The Pornography of Meat by Carol J. Adams

The Pornography of Meat Reviews

• 
  Sean Barrs

  It's extremely distasteful how strongly meat marketing is associated with the (human) female body, and it's also quite scary that not many people are talking about it.
  
  And it's also quite scary how the notion of meat eating is associated with manliness and that not doing so is considered weak and feminine. That's a whole world of messed up because notions of gender should not be applied to food nor should what we eat determine how strongly we represent a gender. But, unfortunately, they do.
  
  Here Adam's draws on her earlier work and considers the arguments in relation to imagery and the history of advertising.
• 
  Vi

  The pornography of meat is a very interesting book. It discusses the intersections between meat eating, selling, production, and the selling, shaping, and framing of women. In essence, it's about women and turning women into something less than human, which is continuously done in advertising and pop culture. While I might not agree with all the conclusions Adams reaches, I think the topic is fascinating, she presents the material in an interesting way, and the compiling that she did for this book lead to a disturbing, thought-provoking montage.
• 
  Peacegal

  For those of us who found Adams’s previous work, The Sexual Politics of Meat, a bit to dense and crouched in academia-speak, Pornography is a much more distilled and reader-friendly version of the groundbreaking ideas Adams advances.
  
  This is a fine book (and not just because one of my submissions made it into its pages!) Adams gives voice and form to an issue many animal advocates have encountered--the linked oppression of animals and women in male culture. Even if this idea seems hard to believe, after viewing the reproduced advertisements and photographs sprinkled liberally throughout the pages, you’ll more than likely close the book in agreement with Adams’s thesis.
  
  A novelty company offers for sale two plastic breasts mounted on a trophy plate like a deer’s head: “Own your own trophy of the world’s greatest hunt,” the copy reads. Agricultural magazines and websites depict cartoon chickens and pigs dancing as if in a peep show. A hunter describes to a newspaper his obsession with killing one particular deer, whom he has pursued diligently and even named, his words sounding for all the world like those of an abusive stalker. Women’s magazines advise their readers that to catch a man and keep him, they need to serve him steak and lots of it. And then there are the endless advertisements for meat companies and fast-food chains that make wink-wink gags about legs, breasts, thighs, and so on and so forth.
  
  One of the most disturbing things I have ever seen, discussed both in the book and Adams’s traveling lecture and slideshow, is a pork industry comedy publication called “Playboar.” It’s all of the typical stag magazine jokes about sex and women, except they all star pigs. A highlighted feature of this illustrious publication is a parody ad for the “S&M Hog Equipment Warehouse.” Under the tagline “It Hurts so Good!” a variety of standard pig industry devices are presented with har-har descriptions: gestation crates, whips and canes, electric prods, teeth cutters, snout nooses, piglet “weaner decks,” and an ear tattooer. Remember folks, these are the kind of people with whom we’ve entrusted the welfare of nearly 10 billion farmed animals.
  
  The Pornography of Meat is an important contribution to the literature on animal rights and intersecting oppression.
  
• 
  Julia

  This is now one of my favorite books!! Not just because I love reading it in public. (Actually, I don't recommend reading it on a middle-seat on a plane, which I did, because inevitably there are so many graphic porn and butchery images that it just becomes uncomfortable). I love the writing of it, and how it jumps from example to example with line-breaks, like a fucked up poem about how women and animals are treated in the same dehumanized way. I now can't stop thinking about my relationship to meat-eating. It got slightly repetitive by the end, but there were so many different angles and facets to this, I didn't mind.
• 
  Dafydd

  3.5 stars. Adams has a lot of profound and important insights. This book made a lot of important connections between the imagery of women, people of color, animals--and connects them all to meat. She points out that the way all these groups are portrayed reduces them to "mass terms" in which they are represented as interchangeable objects for consumption, stripped of their existence as individuals, as subjects, something which is reserved for white, cisgendered, heterosexual men.
  
  However, I can't rate this book as highly as I'd like, because of the way it is written. It feels unfocused and disorganized. Much of the book reads like a series of commentaries with no clear relation to each other. She simply lists various ads, representations, and occurrences; she tries to pin them to philosophical and critical frameworks, but inconsistently. For instance, early on she makes much of distinctions between "A" and "not-A" and how they relate to women, people of color, and meat, but then the importance of this schema fades and is barely mentioned in the second half of the book. It ends up reading like much of PETA-type literature, "can you believe this terrible stuff happens?" instead of tying it together with a sustained big-picture critique.
  
