Canada’s Beef with Lipstick: Eat or Be Eaten

Abstract

In the summer of 2015 the City of Edmonton Youth Council proposed a motion to City Council to adopt solely vegetarian or vegan food for all catered meetings for the purpose of environmental sustainability. The motion garnered national media attention, starting with a focus on the motion itself, however quickly transformed into a story about sexism when the online reader commentary started to attack the Youth Council Committee Chair Marina Banister. This paper will analyze the backlash Banister received in the online commentary sections by breaking apart four articles from CBC News Edmonton, Yahoo News Canada, and the Edmonton Journal. The online comments written in reaction to news articles about Banister’s motion to City Council will be assessed in how they delegitimized her argument and undermined her political credibility. Ultimately the paper will conclude that the online comments focused on Banister which distracted from the motion itself and challenged her credibility as an expert on this issue.