| Wednesday, April 22, 2009 |
| Cruelty is sexy |
If you ever take any advice from me, let it be this: Do not ever, under any circumstances, sign yourself up for a PETA Google news alert. Every day I must subject myself to an email full of their relentless stupidity, and every day I want to bang my head relentlessly against the wall upon reading it. In today's Stupid PETA Stunt, which contrary to PETA's "sex sells" mantra has received pretty much no media that I'm aware of, our darling idiots did the following (from a PETA press release):
Bowling Green, K.Y. -- Two PETA members in red bikinis will be crammed together in a tank of "bloody" water with the message "McDonald's Scalds Chicks to Death" outside McDonald's restaurant in Bowling Green on Wednesday to protest the abuse that chickens suffer in slaughterhouses that supply the fast-food chain. Other PETA members will hold signs reading, "McCruelty: i'm hatin' it."
When: Wednesday, April 22, 12 noon
Where: 1925 Russellville Rd., Bowling Green
Hey, everybody, what's sexier than scalding animals? Scalding half-naked women, er, I mean, scalding chicks, hell yeah! And obviously there aren't nearly enough images of sexualized violence against women around, so we need to make some more! Seriously, I wonder if the fuckbrains at PETA have taken a day of psychology in their lives. What's more likely to happen as a result of protests like this is that people will further associate violence against women with sexiness, and if they do happen to connect it to the issue of animal rights, they'll view violence against animals as sexy as well. See the boot study by Rachman and Hodgson in the 1960s, which showed that paired with sexual stimuli, researchers could create sexual response to a boot. A fucking boot, just because it was paired with pornographic images of women.
And as usual, PETA's attitude of "fuck everybody who's not a straight white cisgender man" is in full play here. Because despite the fact that viewing images of violence against women disempowers women and despite the fact that 1 in 7 people in Britain believe it's okay to hit a woman for wearing sexy clothing in public, clearly showing the link in people's minds between violence and women being sexy, and despite the fact that every day and everywhere we go we are barraged with images of sexy violence against women to the point where one in four women will be raped and most of us won't be believed because pretty much everyone thinks we asked for it, despite all these facts, PETA still thinks this shit is okay. Rather than having fully dressed people imitate chicks being scalded, or rather than having them wear a body suit of some sort, PETA has decided to once again portray violence against women as sexy. Never mind that the majority of vegetarians and vegans are women, and never mind that women are not viewed as being worth as much as men, which means that people don't care as much when they see us suffering or will even be turned on by it. Never mind the fact that they could have had men do this protest just as well. No, none of that matters, not a bit. What PETA wanted and doesn't seem to have gotten is headlines, headlines at the cost of the lives of the most ardent supporters of animal rights, headlines that very well may have linked murdering animals with sexiness in people's minds. Oh, and did I forget to mention this study, which shows that sexualized pictures of women make men view women as having as much agency as power tools and that included this interesting and disgusting tidbit?
Scans of some of the men found that a part of the brain associated with empathy for other people's emotions and wishes shut down after looking at the pictures.
The most important part to take away from this particular finding, of course, is the role that such pictures play in promoting rape by encouraging men to not listen to women's wishes. It also follows, then, that faced with some half-naked woman asking him to go vegetarian, a man is less likely to follow that woman's wishes. After all, if women only needed to get naked to convince people to see things our way, wouldn't female lawyers all present their arguments in bikinis? And hell, don't you think we'd have naked women taking to the streets to convince men to stop rape? Huh, yeah, I'm sure that would work really fucking well. Honestly, PETA, why don't you crawl back under the rock from whence you came and let the human race get on with the business of making things better on this planet? We won't miss you, I promise.
On a humorous note, as I was searching for PETA's press release, my browser became momentarily possessed and deleted part of my search term, resulting in a search for the term "Two PETinis will." I wonder what a petini is? |
posted by The Venerable Vegan Empress @ 7:04 PM   |
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| 4 Comments: |
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Interesting, perhaps you're right, that protesting boiling animals alive by having scantly-clad women taking a blood bath together doesn't get the right message across, and might create unfortunate associations in casual observers. However, I don't believe the world would be better off without Peta. They may be misguided, but the solution is not that they disappear, but that they develop. The question we all should ask, even critics of Peta, is how should we effectively get our point across?
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I was actually being metaphoric when I said that PETA should crawl back under the rock from whence they came. I would hope it's obvious that if they decided to stop beating up on every oppressed group out there that I would support them. Also, I'd just like to point out that there are tons of animal rights groups out there besides PETA -- HSUS, Mercy for Animals, Compassion Over Killing, etc., and they do get things done -- witness the recent removal of all eggs from Boca Burgers by the end of 2009, a campaign spearheaded by Mercy for Animals and Compassion Over Killing, and absolutely no thanks to PETA. It's a shame how most people in the animal rights movement seem to view PETA as the be-all and end-all of the movement, and any criticism of them is seen as criticism of the entire animal rights movement and we should always be giving them some fucking leeway when they have never given women, black people, trans people or lesbians any leeway. Frankly, when they start considering my worth in the world, I'll start considering theirs. And if they were to disappear, there would be plenty of much better groups to take their place.
Interestingly, I've heard in various places that once Ingrid Newkirk steps down PETA may become a better organization, since she's mostly the one who led them in this direction of climbing up on the backs of oppressed people and using them as trampolines. Alex Pacheco, who co-founded PETA and left in 1999, has called PETA's tactics "stupid human tricks," so hopefully once she leaves there'll be some progress. If not, then I don't feel at all bad saying they should just get lost. Animal rights deserves better than them, and I firmly believe they are a hindrance to the movement as they are now.
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i totally agree with your every single word about this issue, and the previous ones. congrats, you stole words out of my mind regarding peta. betty from italy
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"climbing up on the backs of oppressed people and using them as trampolines"
Brilliant.
At, we can start by not reinforcing other oppressions. You don't gain against sexism by being racists, you don't gain against speciesism by being sexist.
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Interesting, perhaps you're right, that protesting boiling animals alive by having scantly-clad women taking a blood bath together doesn't get the right message across, and might create unfortunate associations in casual observers. However, I don't believe the world would be better off without Peta. They may be misguided, but the solution is not that they disappear, but that they develop. The question we all should ask, even critics of Peta, is how should we effectively get our point across?