Episode 139 - Of Meat and Men: How Beef Became Synonymous with Settler-Colonial Domination
b'
"Beef. It\\u2019s what\\u2019s for dinner," the baritone voices of actors Robert Mitchum and Sam Elliott told us in the 1990s. "We\\u2019re not gonna let Joe Biden and Kamala Harris cut America\\u2019s meat!" cried Mike Pence during a speech in Iowa last year. "To meet the Biden Green New Deal targets, America has to, get this, America has to stop eating meat," lamented Donald Trump adviser Larry Kudlow on Fox Business. Repeatedly, we\\u2019re reminded that red meat is the lifeblood of American culture, a hallmark of masculine power.
\\xa0
This association has lingered for well over a century. Starting in the late 1800s, as white settlers expropriated Indigenous land killing Native people and wildlife in pursuit of westward expansion across North America, the development and promotion of cattle ranching \\u2014 and its product: meat \\u2014 was purposefully imbued with the symbolism of dominance, aggression, and of course, manliness.
\\xa0
There\\u2019s an associated animating force behind this messaging as well: the perception of waning masculinity in our settler-colonial society. Whether a reaction to the closure of the American West as a tameable frontier in the late 19th century or to the contemporary Right\'s imagined threats of "soy boys" and a U.S. military that has supposedly gone soft under liberal command, the need to affirm a cowboy sense of manliness, defined and expressed through violence and domination, continues to take the form of consuming meat.
\\xa0
On this episode, we study the origins of the cultural link between meat eating and masculinity in settler-colonial North America; how this has persisted into the present day via right-wing charlatans like Jordan Peterson, Josh Hawley and Tucker Carlson who panic over the decline of masculinity; and the social and political costs of the maintenance and preservation of Western notions of manliness.
\\xa0
Our guest is history professor and author Kristin Hoganson.