A common answer to the question of why people eat meat is that "it tastes good." This seemingly automatic answer is somewhat innocent, somewhat playing innocent. It assumes that the preferred taste of food is fixed and unchanging, ignoring the fact that taste is largely culture-dependent. This is why dishes considered delicacies in one culture are not thought worthy of human consumption in another culture. Food preferences are therefore acquired in a cultural framework. Therefore, if we want to find out why people eat meat, we cannot find an objective answer to this question, meaning an answer based on the qualities of the food itself (being tasty, nutritious and so on).

Actually, the subjective answer, that the yearning for meat can be explained on the basis of personal preference, holds no validity. It is not possible to explain seriously why people eat meat without grounding the explanation in an understanding of cultural preferences. To understand cultural preferences we must understand what these preferences symbolize-in other words, their symbolic value. One of the most convincing answers to this question is that meat symbolizes male domination.

"The meat, which is considered to be the outstanding nutritious food, the food of strength and strengthening, granting vitality, blood and health-is the food of men, who eat it twice, while the women suffice with a small portion. This doesn't mean that they refrain from food; they really don't need the thing that others, primarily men, who are carnivorous by nature, miss so much, and they derive some kind of authority from something, which they don't experience as giving-up. Besides, they don't like men's dishes, that are known to be harmful when taken in too large quantities (for instance, over-eating meat 'poisons the blood,' causes over-excitement, brings out pimples and so on), and may therefore encourage a type of disgust." (Three Ways to Differentiate, Bourdieu)

Meat is "the food of men," according to Bourdieu, because they consume more meat (eat a double portion), and because they need more meat (meat gives blood, health and vitality). The connection between the various functions of meat is a feedback connection: The masculine image leads to an increased consumption of meat among men, and on the other hand, the increased consumption reinforces meat's masculine image. Despite the connection between them, these are two different claims, different kinds of claims, and therefore I shall discuss each one of them separately.

Due to the lack of data providing a gender breakdown ofmeat consumption in Israel , I will present British figures from a book by Nick Fides titled "Meat-a Natural Symbol." Of women in Britain between the ages of 16 and 24, 22.4 percent do not eat meat or almost never eat meat; the figure is and 12.8 percent for all women in Britain. In contrast, 9.1 percent of men between the ages of 16 and -24, and 7.1 percent of all men, refrain from eating meat. This means the number of young women in Britain who do not eat meat is 250 percent the number of young men who do not eat meat, and the percentage of all women who do not eat meat is 80 percent higher than that of all men who do not eat meat. A different study shows a similar tendency among the meat eaters as well: Within the family unit, the man consumes more meat than the woman. In times offood shortage, only the men eat meat: In 19th century England, for example, working-class women ate meat once a week, while the men ate meat on a daily basis.

In the framework of a limited-scope survey that I conducted among male and female students in Tel-Aviv, I obtained the following results: Eighty-six percent of the male students specified meat as their favorite dish, versus 33.3% of the female students. On average, the men eat meat 4.5 times a week, while women eat meat twice a week. Among the vegetarian friends of the students (men and women), 37% are male and 63% are female. This means respondents had 70 percent more female vegetarian friends than male vegetarian friends. It seems, therefore, that the claim that men eat more meat is true. The question we ask now is: What accounts for this difference?

This claim deals with the apparent connection between the nutritional value of meat and the masculine way of life. This claim can be easily refuted. Carol Adams, in her book "The Sexual Politics of Meat," shows that if the population ever had groups that needed meat objectively for the protein it contains (which under certain historical conditions could not be obtained from plants), these were pregnant or nursing women. Peter Singer, in his book "Animal Liberation," provides a long list of successful athletes who did not eat meat at all as proof that meat is not required to achieve physical strength. In fact, Singer shows that meat is not vital at all, either for men or women:

"Nutritional experts no longer dispute about whether animal flesh is essential; they now agree that it is not. If ordinary people still have misgivings about doing without it, these misgivings are based on ignorance. Most often this ignorance is about the nature of protein. We are frequently told that protein is an important element in a sound diet, and that meat is high in protein. Both these statements are true, but there are two other things that we are told less often. The first is that the average American eats too much protein…The second thing to know about protein is that meat is only one among a great variety of foods containing protein, its chief distinction being that it is the most expensive."

