Ep. 139: Of Meat and Men - How Beef Became Synonymous with Settler-Colonial Domination

"Beef. It’s what’s for dinner," the baritone voices of actors Robert Mitchum and Sam Elliott told us in the 1990s. "We’re not gonna let Joe Biden and Kamala Harris cut America’s meat!" cried Mike Pence during a speech in Iowa last year. "To meet the Biden Green New Deal targets, America has to, get this, America has to stop eating meat," lamented Donald Trump adviser Larry Kudlow on Fox Business. Repeatedly, we’re reminded that red meat is the lifeblood of American culture, a hallmark of masculine power.

This association has lingered for well over a century. Starting in the late 1800s ,as white settlers expropriated Indigenous land killing Native people and wildlife in pursuit of westward expansion across North America, the development and promotion of cattle ranching — and its product: meat — was purposefully imbued with the symbolism of dominance, aggression, and of course, manliness.

There’s an associated animating force behind this messaging as well: the perception of waning masculinity in our settler-colonial society. Whether a reaction to the closure of the American West as a tameable frontier in the late 19th century or to the contemporary Right's imagined threats of "soy boys" and a U.S. military that has supposedly gone soft under liberal command, the need to affirm a cowboy sense of manliness, defined and expressed through violence and domination, continues to take the form of consuming meat.

On this episode, we study the origins of the cultural link between meat eating and masculinity in settler-colonial North America; how this has persisted into the present day via right-wing charlatans like Jordan Peterson, Josh Hawley and Tucker Carlson who panic over the decline of masculinity; and the social and political costs of the maintenance and preservation of Western notions of manliness.

Our guest is history professor and author Kristin Hoganson.

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Guest

Dr. Kristin L. Hoganson is a Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of books including American Empire at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars and, most recently, The Heartland: An American History.

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Show Notes

Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-To-Table History of How Beef Changed America

Joshua Specht | 2019 | Princeton University Press

Changing ideal of manhood in late-nineteenth century America

John Robert Van Slyke | 2001 | The University of Montana

Rough Rider in the White House: Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Desire

Sarah Watts | 2003 | University of Chicago Press

How Teddy Roosevelt Crafted an Image of American Manliness

David Roos | July 6, 2018 | The History Channel

The dubious masculinity of grilling

Rebecca Jennings | June 28, 2019 | Vox 

How steak became manly and salads became feminine

Paul Freedman | October 24, 2019 | The Conversation

Men, Meat, and Marketing

Kat Kinsman | February 16, 2021 | Food & Wine

Beef Is Back for Dinner as Marketers Woo Nostalgic Millennials

Alexandra Bruell | October 5, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal

Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy

Nellie Bowles | May 18, 2018 | The New York Times

Why I vote ‘Hell, no!’ on a vegan president

Steve Cuozzo | August 13, 2019 | The New York Post

Of Meat and Manhood

Zachary A. Kramer | 2011 | Washington University Law Review

Why are we programmed to think meat is for men?

Laura Brehaut | June 22, 2018 | National Post

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Transcript

For a full transcript of this episode, go here.

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