Over at NPR, writer Julia Simon recently explored the gender dynamics as it relates to climate change. Specifically, how beef is disproportionately responsible for meat-related carbon emissions and how men are disproportionately obsessed with eating cows as a marker of masculine identity.
Seriously, this statistic is mind-blowing (and I say this as a man who still eats meat!).
Not all Americans eat beef equally, data shows. Last year, Rose and his colleagues published a study looking at U.S. government data of the diets of more than 10,000 Americans. They found that on a given day, 12% of Americans account for half of all beef consumption. That 12% was disproportionately men.
[…]
While some American women also eat high amounts of beef, her research with Rose found that demographically, the No. 1 predictor of high-emission diets is "being male" and "there's nothing that comes close."
We've all met those kinds of guys (or, embarrassingly, been them): the ones who rely on burgers and steaks as their own special form of gender-affirming care, hoping to alter their bodies by ingesting factory-farmed hormones slathered in fat and blood. The ones who still get a chuckle out of stupid shit like Steak and Blowjob Day.
As NPR points out, those men are not only contributing higher carbon emissions—they're also more uniquely resistant to any efforts to reduce those emissions because of how much that destruction is entangled in their sense of identity. Toxic masculinity is literally poisoning the planet. From the article:
Getting people to eat less beef could quickly make a large dent in climate pollution. Rose's research finds that subbing poultry for beef in a meal can cut a person's daily dietary carbon footprint by about half. Food and climate researchers have long grappled with how to get people to shift diets toward less beef. And now they are thinking about the problem through the lens of gender. But there are challenges to shifting diets toward less beef, from misinformation about soy and protein, to powerful societal pressures and messaging for men to eat beef.
It's a fascinating article in general, as it weaves in all the ways that the advertising and meat industries collude with general patriarchal attitudes to create worsening problems for the planet overall.
Previously:
• Big beef jerky is ripping you off
