☆☆☆☆☆ (0 Stars)
So, a while ago I read a book series called ‘Perfected‘, a YA series inexplicably about a world where humans were kept as domestic pets. I discussed some of the oddities of how Pets and Humans were classified in that universe, how the worldbuilding failed especially because Pets were obviously 100% human, and the moral leap required for everyone to be cool with that didn’t add up. Among many other reasons the book was bad. I got a lot of comments saying I should read ‘Tender is the Flesh‘ for a book which better captured the idea of humans replacing animals, though primarily about meat rather than pets. The vast majority seemed to hold the book in particular reverence, and while I had my doubts, I expected Tender to be an interesting read.
It’s… not. It’s just plainly not. Hold on here and trust me. Tender is about a world where all animal life has been contaminated, but the allure of meat is so addictive humanity has immediately defaulted to raising humans for meat instead. Where this premise could be interesting is the fact it is a ‘what if’ sort of story, a near-future speculation which has a great opportunity to take a single question and try to answer it in full. This is one of my favourite kinds of science fiction, the thought experiment, where you change one detail about our world and see what would happen.
With humans as meat, the possibilities are obvious in what we might examine. For example, like in Perfected, the question of ‘what is human’ comes into play. What do we understand as human, and how far does our empathy go when it conflicts with our morals and desires? The human meat in the book is not special, it is isolated from birth and artificially accelerated with hormones but in theory has the potential for full intelligence, rather like wild children. The line then between human cattle and humanity is very thin. I think with a story like this you can really examine humanity and especially those who are denied it, such as the poor or immigrants or minorities, and the book mildly knows this.
Tender , however, grasps at the basics of its potential and then throws it out the window in order to tell you if you eat meat you are a brainwashed savage, an addict led along by the lies of science and the media, and you would gleefully murder if you had the chance. Tender fails because rather than ask What Is It To Be Human, it declares Cows Are Humans Too, a fact which is simply wrong, and so all its arguments wind up wrong too.
Because rather famously, a cow is not the same thing as a human, and if your entire book is trying to furiously point to a non-sapient creature and say it is exactly the same as a person, well- it’s not going to be a very good book. It’s certainly not going to deliver its point.
And yes, I know that the book is supposedly more about misogyny and classism, but we’ll get there. It’s mostly about meat.
I realize this is a hot topic, so I guess I have to roll up my cred and opinions and life story in order to justify my right to talk. I feel like I run the risk of being conjectured about if I don’t. I don’t actually eat meat, really: I have something called ARFID, which is something that means I eat like 20 foods and that is it. I don’t eat it, not because of moral argument, I just don’t, in much the same way I will never consume a pear. I also grew up in Vermont, which is a rural-y, liberal-y kind of place with a lot of farms. In my town we had a lot of celebrations and focus on sustainable farming and local food, the highlight of the year even being a parade where local farms marched their cows through main street wearing flower crowns as we all clapped. My stepfather was a chicken farmer for many years and we’ve raised chicks from eggs to meat. So, there’s my meat history. Here’s my meat opinion:
Meat is fine. If you don’t want to eat it, I support you. If you don’t want any animal products, I support you. But it is not a moral failing to eat meat. It’s not a moral failing to eat any food, really, because assigning morality to food is how you get disordered eating, and if you know what ARFID is, you’ll know I’m pretty familiar with just that. Meat is fine. We should treat animals well, we should have small farms and well-paid farmers, and if we want we should eat them. In so many communities it isn’t like there is much choice: meat is sustainable and easy, and in many cultures very important to heritage. I have much more of an issue in regards to person welfare than animal, and I don’t mind saying that. I would rather an animal die than a human. The people who work in meatpacking plants, the children who are now legally allowed thanks to Republicans to work in slaughterhouses, we should be protecting them first. Not to sound like a saint or whatever.
But I am digressing. I think too much, I’m just nervous I’m going to get slaughtered for talking negatively about this book. Just like Tender Is The Flesh predicted! Aaaaa!!! We are all savage beasts!!
Plot
A virus has infected all animal life, making them unsafe for human consumption. This leads to a human flesh market.
Now we need to accept certain things about a story to follow along. It’s called ‘suspending your disbelief’. We have to accept this premise, and I can, but it immediately raises some very serious questions. All animal life is infected, but not humans. The world resorts to extreme violence against all animals, with TV shows about brutally murdering cats and all images removed from display. Most animals are now dead, decades into the future. Obviously, this would represent an ecological disaster unlike we have ever seen, because the world rather needs animals, but in this book society is easy to turn towards pure hatred and eager to embrace human flesh. This is necessary for the book’s plot, yet it feels like it is trying to be some sort of commentary. Feels like, being the keywords.
