The Republic of Dogs

(updated below)

So, I’m clicking around on Bitten, Mark Bittman’s blog on the NYT website, and I see this:

 

Bittman sez:

Members from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Asia-Pacific wore outfits made out with real lettuce leaves and held signs that read “Save the Planet, Go Vegetarian,” as they greeted passersby in downtown Tokyo last month. PETA argues that switching to a vegetarian diet is the most effective way that anyone can do to fight climate change and reduce environmental destruction.

I wonder how they make that argument without heads to hold their mouths and brains?  Oh right, ladies don’t need those.

Bittman’s choice of words is interesting.  Describing the women in the picture as “members” elides a fairly significant choice that PETA seems to have made about who would be involved in this particular outreach campaign.  Still, I figured that these “members” may have been selected by the photographer, and that the lettuce clad dudes might be just off-camera.  And who could argue with the noble goals of fighting climate change and reducing environmental destruction, right?

Curious about whether the PETA “members” in that picture had been chosen by PETA or the photographer (and mildly interested in seeing some hot dudes in, like…I dunno, arugula jockstraps or something), I googled “Lettuce + PETA”.

Ruh-roh, Shaggy!  There do not appear to be any Lettuce Dudes!  What are those whacky PETA kids up to now?  Let’s find out!  *CLICK*

Wow.

PETA has always been a bunch of assholes, but at this point it’s starting to look like the animal rights stuff is totally incidental to the overarching goal of portraying women as servile, oversexed (irony alert!) meat-puppets.  I don’t think they really oppose meat-eating.  They just want to replace the cows and chickens with hot, horny college sluts.

If you can stomach it, be sure to check out this video:

Edgy!  Sexy!  Totally unrelated to vegetarianism!

There’s exactly one dude on this page, and his crotch bulge has been cropped out.  In case you missed it, I’ve prepared this annotated edition for scholars:

This mysteriously sausage-bedecked young man in an equally mysterious American flag swimsuit leads us to the real howler of lettuceladies.com – THE BROCCOLI BOYS!  Behold, a case study in the relationship between the patriarchy and heterosexism:

Who says girls get to have all the fun indeed!  Of course, given the promise that the boys are going to get in on “all the fun”, you might expect that you’d see some hot boy-on-boy action.  You, Dear Reader, would be foolishly and sorely mistaken.

At least some cute guys in their underwear? 

What do you think this is, gay.com?! 

Swimsuits?

Ugh, then we could see their junk!

Shirtless??

Give it up, fag.  Didn’t you see the patriotic theme?  This site is for the menz!

No, Dear Reader, this sad, shoddy subsection of lettuceladies.com features nothing more than a strangely off-topic “USA Number One Forevah!” visual theme and these three fully-clothed and marginally-attractive men:

You will undoubtedly be 100% unsurprised to learn that there are no videos or national tour featuring Rav, Paul and Ricardo making out with each other in their underwear to promote a healthier, planet-friendly lifestyle.  That would be gay, and in its desperation to connect vegetarianism with priapistic heterosexuality, this site makes it very clear that vegetarianism is not for fags. In fact, there aren’t any other pictures of the Broccoli Boys…just their little bio sketches so we don’t miss the important point that they, unlike the Lettuce Ladies, are people.  Any other treatment would, of course, violate Patriarchy’s First Law – you don’t treat guys like mindless dick-receptacles, because that’s what the ladies are for!

You don’t believe me?  Think I’m just being Little Miss Oversensitive?  M’kay, here’s Lettuce Lady Emily assuming the position:

Ahem.  Compare and contrast with Rav.  Credit will be given for noticing that none of the Broccoli Boys are portrayed bending over.  Extra credit for noticing the helpful color-coding indicating which one is for fucking.

And of course, no exercise in pornographic patriarchy-propagation would be complete without Pam Anderson:

They don’t just like her for her melons looks, though. She has a lot of wisdom to offer!

 

It’s all so clear now!  People only hunt because they’re unable to constantly shove their throbbing members into Pamela Anderson’s various openings!  Look, I’m not a particularly big fan of hunting, but all kinds of people do it for all kinds of reasons (most of which are completely non-Pam-Anderson-orifices-related).