Meat does not, therefore, give real power. Although it is perceived as empowering, this power is strictly symbolic. How was this symbol created and how does it function? Adams claims the source of the myth lies in a progression of the male role from that of hunter in prehistoric societies to that of meat-eater. In most human societies in which game meat was consumed, it was the men who did the hunting, while the women were in charge of providing food from plants, cultivating and gathering it. There is a direct connection between a society's level of egalitarianism between men and women and the extent to which a society sustains itself with vegetarian food resources. The more a society depended upon vegetarian food resources, the higher the status of the women within it, because their economic role was more important. On the other hand, their status was lower during the times that their economic position as food providers was limited. In other words, hunting corresponded to male dominance.

Fides also shows how hunting shapes the idea of masculinity: In many societies a man is (or was) considered to be ready for marriage only after his first hunting kill. Likewise, it is a custom that the best hunters receive the women who are considered the best. If a man brings good meat home then he "receives" sex, and if not, he remains unsatisfied. Margaret Visser shows in her book "The Rituals of Dinner" how the Aborigines of Australia divide the kangaroo meat among the men during an event called "men time," while the women wait a long time before they get the leftovers.

Hunting has always been a communal issue among men, yet nowadays the meat we eat comes mostly from industrial factory farms, in which animals are raised in captivity and sent from there to the slaughterhouse; hunting remains mainly a hobby of the upper class. For thousands of years meat has been perceived as a food that is obtained thanks to male courage and boldness-even after they stopped hunting it, men still insisted upon cutting it up and even cooking it, while vegetarian food was a matter for women only. In 18th century Europe, for example, the education of a gentleman was not complete before he could manage to cut meat well.

The most obvious remnant of hunting nowadays is the barbecue, as it is called in the Israeli culture, clearly the property of men. Unlike the daily cooking, which is usually performed by women in the kitchen, the barbecue is not domestic, it is performed outdoors. The manner of cooking is not modern: The cooking is performed by lighting a fire, without using gas or electricity, and the meat cooked on it is considered more masculine-beef rather than chicken. At events such as these, the women are in charge of preparing and serving salads and desserts, and washing the dishes.

But roasting meat on a fire is not the only way of expressing the myth of the hunter, which as said, expresses male dominance-the actual eating of the meat is also correlated with the myth. Adams claims that in many cases battering men used the excuse of no-meat-for-dinner to rationalize beating their wives: The woman disdained the masculinity of her husband, disrespected him, and was, therefore, beaten. The connection between meat and masculinity seemed so real that 19th century educators in Europe recommended reducing the quantity of meat served to adolescents in order to fight masturbation.

When the students participating in a survey that I conducted were asked to name a dish they consider masculine and a dish they consider feminine, 86 percent of respondents (men and women) chose a meat dish (barbecue, spare ribs, steak and so on) as a masculine dish, while none of the respondents chose a meat dish as a feminine dish.

Fides claims men express their domination over animals through meat and indirectly over women as well. Killing, cooking and eating animals provide the ultimate proof of the supremacy of men over the rest of nature. Therefore, the delicacies in a culture will always be those whose production requires more cruelty toward the animals. For instance, people used to skin eels alive, roast crabs alive and abuse bulls and pigs just before slaughter, thinking this would make their meat taste better. In our culture goose liver (foie gras) and veal are delicacies produced by causing the animals extreme suffering.

Studying restaurant reviews in Israeli weekend newspapers and local newspapers in Tel-Aviv from January to July 1999, the following figures come up: In "Tel-Aviv Time," 88 percent of the restaurant reviews by male critics related to meat dishes, while only 31 percent of the reviews written by women related to meat dishes. In the "Tel-Aviv" newspaper all food critics are men, and 69 percent of the time they cover meat dishes. In "Ha'ir" weekly newspaper 65 percent of the male critics wrote about meat dishes, while 30 percent of the female critics reviewed meat dishes. The "Yediot Aharonot" restaurant critic covered meat dinners in 78 percent of his reviews, and the "Ma'ariv" critic wrote about meat dishes in 100 percent (!) of his restaurant reviews.

