first novel and her second degree by writing about the damaging effects of patriarchy on heteronormative relationships and also quite a lot about tea as a metaphor. Her website can be found here.

THIS WEEK, LAST YEAR, WE WERE PUBLISHING…

Home or Something Like It, an essay by FFJ co-founding editor Isabela Bonnevera. It is a bittersweet reflection on the many homes she’s had over the years and a meditation on the things we leave behind when we go looking for more.

Listen Now

By Amirio Freeman

At the end of every school year growing up, there was always one event that I looked forward to more than any other summer activity: family cookouts—especially those featuring my dad as the grill master. I have yet to taste a burger that’s better than one grilled by my father and I cower at the thought of attempting to replicate his mastery. As the oldest of three boys, there’s a shared sense that I’m responsible for preserving this family tradition. However, the domain of grilling has always felt overly masculine and, therefore, incompatible with a queer Black boy like me.

Meat has long been associated with masculinity, and one of the preeminent methods of cooking meat has long been associated with men. Just look at the way Father’s Day ads are consistently inundated with images of men placing an assortment of foods on heat. In my Southern household, grilling is also steeped in a rich Black tradition. Still, the overwhelming maleness of grilling imagery and culture has made it a tradition that I’m hesitant to continue. But at the same time, there is something about the maleness of the act that is intriguing: Especially in my family, the spaces where grilling is happening are also where men are together in rare moments of intimacy. While grilling invokes in me an anxiety around a kind of gender failure, there’s also a kind of queerness to grilling, which creates portals to Black male tenderness. 

In this podcast, through a conversation with my father, I dig into the gender, racial, and queer dynamics of grilling. Drawing on references to literature investigating meat’s link to masculinity, the piece offers an intimate dialogue between family members about how the act of bringing meat to a flame reflects Black food traditions in need of stewards, impositions of gender performance, and food as a vehicle for queer possibilities.

Further Reading

One Nation Over Coals: Cold War Nationalism and the Barbecue by Kristin L. Matthews, in American Studies, 50(3/4), 5-34. (Or read this summary blog)

Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue by Adrian Miller (Or read this interview with the author)

Credits

This episode was scripted and narrated by Amirio Freeman and edited and produced by Joy Imani Bullock.

Amirio Freeman (he/they) is a writer, interviewer, and audio storyteller who explores the relationship between humans and our beyond-human kin through a Black, queer lens. Amirio’s writing has been published in Broccoli Magazine, It’s Freezing in LA!, and Are.na Annual, among other publications. In partnership with Loam, the publishing branch of the Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education, they hosted the Loam Listen podcast from 2020-2022 as well as developed the Down to Earth Deck. Amirio is from coastal Virginia and currently resides in Philadelphia, PA, where they write their newsletter, PLANTCRAFT.

Joy Imani Bullock is a multimedia creative and dedicated storyteller. She works with mediums including film photography, digital photography, and video.

THIS WEEK, LAST YEAR, WE WERE PUBLISHING…

The Shadow Mothers, an essay about the foreign domestic workers who power the city of Hong Kong. Through the story of her family’s own foreign helper, Jia, author Chelsea Lee reflects on the meaning of love and labour, given that Jia sacrificed much of her own life so Chelsea’s family could have theirs.

This week, we’re pleased to share an episode from Farmerama Radio, an award-winning podcast that showcases the voices behind regenerative farming.

Their latest series, “Less and Better”, is about one of the biggest, yet most confusing, questions of our time; what do we do about meat? 

The idea was born from hosts Katie Revell and Olivia Oldham's frustration at the binary and combative tone that characterized the meat debate. They wanted to spark a more nuanced and productive conversation around the future of meat. 

We’re sharing episode seven of the season, “Not a Small Act”, in which the hosts begin to unpick the complexities of whether it can ever be morally right to farm, and kill, animals. Through conversations with farmers, researchers, meat eaters and abstainers, the episode explores various cultural and personal ways of relating to animals, and whether it’s possible to square caring for animals with eating them.

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe and listen to all of Farmerama Radio’s excellent content, wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen to more Farmerama

THIS WEEK, LAST YEAR1: We were kicking off our CITY issue with…

• Respectable Lives and Transgressive Tastes, an incisive analysis of street food, visceral delights, caste, and gender by Sohel Sarkar.

• Bitter Oranges, a meditation on globalization, queerness, and food through the everyday politics of life as an immigrant in Barcelona by Theodora Cadbury.

  ---

  Attention FFJers in Cologne! Our friends at Taboo Dinners have recently announced their 2024 spring dinner dates. With provocative, plant-based cuisine prompting discussion on taboo topics, we have a feeling they would be a lot of fun to join. Check them out!

Editors’ note: Today’s MEAT edition is particularly exciting as it marks the first time that we have published poetry as part of FFJ! Here we bring you two poems. The bold and talented voices of A.J. Parker and Natasha Matsaert probe the nexus of gender-meat-consumption with visceral acuity, unearthing unhealed wounds and unresolved tensions of expectation, performance, control, and desire. We’d love to hear what you think. — IV & ZJ

Engorged

By A.J. Parker | Listen to an audio reading of this poem by A.J. below.

To be what they want, 
you will have to shave off the excess, 
strip down to the last semblance 
of self-preservation you had, 
eat the meat raw like a rabid dog. 

You will have to drink your own blood 
to make sure it still tastes like the other’s. 

You will have to say something old 
in a new way, in a sexy way, 
in a young and plump way. 
 
You will have to sandpaper the scars 
until they’re smooth and don’t scare anybody, 
cut the fat until you’re chewable again. 

You will have to look at yourself 
in the knife’s reflection and ask  
am I what they want to see? 

Then you’ll line your tongue 
with nail polish remover 
and smile like you practiced, 
your stomach still empty 
with acidic ego and 
the last of your propane, 
but this is what you do for dreams, 
this is what you swallow for 
shame-turned-pride, 
this is what you gorge yourself on when 
you remember the girl you used to be 
before you became the girl they made you to be, 
this is the bone you choke on 
when no one is looking.

A.J. Parker is an emerging young adult writer from Phoenix, Arizona. She’s been published in Synkroniciti and Feminist Food Journal. You can follow her at @ashleyjadeparker on Instagram/Threads and @ashleyjadeparke on Twitter/X.

Mutually Assured

By Natasha Matsaert

I tell myself that tonight I will destroy you
with the form, mass, weight, certainty, capacity of my desire.
I want to desire you and make you fear me.
It is central that you view me as less human
following this colonising of form.
You will feel the need to trap me in small dark spaces
and watch me out of the corners of your eyes.
Afterwards we will move like paper ripping and live between jagged lines.

White flesh, soap flesh, fish flesh, chalk flesh.
pink lips, pink dick, pink between your fingers, pink pooling in your collarbone. 
pink milk dripping down your thighs.
you produce redness of tongue and consume
[a soft red meat that screams for space and digs digs digs].
The hardness of your dick is in my hand and then inside me.
More soft red meat digs with eager earnest hunger.
it is form tense with intention.

