Animals And Women: An Analysis Of My Year Of Meats From The Perspective Of Vegetarian Eco-feminism

My Year of Meats is the first novel of Japanese-American novelist Ruth Ozeki.It was published in 1998,which aroused great attention from the critics and won her Kiriyama Prize in the same year,an international literary award for books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia.The novel has two parallel storylines with Jane Takaki Little,a Japanese-American producer of television show,and Akiko Ueno,an ordinary Japanese housewife,as the protagonists.Through the delicate and detailed description of their experiences and psychological changes,Ruth Ozeki discusses the situation of animals and women under meat-eating social backgrounds.By comparison,it can be found out that both animals and women are oppressed.Ruth Ozeki greatly criticizes this phenomenon which shows her strong feminist consciousness and ecological awareness.This thesis analyzes the similarities between animals and women in My Year of Meats with the application of vegetarian eco-feminism theory.It points out that in a meat-eating culture,speciesism and sexism collude with each other.It also discusses how women fight for the rights of both animals and themselves in meat-eating societies.The thesis is divided into three parts: introduction,the main body,and conclusion.Introduction gives the basic information of the novel and the author.It also makes a literature review of the novel both at home and abroad and explains the vegetarian eco-feminism theory including its origin,development,and central concepts.The main body consists of three chapters which offer detailed analysis of My Year of Meats.Chapter One analyzes the victimized bodies of both animals and women.The huge applications of hormones and unqualified feed in husbandry have greatly damaged animals‘ health.Besides,the severe living environment and the ?assembly-line? slaughtering process aggravate their conditions.As for women,the application of hormone under fertility pressure and domestic violence form great threats to their health.Therefore,through this chapter,it is clear that animals and women are similar: both of them are victims of abusive use of hormone and violence.Chapter Two mainly analyzes the objectification of both animals and women in a meat-eating culture.Animals are no longer subjects of life but meats to be consumed by customers.With the change of ways they are referred to while living and dead(cow/beef),animals‘ sufferings are eliminated from human awareness and the fact of animal abuses is hidden.Besides,since men occupy dominate positions in meateating societies,women are also oppressed.They are reduced to breeding tools and objects of sexual desire.While at work,women also suffer from sexual harassment and become commodities for the male bosses to acquire profits.By linking the female image to the beef campaign,Ruth Ozeki highlights the fact that,as objectified subjects of life,women and animals are the same.Based on the analysis of the relationship between women and animals in the meat-eating society,Chapter Three discusses how women fight for rights and liberation for both themselves and animals: on one hand,women need to have self consciousness;on the other hand,sympathy and caring are advocated.In the conclusion part,it points out that women and animals are in the same oppressed position in the meat-eating society.Besides,since they share the same fate,women are capable of understanding animals‘ suffering thus are sympathetic to them.As a result,when they care for and support each other in the fights against men,they also show caring and concerns for animals‘ conditions and fight for their welfare.