Yet the differences were not only expressed in a quantitative manner. Even when women wrote about meat, they related to it as yet another dish, and stated in their reviews their impressions of the meat along with their impressions of the other dishes-salads, desserts and so on-as well as the style of the place, the atmosphere and the service. The female critics never visited restaurants that were clearly meat eateries, such as steak houses. Men, on the other hand, frequently visited clearly meat-centered establishments, and photographs of raw, bloody red meat cuts often accompanied their reviews. When the male critics wrote about meat, they usually did not write about other dishes or other aspects of the restaurant experience, and their descriptions went beyond what one normally expects to read in a restaurant review.

This is what Ron Myberg ("Ma'ariv" restaurant reviewer) writes, for example: "By the battle that the meat gave the jagged knife, according to the direction of its fibers, by the intoxicating scent arising from it when being cut, I knew that I was in the presence of greatness...and as if this sliced steak wasn't a great enough feast, it turned out, to the comfort of my sparing heart, that Evron serves it with a saucer of bone marrow floating in greasy meat gravy prepared from the fried juices of the meat... all that one can do is close one's eyes and act as if the elections are far behind and their results are known: We won!" (Taken from the weekend supplement of "Ma'ariv", 19/3/1999)

And Allen Richman writes: "A juicy and meaty American steak is everything that a man wants when he feels that he deserves a rewarding dinner for some worthy thing that he has done." (The weekend supplement of "Ma'ariv", 25/6/1999)

Masculine writing concerning meat is also full of references to the dead animals and often even of their suffering, a phenomenon that is nonexistent in feminine writing.

Thus, for example, writes Gil Hovev: "I think that the success must be credited to three souls: that of the deceased cow, that of the talented chef and mine as well." (The "seven days" weekend supplement of "Yediot Aharonot", 20/5/1999)

One paragraph before praising a dish of foie gras, Hillik Gorfinkel writes: "Geese aren't born with a liver weighing 900 grams. Somebody helps them reach the desired goal. Geese and duck fattening is an ancient business which is performed nowadays by using a machine, and its general idea was and still is very cruel. From a tender age the goose is stuffed with corn, which makes his liver grow into monstrous proportions, ultimately causing his death". ("Ha'ir", 25/6/1999)

The reference to the dead animal, which seems strange at first glancesupports the claim of Fides, according to which men eat meat because of, and not despite, the fact that it comes from killing animals. On the few occasions when men do not write about meat, we often find an apologetic undertone. Zvi Gilat writes, for instance:

"One of the greatest, if not the greatest advantage of my ungrateful role as a restaurant critic is the huge budget that I have at my disposal for performing the task...the budget is definitely enough for a meat dinner for myself... what brought me, therefore, to spend my biweekly budget on a dinner at Ronen's place?...Well, my figurative artist friend D' has suggested the place for an intimate farewell party for our mutual friend, whose name is D' as well... D' does not eat meat (as many well-shaped women she suffers from a totally unjustified diet complex)." ("Tel-Aviv Time", 2/7/1999)

Most people in the Western world are shocked by the custom in certain cultures of bartering farm animals for women. In Western society the exchange is performed metaphorically-in the way men speak about, represent and treat women. (1) Men?Women. (2) Men?Animals. From herein it is derived that: (3) Women=Animals. The category "men" has a double meaning in English-on the one hand, it can mean all members of the human race; and on the other hand, members of the male sex only. The category is cast in opposition to those of "women" and "animals," thereby making the latter two identical.

Despite the fact that both men and women are compared with hunted animals, Fides shows that comparisons between women and animals are metaphorical, while those between men and animals are metonymies. While women are perceived as food, men are not-instead they are identified with the power that the animals represent.

I will only review the actualization of metaphors according to which the man is a hunter and the woman is the hunted animal and his or her flesh, even though there is also a lot of truth to metaphors between men and animals, such as the image of the "stud." The Hebrew language, both the standard as well as slang is filled with expressions taken from the field of meat and game and transferred into the sexual field. In fact, the entire field of sex is called "flesh lust" or "flesh pleasures."