The virus is something which the main character, Tejo, is doubtful of. The book came out before 2020, I’ll note. Though Tejo is considered to be a conspiracy theorist, the book seems to agree with this notion. Multiple times the notion that the virus is fake is brought up, and the narrative points out specifically how universities and scientists all started talking post-virus about the need for meat- suggesting the media and these prestigious elites conditioned the population into accepting human flesh. Again, Tejo is not a great man, but the book certainly doesn’t challenge the idea.
He believes in a theory that some people have tried to talk about. But those who have done so publically have been silenced. The most eminent zoologist, whose articles claimed the virus was a lie, had an opportune accident. He thinks it was all staged to reduce overpopulation. For as long as he can recall, there’s been talk of the scarity of resources. He remembers the riots in countries like China, where people killed each other as a result of overcrowding, though none of the media outlets reported the news from this angle.
pg 11
To this, I say: Hmmm. A manufactured virus by liberal elites to lead humanity into the sin of meat eating, you say? Why does that give me such a bad vibe?
There were massive protests, hunger strikes, complaints filed by human rights organizations, and at the same time, articles, research and news stories that had an impact on public opinion. Prestigious universities claimed that animal protein was neccessary to live, doctors confirmed that plant protein didn’t contain all the essential amino acids, experts assured that gas emissions had been reduced, but malnutrition was on the rise, magazines published articles on the dark side of vegetables. The protest centres began to disperse and the media went on reporting cases of people they said had died of the animal virus.
pg 11
There is a question if this book is a satire, but as extreme as it gets, it is too clearly invested in everything it says. Rather than be ridiculous to prove a point, it has a point and is ridiculous with it. So while Tejo is not a great guy and it may reflect his viewpoint that he believes this conspiracy, the book does not question it, only confirming the apparent inhumanity of the wealthy meat eaters around him. Tejo as our lead is, up until about halfway, explicitly the ‘straight man’ to the nonsense future all around him, acting as our lead in and one moral core. He does some bad stuff later, which I’ll get into, but it’d be incorrect to blame the focus on conspiracies as evidence Tejo is bad rather than worldbuilding details. The conspiracy, true or not, is suggested honestly and given hints of proof.
It’s a dangerous idea because conspiracies get people hurt and get people into cults. It’s rather easy to imagine someone claiming this as a conspiracy today- that the rich all secretly eat human flesh and wish to chip away at our human cores with their obsession with chemically addictive meat, that veganism is the only true path, and probably, lest we forget, probably mean ‘the rich’ as a euphemism for ‘the Jewish’.
So I find this all rather bad.
The book posits that after animals became unsafe to eat, the world immediately turned to cannibalism. In fact, large groups of people soon started finding and murdering others to satiate their desire for meat. In the world of this book, meat is basically a disease like vampirism, and there’s even a group called Scavengers who lurk outside meat processing plants searching for rotten carcasses to satiate their needs. Here’s how the Transition, as the book calls it, happened.
In some countries, immigrants began to disappear en masse. Immigrants, the marginalized, the poor. They were persecuted and eventually slaughtered. Legalization occured when the governments gave in to pressure from a big-money industry that had come to a halt. They adapted the processing plants and regulations. Not long after, they began to breed people as animals to supply the massive demand for meat.
pg 10
The plot of the book is rather sparse anyway. It follows Tejo, a man who appears to smoke an entire cigarette every paragraph. He works at a meat processing plant as the second in command. He recently lost his infant son, which drove his wife into such sadness she lives with her mother and refuses to see him. He has a lousy sister and his father is dying with dementia at an expensive home. He’s a sad man and his life consumes much of the pages, yet rarely feels relevant. It might as well belong to another book at points, as he wanders about moping and smoking.
The book’s plot, then, is not really existent. Most of the first part follows Tejo as he does his job: he visits buyers of the meat plant and works out deals, he takes two interviewees on an excruciatingly long trip down the factory floor. The second part continues this nothingness, as he visits a hunting game reserve, a laboratory, and deals with cultists at his job. Primarily, this book is about a point, so much of the short length is just that. The Point. We see the slaughterhouse in full gory detail and witness a world where humans have replaced cows. That is it.