I am surprised at how easily my body is shared
[I am meat created to be eaten by meat].
how willing I am to accommodate! how generous I am! 
Split me open like bread and pass me round;
roll me into shapes, flatten me with your fingers;
hold me on the back of your tongue, drown me in saliva; 
chew me slow, press me against your gullet.
I was created to be savoured!
Certainly, I am still warm at my centre.

This body is communal, holy flesh; in-between forms. 
Not mine, not yours; no one is alone.

We are in the space above our heads
pressed down by the fabric of things.

Natasha Matsaert is an Anthrozoology graduate and animal freedom campaigner. She is passionate about the power of storytelling to inspire action and create social change. 

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By Mwinji Nakamba Siame | Premium subscribers have access to an audio reading of this piece on our podcast.

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At my cousin’s wedding send-off the drums begin. They throb with something like pain and longing but also desire. I catch my mother smiling at me or rather, at us. “Us” is  a troupe of my female cousins and her closest friends who dance with aplomb in our colourful chitenge dresses — dresses made of cotton or sometimes wax fabric also known and worn as a “wrapper” or “maZambia”  with various, often colourful prints like drum patterns or geometric shapes. In Namwanga culture, very little of importance in spiritual and social life happens without a collective of women deciding upon it and moving, sometimes literally, to make it happen. 

Our Namwanga people are a Bantu ethnic group that hails from the northern part of Zambia, and in our communities, the highest seat of power is occupied by a woman. The first woman Chief (or Chieftainess) of the Namwanga tribe in Zambia came to power when the border between Tanzania and Zambia was drawn in 1890. Since then, the Namwanga people in Zambia have been led by a woman, who rules in tandem with a male chief (usually her brother by blood or someone who shares some other form of kinship) on the other side of the border.1 Bemba2 cultural thinker Mulenga Kapwepwe describes this dynamic as the continued practice of “power-sharing” between men and women. The Chieftainess presides over social and economic matters such as addressing child marriage and economic development in her area in Zambia, while occasionally meeting with her counterpart, the Mukoma (the Chief of the Namwanga people in Tanzania) to discuss important matters and strengthen diplomatic ties across borders. 

Power sharing is a feature of cultural, social, and religious life beyond the Chieftaincy too. Our belief in an equal distribution of labour and thus power can be seen reflected in our relationships to gender and food, including animals, and it’s on display at my cousin’s send-off. After we hand our sister over to her future groom, we return to our dainty chairs at linen-covered tables. We watch as our aunts prostrate to the future groom's family, turning from side to side on the ground as if trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in. When they have done this bidding of the Creator — to thank him, thank the family of the groom, and to bless the marriage with harmony and longevity through this supplication — a handful of goats are brought out and taken to my uncle. Animals are often an important part of Namwanga cultural and religious rites, including premarital and marital ceremonies. The goats are a token of appreciation from the groom's family to the bride’s for nurturing her. As the handover takes place, one of the goats flees from a handler, causing a raucous scene that fills the ceremony area with laughter.

There is a school of Western feminist thought that might read this seeming exchange of a bride for livestock as confirmation of the equation of women with meat. But this would be a gross misreading. As Chandra Talpade Mohanty argues, Western feminist scholarship and discourse distort the experiences of Global South women and their culture because their methodology fails to account for individual experiences. Their methodologies tend to miss the cultural or personal meaning behind practices, failing to see these practices through the eyes of women who participate in them. 

According to Mohanty, any discourse around patriarchy needs context, specificity, and nuance. I would add historical context. Each cultural practice or belief system — including those regarding women and meat — has a different history behind it, and the methodologies used to research and analyze these systems of oppression must be salient to this reality. Adopting this lens on many of the cultural practices of pre- and post-colonial Zambian communities like mine challenges some of the assumptions by key Western feminist scholars regarding both meat and gender.

***

In her book, The Sexual Politics of Meat, Carol J. Adams makes an argument about the “absent referent”, drawing parallels between the objectification of both animals (as meat) and women. In Adam’s opinion, both are made invisible through their consumption — the consumption of meat on the one hand, and the consumption of cultural images of sex, on the other. This objectification grants the consumer the freedom to imagine them as unfeeling, or not imagine them at all. This suggests that women do not, at least symbolically, have an egalitarian role in society.

Adam's argument might be salient in highly-capitalist and industrialized communities where meat is simply a product and not a part of ritual or social life, However, it clashes with the realities of many Global South cultures, by neglecting the ways that the natural world — and by extension, meat and animals — carry different meanings in different contexts. 

In Zambian culture, it is not uncommon to find that animals are dealt with by consumers — not just as meat, but as animals. In this sense, they are very present in the experience of meat consumption. This consumption can take place at a premarital ceremony, wedding send-off, thanks-giving for the husband (matebeto), or even at less formal events like barbecues, where farming families like mine prepare animals that we have reared and slaughtered nearby. The inclusion of animals in these events suggests that they are more than just food, and they are treated as such. In Bemba cosmology, relationships between humans and all of creation — not only relationships between human beings — are considered among the most important elements of life created by God.3 

Animals also contribute to important dimensions of gender equity, including power-sharing. Unlike in other African cultures — and even non-ceremonial social events in Zambia — where men tend to take the lead on preparing meat, Namwanga women from all class groups are often permitted to be active participants in indigenous rites that involve the preparation of meat. At events like my cousin’s send-off, one might enjoy freshly slaughtered meat that women have prepared. Even in circumstances where women may not be permitted to eat certain parts of an animal, they are allowed to prepare these parts. For example, in the Bemba knowledge system, women are not supposed to eat the back of the chicken because this part is said to represent the physical efforts of a man during intimacy with his wife. In this case, the woman is expected to use her physical body to prepare (but not eat)  the meat, while the man uses his physical body to nourish the woman by sexually satisfying her. This reflects the Namwanga belief that there is supposed to be give and take in relationships: even when women are excluded in one way, there is another way in which they are uplifted through a system of complementary roles. 

In this way, meat articulates ideas of justice. It can also be a vehicle for empowerment and community. In a market near my house, the smell of goat meat floats in the air as women vendors jab at the thick pieces of meat and fan pillows of smoke from their faces. Drunk passersby and labourers pull out matted notes from muddy-hemmed pants and set profits apace for these enterprising women. Many of them work with women farmers, who rely on them to distribute their products.

Two-thirds of Zambia’s population is engaged in farming: 78 percent are women, and 18 percent of those are directly engaged in livestock farming. One of the largest quail producers in sub-Saharan Africa is managed by a Zambian woman. By asserting themselves as producers and not simply consumers, women’s local ownership and production within the meat industry allows them to not only feed their communities at an affordable rate but to produce meat in a way that is less destructive to themselves and the environment. In this way, they resist the form of neocolonialism that comes with multinational corporations taking over our food system and often exploiting both male and female workers. 

