In an earlier blog (06/09/2013), I mentioned Carol Adams' Sexual Politics of Meat (1990, 2010) in which she argues that woman abuse, animal abuse and the exploitation of nature are part of the same spectrum of violence perpetrated by patriarchal and masculinist oppressive systems. Key to her theory is the concept of the "absent referent" which enables the ideology of meat and its related violence to be perpetuated. Below, I quote the key passage from her book:
"Behind every meal of meat is an absence: the death of the animal whose place the meat takes. The 'absent referent' is that which separates the meat eater from the animal and the animal from the end product. The function of the absent referent is to keep our 'meat' separated from any idea that she or he once was an animal, to keep the 'moo' or 'cluck' or 'baa' away from the meat, to keep something from being seen as having been someone. Once the existence of meat is disconnected from the existence of an animal who was killed to become the 'meat,' meat becomes unanchored by its original referent (the animal), becoming instead a free-floating image, used often to reflect women's status as well as animals'. Animals are the absent referent in images of women butchered, fragmented, or consumable" (Adams 2010:13).