International Vegetarian Union (IVU) IVU logo  1847-1981 :  for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, by Julia Twigg ©AUTUMN 1981
- Thesis Index      There runs through vegetarianism a vein of
sexual eccentricity. It takes two forms, one centred around the
advocacy of freedom and liberation, often with deviant or semi-
sacrementalist associations, and sometimes involving highly
eccentric theories of sex; (1) the other, much the predominant,
around ideas of purity and sexual abstinence.  The theme of
sexual purity turns up in a number of spheres, whether overtly
in the common association of meat eating with sexual
stimulation, or less openly in repudiations of 'low
materialism.., and the idolisation of the body'. (2)
'Materialism throughout the context of vegetarianism is used
equivocally; it can mean the gross pursuit of worthless
possessions; it can mean the denial of the higher spiritual
realm; but it can also mean the rejection of the physical, with
its central meaning the denial of sexuality and pleasure in