***

Earlier I spoke of scholar Chandra Talpade Mohanty and her critique of Western methodologies as distorting and misunderstanding contexts of Global South women. This argument is important to me because as a non-meat-eating woman in a meat-eating culture, I too have had to be considerate of context and methodology. How I “do” vegetarianism, as someone who values and respects my culture and its people, is perhaps different from how someone who is outside my cultural and personal context might. 

I first became a vegetarian in Cape Town, South Africa, in my late teens. I more or less sustained this until I was in my third year of university — twenty years old and percolating in invitations to social gatherings that often involved braais. I became vegetarian again just a year after my cousin’s wedding send-off, two years into my return to Zambia. Maybe it was the immersion in matriarchal cultures that year that gave me a new appreciation for the fact that I had choices over my body: I did not have to be beholden to prolific meat-eating. Maybe I felt a renewed tenderness for the natural world, waking up once more to the sweet scent of fallen moringa and the melody of birds and goats that accompany farm life here. Whatever the case, I would even go as far as saying that having to consume meat while feeling some mystical connection to animals was damaging to my emotional well-being. It required a lot of deep denial and closing off parts of me. Simply acknowledging the “absent referent” was not enough for me. And so, I became vegetarian again — this time with a little more thought about my personal context, culture, and beliefs. 

As the Bemba proverb goes: “A visitor ate the nice guinea fowl”. In other words, the best meat is given to visitors. How could I weigh my compassion for animals with the desire to not offend those around me? This was a major consideration that I contemplated. Creating and consuming meat is packed with meaning for some of my friends and families, even those outside Zambian culture. Food is an important part of bonding; accepting food generally denotes respect for the other person and allows one to maintain good relationships. 

So, I’ve decided to abstain from meat most of the time — except for important social occasions related to my Namwanga culture. To you, this might not be “vegetarianism” at all, and I have come to terms with that. To me, isolation from my culture and community would be as painful as having to fully deny my moral qualms about eating meat. I think my experience as an African meat-avoider has also shown me that in reality there are no simple answers to how to build a truly humane and egalitarian society for both humans and animals. Indeed, removing culture from the discourse on feminism and imposing what “best practices” are to avoid the harm of animals only flattens our context. As one Bemba proverb might suggest, it is “necessary to sit close with those who eat the monitor”, meaning, put yourself in the other person's shoes before judging their culture.

Over time, cultures might evolve to be more compatible with vegetarianism — but this change needs to happen naturally. Discourses and ideas on meat production and abstinence should originate from the context in which they are being discussed, rather than be imposed. This is in the same way that Mohanty suggests discourse, practice, and ideas around feminism and gender equity should also be based on the self-archived experiences of women in the Global South rather than the imagination of the Western academy. 

In a dietary discourse largely dominated by the West, I have felt lonely in trying to navigate vegetarianism intellectually as an African who still draws a lot of my solutions philosophy and perspective from Africanist thought and experience. I’ve endeavoured to use Bemba proverbs in this section, for this reason. Proverbs often contain stories and hints about pre-colonial beliefs and societies, while giving us glaring insight into how these beliefs may or may not be relevant today. I see these proverbs as a form of context-specific knowledge that can help us deconstruct issues in less globally dominant cultures. Perhaps they can even give us the language to make new meanings of what it means to abstain and indulge in meat.

***

At the end of my cousin’s wedding send-off, I am greeted by an aunt. She asks if I remember her. She does so in Namwanga, which I do not speak very well. A smile spreads across her face as she probes my eyes like a soothsayer. I like to think an aunty always knows the truth; just a little wrinkle on your forehead, or a tapping of your foot, can give you away. She knows I do not remember her. She also likely knows that I have only just started learning Namwanga. 

We understand each other nonetheless and hug; me tipsy from a little pink cocktail and her ecstatic from the power of her seniority as an older woman at such an occasion. 

I believe there are two tongues that we all speak; one of vowels and consonants and one that comes from the heart. The latter is what might result in empathy. As feminist scholarship and popular discourse continue to touch on the variety of our experiences as women, we must contemplate how we can build solidarity and community without erasing those differences. We must acknowledge and explore the histories of colonialism that have attempted to erase African and Global South voices. One way we can do this work is by handling each other’s cultures with empathy from wherever we think and write. But the ultimate act of empathy is to know that every woman has the ability and often the desire to speak from their context. African women are not just objects; we are alive and we use our tongues to speak, to sing, to shun, to kiss, to bless, and to devour.

Mwinji Nakamba Siame is a writer and budding visual artist with an interest in sharing and understanding African women’s experiences. Her nonfiction has most recently appeared in Art Dusseldorf where she wrote about the Women’s History Museum of Zambia. Her fiction is forthcoming in Chapbook format via Dancing Girl Press (US). 

Editors’ note: Our MEAT issue is here. Like a well-cooked slab of animal flesh, it’s simultaneously tender, juicy, enjoyable (potentially in the case of meat, hopefully in the case of our magazine), confronting, and achingly complex. We have stories, podcasts, and poetry coming on cannibalism, queer Black barbecuing, Indigenous Zambian connections to animals, a historical view of the meat-masculinity nexus, the future of alternative proteins, and much, much more.

Our pilot episode, so to speak, coincidentally opens with a scene from the pilot episode of Yellowjackets, a thriller television series where members of a girls’ soccer team find themselves stranded deep in a Canadian forest. That they consume each other before the wilderness consumes them speaks to the gendered dynamics and expectations related to consumption — who we consume, why, and how — and who these paradigms might serve.

With MEAT, and as always, we’re striving to bring you a blend of the personal, the cultural, and the political. Like MILK, this issue reminds us that the brackish waters in which these forces intersect are where potent new perspectives generate, and we ask that you come into MEAT with an open mind. Or, as writer Sadie Barker notes below on engaging with Yellowjackets, “To access this world, viewers, too, must cross a threshold, enter the wilderness, and be open to possibility.” See you there.

By Sadie Barker | Premium subscribers have access to an audio reading of this piece on our podcast.

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Warning: Contains spoilers for Season 1 and 2 of Yellowjackets.

In “Edible Complex”, the seventh episode of season two of Showtime’s Yellowjackets, the girls sit down to an unexpected feast. Featuring candles, grapes, urns, togas, and wreaths, the scene — recalling, perhaps, Giovanni Bellini and Titian’s “Feast of the Gods” or a Greco-Roman bacchanalia — evokes the bounty of the harvest. It is a rare moment of abundance in a show about scarcity. The series depicts a girls' soccer team who, when their plane crashes in the Ontario wilderness, must find a way to survive the relentless winter and human-hungry wolves while they await rescue.

