“Meat has long been used in Western culture as a metaphor for women’s oppression. The model for consuming a woman after raping her, as noticed in the preface, is the story of Zeus and Metis: “Zeus lusted after Metis the Titaness, who turned into many shapes to escape him until she was caught at last and got with child.” When warned by a sibyl that if Metis conceived a second time Zeus would be be deposed of by the resulting offspring. Zeus swallowed Metis, who, he claimed, continued to give him counsel from inside his belly. Consumption appears to be the final stage of male sexual desire. Zeus verbally seduces Metis in order to devour her: “having coaxed Metis to a couch with honeyed words, Zeus suddenly opened his mouth and swallowed her, and that was the end of Metis.” An essential component of androcentric culture has been built upon these activities of Zeus: viewing the sexually desired object as consumable. But we do not hear anything about dismemberment in the myth of Zeus’ consumption of Metis. How exactly did Zeus fit her pregnant body, arms, shoulders, chest, womb, thighs, legs, and feet into his mouth in one gulp? They myth does not acknowledge how the absent referent becomes absent.”
-Carol Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat.