 

Something must be wrong with their “equipment”.  Otherwise they’d be laying around in skimpy lingerie and making out with each other, like all girls in PETA’s utopian post-omnivore future.

Yeah.  Moving right along…

Oh, here’s another favorite:

No, really, I didn’t photoshop that in.

I mean seriously, who is this website aimed at?  Who crafted its message?  I have some ideas:

1. Woman-degrading tools.  See above.  And they’re not really even good at it, you know?  This whole site is like something I might come up with if I were tasked with creating something to appeal to straight guys.  Boobies!  Chicks making out!  I’ve seen the Girls Gone Wild! commercials.  I know what y’all are into.

2. Horrible cooks.  A quick trip through the “Easy, manly recipes” will make it clear just how profoundly unsexy the reality of PETA-style vegetarianism is.  If there’s an “opposite of sex”, I’m pretty sure that tofu soaked in store-bought barbecue sauce is it.  And the less said about “Fried ‘Chicken’”, the better.

What the hell is a “manly recipe”, anyway?  Probably not the recipe for this:

Beyond that, I (a life-long man and a life-long cook) couldn’t tell you. 

3. Liars.  Look, I’m not going to argue that there’s not a serious health cost to eating as much meat as the average American does.  I’m a huge proponent of EVERYONE moving towards a far less meat-centric diet.  But I don’t think that’s the message of this page.  The message of this page is that meat makes your dick soft, whereas veganism will give you a fat, 14-inch ‘zucchini’ that sex-starved, lettuce-wearing babes will constantly beg for.  And the thing is, we all know that’s not true.  I mean, obviously that last part isn’t true under any circumstances, because it’s a figment of the patriarchal imagination — but the entire premise is self-evidently false.  Unless you’ve been living on some sort of vegan commune for you’re entire adult life, you know perfectly well that there are plenty of hawt, large-breasted babes and sexy dudes with big and fully-functional schlongs who eat meat.  In fact, I’d wager that most hawt, large-breasted babes and sexy dudes with big, fully-functional schlongs eat meat, because most human beings on this part of the earth eat meat.

There are plenty of truly compelling arguments for vegetarianism, but this “meat makes your dick small” bullshit just isn’t one of them. You might get straight guys’ attention with such a crassly piggish site, but you’re not going to convince them to become vegetarians, because everyone instantly knows from experience that the entire premise is silly.

But then, with PETA, we know what the real message (always) is.  It’s not that “animals are people too!”  It’s that women aren’t.

UPDATE:  Commenter Mandolin sez:

I wonder if you might consider taking out the micropenis dig. I know that you’re poking fun at the veneration of big dicks, and that’s a good thing to make fun of. But when you use micropenises or small dicks in this way, to indicate that they are the property of sexist and insecure people, the individuals you’re most likely to end up hurting are probably people who have small dicks or micropenises.

It’s like calling Ann Coulter trans. Yeah, it mocks her femininity obsession, but to get to that dig, you have to make use of all the misogynist and transphobic baggage that makes “trans” a slur, and more than insulting Ann Coulter, it ends up insulting trans people.

You know what?  Mandolin is right.  That was a mostly-pointless sentence based on the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the woman holding that absurdly large zucchini.  I almost deleted it before I posted this, because it seemed a little juvenile even for me.  I changed my mind, and now I wish I hadn’t.  I’m deleting that sentence.

Aside from being needlessly cruel (the opposite of liberalism in my view, see “Our Republic”), dick-size humor really does perpetuate the whole linguistic and conceptual infrastructure of the Great Phallocentric Dickocracy that ultimately places those without penises (hi ladies!) at the very bottom of the chain of being or whatever.  We call that “The Patriarchy”, and we don’t cotton to it ‘round these parts.

I have the sense of humor of a 13 year old, that kind of bullshit comes pretty easily to me.  Interrogating that – and being willing to change what I say even if my internal sense of what’s funny hasn’t always quite caught up – is part of my attempt to be a progressive and a man who is an ally to feminism.

So, thanks for the thoughtful feedback, Mandolin.