The scene, though, should be taken with a grain of salt. The interspersed flashes of an alternate reality, one far darker and more violent, suggest what any regular consumer of Yellowjackets already knows: the feast is riddled with subtext, and the table holds not a sumptuous meal but something grisly. The girls’ team captain, Jackie — who froze in the wilderness — is now roasted on a spit, being devoured by her suburban teenage friends.

Yellowjackets had hinted at cannibalism from its initial episode. In its 90-second opening scene, a girl runs through the snow barefoot, pursued by something. She falls into a deep trap, its base filled with sticks. She dies there. Her hunter appears to peer over the ledge, taking an unexpected form: small, anonymously covered in animal skins, and sporting Converse sneakers. It’s an unusual set of circumstances: two girls in the woods, too young to be there alone, one hunting the other. So unusual, in fact, we might assume they were once acquaintances, or perhaps, friends. It’s a relationship, we might also infer, that has ended abruptly, with one adopting a more ruthlessly individualistic approach to survival than the other. The moral schism grows as we watch the hunter drag the hunted from the hole, hang her from a tree, and then serve her fresh meat ceremonially around a fire. 

For the entire first season, the show failed to return to this opening scene. Cannibalism is a difficult subject — one might be excused for avoiding it. Yet, the pilot had instilled an expectation in viewers that wouldn’t relent, and by the end of Season 1, Reddit commentators were getting hangry. 

“I hope we get some actual cannibalism in Season 2!” BigL54 exclaims. 

Bellsbeach counters: “Any foreshadowing of cannibalism was a red herring… Just got people to tune in”. 

Bellsbeach may have been onto something: a cannibalistic horizon captivates, and Yellowjackets’ pilot seems to know this. But cannibalism in Yellowjackets is not just a red herring, nor a provocative hook. Rather, it’s an encompassing theme. Throughout the episodes, the girls are each plagued by impulses — to butcher and eat animals, to be ruthless, to self-sabotage and spiral, to be assertive and controlling, to be violent, and to, at times, be deeply selfish — impulses that defy expectations of girlhood and later, womanhood. In this way, taboo seemingly accompanies the show’s wider feminist exploration. Sometimes referred to as the “darkness” the “wilderness” or just “it”, it’s an incessant pull that compels the girls to misbehave, to refuse, to be impure and unlikeable. All the while, the spectre of cannibalism — as “one of the strongest taboos”, if not the “ultimate taboo” — looms. 

As Stephanie Rutherford notes, cannibalism is often used as “a shorthand for monstrousness”. But Yellowjacket’s pilot, in introducing its characters through this shorthand, seems to ask viewers to withhold judgment: To access this world, viewers, too, must cross a threshold, enter the wilderness, and be open to possibility. Nested within the show’s clear allegiance to the tropes of horror — the blood, grit, and grime of a ruthless quest for survival — is the show’s reframing of cannibalism as not a horrific endpoint but an ambivalent entry point. It’s a structure that asks its viewers: What if, in this world, the politics of consumption are not quietly subtextual but the explicit terms of human (and all) relationships? When we proceed with the understanding that all relations are power-laden, what then does the world look like, and how do we ethically move through it? 

***

Cannibalism and its long legacy as a taboo in Western thought, is responsible, in part, for the buzz that the pilot of Yellowjackets ignited. Taboo is a cultural phenomenon that often tells us less about the abject thing or taboo itself and more about the systems of governance that render it so. Take Kim Scott’s novel, Taboo — its exploration of crime- and sex-related taboos reveals that the ultimate taboo is, in fact, speaking truths about Australia’s ongoing colonial history. Taboo is marked by rejection from the governing norms of the every day and yet is intimately interwoven with them. Anticolonial, critical race, Indigenous, and feminist thinkers have consistently shown us the real, material, imaginative, and storied forms of governance upholding the so-called West, and the ways that heterosexist, racist, anthropocentric, and capitalist logics form its scaffolding. Which is to say: if cannibalism appears at the grotesque fringe of Western storytelling, it is no coincidence. 

Western storytelling has long been married to expansion, and colonialism has long relied on the construction of monstrous “Others.” Gananath Obeyesekere notes that Western writers’ tendency to exaggerate cannibalism during colonial expansion reflected their investment in acquiring land and resources. Colonizers who arrived in South America, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific assumed that most of the peoples they encountered engaged in the practice, and their writings institutionalized these assumptions. Take Caliban, the Native Islander in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. His name evokes the practice of same-species flesh-eating, which follows The Tempest’s ongoing representation of Caliban as immoral and irredeemable. And yet, as Obeyesekere’s framework reminds us, Caliban stood on the threshold of something desired: land. That The Tempest was written during Britain’s conquest of the so-called New World, suggests Caliban’s implied cannibalism is maybe less about Caliban and more about The Tempest’s ideological stake in the geopolitical encroachments underway. 

Consider also the colonial history of Yellowjacket’s particular setting. Based on the plane crash — which we know occurred somewhere in northern Ontario — the girls are likely stranded in Anishinaabe, Cree, or Métis territory. Cannibalism’s complex political legacy haunts this space. It stalks one of the show’s main characters in particular: the wolf. Wolves are a fearful presence in the show, at one point ravaging one of the girls; however, the animal bears its own history of subjugation. As Rutherford outlines, wolves’ tendencies to occasionally cannibalize their kin “catapult[ed] them to a whole new level of degradation and irredeemability” in the eyes of early settlers. Yet, this perception was not without political subtext: Wolves were configured as “biopolitical threats to the emergence of the nation white settlers were attempting to make” and as such, the “only response to their brazen presence on the landscape was annihilation”. Like Caliban, the wolf is strategically configured against the consumption of its own kin’s flesh; in this way, “monstrosity” is utilized within colonial storytelling to legitimize acquisition and control.

Alongside being a specific phenomenon, cannibalism then presents a framework by which to consider power relations generally. It reflects the power-laden politics of colonial, racial, and geopolitical consumption — the ways regions take over regions, communities take over communities, and bodies take over bodies. These politics of consumption illuminate the potential relevance of cannibalism to anticolonial projects, and also how feminism and cannibalism might find each other as accomplices, or at least acquaintances, too. 

It is perhaps an appreciation for the dynamics of consumption that motivated the “Edible Complex” episode’s opting for metaphor. After all, people, usually women, are objectified as “pieces of meat,” “spoiled” or “used goods”; sexual encounters are relaid as having “had (someone)”. The choice to partially sub-in Jackie’s corpse for a Greco-Roman banquet, to partially trade in the scene’s horror for sumptuous, somewhat erotic, revelry, seems to manufacture awareness of the fact that images are never full. While the show has been well-received as a feminist claim to survival horror and its generic images, part of that claim rests on the show’s interrogation of the power of the image itself, and how easily one can be consumed and objectified by it. There is something strikingly agential about the girls finding joy and arousal in a scene that should ostensibly be grim, shameful, and depraved. That the girls, in this alternate reality of bacchanal festivity, seem to like eating their friend — so much so that the morning after, one of the girls reminds her now-amnesiac friend: “Tai, you ate her face” — is a strong rebuttal to the terms of monstrosity they are subjected to. The scene, as it inverts the expectations of viewers, encourages us to remember that Jackie wasn’t killed. She died — under socially fraught circumstances, yes, but ultimately, of hypothermic conditions. And the girls are starving. 

