Do you love a good steak? Fancy a juicy hamburger or prefer to pile on the bacon?
Congratulations! According to a sociology professor at Pennsylvania State University, you’re responsible for perpetuating the “hegemonic masculinity” that sustains the Patriarchy and keeps feminists so angry.
Professor Anne DeLessio-Parson published her article, shaming meat-eaters for their anti-feminism, in this month’s “Journal of Feminist Geography” (a publication we’re sure Daily Wire readers are just itching to put on their holiday wish lists). In it, she claims that “hegemonic masculinity implies an imperative to eat meat” and that people who follow that imperative reinforce other power hierarchies as well, including the Patriarchy.
DeLessio-Parson interviewed a grand total of 27 vegetarians to get their thoughts on how male oppression and vegetarianism are related, and from those interviews, theorized that women become vegetarians to push back against the “meat-centric” culture and “destabilize” the gender binary.
“The decision to become vegetarian does not itself destabilize gender, but the subsequent social interactions between vegetarian and meat-eater demand gender enactment—or resistance,” DeLessio-Parson wrote. “Refusing meat therefore presents opportunities, in each social interaction, for the binary to be called into question.”
According to DeLassio-Parson, men who are vegetarians also take on more traditional domestic duties, like cooking. She suspects this is because being a vegetarian is a “feminist act,” and draws the conclusion that male vegetarians are more in touch with their female-ness. It’s not clear, though, whether DeLassio-Parson has considered whether it’s a chicken-and-egg situation, where feminine men are more likely to choose vegetarianism, out of the evolutionary realization that they are not cut out for hunting and killing.
She also does not seem to correlate feminist anger with the constant ingestion of salad — though that seems to be an obvious conclusion. Instead, she says, we should all be vegetarians, because that would lead, inevitably, to global harmony.
“If we can pay more attention to what we put in our bodies … we can create a better sense of peace in the world. Vegetarianism is a part of that,” she writes, instead.
Frankly, most people would probably prefer a world with steak.