Another Bridge to Cross

In choosing this quote, from VuginiaWoolf, to begin The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory, Carol Adams appropriately highlights certain central characteristics of contemporary feminist thought and thus locates her own work frrmly in the tradition of feminist theorizing. By pointing out the impossibility and lack of desirability in renunciation, Adams through Woolf points to self-reclamation as opposed to self-denial as a tool for social change. Renunciation has for centuries been the defining characteristic of women: a good woman sacrifices and serves. The compulsory institutions of marriage and motherhood (and as Adams will argue, meat-eating) are just a few examples ofhow this renunciation is enforced. I point out these somewhat subtle implications of the opening quotation because I think they are important in understanding Adams' project. Her work is not, on my reading, intended to be a call for renunciation, guilt-tripping, or brow-beating but, rather, is about recognizing connections and building bridges. Many people sympathetic to vegetarianism may not read the book because they have misconceptions about feminist renunciation; misconceptions that have recently been promoted by media portrayals of "feminazis" who have moved beyond bra-burning to male-bashing and the imposition of political correctness.! Similarly, many feminists may shrug the book off because of certain misconceptions they may have about vegetarian renunciation and a vegetarian lifestyle, often seeing it as yet another way of denying women freedom of choice. 2 These misconceptions are part of a problem for which The Sexual Politics ofMeat presents some solutions. As Adams writes, "I see the oppression of women and the other animals as interdependent,"(I6) and thus believes ending the oppression of one is connected to ending the oppression of the other. The Sexual Politics of Meat is therefore crucial reading for vegetarians and feminists alike. When the book fust came out in 1990, it was my hope that it would serve to bring feminists and animal liberationists closer together. This hasn't really happened. While such a grand social phenomenon seldom occurs as the result of one book, I do think at least part of the reason such coalitions did not form has something to do with the way the book was written. The language of literary criticism that Adams adopts often leads to problems with clarity which in tum causes