As some critics have suggested, the show’s choice to not only explicitly, but symbolically show the girls eating Jackie, might be intended to mirror the disassociation the girls are likely feeling while eating her. But it is also possible that the feast was not about dissociation so much as a head-on encounter. Cannibalism has a strong presence in Greek mythology, and the toga-clad dinnerwear inspires a return to one of cannibalism’s earliest documented origins. Zeus, the god of sky and thunder, survived his father Cronus’ propensity to cannibalize his children thanks only to his mother’s foresight. Lamia, following her affair with Zeus, and the loss of her children, went on a campaign of child-eating — an act that compelled her to develop the lower body of a snake, transforming from goddess to monster. Yellowjackets’ Jackie-feast is an homage to this lineage. But it is also a recognition of the complex relations between feminism, the monstrous, and the godly. Was Lamia a horrible woman because she ate children? Well, yes. But Cronus ate five of his own and was hardly crucified for it. “Edible Complex” thus seems to ask: Should these girls, too, be prohibited from the kingdom? 

Yellowjackets responds to this question by presenting cannibals with whom we come to empathize. Before feasting on Jackie, Shauna, her best friend, offers the eulogy: “I don’t even know where you end, and I begin.” It seems true of their relationship, in which Shauna would shrink and Jackie would grow; they kept secrets from each other, carried guilt and thus one another’s weight; they fed on and off one another, giving and taking, at times starving the other out and at others satiating them with love and attention. It seems true of many relationships. In this moment, Shauna is a cannibal — and a deeply relatable one. More than casting her as irredeemable, Yellowjackets invites viewers to see Shauna as a lost girl in the wilderness, the subject of deeply complicated relationships and deeply compromised conditions. 

And therein, perhaps, lies Yellowjackets’ feminist claim to cannibalism: It’s not just a matter of subversively inhabiting the tropes that render bodies mere meat and matter. Maybe it’s about provoking the terms by which bodies as meat come to matter, and what that means for ideas of monstrosity. If the girls of Yellowjackets have been prohibited from the kingdom, the show reflects the dubious architecture of the kingdom itself: how easily one can be prohibited from it, and potentially constrained, objectified, and silenced, within it. The unsavoury, unsettling, and contrarian impulses of these girls have always been there — they just took hold in the wilderness.

Perhaps this is why, when the girls are rescued and granted re-entrance into their “civilized” lives, the darkness seemingly fails to let up – at least in the case of the characters the show follows most closely. Shauna, now a housewife in her forties, takes uneasy pleasure in killing and butchering rabbits, hunted fresh off her manicured lawn. Tai eats dirt and climbs trees at night, a tendency that threatens to exacerbate the public scrutiny she endures as a woman of colour running for State Senator. Another character simply spirals, induced by drugs, alcohol, and a sense of reckless abandon. Despite their efforts to embody expectations — to be a happy housewife, to weather sexist attacks with professional grace, and to clean up their act — these women, now inhabiting “normal lives,” are, it seems, still lost in the wilderness.

Perhaps, this is because of what happened “out there.” As the survivors are reminded, regularly, by colleagues, family, and journalists, they survived an unimaginable trauma. Surely, it would leave anyone scarred and haunted.

Yet it’s also, perhaps, because the better lives these girls are returned to have failed to uphold. Indeed, if anything, Yellowjackets’ scene of cannibalistic feasting gestures to a world where young women are surviving — scrappily taking charge in less-than-favourable circumstances — free of judgement. 

Perhaps, Yellowjackets suggests, the wilderness is not such a bad place to be.

Leave a comment

Sadie Barker is a student and cultural worker, situated in the field and interests of decolonial cultural studies, and the co-editor of the journal Refractions. Her website is available here.

Further reading

Rutherford, Stephanie. Villain, Vermin, Icon, Kin: Wolves and the Making of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022.

I’m walking around here in Brussels and in London and seeing everyone with little banners for “welcome Ukrainians”. But then when we have these ongoing crises in Afghanistan and we have the US and Western powers actively aggravating that. And people needing to leave and people being unsafe we don’t allow them in, we allow them to drown at sea. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t support Ukrainians, but it means that we need to be a little more reflective on whose lives are worth saving. 

Although it can be painful to watch and observe how little has changed since early 2022, we believe, as Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi says, that bearing witness is a feminist act. Like in all conflicts, food has been central to this war: its weaponization by Israel, as it deliberately starves the population of Gaza to death, and its link to atrocities, as people waiting for aid were slaughtered in what is now grimly known as the “Flour Massacre”. We hope revisiting this podcast will offer you new insights into food, war, feminist organizing, and maybe provide a faint glimmer of hope — that for all the world’s violence, we can still find generative, creative ways of working together that don’t bolster the military machine.

This podcast was written and produced by Zoë Johnson with original music by the Electric Muffin Research Kitchen.

SHOWNOTES

Transcript

Read the show transcript here.

Resources

* Learn more about Feminist Workshop and donate to their feminist and queer mutual aid in Lviv via GoFundMe;

* Check the list of feminist, LGBTQI, disability justice groups in Ukraine and donate to them directly;

* Read the Solidarity Statement and Call for Action; and

* Follow Sonaksha Iyengar, who did the beautiful graphics for Cooking Up Resistance.

Featured Audio Clips 

* Woman at war by Benedikt Erlingsson (2018): Ukrainian folk singers

* Feminist Workshop: “Sex, Freedom, Money: What more do feminists want? (“СЕКС, СВОБОДА, ГРОШІ: ЧОГО ЩЕ ХОЧУТЬ ФЕМІНІСТКИ?”)

* NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday: “Ukrainian women are volunteering to fight, continuing a tradition”

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.feministfoodjournal.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.feministfoodjournal.com/subscribe

Isabela and Alison reflect on the book’s findings to discuss why we should include food in conversations about gentrification, and vice-versa; how to understand gentrification as an outcome of cultural or structural drivers; how well-intended activities like urban agriculture and food activism can inadvertently displace vulnerable communities, and how gentrification links to gender and racial justice.

Credits

This episode features research, writing, and sound editing by Isabela Vera and original music by the Electric Muffin Research Kitchen.

Big thanks to all contributors to A Recipe for Gentrification, whose insights and analysis were instrumental in shaping this interview.

Transcript

A full transcript of the episode is available online here.

Further reading

Books

Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability. (2011). Edited by Alison Hope Alkon and Julian Agyeman.

Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America's Sorted-Out Cities (2013). Mindy Thompson Fullilove.

