UK Edition
Women should impose a sex ban on men who eat meat because they are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions, an animal rights group said on Wednesday.
The call for a sex strike on carnivorous males has caused outrage in Germany, which is famous for its love of sausages.
Women must “go on sex strike to save the world”, Peta said before calling for a the bedroom ban “for all meat-eating men”.
The German branch of Peta pointed to research last year from Plos One, a scientific journal, which showed men caused 41 per cent more pollution than women because they eat more meat.
Peta said that such “toxic masculinity” required enforced chastity and even a ban on having children. Every child not born would save 58.6 tonnes of CO2 a year, it said.
“We all know them , the suburban fathers with beer bottles and barbecue tongs sizzling 70 cent sausages on their 700 euro grill,” Daniel Cox, of Peta Germany said as he accused dads of proving their manhood through conspicuous meat consumption.
“The courgette added by the visitor is eyed with suspicion and only reluctantly tolerated,” he said, before telling German men to turn vegan to ensure their children had a planet worth living in.
Calls for hefty 'meat tax'
To make matters wurst, Peta also called for “a hefty meat tax of 41 per cent” for men to save the planet from global warming emissions caused by agriculture.
“Now there is scientific proof that toxic masculinity harms the climate,” Mr Cox added, “a ban on sex or procreation for all meat-eating men would also be purposeful in this context.”
Agriculture is a major contributor to climate change, with a large share of methane emissions caused by cows burping.
In the UK, agriculture was responsible for 11 per cent of the UK’s total emissions in 2020 and is the fifth biggest sector for polluting greenhouse gases.
In 2019, the UN said agriculture was directly responsible for up to 8.5 per cent of all the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, with another 14,5 per cent caused by land being turned over to farming and food production.
While undoubtedbly good news for German vegetarians, the sex strike has been branded attention seeking and “total nonsense” by conservative politicians.
Florian Hahn, a CSU politician, said, “Instead of a ban on sex for meat eaters, there should be a ban on thinking for divisive ideologues."
'I sell bratwurst and more women than men come to me'
The demand made the front page of the best-selling Bild tabloid in the traditionally meat loving nation.
“According to the cold logic of the radical animal rights activists, anyone who orders a bratwurst in the stadium, likes to grill their steak in summer or doesn't want to do without their schnitzel is no longer worthy of reproduction,” the newspaper said of the “crazy suggestion”.
Jessica Stahl, 36, a bratwurst seller from the northern city of Schneverdingen told Bild "I'm speechless, completely shocked by this statement. I sell bratwurst professionally and more women than men come to me.
“I would have a big problem if my husband wasn't allowed to have sex anymore," she added.
Peter Köhler, a 64-year-old pensioner from Meiningen, added, "If it fits, I'll take both – sex and meat. At the moment I only have meat because I don't have a wife."
The idea of women using sex strikes to secure political goals has been around since the Ancient Greeks. In Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata, women bring about the end of the Peloponnesian War by refusing their partners’ amorous advances.
In 2019, activists called for women to impose bedroom boycotts on their partners in protests against strict new abortion laws in Georgia, USA.
In 2003, a sex strike helped end Liberia’s brutal civil war, which earned organiser Leyma Gbowee a Nobel Peace Prize.