I think a lot of people who read this book were too shocked by the gore to really process it as good or bad. The gore doesn’t disturb me though: it’s a lot, but any shock is ruined by how over the top it is. It isn’t enough for it to portray a 1:1 swap of cattle for humans, the book feels the need to add in bizarre details to try and disturb the reader more. It left me rolling my eyes and exasperated with my irritation.
On the way to the exit, they pass the barn where the impregnated females are kept. Some are in cages, others lie on tables. They have no arms or legs.
He looks away. He knows that at many breeding centres it’s common practice to main the impregnated females who otherwise kill their fetuses by ramming their stomachs against the bars of their cage, or by not eating, by doing whatever it takes to prevent their babies from being born and dying in the processing plant.
pg 23
Someone else said this, Rory on my discord, but it feels often like it is one of those ‘I’m fourteen and this is deep’ sort of things: that the excessive gore and violence and fixation especially on pregnancy and fetuses is the author trying to be evocative and deep. That by thinking of bizarre torture methods I’ll be too struck by the violence to have common sense.
Some of the worst of this is regarding ‘domestic heads’, as they are called. Rather than ever call them human or meat, meat humans are referred to as heads, and it’s a very wealthy status thing to have a head of your own. Not at all as a pet, only for meat.
He knows he can raise her, that it’s permitted. He’s aware there are people who do so, and who eat their domestic heads alive, part by part. They say the meat tastes better, claim it’s really fresh. Tutorials are availible that explain how, when and where to make the cuts so the product doesn’t die early.
pg 38
See, the book really loses a lot of its vegan steam when it starts making things up. If this is a 1:1 transfer of humans to cattle, okay, we can at least talk about meat processing practices I guess. But no one is keeping a cow and cutting it up alive. At that point it is not a commentary on meat at all but on apparently how all of humanity is just a day away from losing its mind and turning into sadists. Which is… I find the meat comparison not the best, but the notion here of humanity being intrinsically evil is worse, because you cannot convince me for a second that even if we all owned human cattle we’d all get cool about torturing and eating them alive. C’mon.
Domestic heads are a status symbol in the city, they give a household prestige. He looks at the head more closely and when he makes out a few sets of initials, he realizes she’s an FGP [First Generation Pure]. Off to the side on the countertop, he sees a book. His sister doesn’t have books. The book’s title is Domestic Heads: Your Guide to Death by a Thousand Cuts. There are red and brown stains in the book. He feels he might vomit. Of course, he thinks, she’s going to carve the head up slowly, serving pieces every time she hosts an event. The death by a thousand cuts thing must be some sort of trend if all her guests are talking about it. An activity for the whole family, cutting up the living being in the fridge, based on a thousand-year-old form of Chinese torture. The domestic head looks at him sadly.
pg 163
I’m putting this statement deeper in the review on purpose, and that statement is this: Tender Is The Flesh is a thought experiment too dumb to have thoughts or experiment with them. There.
Now, the key plot point in the book is that Tejo is given a domestic head of his own randomly by a boss. Why is not really justified and doesn’t matter, it’s just an excuse for the plot to exist. Some guy drives up and drops a woman off and leaves, and his boss never checked if he wanted or even had a facility for her.
This is again where I think a lot of the shock factor comes in. Though it’s hard to beat the human game preserve where a man boasts about hunting people attempting to pay off debts or his desire for pregnant prey with fetuses developed enough to eat. Tejo does not want this woman, but accepts her, and the end of part one is the fact that he has sex with her. In part two, she is eight months pregnant. He named her Jasmine, and she is basically a child, as she was raised in a cage- he keeps her locked in a room most of the day and has to teach her about everything. The cattle people have had their vocal cords removed to help dehumanize them, but even then she obviously cannot mentally grow at this point in her life. It’s rather like with wild children: early infancy is extremely key for mental development and someone raised outside that will struggle to function in society.
Tejo’s relationship with Jasmine is quite unclear. He treats her romantically at points and at others like one of his now-dead dogs. He has a fixation on the death of his infant son and simply wants his child. At the very end of the book, she goes into labour. He calls his wife, who has been trying to reconnect but finding him too distracted. She’s shocked by the pregnant woman but delivers the baby. With this new baby to apparently replace the one they lost, their relationship is apparently repaired, and Tejo goes and kills Jasmine without any thought. That’s the end.
When she calms down a little, he stands up and grabs her by the hair. Jasmine is only able to move her hands, is trying to reach her son. She wants to speak, to scream, but there are no sounds. He picks up the club he brought from the kitchen and hits her on the forehead, right where she’s been branded. Jasmine falls to the floor, stunned, unconscious.