Journals

Anguelovski, I. (2015). Alternative food provision conflicts in cities: Contesting food privilege, injustice, and whiteness in Jamaica Plain, Boston. Geoforum, 58, 184-194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.10.014

Anguelovski, I., Brand, A. L., Ranganathan, M., & Hyra, D. (2022). Decolonizing the Green City: From Environmental Privilege to Emancipatory Green Justice. Environmental Justice, 15(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2021.0014

Bonotti, M., Barnhill, A. Food, Gentrification and Located Life Plans. Food ethics 7, 8 (2022). https://rdcu.be/dhzRR

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.feministfoodjournal.com/subscribe

You can also read and listen to the original English-language version.

En México, el trabajo y conocimiento de las tortilleras, — mujeres que hacen y venden tortillas de manera tradicional — son fundamentales para conservar la agrobiodiversidad y las prácticas alimentarias tradicionales. Al reflexionar sobre el uso de la leña para la transformación de los alimentos en el campo mexicano, encontramos el particular vínculo entre las relaciones de género, la construcción de soberanía alimentaria y el uso de recursos energéticos para la transformación del maíz en alimento. 

Por María Villalpando | Traducido por Ignacio Ahijado

María Villalpando es una estudiante de doctorado mexicana en la Universidad de California, Berkeley. María está interesada en las complejidades de los espacios rurales de México y entiende la escritura y la investigación como prácticas socialmente comprometidas.

Ignacio Ahijado es traductor, mediador intercultural y gestor de comunicación en Nested CoLab. Actualmente vive en Lisboa, enclave atlántico desde donde busca construir puentes entre personas, culturas y territorios.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.feministfoodjournal.com/subscribe

Credits

This episode features writing and sound editing by Zoë Johson; Research by Zoë Johnson & Isabela Vera; and original music by the Electric Muffin Research Kitchen.

Audio clips include Dr. Alice Ragland, from her recording of “More Radical Than It May Seem” from Feminist Food Journal, and Karen Washington, from the video “Community Wealth Building” by Black Farmer Fund.

Transcript

Full transcript of the podcast available here.

Shownotes

Learn more about Black Farmer Fund on their website, where you can also watch the powerful “Black Farmers Thriving” video series. For more information on investing, you can email invest@blackfarmerfund.com.

Check out amanda david’s initiative, Rootwork Herbals and read about the Jane Minor BIPOC Community Medicine Garden.

Further Readings

“The Great Land Robbery” (Vann R. Newkirk II, The Atlantic)

“Help Black Farmers, Who Know Hyperlocal Doesn’t Mean Fancy” (Tressie McMillan Cottom, The New York Times)

“Race, Land, and the Law: Black Farmers and the Limits of a Politics of Recognition” (Brian Williams and Tyler McCreary, Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice)

“The USDA Is Set To Give Black Farmers Debt Relief. They've Heard That One Before” (Emma Hurt, NPR)

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.feministfoodjournal.com/subscribe

They discuss the role of gender in Indigenous food sovereignty in both the past and present, the risks of “culinary imperialism” in blanket calls to veganize our diets, how social media enables Indigenous peoples to tell their own stories about food, and the ways that going back to the land with a “colonized” mindset can lead to missed opportunities for true connection.

Transcript

Full transcript of the podcast available here.

Shownotes and further resources

Coté, C (2022). A Drum in One Hand, a Sockeye in the Other: Stories of Indigenous Food Sovereignty from the Northwest Coast. University of Washington Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv289dw4p

Coté, C. (2022, Oct 17). ḥačatakma c̓awaak (everything is interconnected). Indigenous food sovereignty, health, resilience and sustainability. Talk given at President’s Dream Colloquium on Indigenous Peoples and Local Community Perspectives on Sustainability and Resilience. Simon Fraser University, Harbour Centre, Vancouver.

Coté, C. (2022, Oct 6). “c̓uumaʕas. The River that Runs through Us”. Talk given at the Oregon Humanities Center, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon.

Coté, C. (2022, Sep 28). UO Today interview: Charlotte Coté (Tseshaht First Nation), Amer. Indian Studies, University of Washington. University of Oregon.

Coté, C. (2022, March 16). Exploring Indigenous Food Sovereignty with Dr. Charlotte Coté. MOHAI History Café. Download program transcript: https://adobe.ly/3PGcnPs

Coté, C. (2022, March 3). Charlotte Coté with Dana Arviso: Stories of Indigenous Food Sovereignty from the NW Town Hall Seattle.

Coté, C. (2019). hishuk’ish tsawalk—Everything is One: Revitalizing Place-Based Indigenous Food Systems through the Enactment of Food Sovereignty. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 9(A), 37–48. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2019.09A.003

Nast, C. (2020, November 8). This Inukj Throat Singer is Bringing Cultural Pride to TikTok. Vogue. https://www.vogue.com/article/shina-novalinga-indigenous-inuk-throat-singer-tiktok

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.feministfoodjournal.com/subscribe

Zoë's research went on to be published in the Journal of Gender and Research. You can read it here.

This podcast features writing, research, and sound editing by Isabela Vera and Zoë Johnson and original music from the Electric Muffin Research Kitchen. You can also listen to it on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

Further reading

* Bhopal, K. (2010). 'Gender, Identity and Experience: Researching Marginalised Groups.' Women's Studies International Forum, (33, 3: 188-195).

* Campbell, R., & Wasco, S. M. (2000). 'Feminist Approaches to Social Science: Epistemological and Methodological Tenets.' American Journal of Community Psychology, (28, 6: 773-791).

* Cornwall, A., & Anyidoho, N. A. (2010). 'Introduction: Women's Empowerment: Contentions and Contestations.' Development, (53, 2: 144-149).

* Cornwall, A., Harrison, E., & Whitehead, A. (2008). 'Gender Myths and Feminist Fables: The Struggle for Interpretive Power in Gender and Development.' In A. Cornwall, E. Harrison, & A. Whitehead,(Eds: pp. 1-19 ). Gender Myths and Feminist Fables. Malden. MA: Blackwell Publishing.

* Devault, M. L. (1990). 'Talking and Listening from Women's Standpoint: Feminist Strategies for Interviewing and Analysis.' Social Problems, (37, 1: 96-116).

* Gregson, N., & Rose, G. (2000). 'Taking Butler Elsewhere: Performativities, Spatialities and Subjectivities.' Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (18, 4: 433-452).

* Hoppe, K. (1993). 'Whose Life Is It, Anyway?: Issues of Representation in Life Narrative Texts of African Women.' The International Journal of African Historical Studies, (26, 3: 623-636).

* McRobbie, A. (2009). The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: SAGE.

* Peacock, J. L., & Holland, D. C. (1993). 'The Narrated Self: Life Stories in Process.' Ethos, (21, 4: 367-383).

* Shain, F. (2012). '"The Girl Effect": Exploring Narratives of Gendered Impacts and Opportunities in Neoliberal Development.' Sociological Research Online, (18, 2: 181-191).

