Ever wonder where the phrase “don’t treat me like a piece of meat” came from?

To me, I simply saw it as a way to describe the minimization of a human to their physical body and nothing else. Minimized from their personality, emotion, soul…to their “meat”. I eat meat. I love animals. I am a feminist. But I found these thoughts interesting from feminist writer Carol J. Adams, whom I learned of in a gender class in college. This is to be thought provoking, incite discussion and nothing else.

(and if you tell me that when I wear a bikini I’m “asking for this” :fork: you just don’t get it – that thinking is similar to the Taliban’s justification for covering their women to “protect the men” from natural urges they weren’t asked to be forced to control :rage: )

the image is to demonstrate that when you take the woman, only see the meat, the “rest” of her dies……

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Carol Adams:

Some feminists argue that the treatment of animals as objects is parallel to and associated with patriarchal society\'s objectification of women and other minorities in order to routinely exploit them. A trinity of interrelated forces--objectification, fragmentation, and consumption--impact our cultural and personal consciousness about women and animals. Fragmented body parts of animals who will be eaten depicted in such a way that thoughts of women as sex objects are clearly evoked as well. \"We serve the best breasts and legs in town,\" draw upon the patriarchal fixation on women\'s body parts. Animals presented in poses and clothes human females are represented in our culture (svelte legs, a \"chick\" in high heels, often animals posed like women, animals who are four-legged made to appear both \"sexy\" and bipedal, animals in bikinis).

In all of this, we encounter the underlying hostility to women that is conveyed, through the supposed neutral medium of meat eating. The connections--and images--are everywhere. Through the sexual politics of meat, consuming images such as these provide a way for our culture to talk openly about and joke about the objectification of women without having to acknowledge that this is what they are doing. These issues are \"in our face\" all the time. We do not perceive them as problematic because we are so used to having our dominant culture mirror these attitudes.

There\'s a connection between male dominance and the exploitation of animals–you are not supposed to care, you are not supposed to ask of farmed animals, ‘what are you going through?\' You are to be strong, and virile. A meat eating culture teaches men to love being macho and to hate women; to love steaks and to hate vegetarians. Perhaps meat eating advertisements are everyday reiterations of the mythic conquest of women and nonhuman animals.

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Model: Cindy
Photographer: me
All stock: mine

Thanks to :iconwicked-eve: for her honest and encouraging support on this endeavor and to quote her…”comment if you wanna”

:heart:
mary