Cecilia jumps when she hears the thud and looks at him without understanding. “Why?” she yells. “She could have given us more children.”
As he drags the body of the female to the barn to slaughter it, he says to Cecilia, his voice radiant, so pure it wounds: “She had the human look of a domesticated animal.”
pg 173
It’s an ending which is shocking, I guess, but rather meaningless. If you think of the story as one purely about our relationship to cattle, it is weird: is it that it is better to engage in beastiality than eat meat? That meat is simply something we use and abuse and think nothing of? Is this about women? The book ends suddenly and offers very little insight. Tejo is not a good man, but I have said that most purely based on the ending. Up until this point he has been a mostly normal, though very depressed, man. He has shown no interest in harming Jasmine and in fact is disgusted by human meat and the whole practice. So what does this ending mean? He discards her for his wife and baby and his old life, sure. I get that. But beneath the shock factor, I can’t find much meaning, especially relating to the usual cudgel of the theme. A conclusion ought to be a cumulation of the themes, a closing note, but this one feels rather like an obligatory twist ending.
Of course, the idea it is meant to be about more than meat is obvious to me. I initially talked about this video in a reading vlog and gave short thoughts, and a few people said they hadn’t even realized it was a vegan thing, or saw it more as about women in society or capitalism. The author is Argentinian and has spoken about the book in terms of those themes, though she is also obviously a vegan. Understanding capitalism or society as like a meat plant, the way the rich might torture or metaphorically consume the poor, is a great idea. I just wish it was in this book!
The thing with this angle of critique is that the work just isn’t there. It’s one thing to point out say, the hunting lodge scene where rich men brag about hunting humans who are only trying to survive to pay off their debts, and note it’s a critique on capitalism and class. Of course it is. But what about the 80% rest of the book devoted to a meticulously slow meander around a meat processing plant, where every paragraph is the author trying to gross you out with entrails?
What does the scene where Tejo befriends a few puppies and watches a bunch of unruly teens torture and kill them say? It says that humans can be led to extreme violence by their culture, yes, but in this book the culture is one fixated only on meat. The other themes do exist in this book and I wish they had more attention, but I will promise you now this is a book primarily about eating meat. I am slightly mystified by the notion the meat is actually secondary.
Few other interpretations make the ending any better, though. Jasmine is used and abused by Tejo then killed without care once she has provided a child. Is she an immigrant woman here? A woman in general? Or is she just a vegan’s understanding of domestic farming, a cow which has fulfilled its purpose and now is just meat to harvest? The latter, not accurate to how farming work, makes the most sense to me.
In the end of it, Tender is a book which is very ardent about being something, but much like the ending, I can’t find any worth. It is short, that’s a bonus. But it is also drearily cynical at strawmen sadists. It uses gore and shock relentlessly, but rather than horror at the human condition, it is too focused on some mythological disease of the meat eater.
The body is very sacred to this book. A large point is made about funerals, and how cemeteries no longer exist in this world. Funerals don’t either.
It’s known that in public nursing homes, when the majority of seniors die, or are left to die, they’re sold on the black market. It’s the cheapest meat money can buy because it’s dry and diseased, full of pharmaceuticals. It’s meat with a first and last name. In some cases, a senior’s own family members will authorize a private or state-owned nursing home to sell their body and use the proceeds to pay off any debt. There are no longer funerals. It’s very difficult to ensure that a body isn’t disinterred and eaten. That’s why many of the cemetaries were sold and others abandoned. Some still remain as relics of a time when the dead could rest in peace.
pg 44
Apparently, the plague of eating meat is so rampant hearses get raided regularly and graves are always dug up. All bodies are cremated, something which the book obviously considers as lesser, and which apparently means you can’t hold a funeral. Funerals for ashes are referred to as a ‘simulacrum of a funeral’. All of this is definitely news and an insult to the many, many people who have buried ashes. Apparently, I’ve gone so many years and never buried my papa, huh? As much as this might be a cultural thing to Argentina, it is treated as an international assumption, and that bothers me.
This mention of the funeral point is late in the review, but it comes up multiple times, and I think it supports part of my concluding thoughts: this book does not acknowledge another viewpoint but its own. Much like the accepted notion one could never bury or hold a funeral for cremated ashes, the book simply believes one could never look at meat as anything but sadistic torture. There is no wiggle room, and because of that the potential of the premise is entirely wasted. There’s only shock and gore and blood and guts and the irritating, self-satisfied eyebrow raise of someone who’s already decided you’re going to Hell.
Crow Defeats Books 