  Still, as I said, it has a lot of brilliant insights and made me think of these issues in ways that I hadn't, despite over a decade of attempting to be an informed vegetarian.
• 
  Ian Huddleston

  There was potential.
• 
  S̶e̶a̶n̶

  
  In 2004 when this book was published, I ordered a copy for the public library in Texas where I was working. This was in a conservative town full of meat-eaters. I am happy to report that it is still on the shelf (or at least still in the catalog!). Of course I am curious how many times it's been checked out since I left, but unfortunately I no longer have the power to obtain that information. A recent catalog search reveals that the book is no longer in the collection. My guess is it was withdrawn due to lack of use. Oh well, I tried. I'm actually surprised it lasted for almost a decade—surely someone other than me must have read it in that time.
  
  I was reminded of this book at work yesterday when I came upon a recent journal article by Carol Adams. She also wrote
  The Sexual Politics of Meat, which covers similar ground as this book but at a more in-depth level. One of the strengths of this book is the extensive collection of advertising reproductions that show the parallels between exploitation of food animals and exploitation of women. Why, for example, does a barbeque joint use a seductively posed pig in a bikini on its sign? It does not take a rocket scientist to see the correlation to women, to receive the implication that women are simply meat to be devoured. To ignore this, to laugh it off as 'cute' or 'harmless', is to willingly accept yet another facet of the patriarchal domination and control that continues to permeate our culture.
  
  For more on Carol Adams, including a slideshow presentation based on The Sexual Politics of Meat, visit her
  website.
• 
  Noora Karoliina

  Even though meat industry advertisement and degrading women might often go hand-in-hand, and the common ground of them is an interesting topic to study, I think this book wasn't the one to make the statements.
  
  The Pornography of Meat was polemic and dramatic book, where all of the points, lists and "rules" were based on (horrific) example cases, not studies or numbers. The fast-paced text got really deep into the newly constructed theory before I even realized, and there was barely anything to explain or open it. I think the harshness and the size of the statements really would have needed a little something to back them up, especially when Adams started building a list of patriarchal systems winners and losers, and it was based on her feelings, "advertisements" and "everyone knows".
  The emotional writing didn't really help to make the point any clearer either, in fact, the amount of disgusting details and shocking stories of violence felt like cheap stragedy. I had to skip a lot of pages because of nausea.
  I unfortunately think this book might make vegetarianism and feminism look irrational and pseudo-intellectual, not something to take seriously. Adams is called vegetarian-feminist theorist, but there are no traces of theory to be found from her book.
  The pictures were worth a star, though.
• 
  saizine

  Yet again, I am quite disappointed by one of Adams’ books. I had slightly higher hopes for this one—seeing as it appeared to be building on the two sections of The Sexual Politics of Meat that I felt were the strongest, but it falls apart quite quickly. There are some great ideas in here, and some great connections (and continued deployment of the concept of the absent referent, which is a fascinating way of thinking about how we think about things), but the presentation is just so disjointed, so unorganized, and without much thread between chapters that it felt more like reading a long list of aphorisms than a well-structured argument. At no point was I especially sure where we were going or where we were coming from - a complete lack of signposting! Also, while the vast amount of images provided in the text are interesting, Adams only occasionally engages directly with them; the rest are simply plonked on the page and the reader is left to puzzle out why those images, in particular, are important. A good effort, but short a couple of sandwiches for a picnic.
• 
  Carolyn

  After reading this book, I feel even more terrible for having ever eaten meat and dairy in my life. I have been vegan on and off for the last 10 years, but since having read Carol Adams's other books I am firmly entrenched in my commitment to not cause any death and suffering on my behalf. As to this book, it is essentially an extension to The Sexual Politics of Meat by focusing more on the advertisements that sexualize meat eating. There was some disturbing information in the book, but these things are necessary to our awareness of the atrocities of both the pornography and slaughter industry.
• 
  Leanda

  Look at the pictures.
• 
  Brennan Probst

  If you eat meat, read this book and rethink your life choices.
• 
  Tiffany Starling

  This book was very interesting and easy to read. It shows the links between patriarchy and meat eating, and more specificly, how meat eating is a real part of the patriarchy. It discusses the way we create the male identity, based - not only- on the domination of animals, the sexualisation of women, her dishumanisation, and most surprising, the animals sexualisation (at first I thought "what the fuck??" but the examples are pretty interesting and well found). The argumentation is easy to understand, but, on some little points, a bit far fetched (for example, Adams creates a link between the pets names that we give one to another when we are on a couple relationship, and the fact that butchers don't give names to the animals they'll kill, to make the killing psychologicly easier. It seemed a bit crazy to me to make a link between those two diffrent things. But, as I read it in english, did I misunderstood this part? Anyway, this is a three lines part, not a big argument coming over and over during the whole book, so, that's not a big deal actually).
  