* van Stapele, N. (2014 March). 'Intersubjectivity, Self-Reflexivity and Agency: Narrating About "Self" and "Other" in Feminist Research.' Women's Studies International Forum, (43: 13-21).

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.feministfoodjournal.com/subscribe

Further reading

Atwood, S. F. (2019). The Determination of Gender Roles and Power Dynamics Within Female Same Sex Couples. University of Northern Iowa. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1404&context=hpt

Gill, R., and Orgad, S. (2018). The Shifting Terrain of Sex and Power: From ‘sexualization of culture’ to #MeToo. Sexualities, Vol. 2(8), 1313-1324. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1363460718794647?journalCode=sexa

Milton, J. (2022, February 8). ‘The long, deep, surprisingly versatile history of bottoms: From Ancient Greece to modern misogyny’. Pink News. https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2022/02/08/bottoming-history-gay-bottoms/

Tarrant S. (2013). Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Men-Speak-Out-Views-on-Gender-Sex-and-Power/Tarrant/p/book/9780415521086

Trotman, A.D. (2017). Relationship and Power Dynamics in Women’s Same Sex Abusive Couples. University of Rhode Island. https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1619&context=oa_diss

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Listen to an audio version of this piece above or on our podcast (and in your usual podcasting app).

By Jay Gee | Narrated for audio by Pericles Santis

I’m new to bottoming. As a self-identified slut, it surprises me that I’m only now learning how to bottom, somewhat late in life – in my oh-so-dreaded thirties. In gay years on the Chicago scene, I’m now An Elder. It’s like I’m learning a new language, one peppered with references to douching, poppers, fibre supplements, toys, and specialty diets. But beyond following prescriptions to avoid dairy and drink enough water, I’m also seeing myself in a totally new light. 

In my twenties, I spent my most promiscuous years identifying as a vers top: I would bottom on occasion but never really enjoyed it. I indulged in regular hookups with a mix of guys where we would explore what turned each other on, but I tended to go for guys who preferred bottoming. That was just what got me off. In those years, I never really considered my gender identity: I thought I was cisgender at the time. I was a homonormative cis-gay vers-top. I enjoyed frequent hookups with guys in the Chicago area. I exclusively topped with my most recent ex and the other guys we would mess around with. I prided myself on being the one others thought to be in full control.

Everything changed when I met my current partner. We encountered the usual way — via the apps — and I was overwhelmed by his charm. His confident smile instantly won me over. He identified squarely as a top and knew what he liked. He had never been penetrated and certainly wouldn’t be any time soon. When we started talking, we laughed about both being tops, joking that we would endure taking turns bottoming or saying we would need to invite in a third to make it work. 

But as our relationship deepened, something shifted within me.  I felt comfortable relinquishing power to him and allowing him to take the lead. To take control. My sexual preferences, my world, flipped upside down.

***

To bottom is to let go entirely — physically and mentally. For me, though, letting go has never before been an option. Until now, the contours of my selfhood were always defined by control and restraint. Even my own emotions were no match for the dominion I had over myself. I ignored or reigned in inconvenient feelings of remorse, jealousy, and grief. I steered conversations so that the spotlight would shine over my head. I manipulated, and I hurt those closest to me. To let go, then, would be to lose myself.  

I remember it well. On the pallet-supported bed in his spacious but bare-shelved studio, face dug into a pillow, knees flush to the chest, hands clasped, arms extended along my back. A position reminiscent of the amateur porn littering the seedier corners of my Twitter feed – motel cumdumps, darkroom gangbangs, winsome college lovers. Except I didn’t have the bird’s eye view. I was the one who now lay writhing, self-consciously adjudicating whether the wetness I felt was lube or s**t, feigning moans on a cacophonous scale climbing from minor pain to — dare I say — major pleasure?  Here, balled up in a reverse fetal position, fumbling in the dark trying to align his cock with my a*****e like a mid-air jet refuelling operation, in total awe of his girth and my a*****e’s elasticity, I learned to unfetter from my reign of self-imposed control. I’d always imagined it happening differently.

***

With my current partner, I'm now only bottoming. And I’m loving it. I’m revelling in the feeling of releasing, of letting someone else take the wheel. It’s the feeling of every cell in my body suddenly vibrating at the same frequency, a sensation so powerful that my mind, which never shuts the f**k up, finally falls silent. All I feel are the corporeal markings of pleasure. Have you ever been dicked down so good that you question your very existence?  This is essentially what happened. I’ve experienced my first anal orgasms and even hands-free orgasms. It’s been so good that I haven’t wanted sex with anyone else, and I haven’t wanted to top either. 

But giving myself up has changed how I show affection outside of the bedroom. Despite the veneer of effortless, almost irreproachable, fortune and charm I use to cloak it in everyday interactions, I have a softer side. In particular, making and sharing food is my love language. I'm someone who would give you a take-home bag of cookies after a threesome. Not only am I the kind of person who would do this, but I have done this. I remember discretely placing Ziplocs of freshly-baked chocolate macadamia nut cookies in the backpacks of two Russian gymnasts, just beside the bottle of poppers. I always ensured that my special guests left with a full belly, one way and the other. That’s what I consider being a good host.

When I started dating my current partner, I spent lots of time in the kitchen — as I always had — making us food. After he would toss my salad, I’d toss a literal salad for him in return. But after about two months of getting railed exclusively, I started feeling uneasy. Why did I feel so compelled to cook for him after sex? He would blissfully gorge on whatever I made him as I grappled with not feeling the same joy providing nourishment that I used to. With every post-coitus meal, I was filled, inch by inch, with equal parts spunk and irritation. 

Is he just asking me to do this because I’m taking the more “feminine” role in our relationship? I’m sure it’s fine. He would do this with anyone, right? I should be fine with it. 

I unpack discomforting and vexing situations to death and ruminate helplessly for inordinate lengths of time, as is my wont. Outwardly, I suppressed revealing these feelings, thinking that maybe I was just being dramatic. But with my mind on spin cycle, I lurched and bucked through endless mental reruns looking for a sign, a clue, an inkling as to the crux of my resentment. Why had I become so sensitive to associations with care work and the feminine after bottoming? 

Eventually, the seemingly endless rounds of mental acrobatics unveiled what lay buried for the better part of my life: shame. Steadily and potently distilled from my fear of being perceived as feminine, weak, and not in control. My partner identifies as a cisgender man, and even though I’m somewhat masculine-presenting,  I now identify as non-binary. I grew up with traditional gender modelling from my cishet parents and didn’t want to repeat the same “the masc is the head of the household” b******t that I had grown up around. But somehow, I was clinging to remnants of a brittle masculine artifice. 

