There’s something we need to address in the western world about our obsession with animal products, and I’m going to try to put this into words as best as I can, but it’ll be a little messy. But there is this prevalent notion that animal products are universally superior to other products, be they plant-based or synthetic. There’s this romanticism tied up in ending a life and making that life into something.
Leather from cows being touted as universally better than other leathers (despite advances in other leathers in their durability, cost, fashion appeal, and sustainability). Real fur is treated as a luxury even though a cheap fake fur these days is about as soft as any textile can get, and more versatile stylistically. Ivory, from elephants or otherwise, is still seen as a luxury in the west despite campaigns against it, and despite its value being based entirely on intangible traits with no real function. And of course there’s meat. Then you start digging deeper, and you see how even when comparing different animal products, you find that the more an animal suffered, the more its corpse is valued as a luxury. Foie gras is duck that suffered liver damage, force fed by tubes. Veal is literal babies. And with lobster, blind taste tests have shown no identifiable difference between lobster that was killed just prior to boiling, and lobster that was boiled alive, but people will insist that they know the crueler option tastes better. No matter how much ‘organic meat’ and ‘happy cows’ get touted as the new trends, these fashions remain. Cruelty is a luxury for those willing to pay for it.
And when you see this pattern you start to realize, it’s not the animal product itself that people want. It’s what the product represents. Our society teaches us to crave ownership over others, control over our surroundings even to the point of cruelty. It’s the violence against animals itself that is being celebrated and sold, and the foie gras and fur and ivory are just by-products of that celebration. I even find myself, as a vegan, slipping into that mindset from time to time. When I think about self-sufficiency, especially as a white man in America, there’s this notion that’s been fed to me that true self-sufficiency means “taking what’s yours” from nature, from animals, and even from other humans so long as those humans are sufficiently disenfranchised. Which is ironically not self-sufficient at all. But male strength in America is equated to violence, so this romanticized fantasy of warped self-reliance ends up taking up a role in the male psyche not unlike the rape fantasy. Existing to make men feel powerful and in control through cruelty and strength over others, especially those who cannot resist.
You ever notice how survival tv shows and homesteading blogs aimed at western men, put little focus onto agriculture and cooking, and largely focus on hunting, foraging, and the use of animal products (not that foraging is inherently bad but the way it’s portrayed as man unilaterally taking from nature plays into this power fantasy). You ever notice how male-marketed food is centered entirely around meat, and plants which didn’t suffer in their harvesting, are seen as feminizing dishes if they take up too much of a plate. The attitudes are shifting, becoming less explicit, but they’re shifting slowly, and the death of innocent animals who were never given a chance, is still implicitly seen as a requirement for masculinity. It’s not the product that is valued. High-quality fake meat, and even real lab-grown meat, is still seen as insufficiently masculine. It is the cruelty that is valued for proper manhood.