  The book is more than a book. It contains lots of photographies and concrete examples. According to me, it brings a lot to the ecofeminism movement, which is not very famous and theorised in France, so, that was a good revelation to me.
• 
  Lily

  I'm a feminist vegan dem-socialist so ofc I dislike the ways that meat is advertised. This book makes good points about meat, capitalism, and sexism. However, I cannot take it seriously because it cotains many OBVIOUSLY photoshopped images that are insinuated to be real examples of adverts. I do not think Adams created these images or even used them intentionally despite knowing they are faked. I just need to point out that there are a few examples of doctored images. Because of this I did not read the book in its entirety since I feel I cannot trust the sources used. It's unfortunate because I like the cause.
• 
  Els

  While I think the message in this book is very important, while risking the reader to become very misanthropic, I find this a very difficult book to read because of the writing style. It’s also a shame that the images, which are so very important in this book, are printed in such bad quality that it makes it very difficult to see them clearly.
• 
  Leah

  A bit sporadic when it comes to the organization of ideas, but once you get into the rhythm of the book things make sense. Hard to disagree with her arguments... definitely makes you think and re-examine our society, the language we use, and how we consume (ads, meat, women, etc).
• 
  K H

  Very Enjoyable!
• 
  mad mags

  Interesting [But Abstract] Study of Parallel Oppressions
  
  "The Pornography of Meat" seems largely to be a condensed version of Adams's earlier volume, "The Sexual Politics of Meat". The general premise is the same, as are many of her arguments; however, "Pornography" is much shorter and easier to wade through.
  
  With its informal writing style, "Pornography" reminds me of a journal-slash-scrapbook as opposed to a more scholarly piece of literature. Adams's writing style can be somewhat disconcerting; she shifts gears rapidly, leaving the reader with the feeling that she's jumping from topic to topic without fully resolving (many of) them. Her arguments are sometimes so abstract and theoretical that they seem enigmatic. Additionally, Adams does provide references, but not in an especially organized manner; as a result, it's hard to tell what information she pulled from which sources.
  
  Don't get me wrong, "Pornography" is not without its redeeming qualities. Every few pages, Adams does hit the reader w/an excellent point, making all the other jargon worthwhile. The pictures (and there are many!) are the book's single best feature - but unfortunately they're all reproduced in black and white, many of them shrunk down to a fraction of their normal size so that the critical details are obscured.
  
  One more minor gripe: as one of the leading AR organizations, PETA bears the brunt of anti-ARA criticisms, not all of them invalid. Though Adams does mention PETA's "exploitation" of women in their ads, the discussion is unfortunately very brief. As PETA is seen as the Church of the AR movement (and leader Newkirk as its Pope), I thought a more detailed discussion would have been appropriate (after all, what's more ironic than sexism in an organization designed to eradicate "ism"s?).
  
  Adams is one of the few feminist writers that tackles the topic of "parallel oppressions" (speciesism, sexism, racism, etc.). There are painfully few books that deal with such issues, so "Pornography" is a must for anyone interested in the subject. If you'd like to learn more about feminism in relation to animal rights, this book is certainly worth the price - and is actually one of the few options out there.
  
  
  http://www.amazon.com/review/RM9N3GV8...
• 
  Penelope

  This was really more of a 2.5 for me (mainly because of the disjointed writing). The images themselves tell a far clearer story than Adams does. I'd give her "slideshow" of images 3.5ish stars, although I really wish some of the image reproductions were better. I couldn't even read some of them, which seems to defeat the purpose.
  
  I think Carol Adams brings up many provocative, valid points. However, it seems like this book was basically compiled from slide-show notes. I realize the book is based on her slide-show, but that doesn't mean it can't be a polished, well-written piece of work. It definitely is not, and I found it frustrating to read sometimes. Nonetheless, Adams' passion and knowledge about the topic shine through the occasionally muddled writing.
  