"Sexual hunger" is a passion for sex. A man seeking a woman for a night is a hunter and is armed with his "weapon," the organ of manhood. If the woman gives in easily then she is "easy prey." Events in which women present their bodies (beauty contests, for example) are compared to meat markets and are often nicknamed "the butcher shop."

The Hebrew language also borrows expressions from Arabic, as well as from Yiddish: The word "Freha" in Arabic means a spring chicken, a chick, and a girl's thighs are called "Pulkes" in Yiddish-chicken legs. A good-looking girl is a chick, meaning -"a piece, a cut"; and a full-figured woman is "juicy."

The Hebrew language pictures women not only as meat, but also as farm animals prior to their being turned into a product: so, for instance, a "Ketchka" -a goose in Yiddish-means a "light-headed girl, a giggler, a racket raiser." Common nicknames for a fat woman are "cow" or "beast," and "bunny" is a nickname for a girl who is easy to get sexually.

Since at the heart of any metaphor lies a comparison, we can hence reverse the equation, meaning not only that "woman is flesh," but also "flesh is woman." This inversion is performed by Portnoy, for example-a Jewish-American boy with a compulsive sexual urge, the hero of a novel by Phillip Roth titled "Portnoy's Complaint:"

"Come on, big boy, come on-yelled the chunk of liver in frenzy, the chunk which I bought out of my madness one day in the afternoon, at the butcher shop, and believe it or not, I raped it behind a bulletin board on my way to my Bar-Mitzvah preparatory class."

In a similar manner, the chapter discussing meat in one of those cookbooks marketed to men-"Cooking for the Liberated Man" - is called "Flesh Lust." The meat is discussed using sexual terms, instead of the opposite, as is more common.

Visual representations of women fulfilling the metaphor of woman=meat exist beyond the field of language as well. These representations are common in the pornography industry, which often presents women through images taken from industrial factory farms-women appear numbered, tied with ropes and chains, held in collars and so on.

On the cover of The Sexual Politics of Meat, there is an illustration that originally appeared on a beach towel in 1969 showing a woman divided into cuts of "meat" with the caption, "What's Your cut?" It is therefore easy to see that the value of meat as a source of strength is more symbolic than real, because meat does not provide more energy than vegetarian food, but unlike vegetarian food, it is obtained by using force. Exercising this force, according to Fides, symbolizes the control man has over nature. This force has been traditionally exercised by men, being in charge of hunting, and this gave them, along with control over nature, a dominant position in society.

Even nowadays, although hunting accounts for a negligible portion of all the meat consumed, meat still retains its value as a symbol of domination, and of male domination in particular. It is from the symbol of man as hunter, as meat eater, that the symbol of woman as meat, as hunted animal, derived-this is expressed in the way men talk, think about, and treat women. Actually, women in modern society are almost as responsible for hurting animals as men, yet by doing so they participate in a system of values that oppressesthem as well.

Bibliography

Adams, J. Carol, The Sexual Politics of Meat, Continuum, 1995 (1990).

Ben-Amotz, Dan & Netiva Ben-Yehuda, World Dictionary of Spoken Hebrew, Levine-Epstein, 1972 (in Hebrew).

Bourdieu, Pierre, "Three ways to differentiate,, from: But who made the creators? Studies in the Sociology of Culture, editors: Itamar Even-Zohar & Gadi Elgazi.

Fiddes, Nick, Meat, a Natural Symbol, Routledge, 1993 (1991).

Pollock, J. Donald, "Food and Sexual Identity among the Culina," In: Food and Gender, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998.

Roth, Phillip, Portnoy's Complaint, translated by Haim Glickstein, Shoken publishers, 1970 (1967).

Sapan, Refael, The Ways of Slang, Kiryat Sefer, 1972 (in Hebrew).

Singer, Peter, Animal Liberation, Avon Books, 1990 (1975).

Visser, Margaret, The Rituals of Dinner, Penguin books, 1992 (1991).