Real Men Eat Tofu
July 27, 2007
Men are bombarded with the message that meat equals manliness. Did you catch the Hummer commercial where a guy in the supermarket is buying tofu, but feels so emasculated by the guy in front of him whose cart is piled high with meat on Styrofoam trays that he has to run out and buy a Hummer to “restore his manhood”?
Even Boca, in an attempt to reach out to their female consumer base, has published ads in the past proclaiming “woman does not live by salad alone” for its meatless lasagna and “attack this like the wild, crazy, yet highly intelligent woman you are” for its veggie burgers. My fiancé couldn’t have been the only veg guy out there annoyed by those ads.
Some of my favorite veg bloggers are guys—for example, Eric Prescott of
An Animal Friendly Life, a writer, film producer, and festival organizer who blogs regularly about veg-related news. Then there’s Ryan MacMichael of
vegblog.org, a freelance writer who started his blog to help new vegetarians make the transition. Now his blog covers a variety of veg topics, recently cookbook reviews, news commentary, and updates on his young niece, who recently became a vegetarian. Jason Doucette recently relaunched his veganporn.com web site as
TasteBetter.com, a vegan news and information site. (Veganporn.com never had porn, but the name sure gets your attention, right?) And though he’s on a hiatus right now, Ken in Tennessee’s
veganlunchcast.com has more than 150 photo posts that show off his vegan lunches, inspired by Jennifer McCann’s very popular
veganlunchbox.blogspot.com (and even those lunches were made for her son!).
But still, the list of my favorite female bloggers could go on for pages (I’ll save that for another post). Our own reader surveys show that the vast majority of our
Vegetarian Times subscribers are female. The Vegetarian Resource Group’s 2006 Harris Interactive poll found that there are nearly twice as many female vegetarians as male vegetarians. Maybe this is why I get really happy when I meet guys who are veg. It’s probably not fair, but I automatically like them a little bit more because I assume they’re thoughtful, sensitive, and can probably cook.
If, like the Hummer ads say, veg guys are wimps who need to compensate by buying the biggest, most gas-guzzling car out there, how do you account for the many impressive veg athletes out there? Brendan Brazier is a vegan professional triathlete and champion of the 2003 and 2006 Canadian 50km Ultra Marathon. Not to mention vegan ultramarathoner Scott Jurek, two-time champion of the Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135-mile race in the California desert (with temperatures reaching up to 130ºF). Oh yeah, he also set a course record on that one. Plus, Jurek has won the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run seven years in a row—and this is only a tiny bit of his athletic résumé. How many meat-eating Hummer drivers can say they’ve done that? I’m betting zero, but feel free to surprise me.
Why do you think society associates vegetarianism and veganism with feminine qualities? What can we do to change that perception and show that real strength comes from caring about creatures more vulnerable than yourself?
—Lisa Barley, web editor/associate editor
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I think the problem of men lacking compassion runs a lot deeper than their reluctance to stop eating meat. Men are less tolerant and compassionate in general, I would say. Women have always seemed to me far more willing to engage with the "other" than men are, to show compassion for suffering wherever they find it. Men seem more likely to commodify other beings, to view them as either useful or not useful to them. I don't think these are unsupportable stereotypes. There are more female vegetarians than male vegetarians. Women favour gay rights more strongly than men do. Women seem to do more hands-on charity work than men. I just think compassion comes more easily to women. I don't know why and I haven't the faintest idea what we can do to change men.
As a straight male, a vegan, and a buyer of the vegetarian times mag, I can see the correlation between femininity and veg*nism. Every picture in the mag seems to be of a woman; the colors and patterns chosen even for this website, let alone the mag, seem to have a feminine quality.
The problem is with the burden society places on men, to be strong, to be able to win every fight, fix anything mechanical, excel in physically demanding sports, and be as emotionally bland as Arnie in the Terminator series.
That said, if you want to market veg*nism to more men, do a special article on it, or even a whole mag. Round up a team of appealing ladies to build their dream guy. Give men dating advice for when they meet veg*ns (i.e., tell a man not to show up to the first date decked out in leather, drinking milk, and ordering 18oz ribeye). Offer man-friendly recipes with lots of protein and nutrients that taste like mom's cooking or dad's barbecue. I don't agree with female exploitation, but men love skin, so maybe a "veg*n ladies" calendar would help.
Hell, I might even be willing to write an article or two myself in defense of male veg*nism, probably referencing Peaceful Warrior (Dan Millman) and the meaning of true compassion.
To summarize: if you want to appeal to men, read what men read, and make it yours by cutting the proverbial fat.
Now it's time to cut some tofu and get it ready for my Vegan Tofu Steak, Potatoes, and Ale. Yum.