  Even as a recently converted vegetarian, I had never considered animals (particularly the ones we eat) as being gendered. I had never considered how advertising for meat reflects gender stereotypes or enforces binary gender roles. Her argument is intriguing and disturbing. After finishing this book, I began seeing examples of "the pornography of meat" all over the place. It really is scary how such disturbing ideas and images are so deeply ingrained in our cultural imagery.
  
  I'll be looking into Adams' book "The Sexual Politics of Meat." It sounds like a more "academic" version of this book, and will hopefully be more structured and provide an in-depth discussion of the ideas presented in "The Pornography of Meat."
• 
  Gabby Humphreys

  This book went OFF. It’s a textbook which explores the similarities between the exploitation of females and animals- a cross over that I hadn’t really considered, but one that is absolutely valid. It also focussed on the differences in exploitation between groups; touching on homophobia and racism. Adams mainly focussed on advertising which is a topic that I bloody love to delve into. This isn’t Adams clutching straws, however extreme this theory seems. Instead, she had a ridiculous amount of examples to choose from and this book (which is a hefty 432 pages) is full to the brim with them.
  
  I loved the fact that this book is so recently published and I’m rly glad that I waited for this newer version to come out. This meant it could reflect on the first edition of the book and how things have progressed in the last 30 years, whilst covering recent examples like Trump, #metoo, white supremacy, and, more Trump.
  
  This book was a treat and I actually ran out of page markers half way through bc I had so much to say. There was a lot on both harassment of humans and animals, including some graphic pics, so be warned that it’s a lot and not the most cheery. But, if u enjoy feminist reads, this is a really interesting and fully evidenced perspective to read about.
  
  (@humph_reads)
• 
  Sydney

  This book changed my life in High School. As a intro to thinking about objectification and the connections between sexist/patriarchal paradigms and subjugation of animals it turned me into a radical feminist vegan. I'm not vegan anymore, but I'm still glad I read this book. It's outrageous and at times a little ridiculous, but overall the points are good and the images are real. It drives the point home. You'll start seeing the connections everywhere: personification of objects and objectification of sentient beings in mainstream media. Good intro book, not a substitute for reading feminist theory. Read this if your young, oppositional and interested in radical politics and veganism... and immediately follow it with "Feminism is for Everyone".
• 
  Mari

  This book largely consists of a discussion of images related to Adams’s seminal
  The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (first published in 1990), and many of the images were collected and supplied by readers of her earlier book. Although I at times found its rather choppy style and lack of in-depth analysis slightly annoying, all the illustrations made it worth a read anyway. Yet, unless one is more interested in viewing examples than working through analysis and argument, the book is perhaps best viewed as a companion volume to The Sexual Politics of Meat, and not as stand-alone work.
• 
  Frances Mican

  Excellent. This book talks about two things very dear to my heart, and how interconnected they are: feminism and animal rights. (Of course, by necessity it discusses patriarchy, oppression, racism, etc. as well - ahhh, intersectionality at it's finest!) Adams discusses the vicious cycle between the use and misuse of animals and the oppression of women (i.e. women are animalized which lowers them to a lesser status, and animals are feminized which further lowers their status, and this cycle creates further oppression). I highly recommend this book for everyone, but particularly those interested in the things mentioned above (oppression, abuse, feminism, racism, animal rights, patriarchy).
• 
  CloverGreen13

  Phenomenal book! If you have any interest in women, gay, minority or animal rights then this is the book for you! Adams makes a compelling case for the connection between gender/sexual oppression and the slaughter and consumption of animal products in our society. Adams argues that the "trinity of interrelated forces-objectification, fragmentation, and consumption-impact our cultural and personal consciousness about women and animals." I would not recommend this book to anyone who isn't ready to read it all at once (It's sooo difficult to put down) or to be totally disturbed and equally enraged.
• 
  Gina

  the ideas in the book are excellent. the pictures in the book are even better. the writing itself is not as concise or organized as it should be. i imagine that when she toured with a lecture of this material, a lot of the book came directly from her presentations, which doesn't translate as well in writing.
  
  still, an important addition to the work that highlights the intersection of the meat industry, marketing, and sexism.
  
  it's worth buying the book just for the collection of pictures and illustrations!