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https://platform.twitter.com/widgets/hub.1324331373.htmlThe Human & Animal Humane Society of Saveapetslife.org.  Violence to animals is not isolated in society. Where we see abuse to animals we also see a culture of abuse to those humans that are less powerful.  It becomes the norm  to victimize and justifications for such abuse of the less powerful  prevails in academic and folk literature.   As a business student said to me ” of course it is about winning …the weak lose and the winners survive.”   How often do you hear people say “nothing personal it is just good business”  when they are explaining  their policies that put profit above all else.   The fur industry skins animals alive but  this is not  outlawed.  The diamond industry is well-known for their brutal treatment of those that mine the gem.  We turn a blind eye to these abuses because we think they are not the norm they are aberrations of  civilized behavior.
I am saying the battered wife, the abused child, the abandoned and abused pets and  exploitation of  those less powerful  are all entwined, each one aspect hinged on the tolerance of the others.  People tolerated the abuse of animals because they  saw violence to animals as a part of life – in effect normal.  Same case for men beating  their partners and children, there was no crime committed because the more powerful males were the law makers and  they refused to label the behavior as criminal, it served them well to keep women, children and animals in a social class that was stripped of  legal power to defend themselves.  So historically abusive people create abusive culture as the norm and then deprive the abused class of any recourse to escape the abuse, doing so brands the abused as a criminal.  Cleverly the abusive class outlaws any retaliation from their victims, giving them the power to imprison and punish the abused class for any act of defiance.

Can you look in today’s news and see where there are systems normalizing the subjugation of other people/animals, often times reframing subjugation as “helping”.  Such is the case when  we euthanize over 300 million pets a year and yet call these chambers of death  “Humane Societies”.  What is so humane about killing animals whose only crime is they are no longer wanted?

Social service agencies  and  social leaders promote the sexualizing of children and call this “progressive thinking”.   My college psych professor promoted 12 years of age as a ‘normal’ age for sexual intercourse”. As we argued the point I was labeled a prude, and  unenlightened to the true sexual nature of  the preteen.   The teacher having a PhD in psychology normalized his own sexualization of children by exerting his authority and power over my grades.
I could have submitted to his views and joined the crowd of students nodding in agreement with him.  How could  I?  It takes one voice to challenge abusive behavior  but the first ones to speak up often pay a heavy price for their boldness.   I paid a price for challenging the teachers sexualization of children, but I don’t regret it.

Women have endured inhumane treatment in so many ways.  In the comparatively recent 1800’s  doctors created the illness of ‘hysteria’ that required a treatment of masturbation.  At times doctors or their nurses  masturbated patients to orgasm as a ‘treatment’ for hysteria, other times the work would be farmed out to midwives.  Some of the indicators of needing this treatment were an inability to reach orgasm via vaginal penetration  or sexual fantasies accompanied by vaginal  lubrication and an urge to masturbate .  So if you did not achieve orgasm or you were just horny, medical science labeled you as hysterical and in need of  doctor prescribed  masturbation.   Some people are not happy unless they are controlling  and humiliating other people……including the most intimate aspects of their lives. Who should control and define women’s sexuality if not each woman herself?

In the book by Rachel Maines The Technology of Orgasm (1998),  we discover the long history of exploiting women’s sexuality, the pathologizing of women’s sexuality and the history of the vibrator. I think it is worth a read.

What  do humans and animals have in common? Are the exploiters of animals such as the  food and clothing industry  influencing our views of  how animals feel and behave?  Would you eat a burger if you saw the cow   dragged  screaming in fright  to the slaughter room?   We have  “Happy Cow”  products but how many of these dairy cows are tossed to slaughter when their milk production declines?   Much like men defining women’s sexuality in a way the benefits men,  humans define animal’s feelings and what is normative in a way the benefits their desire to eat or wear the animal’s meat or skin.

Current research into the inner lives of animals shows us a picture of animal’s emotional lives that is complex and self-aware.

How can our civilization find peace when we do not act peacefully with each other, animals or the very earth that supports us?  There is the rhetoric of  peace in every media but it runs concurrent with obvious exploitation of others.   Until we self monitor our own false assumptions about other people and animals we continue to rely on ‘experts’ to define our  knowledge of each other and animals.  The problem with  these experts in science and politics is  they are all too often entrenched in false assumptions that have normalized and redressed as “scientific fact”.   What drives us to continue to exploit each other and the animals and earth?  Why are we screaming for peace on earth when we cannot find it in ourselves to let other beings exists in peace?

From human interest stories to animal welfare I will post those items that I feel help us to  look at  the ways we fail to live up to our own ideals about being  humane.  There is no fault in realizing you come up short when you take stock of your own misjudgments but there is fault when people are actively pursuing violent  treatment of  people and animals  while trying to hide behind  titles, power and word play.  So if you read something that makes you feel you could do better than you are part of the solution, If you insist on  pretending  factory farms and blood mined diamonds are ‘normal”  then you are a part of the problem.