Rating: 
Summary: The Semiotics of Meat
Review: Does eating rice bring "wholeness to our fragmented relationships"? Carol Adams believes that it can, and in this beautifully crafted work she lays out the entire argument. She does not minimize her personal revulsion toward the eating of meat, and the meat industry, but she ventures widely - from there. This serious, disturbing, and well-researched book covers many interrelated topics, among them women, linguistics, animal rights, violence and terror, political resistance and patriarchy. Food's meaning and importance to sustenance, spirituality, ritual and symbol and more - is undisputed. Adams' interesting, accessible, and scholarly polemic builds a solid foundation for her fervent wish that feminists embrace vegetarianism, or more accurately, veganism - the rejection of all animal-based foodstuffs. But Hitler was a vegetarian and an animal lover; and until I got to Adams' deconstruction of that seemingly hideous contradiction, I thought, "There goes the notion of the moral weight of eating habits!" But Adams tackles the topic of Hitler's vegetarianism (for example)efficiently and convincingly, and in doing so removes him from the discussion. This is a serious, disturbing, and well-researched book. Adams sounds a rational and convincing call for all people with control over what they may choose to consume - to live and eat deliberately and mindfully. Definitely worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: The Semiotics of Meat
Review: Does eating rice bring "wholeness to our fragmented relationships"? Carol Adams believes that it can, and in this beautifully crafted work she lays out the entire argument. She does not minimize her personal revulsion toward the eating of meat, and the meat industry, but she ventures widely - from there. This serious, disturbing, and well-researched book covers many interrelated topics, among them women, linguistics, animal rights, violence and terror, political resistance and patriarchy. Food's meaning and importance to sustenance, spirituality, ritual and symbol and more - is undisputed. Adams' interesting, accessible, and scholarly polemic builds a solid foundation for her fervent wish that feminists embrace vegetarianism, or more accurately, veganism - the rejection of all animal-based foodstuffs. But Hitler was a vegetarian and an animal lover; and until I got to Adams' deconstruction of that seemingly hideous contradiction, I thought, "There goes the notion of the moral weight of eating habits!" But Adams tackles the topic of Hitler's vegetarianism (for example)efficiently and convincingly, and in doing so removes him from the discussion. This is a serious, disturbing, and well-researched book. Adams sounds a rational and convincing call for all people with control over what they may choose to consume - to live and eat deliberately and mindfully. Definitely worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Meat=Murder!
Review: Engaging overview, from a post-structuralist/postmodern vantage point, of the linkage between meat-eating and patriarchy and feminism and vegetarianism. One of the purposes of the book is to emphasize the role of the "absent referent" as an essential influence on cultural and social discourse. In doing so, Adams calls attention to the ways in which acceptable modes of thinking and behaving are structured within the cultural framework. All in all, a very readable, well-researched, and engrossing examination of the integral connections (oppression) between vegetarianism and feminism.
Rating:
Summary: This Book is Crucial
Review: I could go on & on about this book. It is one the most inspiring and thought-provoking books I've ever read. I first read this book around the time I became a Vegan, developed a serious interest in Sociology, and earned a greater respect for Feminism. To truly appreciate and understand this book, one has to read it with an open mind. Some of the concepts and theories may seem extreme or abstract at first, but I suggest that people give Adams's text time to marinate.
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Summary: The Sexual Politics of Meat: ; An Ecofeminist classic
Review: I first read THE SEXUAL POLITICS OF MEAT in 1990. I had just become a vegetarian. This book connected my feminist politics with my vegetarian politics. This book was a groundbreaking work in ecofeminist theory. Ms. Adams shows how a patriarchal society oppresses animals, women and the very planet Earth itself. She shows us how our dietary choices can be a resistance to the oppressive patriarchal status quo. This book continues to empower me. In 2004 this book is more relevant than ever.
Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: I just ate a steak. Last night I had a veal cutlet with a white wine sauce. When I woke up this morning I found that, for some strange reason I had developed a hostility toward women. So, in light of this revelation, I now believe the thesis of this twisted book. BBQ ribs anyone?
