Masculinity Has a Meat Problem — and Trans People Are the Scapegoat

When a politician puts on a cowboy hat, stands in front of a barn, and compares transgender children to cattle, it’s not just a bad metaphor — it’s a mirror. The meat industry isn’t just bankrolling the war on trans rights; it’s underwriting a worldview where domination is framed as identity, where masculinity is defined by violence, and where anyone who challenges that is cast as a threat.

Welcome to the grotesque overlap of speciesism, gender norms, and political propaganda.

In Kansas, a man running for office decided to liken gender-affirming care — which overwhelmingly involves reversible puberty blockers — to animal castration. “Castration is for cattle, not our kids,” said Shawn Tiffany, standing proud in his branded ranchwear, funded by thousands in donations from beef and livestock industry giants. Not one of those donors responded when asked whether they supported the message. Silence speaks.

Meanwhile, in Missouri, Kurtis Gregory used the same strategy: reference bulls, demonise trans people, get your campaign cash from livestock and agriculture lobbies, and call it “family values.” Because apparently, nothing says traditional masculinity like mutilating animals and mocking vulnerable children.

This isn’t new. It’s the same fragile masculinity dressed up in cowboy cosplay, and it’s exactly what Carol J. Adams wrote about in The Sexual Politics of Meat. Meat isn’t food in these ads — it’s symbolism. It’s gender enforcement. It’s about reassuring voters that boys are boys, girls are girls, and anyone outside that binary can be safely dehumanised — like the animals they breed, control, and kill for a living. This isn’t a cultural coincidence. This is a strategy. And it’s being bankrolled by an industry that depends on domination. Domination of bodies. Of reproduction. Of sex. Of lives.

Animal agriculture is built on controlling reproduction through artificial insemination, IVF, hormone manipulation, and routine genital mutilation. It’s so close to bestiality that exemptions have to be written into anti-bestiality laws to keep farmers out of prison. That’s not a smear — that’s law.

Somehow, the same people clutching their pearls over LGBTQ books in schools are pumping out ads about slicing off testicles and eating them. They’re not banning “obscenity” — they’re selling it. Just wrapped in patriotism, steak, and supremacy.

The irony is suffocating. These men are obsessed with “protecting children” while explicitly describing the castration of non-human animals for food. They claim to stand for truth, while pushing lies about trans healthcare. They posture as protectors, but what they’re protecting is a hierarchy — not a community.

And it’s costing us far more than human rights. It’s costing the planet. 

A new study shows that cis mens diets and driving habits generate 26% more carbon emissions than women’s — not because women starve or stay home, but because men cling to meat and motors like they’re sacred. Even when you adjust for income, job type, and commuting distance, the difference remains. It’s not necessity. It’s identity. Masculinity emits.

And what happens in hetero households? The transport gap grows. The man takes the car. The woman disappears from the stats. Not biology — entitlement.

The meat industry knows its customer base. Across nearly every country, men eat more meat than women. The exception? Gay and bisexual men. Because their masculinity isn’t tangled up in chewing carcasses. That terrifies a system built on power.

So we get this unholy alliance: cattle feedlots funding anti-trans propaganda. Cowboys selling steaks and straightness. Christian nationalists rewriting dominion as destiny. All of it engineered to preserve a myth — that domination is manhood, that violence is virtue, and that killing animals makes you strong.

But it doesn’t. It makes you afraid.

Afraid of change. Afraid of fluidity. Afraid that without the binary, the hierarchy falls. That’s why they attack trans people. Not because they’re confused — but because they’re not. Trans people expose the illusion. And like any fragile system, the illusion must be defended at all costs.

The more insecure the man, the bigger the steak. The louder the truck. The more rabid the politics.

So what can we do?

We can start by rejecting the myth. Eating animals isn’t strength — it’s learned domination. A muscle memory of supremacy that serves industries, not people. Masculinity doesn’t have to be violent. Identity doesn’t have to mean power over others. And resistance doesn’t have to mean cruelty.

If you’re serious about justice — for trans people, for women, for animals, for the planet — then stop reinforcing the system that keeps them all in chains.

Reject animal use. Challenge masculinity. Dismantle domination.

And for the love of truth, stop calling it tradition. It’s tyranny with a cowboy hat.