John Sanbonmatsu: ‘Femivores’, Violence, and the New Maternalism in Animal Agriculture

Host Robert Jones welcomes John Sanbonmatsu, PhD, Associate Professor of philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts in discussion about recent memoirs of middle class white women who leave careers to take up animal husbandry, as a way (they claim) to empower themselves as women and to realize an “authentic” connection with animals and the land. According to Prof. Sanbonmatsu, by uniting mothering and fertility with frank, violent sadism and death fetishism, “femivores” are playing a pivotal ideological role in legitimating speciesism and stabilizing meat as a “natural,” “humane” commodity.