Rating: 
Summary: Agree with Adams' assertions, but repetitive, oddly-written
Review: I read this book at the same time I was reading Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade. The two works seem to fit well together in some ways (and I noticed that Eisler quotes from one of Adams' later books in her book Sacred Pleasure). I agree with Adams' main assertion in this book: Throughout modern history meat has been associated with "domination"-type patriarchal values. I don't think there is any question that this meat = patriarchy assertion is true in most of our world's cultures. However, I find The Sexual Politics of Meat oddly and somewhat incoherently written. The book is not really comprehensively anthropological and it's not really comprehensively literary-analytical either. Adams seems to just jump around to (mostly) British-oriented novels and non-fiction works in a very haphazard way. I could not figure out exactly why she chose some of the books that she did. With the exception of some works like Percy Shelly's piece on meat-eating, many of her choices appeared quite random to me. And the other thing that bothered me was that Adams repeated herself a lot. I had trouble keeping track of the different works Adams was analyzing because she seemed to say the same thing about them over and over. Finally, in 2001, I find there is an obviousness to some of the examples Adams uses to make her point about meat-eating and patriarchal values. The Vietnam-era scene about someone refusing to eat meat in the house of prominent military person sticks out in my mind here. Perhaps when she wrote this down fifteen or so years ago, it seemed that our "majority culture" would have sympathized more with the military/macho meat guy. But I think today, more people (or a great many people) would sympathize with the person who refused to eat meat. I guess this book just doesn't seem as radical to me as it probably felt to Adams when she was writing it.
Rating:
Summary: Agree with Adams' assertions, but repetitive, oddly-written
Review: I read this book at the same time I was reading Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade. The two works seem to fit well together in some ways (and I noticed that Eisler quotes from one of Adams' later books in her book Sacred Pleasure). I agree with Adams' main assertion in this book: Throughout modern history meat has been associated with "domination"-type patriarchal values. I don't think there is any question that this meat = patriarchy assertion is true in most of our world's cultures. However, I find The Sexual Politics of Meat oddly and somewhat incoherently written. The book is not really comprehensively anthropological and it's not really comprehensively literary-analytical either. Adams seems to just jump around to (mostly) British-oriented novels and non-fiction works in a very haphazard way. I could not figure out exactly why she chose some of the books that she did. With the exception of some works like Percy Shelly's piece on meat-eating, many of her choices appeared quite random to me. And the other thing that bothered me was that Adams repeated herself a lot. I had trouble keeping track of the different works Adams was analyzing because she seemed to say the same thing about them over and over. Finally, in 2001, I find there is an obviousness to some of the examples Adams uses to make her point about meat-eating and patriarchal values. The Vietnam-era scene about someone refusing to eat meat in the house of prominent military person sticks out in my mind here. Perhaps when she wrote this down fifteen or so years ago, it seemed that our "majority culture" would have sympathized more with the military/macho meat guy. But I think today, more people (or a great many people) would sympathize with the person who refused to eat meat. I guess this book just doesn't seem as radical to me as it probably felt to Adams when she was writing it.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book that challenges cowardly patriarchy
Review: I was so moved by this extraordinary text. Interrogating the assumptions of white male Women beaters/meat eaters, this important work examines how the white dominating and oppressive culture dictates that the eating of meat is 'good' and even 'necessary', subject Peoples of Color to dietary regimes alien to their own subjectivities. As the writer notes, there is considerable resistance among patriarchal-dominated discourses to vegetarianism. This resistance is a form of textual rape, to be combatted by a 'taste of their own medicine': "A vegetarian writer may express feelings about textual violation by referring to images of butchered animals and raising the issue of dismemberment." A wonderful book, highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Pseudo-intellectual balderdash
Review: I will not elevate this book to the status of a legitimate work of intellectual inquiry by writing a detailed critique of it. Suffice it to say that the author, rather than citing objective evidence in support of her conclusions, does nothing except make baldly conclusory statements which conform to her ultra-feminist world view. If Ms. Adams wishes to be a vegetarian feminist, that's her business. But until she can come up with objective evidence that her hypothesis is true, she comes across as nothing but a rambling mad-woman. Using the conclusory technique employed by Ms. Adams, I could easily write an equally legitimate book claiming that vegetarianism causes oppression of men worldwide. Any publishers out there interested?
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