The author compares myths about meat-eating with myths about manliness, and seeks to explore the literary, scientific, and social connections between meat-eating, male dominance, and war. Drawing on such sources as butchering texts, cookbooks, Victorian hygiene manuals, and Alice Walker, the author argues in favor of linking feminist and vegetarian theory.

This tenth anniversary edition of a book that might seem like some strange side-dish next to the more meaty entrees concerned with race, class, gender, and sexuality is a testament to the book's importance, one based on establishing connections between eating and being. Ms. Adams views eating as more than pleasure, business, and nutrition, seeing it intermixed in a succotash of linguistic, cultural, and political practices connected to man/woman and human/animal relations. Read this book to find out about the "absent referent," usually an animal absented by being linguistically appropriated to dramatize the speaker's experience ("He treated me like a piece of meat,"), the ancient but "absented" vegetarian themes in literature, and the absented vegetarian canon—great works by great writers on vegetarianism passed over by otherwise omnivorous instructors. Even after 10 years and a fresh-in-the-trenches breed of anarchovegans fighting the good fight, Adams still has vital things to say to those thinking about slaughtered flesh. The tenth edition contains a new preface and an updated bibliography.
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When The Sexual Politics of Meat was published in 1990, it touched off a heated debate. On the tenth anniversary of its publication, Continuum is reissuing the book. This special anniversary edition includes an important new preface by Carol Adams that answers the question she is most often asked: Why did you write this book? Adams also discusses new developments in feminist thought and animal rights. Along the way, Adams updates statistics and information, taking her many readers into a new era.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [243]-260) and index.