Theologians, social economists, sociologists, political scientists, and psychologists alike have written extensively on the intersections between sex, gender, and power, and how traditional gender roles are perpetuated in queer relationships. Queer people live in the same society as our cishet counterparts, and we are subject to the same patriarchal and misogynistic maladies, including those related to positioning within sexual acts. One historian notes that the legacy of bottoming as taboo dates back 2,500 years and is steeped in thinking that equates sexual passivity to feminization and, therefore, inferiority. We inherit these taboos from the Greeks and Romans, who chose to imbue sex acts based on position with no regard to one’s selfhood. Topping was an act of masculine domination, whereas bottoming meant being feminized into submission. Only a top could desire someone else, their desire pushing them to take an active role. Meanwhile, a bottom was to be desired, passive, and dominated. Powerless. To ancient civilizations, it wasn’t “gay”. It was just sex. But it was — and still is — about power.  

In ‘The Long, Deep, Surprisingly Versatile History of Bottoms: From Ancient Greece to Modern Misogyny,’ João Florêncio gathers that “all homophobia is inseparable from the patriarchy because homophobia is a form of misogyny. You hate gay men because they are closer to women, as if they betray masculinity by being penetrated.” And so-called bottom-shaming is just an extension of this internalized homophobia, a hatred of the perceived femininity within. This implicit misogyny runs rampant in queer circles as it does in heteronormative relationships. Queer relationships operate in a binary frame because much of our relationship playbook came from the dominant heteronormative culture, which finds comfort in binaries and punishes those who fall outside them. In many ways, the fight for queer recognition and equality has engendered assimilation into these regressive structures to achieve progress.

When left unaddressed, internalized and externalized misogyny can be a source of contention, rotting the foundations of queer and cishet relationships alike. These binaries of male and female; masculinities and femininities; dominant and submissive; tops and bottoms: we can choose to reinforce or reject them as we see fit. In previous relationships where I showed up as a top, I’ve been cautious not to perpetuate these harmful norms, and tried my best to subvert them. The dynamics of this new relationship helped to accelerate the stripping away of decades of learned shame, bringing me closer to a more authentic version of myself. Yet insecurities are durable. 

***

I make great sandwiches, which unsurprisingly became my partner’s recurring cravings to recharge after a romp. But after a few casual requests to make him one, I could no longer ignore the gnawing feeling in my stomach. I didn’t want him to feel that just because I would bottom for him, I would cater to his every whim and put myself in a position of servitude. What role model would I be for other people more femme than myself? Should they resign themselves to traditional roles and succumb to society’s expectations of mascs as providers and femmes as caretakers? 

So, I brought my feelings up with him. It wasn’t easy for me, the once-unflappable vers top coming into vulnerable layers of himself. Still, I told him about the new and uncomfortable thoughts that I was having, the midnight ruminations, and how I associated these discomforts with our sex life. I told him that if he expected me to cook for him and clean up after him, I would come to resent him. 

It was a challenging conversation, but he listened. And he cared. He reassured me that it wasn’t his intention to make me feel compelled to care for him just because he stuffed me with cum. He said that he didn’t want to put me in an uncomfortable position or for me to feel compelled to do anything that I didn’t want to do. After all, he assured me, consent is essential in every aspect of a relationship, and certainly within ours.  

In the months since then, I’ve noticed a concerted change in his actions and my thinking. He asks whether he can make me a sandwich or if I can make him a coffee. I know that when he asks me for something to eat, it’s not with any gendered expectation rooted in misogyny or an imbalance of power because I’m free to do the same. We’re free to ask for help, support, and food when we need it. Food once acted as a wedge in our romantic relationship, but now it’s a way for us to bond. We cook together. We wash each other's dishes after enjoying a juicy steak and cobb salad. Just because our sex life has a power balance where he is in physical control doesn't mean that this dynamic extends to other parts of our lives. We're partners. 

I’m changed by my new awareness of the nearly-fossilized shame that welled up in me upon penetration, conscious of how bottoming did away with the projections I had thus far believed to be true about myself. It confronted me with the naked truth of my own emotions and the social constructs that shape them. I’m disquieted by the shame I felt about being feminized — a reminder that this nascent balance we’ve found in our relationship is a choice, not a given. On a larger scale, I feel like living this equity is essential to advancing the politics of the queer community, sidestepping the hetero norms that have been laid out for us and forging our own ways of being and relating. (Power bottoming, anyone?)

In the meantime, I’m still learning more about bottoming. My partner and I have had our fair share of messy encounters (we may have even had some painting). But he has been as patient with my process of getting to know my body in this new way as he was with my inner turmoil.  

Maybe I'll get him to bottom next.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.feministfoodjournal.com/subscribe

In this episode of Feminist Food Stories, founding editor Isabela sits down with Paula Schwarz, the Lois B. Watson Professor Emerita of French & Francophone Studies at Middlebury College and author of Today Sardines Are Not For Sale: A Street Protest in Occupied Paris, to discuss the intersections of wartime food politics and gender, and why and how resistance is remembered in different ways.

This podcast features writing and research by Isabela Vera; sound editing by Isabela Vera & Zoë Johnson, and original music by the Electric Muffin Research Kitchen. You can also listen to it on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

SHOWNOTES

Transcript

Read the show transcript here.

Further reading

Boyle, E. (n.d.). Wartime Memories: Louise Mardon. <https://www.eleanorboyle.com/wartime-memories/louise-mardon>

Brown, T. (2022). The Breadwinners: The Women Whose Hunger Drove the French Revolution. Feminist Food Journal.

Hunt, K. (2010). The Politics of Food and Women's Neighborhood Activism in First World War Britain. International Labor and Working-Class History, 77(1), 8-26. doi:10.1017/S0147547909990226

Schwartz, P. (1999). The politics of food and gender in occupied Paris. Modern & Contemporary France, 7:1, 35-45, DOI: 10.1080/09639489908456468.

Schwartz, P. (2020). Today Sardines Are Not For Sale: A Street Protest in Occupied Paris. Oxford University Press. (If you’re interested in reading it, you can order it using the discount code here!)

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.feministfoodjournal.com/subscribe

This podcast features writing, research, and sound editing by Zoë Johnson and original music from the Electric Muffin Research Kitchen. You can also listen to it on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

SHOWNOTES

Transcript

Read the show transcript here.

Further reading

* Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C. (Ashanté M. Reese)

* Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness (Da’Shaun L. Harrison)

* “Can't Stomach It: How Michael Pollan et al. Made Me Want to Eat Cheetos” (Julie Guthman)

* “The Fallacy of Eating The Way Your Great-Grandmother Ate” (Virginia Sole-Smith)

* Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia (Sabrina Strings)

* Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement (Monica White)

* “It’s Not a Food Desert, It’s Food Apartheid” (Karen Washington)

* Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century (Helen Zoe Veit)

* “Public Health’s Power-Neutral, Fatphobic Obsession with ‘Food Deserts’”(Marquisele Mercedes)

More activists and scholars to read, learn about, and follow:

* Cat Pausé

* Erica Zurawski

* Lindley Ashline

* Psyche Williams-Forson

* Ragen Chastain

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.feministfoodjournal.com/subscribe