Summer Camp Teaches Women and Gays to Eat Like Real Men

Women are out-earning their husbands and gays can legally wed in 37 states, but we’re all still bogged down by the sexual politics of meat.
That’s why Belcampo Meat Co., a Bay Area-based restaurant-butchery group, is hosting a series of summer ‘meat camps’ exclusively for these groups.

Meat is the food of men.
It’s a cultural cliché that just won’t die. Meat-eating suggests power, vitality, and virility. In ancient societies, a successful hunt was an emblem of manhood, bringing status and signaling readiness to marry. Male-centric carnivorism continues to be unapologetically perpetuated in places like Esquire Magazine’s Eat Like a Man column and cookbook, the Food Network’s Meat Men tv series, and the men-only events sponsored by the global ManBQue lifestyle group.

By contrast a meatless regimen is seen as mild and anemic.
Early 20th century pediatricians would recommend a vegetarian diet to limit masturbation in young boys, and today’s vegetarians are still viewed as somehow dissipated. There’s all that tree-hugging bunny-cuddling compassion; it’s not necessarily girlie but they’re compromised as manly men. Even vegetarians rate their own kind as less masculine.

Meat Camp is three days of cutting, chopping, salting, and grilling, hold the machismo.
Less Iron John, more HGTV, guest housing on the grounds of Belcampo Farm has been arranged by Shelter Co., practitioners of the art of what’s known as ‘glamping.’ Individual tents, each with its own full bathroom, are outfitted with luxurious touches like cowhide rugs and high thread count linens on proper beds, and are visited by twice-a-day housekeeping. In between meat-based workshops with names like Bird and Bunny Immersion and Chopstravaganza, the Meat Campers can schedule massages or choose yoga and stretch classes.