Camilleri, Lauren ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5866-4844 (2025) Understanding the Masculinity Dilemma: A Mixed Methods Investigation of the Psychosocial Mechanisms Contributing to Men’s Meat Consumption and Reduction. PhD thesis, Victoria University.

Abstract

Men are the biggest meat consumers worldwide, placing themselves at greater risk of chronic diseases and contributing substantially to animal suffering, climate change, and environmental destruction. Despite these consequences, men consistently show greater unwillingness to reduce their meat intake than women. Researchers argue that meat’s connection to masculinity partly explains men’s resistance to meat reduction, presenting a “masculinity dilemma”. This dissertation aimed to develop a comprehensive understanding of the masculinity dilemma by investigating how masculine norms, hegemonic masculinity, and other psychological factors influence men’s resistance to meat reduction. This aim was achieved using a hybrid sequential convergent mixed methods research design. In a preliminary study, a Meat Consumption Scale was developed and psychometrically validated to improve the methodological rigour of the quantitative phase. Five hundred and seventy-five Australian (n=322) and English (n=253) participants who identified as male participated in the initial quantitative phase, which included two empirical studies. In the first quantitative study, a partial least squares structural equation model investigated which traditional and non-traditional masculine norms predicted men’s meat consumption and willingness to reduce their meat consumption. When controlling for age, education, geographic location, personal income, sexual orientation, and social dominance orientation, the traditional masculine norms violence and importance of sex positively predicted men’s meat consumption, and the non-traditional masculine norm sensitivity to male privilege positively predicted men’s willingness to reduce. In the second quantitative study, a latent profile analysis identified the psychological profiles of latent subgroups of male meat consumers, based on twenty psychological variables related to meat consumption. Three distinct consumer segments (Resistant, Ambivalent, and Meat-Averse) displayed unique psychological characteristics, with profiles differing significantly on all indicator variables, self-reported meat consumption, and willingness to reduce their meat intake. The qualitative phase involved 19 semi-structured interviews with Resistant, Ambivalent, and Meat-Averse participants sampled from the quantitative participant pool. Through an ecofeminist and critical animal theoretical lens, a reflexive thematic analysis identified three themes elucidating how hegemonic masculinity contributes to men’s meat consumption through (1) rewarded meat-eating gender performances reinforced by (2) mechanisms of domination (feminisation, ridicule, and social exclusion) and (3) consent (self-policing, free choice discourse, and strategic ignorance). This hegemonic system rewards, reinforces, and polices men’s meat consumption, producing a sociocultural environment in which plant-based diets are unappealing and difficult for men to initiate or sustain. The results elucidated the gendered social mechanisms underlying the masculinity dilemma. In a unified hegemonic gender order, mechanisms of dominance and consent reinforce a culturally idealised construction of heterosexual carnist masculinity that not only sustains meat consumption, but also normalises violence against human and animal groups, subordinates nonhegemonic masculinities (veg*n and homosexual men), and indirectly contributes to the oppression of women and animals. Thus, this dissertation presents a non-anthropocentric theory of the meat-masculinity link, contributes to the ecofeminist “linked oppression” thesis, and highlights the connection between human- and animal-directed violence, which has practical implications for the development of meat-reduction interventions and strategies. Additionally, this dissertation contributes The Meat Consumption Scale, a psychometrically valid assessment tool for measuring an individual’s self-reported meat consumption.

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