Lawrence KilliumFeminism and veganism. Two very terrible ideas that, when combined, create a monster so insufferable that you can’t bear to live with them.
They’re also some of the most fun to troll.
Over the weekend, Fox News host Jesse Watters decided to troll a Penn State University doctoral candidate who he invited on his show. This specific young woman was arguing the point that her studies in Argentina showed that the presence of meat reinforces gender stereotypes.
Yes, she’s serious. In fact, she wrote an entire article on it for the publication “Journal of Feminist Geography” which said:
In patriarchal societies where hegemonic masculinity implies an imperative to eat meat, vegetarianism disrupts food culture, raising questions about how vegetarians do, re-do, and rework gender. Analyzing 23 interviews in La Plata, Argentina, I find that the narratives of conversion and social pushback reported by women and men expose gender enactment and social reinforcement of the binary. At times, vegetarians compensate by drawing on scripts of femininities and masculinities that uphold difference, e.g. women cook meat and reassure meat-eaters; men make rationality-based claims and demonstrate strength.
Yet in other moments, vegetarians defy attempts to hold them accountable to gendered social expectations. Women, for example, assert authority over their diets; men embody rejection of the meat-masculinity nexus by adopting a worldview that also rejects sexism and racism. I contend that in such a context, we cannot separate the ways people ‘do vegetarianism’ from how they ‘do gender.’ Doing vegetarianism in interactions drives social change, contributing to the de-linking of meat from gender hegemony and revealing the resisting and reworking of gender in food spaces.
Yeah, I know, absolute dribble.
When she graced Watter’s show with her presence, he made it clear he wasn’t buying it.
“Why is eating meat bad?” Watters challenged.
DeLessio-Parson explained that in she believed eating meat “can reinforce existing social structures, including patriarchy” through its “symbolism.”
After that, she talked about how meat reinforces “toxic masculinity,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.
Meanwhile, a producer on the show came out with something very special for Watters – a nice, delicious, medium-rare steak.
She then commented, “That’s some nice dead animal, dead cow hanging on your fork.” As he kept eating and asking her why she thinks that giving up meat will solve society’s problems.
She eventually showed some of her crazier ideas, like “It’d be great if we had universal health care for our animals,” or that steak symbolizes rich people asserting themselves over poor people.
When Watters again pushed back by asking how she’d pay for all that, she said we had “some money” and pointed to her mug with dollar bills on it.
“Really? Because we’re $20 trillion in debt.” Watters responded.
Watch the hilarious video here:
