Animal people looking for good organizations to give your money to, I beseech of you, please ignore PETA, who seems to spend most of their budget getting young women to get naked in public as publicity stunts. If you love both animals and people, look instead to less sexy but much more humane organizations like the Humane Society, who actually have done a bang-up job of using their issue of animal welfare to highlight the problem of domestic violence. From Salon, I see that the effort from organizations like the Humane Society, PAWS, the ASPCA, and the Humane Association (and no doubt many other animal organizations that don’t see the need to parade naked women around to make a point) to improve the public’s understanding of the link between animal abuse and domestic abuse have led to an article in O about the link.
For people who understand how domestic violence really works, this link is not surprising. Abusers use any leverage they can to terrorize their victims and break their will, and will happily resort to abusing and killing pets for that end. There’s also the added incentive of using the pet as leverage to keep your victim from escaping, because she knows that fleeing without or even with the pet might result in the abuser retaliating by killing her pet. In order to make pet safety less of a barrier to women fleeing abusive homes, the Humane Society has put together a list of 170 safe haven programs, where both the victim and her pets are cared for by the shelters, using various methods.
The article suggests that police and prosecutors start following up on animal cruelty cases to see if there’s a woman behind each dead or maimed pet that is being terrorized and is afraid to speak up. That’s a good start, and I’d also suggest that it could be something that vets are taught to look out for. The first story in this article suggests many victims are not averse to getting medical care for pets after an abusive episode, giving vets a chance to share information that could help victims.
MARCELLA HARB-HAUSER, DVM, WAS DOING HER morning rounds at a San Rafael, California, veterinary hospital when she first met Malibu. The gray tabby was hunched in his cage, his face swollen and right eye bulging. His lungs were bruised. His ribs were broken. He had a fractured tailbone. When Harb-Hauser examined the cat’s mouth, she says, “it looked like an eggplant inside.”
An experienced emergency vet, Harb-Hauser tried to make sense of the medical evidence. The cat had obviously suffered a trauma, but there was no sign of a car accident or fall from a window. “This didn’t just happen,” she told her colleagues. “Something is fishy.” The cat’s owner, she learned, had brought him in at 5 a.m. and for the past three hours had been sitting quietly in an exam room. Maybe, she thought, the young woman could provide some answers.
Malibu’s owner had milky skin and dark eyeliner, with tattoos on both arms. She was barely 30, her face youthful, but her gaunt frame and blank expression suggested a hard life. Speaking in a high, thin monotone, she told Harb-Hauser that she had separated from her boyfriend a year earlier, moving three times to escape him, only to have him track her down and break into each successive apartment. This morning she’d come home from a trip and found him waiting. Fresh scratches and bite marks covered his arms. The apartment was wrecked, and Malibu was hiding under a glass table, barely breathing.
“I really don’t know how to tell you this, because it breaks my heart,” Harb-Hauser said. “But someone tried to strangle your cat.” For the first time, emotion registered on the woman’s face. She looked up and locked eyes with the vet. “Yeah,” she said. “My boyfriend likes to do that to me, too.”
Stories like this show how domestic violence is not, no matter how much MRAs claim otherwise, just a matter of overly aggressive fighting between couples. And as ugly as it is, perhaps partnerships between animal welfare agencies and domestic violence activists could really drive home to people how serious domestic violence is.
I have to confess a bit of frustration with Catherine Price at Broadsheet, who wrote an otherwise great post on this. After quoting this story, she says:
Almost sadder, though, is the idea that there are women out there who don’t leave their partners, regardless of the abuse they themselves endure, but do then bring their pets to the vet. It’s better, of course, than leaving the animals to suffer — but it says something about a person’s self-esteem if she speaks up about her pet’s abuse but says nothing about her own.
Without denying that a lot of domestic violence victims do have self esteem issues or mental problems that make them unable to properly protect themselves, I have to point out that the victim in this case did leave. Three times. And each time, the asshole found her and brought her under his control again.
This does point to why asking, “Why doesn’t she just leave?” is both tempting and a problem. It’s tempting, because it’s a way for the asker to assure herself that she won’t ever be the one who finds her pet strangled one day by a lunatic she was in love with. It’s a way to tell yourself that it couldn’t happen to you, because victims are people with mental problems you don’t share. (I’m not even sure that victims suffer from mental problems or self esteem issues at greater rates than people in general—I mean, prior to the traumatizing effects of the abuse, which will destroy anyone’s self esteem and that’s of course the point of it.) But it’s a problem precisely because it others the victims, makes it seem like they have problems that aren’t in our collective power’s ability to address.
Eh, maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe Price meant to talk about the way abuse drains women of self esteem, and wasn’t trying to insinuate that victims are uniquely victimizable people.
Meanwhile, the comments at Broadsheet are horrifying as usual. Apparently, the usual cadre of assholes over there thinks if a man kills his wife or girlfriend’s pet, it’s her fault for “letting” him completely take over her life and break her down mentally. You’d think the idea of cute little animals would make them feel some twinge of compassion, but no.
75 Responses to “If not for the women, do it for the puppies”
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Floating Puppies are adorable.
Been there, done that…
Got dragged around a farm by a pig.*
Thanks for posting about this. It’s very important and close to me in a bunch of different ways. First, to highlight the much better job that groups such as the Humane Society are doing in joining the dots, and not about grandstanding, and in such they’re actually making progress, slow as it may be.
Second, that this stuff really does happen, that animals, especially in rural areas can really be the hardest ties to cut. Kids you can take with you, cows, not so much.
*I helped with an animal rescue so a victim of domestic violence could get away. One of the pigs got loose, and I thought I could stop him on my own. Oh. And he was a huge bull pig. Got dragged over barbed wire for that mistake.
One of my prouder moments. No lie.
Hmm, reading the rest of the post, I see that this offhand, kneejerk comment has nothing to do with the seriousness of the post itself.
Concerning the whole “Why doesn’t she just leave?” question in relation to worrying about pets, I think, in my experience as someone who has suffered depression in the past (though not abuse) that, (and I am just projecting here) when a person is suffering from psychological torment (which physical abuse unavoidably causes, I think) then it is very likely that a person comes up with thin justifications for the continuence of their behavior, behavior that the emotional state their situation has rendered them incapable of coping with. While “I can’t leave, I have to protect my pet” isn’t exactly a reasonable response, it is definitely understandable. Sometimes the easiest thing to do is just keep suffering.
One thing I didn’t mention in the post, but now occurs to me is that this is one way that a friend trying to help another out of an abusive relationship might offer: To take the pets and hide them. It shows that you take the problem seriously, and it might give her a way out.
Thanks for posting about this. I had never made the connection between animal cruelty and domestic violence before. The woman’s story about the cat is so tragic - moving three times and having him find her every time? She must have felt so numb.
I clicked through to the Salon article and saw a reference to taking a Yorkie and gluing its eyes, ears, and sexual organs shut, and just about vomited. The depth of cruelty that humans can descend to continually amazes me. Those commenters are horrid. Who the fuck reads that story and blames the woman?
Incidentally, my dog looks just like the dog on the right! Malteses are the best!
Animal abuse is already a pretty well-known sign of sociopathy, so I’m not surprised at all that someone who would abuse his wife/girlfriend would also abuse any animals in his care. There’s probably also a strong link between child or elder abuse and animal abuse.
And the story about the cat being strangled will give me nightmares. Thanks a lot.
hugging the kitty cat right now. will do little else but hug the kitty cat and cry for the foreseeable future…
at least until my monthly Humane Society donation clears next week…
I can’t say much other than I must hug my kitty right now.
Reading the original article was hard enough — I’ve never understood how someone could be so cruel to animals, and some of the incidents in the article were worse than most I’ve read before — but then I had to go check out some of the Broadsheet letters … big mistake. I couldn’t make it very far without wanting to put my fist through the computer screen. Is that where the Freepi hang out when they have more vitriol to spew than the Freepi homeworld can absorb?
Sounds like a real winner there, in more ways than one. With logic and coherence like that, I wonder how long it will be before some right-wing think tank snaps him up (if they haven’t already).
I had no idea that “so many women” have pets as accessories. I must live amongst the “wrong” types of people because I haven’t known anyone, male or female, that had a pet as an accessory. Yes, there are some number of people who have accessory pets that they use to show off and then discard when they’re no longer fashionable, but their numbers are likely to be fairly small. Furthermore, I saw nothing in the article that suggested that any of the women in question considered their pets as anything other than members of the family. THAT’S WHY THEY WOULDN’T LEAVE THEM BEHIND.
More surprisingly to me is that it’s not just men that are piling on in the blame the victim game. (OK, maybe it shouldn’t be too surprising considering that we also see women parroting right-wing misogynist nonsense elsewhere.)
What makes me saddest (although grimly more hopeful) about this is there will be a surprising number of people not incensed that much by domestic abuse but willing to raise hell about poor little animals.
I mean, kudos for using that to do good. But the fact that it even has to be used makes me sad.
emjaybee, you gotta get over it. Does anybody really know why anybody does?
People have all kinds of motivations for their altruistic impulses. Do we really care why they do what they do? And can we ever really know what’s in someone else’s heart or mind? Does anyone really know what’s in his own?
That whole knowing them by their fruits thing is a good idea, even if you don’t believe in God.
If animal lovers who were previously indifferent to domestic violence use this information and decide to support VAWA, are you going to question their motives, or welcome them with open arms?
Instead of assuming that animal rights activsts don’t care about domestic violence victims, wouldn’t it be better to assume that everybody has his own windmill?
Word of warning: do not donate to the Humane Society of the United States. HSUS is practically an arm of PETA and money you give to them does not go the the local Humane organizations who actually do good work. Local and state associations are where people should send their money and support, not to HSUS.
I’ve always sort of assumed a connection between the two. If a person will go to those lengths to control a domesticated animal, which generally needs a person to survive anyway, what are they going to do to control a person who doesn’t need them that much? Not quite the same thing as using the pets as an instrument of control, but yeah, the person doing either kind of abuse is pretty much a sociopath to my mind.
Also, I wish I were hugging my animals. Unfortunately the cat is eating and the dog is chasing a fly. Neither activity makes for good snuggling.
Am I the only person who dislikes the term “battered”? (They use the terms “batterer” in the HS article.) I mean, it makes beating your wife sound tasty. Ick.
I am dearly hoping that anyone who is getting abused gets rid of her cats before that happens. Give them to the vet, friend, shelter- but my thinking on this alone is sad, worrying about getting the cats out before they get killed before the girlfriend/wife gets killed. Oy. What a mess.
Whatever it may “seem,” Amanda, PETA spends almost its entire budget on rescuing animals, successfully lobbying retail outlets to stop cruel practices, shutting down labs where animals are abused and neglected, shutting down puppy mills, teaming with Farm Sanctuary and the HSUS to eliminate factory farming, and educating people about cruelty. The list of PETA’s accomplishments in any given year is stunning.
My previous comment has been weirdly edited by a machine or something.
I’m not that incoherent.
Even when I’m drunk.
“I am dearly hoping that anyone who is getting abused gets rid of her cats before that happens.”
It’s frequently not that easy, unfortunately. The woman in the article sounded like her problem stemmed from an abusive ex-boyfriend in spite of the article’s use of ‘boyfriend’ to describe him–what’s the point of moving three times to get away from someone you’re still actively seeing? When is the moratorium on pet ownership over?
And, of course, you see abusers who haven’t yet graduated to physical abuse with humans abusing pets seemingly out of the blue, or retaliating against partners who think “Man, there is something not right about this person” and break it off by harming their pets. You also get abusers who bring pets into the house specifically to have another way to manipulate their partner/children. If one pet “runs away” to a sympathetic friend or shelter, it’s just replaced with another.
PETA shuts down labs, and then puts the animals down. Fuck them. If they actually got a brain and dropped the self-righteous act, less animals would die.
In my book, I compare them to pro-life groups, and I stand by that. PETA attracts people who want to have a voiceless population to speak for, not because they care so much as they enjoy preening around like they’re morally superior. Like “pro-lifers”, if given the choice between a symbolic act of self-righteous nonsense and actually helping someone, they will choose the former every time.
Yes, the incident with the downed animals was terrible, I agree with you.
And as for being called “preening like I’m morally superior,” well, this year I have already called “elitist” for identifying as a feminist, and a “paleofeminist,” so I guess I can handle it.
Jennifer and Diane suck.
Now, that is some suck.
“I hope you’ll get your kitty out of the way if you’re getting the shit beat out of you…”
Why not help animals AND humans at the same time?
HeroRat trains rats to detect landmines. I discovered them on PBS. They’re better than detectors because they can smell the TNT and better than dogs because they’re too small to trigger the landmines.
Amanda’s description of the link between animal and domestic abuse shows the former as an adjunct means of pursuing the latter, which is valid enough as far as it goes, the situation in the article being a horrific example. But the link is broader and deeper than that.
All victim abuse is fundamentally a power dynamic, and domestic animals are at least as helpless as human domestic abuse victims. Many abusers begin by ill-treating animals, both because they’re already low on the totem pole and because they’re readily accessible. From there it’s only a step to seeing women, children, and other disempowered groups as subhuman, too.
I’m not trying to argue that animal is worse than human abuse. For me they’re two sides of the same terrible coin. As others have pointed out, the problem with getting more exercised over battered animals than battered humans is that there’s usually a mindset behind that attitude that says that the animal was helpless, while the human “should have” been able to avoid the situation or extricate themselves, ignoring or denying all the social, cultural, psychological, financial, et al., dynamics that collude to keep human victims of domestic abuse as effectively powerless as a cat or dog.
By the way, this whole discussion is reminding me of a very disturbing shock PSA from the Australian RSPCA that Lauredhel blogged about last month. I can see what they were going for, but I don’t think it really serves the cause to equate a woman with a dog, even to illustrate the links between domestic abuse and animal abuse.
Why not help animals AND humans at the same time?
Well, exactly.
That’s the original pont of this post: A person who abuses domestic pets could very well be abusing his domestic partner.
Sirkowski, your point is irrelevant.
I’m just saying that I value effectiveness over preening. The entire allure of the anti-choice movement is feeling morally superior without having to face up to the reality of what you’re talking about. I think animal rights has some interesting arguments; it’s a shame to see PETA take over and make it about that magical thinking that dominates the “pro-life” waxing poetic about fetuses.
It’s funny; there’s actually an interesting discussion about the fact that animals are more like us than not. Too bad the naked woman antics of PETA makes it a circus and makes it easy to dismiss the real arguments.
Feminists who make preening self-righteousness more important than reality also get under my skin. Witness: Anyone who is willing to let McCain win and ban abortion as part of a temper tantrum over Clinton not getting the nomination.
To all of the above, I have to say this: Glad it’s all symbolic for you. Too bad you can’t distinguish when actual people/animals are on the line.
Anyone who gives money to PETA—money that could have been given to a more effective animal organization—automatically raises suspicion with me. Why do they value self-righteous preening over doing the right thing? We’re talking cold, hard numbers. That same check made out to a feral cat program or to an animal shelter would have gone much further, and with less naked women antics. How many animals could be spayed for the money you gave PETA to run ads with naked women?
Overreacting much? I was just providing a link. Jeez e_e
You and I can agree to disagree, Amanda. We have done it before. I give money to PETA, Farm Sanctuary and HSUS, and each organization does excellent things. They frequently work together as a team, too–I suppose that turns you off of FS and HSUS, but that’s a fact.
We also volunteer for local animal shelters and have rescued and fostered feral cats. Once again, though, I think you are not as familiar as I am with where PETA’s money actually goes. As for the naked women ads–they are but one part of an in-your-face campaign–one I happen to like.
(Oh, and I wasn’t criticized for being an “I’ll vote for McCain” feminist (please…). Just for identifying as a feminist. But I’m not totally unsympathetic to those women.)
“Now, that is some suck.
‘I hope you’ll get your kitty out of the way if you’re getting the shit beat out of you…’”
It makes sense. The majority of women in this culture who are being abused stay in the abusive situation by their own choice. It is their choice, but they do not have the right to place other creatures, human or otherwise, in harm’s way. Children and and non-humans need to be taken to safe places.
I can’t speak for Jennifer, but I’ve spent 3 and a half decades directly helping abused women, children and non-humans. I’m assuming, hamletta, that you also make a contribution…other than randomly insulting people.
Oh, I’m sorry, Sirkowski. I must be a hysterical female.
Never mind that your link had nothing to do wilth the matter at hand.
Not to mention the money that goes to ALF.
*don’t feed the troll, don’t feed the troll, don’t feed the troll*
Sirkowski:
Dude. You are the troll.
Seriously, guy, give it a rest. You’re nowhere near as clever and witty as you think you are.
Wow. And people wonder why I automatically assume all animal rights proponents are assholes.
Here’s Exhibit A, right out for everyone to see.
This brings back some very bad memories. The one frightening lesson I learned from my situation was that any woman can become an abused spouse/girlfriend. Anyone, including every woman who is reading this site right now.
I didn’t think it would ever happen to me. I was always raised to believe that no man had a right to hurt me for any reason. I wasn’t one of those victim-types, I thought. And then I met Chris. Mom managed to extract me a year later, bruised and destroyed, wanting to die. It took years to recover, and over a year before I could bear to let another man touch me. Ladies, keep an eye out for “groomers”: many times, the abuse doesn’t start as a sudden punch or a slap, it increases so slowly you don’t realize you’re a victim until someone else forces you to see the truth.
I imagine that these women have no illusions about what their spouses/boyfriends are doing or could do to their pets, but giving away the only living thing that loves you is more than they can bear.
I volunteered for years at a wildlife rehabilitation center and we had a rash of wildlife abuse one year (I’ll spare you the details. You don’t want to know). The police talked to us regularly: we all knew that we had a budding sociopath in the area. I don’t think they ever found the person, and it still haunts me: did the animal abuse stop because (s)he moved elsewhere, or because (s)he moved up to abusing humans?
Oh, and I’m with Amanda on the whole PETA thing. All the philanthropic animal lovers I’ve met were very touchy about PETA, and viewed them as similar to ALF in demeanor. I prefer to donate my time and money to other organizations.
Jeebus, Bananaphone, I am keeping your comment for the next time some victim-blaming bullshit comes up. People who have not been victims have NO idea how lucky (not virtuous or strong-willed or some other BS) they have been.
Just chiming in to agree that animal and human abuse are definitely just parts of a continuum. In some countries with “traditional” tolerance for animal cruelty, there are efforts underway to get the police to take animal abuse seriously, as a preventative measure. The idea is that some psychopaths start with animals and move up to humans, both within the domestic sphere, and without.
Also re: PETA. There is nothing wrong with barenekked ladies, there is a lot wrong with PETA’s message, and the fact that the barenekkedness shows one body type only.
The shelter I work for does board animals for women entering DV shelters; unfortunately, it wasn’t listed on the link provided, and I don’t think they advertise this service beyond the partner organizations. It probably could help more women to know they dont have to give up their pets to escape DV, but we are space limited ourselves.
The HSUS is an interesting org - they do a lot of good stuff, and a lot of their money does not, no, go to local shelters, but my shelter hands out plenty of HSUS-branded info, because it’s good info that people should read. The study is another example of good stuff, the parading naked women around with PETA is bad, but tell them that when you donate. “This money is not to be spent on campaigns that in any way denegrate women”. Problem solved.
Last month, we bought two kittens from the RSPCA. There were 20 kittens there, some of which had been thrown out of a moving car at the shelter’s volunteer workers.
As we were paying for the cats and their assorted accessories, a woman came to the front desk. She was crying. She was battered. Her dogs were happy to be out and about meeting people. She had 30 days to find a stable home, or the shelter would have to to sell them. The DV women’s shelter wouldn’t accept pets.
The animal shelter was working on donations as it was. As they were young, working dogs, and needed a farm life, euthanasia was their probable fate.
The woman cried as she explained that her daughters had been training the dogs for a show. She didn’t know what her life would be like in a year, let alone a month. She had been trapped for a decade.
We didn’t know what to do. The shelter worker said they get at least one DV case a week.
(Quo Vadis and Soma are now 3 and 2 kilos respectively, up from 1kg and 500g when we adopted them. They have both started to lose their kitten teeth and love hiding in boxes.)
I don’t know the organizations in this space very well — who’s promoting vegetarianism and calling attention to the horrors of factory farming? I know PETA does some of that, but I don’t know who else is around.
Since when does an organization your donating to listen to the donars? Once you give them the money it’s theirs to list on a tax exempt form to do with as they please…
PETA sucks period.
My relationship started that way too, and it escalated when I found out I was pregnant. Luckily I wasn’t stuck in the situation as most women find themselves. I was violently raped as a young girl so any violence towards me tipped me off immediately and I made no excuses for it, nor did I take any excuses for it. It took 3 other people to help me escape. And let me just add that it is PRISON essentially and I saw the cage closing. There is a small window just before it escalates that you have to escape. If you miss it, god help you.
I managed to have him locked up for the weekend on attempted murder charges. Long enough for me to get my stuff and get out. He got out that monday and walked bold as you please right into my mom’s house and my room. The first thing he tried to take? MY CAT! To get me to go with him. Too bad the cat was having nothing of it. He will have a lasting scar to remember for the rest of his life. He ran out of the door holding his eye. And I took care of my cat for the next 10 yrs. And NEVER let ANYONE in the house the cat didn’t approve of first. Damn I miss him.
my 2 cents.
Penn and Teller have an episode on the PETA clowns and other similar organizations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ijLulwUTY
It is hard to find someone more stupid and vicious that Ingrid Newkirk.
Local animal shelters are frequently desperately underfunded. I’d give them money before I gave a red cent to PETA, which has staged idiotic stunts like offering veggie burgers to Fishkill, New York, if the town would change its name to Fishlive. Never mind that the town was founded by the Dutch, and that “kill” does not have the same meaning in Dutch as it does in English…*rolls eyes*
As for abusers killing and maiming animals…not a surprise. Bastards.
which has staged idiotic stunts like offering veggie burgers to Fishkill, New York, if the town would change its name to Fishlive.
Damn. That’s some stupid shit right there.
Makes me wonder if the existence of killifish would just blow PETA’s collective mind, if they found out about it.
“One thing I didn’t mention in the post, but now occurs to me is that this is one way that a friend trying to help another out of an abusive relationship might offer: To take the pets and hide them.”
Also, some shelters do a foster-pet program with volunteers in the community; you just hold the pet for as long as the client is in the shelter.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the police went to the vets on a regular basis to check animal abuse issues, not to issue tickets for animal abuse, but to make sure the women and children involved were safe? If we lived in a world where violence toward women was really frowned upon, it would be a natural. Vets would have a DV liaison.
PETA believes there is no difference between a rat, a pig, a dog, or a boy.That’s fucked up. I don’t care how much you love your pets, humans are more important.
Yep, that’s a value judgment, and I’m sticking by it.
PETA does not believe people should eat honey or wear wool.
PETA does not believe people should have “companion animals” but tolerates the practice for now.
PETA’s platform is fucked up.
Before you donate to anything, you should read what they really want to do. Yes, they do some good work. I have a former roommate who donated to them b/c she liked the good things they did and just didn’t believe in everything they believed in.
“But they’ll use your money for everything, including the things you disagree with!”
Humans =/= animals. Humans > animals. Whenever someone is messed up enough to start equating animals and humans or thinks animals > humans, I start looking for the trauma.
People don’t think animals are better than humans unless humans have really betrayed them and abused them. PETA was founded by one such messed up person.
And please remember that pre-Civil War, “Be Kind to Animals” leagues were very big. If you were already “involved” in an issue as important as being kind to animals, you might just not have the time to join an abolitionist movement.
Loosely Twisted @ 37:
Wonderful story. Awesome kitty. : ) My cats are big wimps, but I just keep telling them that I know they have the hearts of lions — hopefully it’ll sink in.
Caren, do you have any further info on the pre-Civil War stuff? That’s interesting.
For the record, I hate PETA but I do not think humans are better than animals. I care about humans more and i think it’s natural and right that we prefer them, but I make no judgements on the superiority or inferiority of any creature (except spiders. I hate those things).
I got really into the animal rights thing when I was in 2nd grade, and it’s still important to me. I won’t become a veggie because I really don’t buy that it’s better in any way. As much as I care about animals, I also think many of them are tasty foodses, and thus eat local and organic whenever I can. It’s NOT cruel to eat animals, it’s cruel to mistreat them.
I think the thing that really clued me into PETA being nuts is when I saw on their website a few years ago that they advocate taking pets from other people’s homes to fix them. That, and their position that pets are bad. Yeah, we as a species has spent 100s of generations domesticating animals. It would be horribly cruel to just free all the little kitties and doggies who are no longer capable of surviving on their own.
And i have to say that I LOVE that 28 Days Later started with crazy foolish animal rights people.
“I don’t think they ever found the person, and it still haunts me: did the animal abuse stop because (s)he moved elsewhere, or because (s)he moved up to abusing humans?”
If it’s any comfort, it’s also possible that s/he wound up in prison over another crime. It’s fairly rare that someone who tortures random animals is only torturing random animals–you tend to get a constellation of other anti-social behaviors, such as arson, going with it.
I have never been involved with people who abuse animals (which to me is a wickedly good sign that they will abuse humans, as well).
However, I’ve known young women whose boyfriends (or actually just fuck buddies at that early stage of the relationship) took their kittens and sort of dangled them in the air, flipping the cats and “playing” with them.
As I watched this, I was totally appalled and told the fellow in question to quit messing around with the cats. It was not only dangerous, but clearly disorienting to the cats. He acted indignant, like who the hell was I to tell him what to do with cats that were not mine? But he did leave the cats alone at that moment in time. Meanwhile, the woman who owned the cats seemed pretty oblivious to the problematic nature of his behavior.
I think people’s potentially violent behavior towards you and your loved ones is very clear early on in relationships. If someone is doing this sort of stuff to your pets on date number two or three, then what do you think will happen when you move in together? Wake up, is my advice. Use your eyes and trust your intuition. Just end it as soon as you notice weird behavior around pets or friends or personal property.
Fuck PETA. Bunch of hypocrites. Their Norfolk “shelter” took in 3,061 animals in 2006, and put down 2,981, according to VDACS. These are rates for a county pound with no funding, not an international organization that can afford to hire celebrities for endorsements.
Skip all the national organizations, if you want to really help. Donate to the little guys locally, and your money will actually go to vet care, adoption, pound pull fees, food, toys, etc.
And please remember that pre-Civil War, “Be Kind to Animals” leagues were very big. If you were already “involved” in an issue as important as being kind to animals, you might just not have the time to join an abolitionist movement.
Please, could we have one discussion about animal rights that doesn’t intimate that people who support animal rights go out and give people cancer for fun? If you choose to devote your energy to one particular area, that’s completely your choice, and I’m glad that you’re doing that work, because a lot of people don’t do anything. But I am capable of both supporting increased protections for farm animals *and* helping victims of DV/sexual assault. I do both of these things because I think that both of them are important. But seriously, the Responsibility Olympics I have to play to “excuse” my vegetarianism gets exhausting, and I can’t figure out what the goal of it could possibly be.
I’ve always been turned off by PETA’s flashy but ineffective campaigns and generally inane positions but after having worked with animal researchers, I’m particularly annoyed by the way they attack science. The researchers I’ve known make complicated, difficult decisions about whether their work can be done without animals and if not working both to minimize the number of animals involved and the suffering of those animals. Seeing their work repeatedly and dishonestly reduced to some “mad animal torturer peddling cosmetics” caricature seems distinctly reminiscent of the way the pro-lifers portray planned parenthood as some satanic baby slaughterhouse.
Yeah for SPCAs! We’ve gotten all of our animals from the MSPCA or local shelters.
Is there any way to specifically search for DV-friendly shelters in an area? Do the ones that are declare themselves as such outright, or is it an unofficial thing? Because I’m looking for a volunteer job, and that sounds like something I’d really like to get involved with (I can’t foster, though, not really, because of allergies in the family to cats/dogs).
You know, I’m really big on animal welfare (though I’m growing increasingly wary of assigning “rights” to fetuses, the state, or “animals”, which are treated like a solid entity by the PETA nuts). I am a vegetarian, and I think factory farming should be banned. I think that people who delude themselves about the big differences between us and animals are being silly—clearly, we have more in common than not with other mammals at least. Animals think and have feelings, and I think that should be respected.
But fuck, the raving PETA nuts make me really embarrassed to state these feelings for being mistaken for one of them.
Imagine how many more people like me that could eloquently advocate for animals are silenced by this fear.
I’m not sure this was the intent–I think the idea was that the animal protection groups were a deliberate distraction from the abolitionist movement. Not a distraction motivated by the members of the groups, either. More like, folks who were benefitting from the slavery system (family patriarch, etc) encouraging those with the compassion (their wives, most likely) to fight that system to channel those energies elsewhere.
One thing, for instance, that concerns me about the animal “rights” framework is that I can’t see how you justify sterilization if animals have rights. It’s against a human’s rights to sterilize against their will. PETA realizes that a pet is under your control and you should take responsibility for it, but I worry that any day now they’re going to start to be lulled by the “rights” logic into coming out against neutering animals. I have to override my cats’ desires on lots of things for their own good. They don’t get to play in traffic and they have to go to the vet, no matter how much they fight. Am I violating their “rights”? It just doesn’t make sense.
Amanda, I see it largely similar to the concept of “children’s rights.” Children, and animals, have the right to be abused, but they do not have the same rights as adult humans.
Perhaps ‘rights’ isn’t the best word, but it’s the one we’ve got.
PETA, who seems to spend most of their budget getting young women to get naked in public as publicity stunts
Do you have links to any pictures to prove that statement?
Notorious P.A.T: Google PETA Alicia Silverstone.
Amanda: Ignore my last comment. I’m on cold meds and didn’t see the one like 2 above.
Glad I’m not the only one who thinks PETA sucks.
Ladies, keep an eye out for “groomers”
That’s an interesting comment that I’d like to hear you (or anyone, really) expand on. I assume you mean “someone who grooms a person to be an abuse target”. How do they do that? How can such a person be spotted?
Am I violating their “rights”? It just doesn’t make sense.
No, it doesn’t. If people shouldn’t have pets, what does that mean? Should I turn our 2 dogs loose into the wild? How long would they survive?
“children, and animals, have the right to be abused”
Just to clarify, do you mean “the right NOT to be abused”?
Drink lots of liquids. Die, cold, die!
regarding grooming behaviors: read Gavin de Becker’s “The Gift of Fear”
That’s an interesting comment that I’d like to hear you (or anyone, really) expand on. I assume you mean “someone who grooms a person to be an abuse target”. How do they do that? How can such a person be spotted?
It’s the desire to control being presented as “helpfulness.” Not just a stray comment like, “You’re getting a little chunky, honey — maybe you should go on a diet,” but a refusal to let the idea go until the person does what you want. It’s getting constant, subtle pressure from the abuser that you need to change something about yourself, but even if you do, s/he takes that as a signal that you can be controlled and they start pushing harder and harder.
And I second the recommendation of The Gift of Fear. If you’re getting a weird vibe from someone, you should trust that feeling and not just shrug it off.
And please remember that pre-Civil War, “Be Kind to Animals” leagues were very big. If you were already “involved” in an issue as important as being kind to animals, you might just not have the time to join an abolitionist movement.
I can’t quite believe I read this. I know this story is upsetting, but this statement is beneath you.
Kindness to animals was a European movement as well as a North American one. And one that was desperately needed. Yes, animals are often neglected and abused now, but it is hundreds of times better than it was during the Victorian era. This was when the SPCAs were founded and we all know the good they have done. Go and read Black Beauty again if you need a refresher.
However, the important thing to remember is that kindness to animals movements stopped no one from also participating in abolitionist movements in the US. In fact, one imagines that there were people who were SPCAers, abolitionists, churchgoers, and temperancers. Imagine! Being able to support more than one cause at a time!
Yes, I meant NOT be abused. Damn cold!
Must refrain from posting until I regain functionality….
In point of fact, animal protection societies were formed before societies that focused on the protection of children. In fact, child protection societies were based on the the already existing animal-protection ones.
In other words, peoples’ priorities about these things have been fucked up for well over a century. Animals were receiving a huge amount of public concern about abuse well before children were, and about a hundred years before women were.
I believe we should make deliberate cruelty to pet animals a felony. I don’t personally give that much of a shit about animals per se, but the prevalence of people who will abuse animals before graduating to humans, or the people who will abuse animals that people love as a proxy for those humans, is huge, and there is currently nothing that can be done about it. Murder someone’s beloved pet cat, causing them enormous emotional trauma? Get a slap on the wrist, maybe have to pay a fine. The guy who, in road rage, threw a woman’s pet dog into traffic? Nothing happened to that guy.
It’s bullshit. Like I said, I’m not coming at this from the perspective of loving animals per se — I eat meat, I have no illusions that it’s a nice life for the animals that I eat. I’m all about protecting *humans*, though, so a prohibition on deliberate cruelty to pet animals — any animal that actually is someone’s pet, plus the protected classes of cats and dogs — that actually had teeth in it, something that carried a year or two of jail time and a felony record — would help a lot. I mean, you’d have to write it carefully so the self-defense killing of a vicious dog and the euthanasia of a dying animal could not be considered cruelty, but the motivation for harming a pet animal is too similar to the motivation to harm people.
PETA believes you shouldn’t own pets, aka companion animals, in the first place.
I actually really like this idea. It would also perhaps turn out to help out victims of DV–if the abuser already has a violent felony on his record, it might force the authorities to take the victim more seriously. And it’s not like there’s not a correlation, as has been pointed out numerous times.
Pippi’s sister is right, The Gift of Fear outlines exactly what abusers do to select and groom their victims. I loaned my copy to my sister, so I can’t refer to it, but I remember one example he gives was an abuser doesn’t hear the word “no,” and looks for women who give in rather than fight over things that seem trivial, like his offer to buy her a drink.
I work at an animal shelter that partners with one of the organizations on the list. I was so psyched when we got together–I got to combine two passions into one! I’ve had the joy of coordinating a few intakes for DV survivors. Recently a woman came in sobbing, wanting to surrender her Rottweiler to the shelter. She said her boyfriend kicked her out and made her sleep outside in the rain, again, and she didn’t know where she was going to go but she knew her dog couldn’t come. She was clearly devastated, holding the dog close, her body wracked with sobs. I got her hooked up with the program, so that she would not have to relinquish ownership of the dog. When she was filling out the paperwork, there was a section asking for a way to contact her. She put the boyfriend’s contact info. I asked, “Do you really want us calling him? Do you have any friends or acquaintances we could call instead to get a hold of you?” She replied, “No. I have no one but him.” That broke my heart. Thankfully, I didn’t have to call this asswipe to get a hold of her; she ended up contacting us the next week to tell us she found a place and her dog could come. When she walked out of the shelter with that dog, she was radiant and so thankful that she got to keep her buddy, and the dog was overjoyed to see her. It was a fantastic feeling, and it’s a desperately needed program.
Not to get too off-topic, but regarding the why-doesn’t-she-leave “phenomenon”—a big part is because she’d have to quit her job too. Without her job, she has no means to leave. It takes a lot of detailed planning (and saving) in order to leave. Otherwise, the abuser will just come to the worksite. The worksite is often the only place a woman will feel relatively safe. It shouldn’t be surprising that a DV victim would be reluctant to give up her job, especially in a shitty economy, and considering that without a well-executed escape plan, that up-and-quitting a job will have future ramifications for getting another job (and disqualifies a person for unemployment benefits in some states).
That more people don’t realize this never ceases to amaze me.
hamletta: Do we really care why they do what they do?
Yes. Because someone who does right for the wrong reason could just as well do wrong for the same reason.
Nothing wrong with mutually benefical alliances, but I bet you that sooner or later someone more worried about the animals than about the women will (or already has) propose the solution that abused women should have their pets taken away. Or something.
Yes, they do and before the abuse. Predators are very good at identifying prime targets. Abusers know who to go after. They’re not going to waste their time on women who will up and leave after the first sign of abusive or obsessive behavior. They’re certainly not going to risk preying on a woman who’s very likely to go to the police.
I don’t agree with the assholes over at Broadsheet, and many other places. Those women are not at fault. It’s insane to blame someone for being too (supposedly) weak to leave when she was specifically targeted for that weakness.
I don’t know if anyone is still reading this thread, but if you are interested in supporting animal rescue and rehabilitation, please donate to local shelters/rescues in your area.
There are many breed-specific rescues out there, as well. They desperately need money just to keep the electricity going.
“Children, and animals, have the right to be abused, but they do not have the same rights as adult humans.”
I started to write something really long in response, but instead can I just say that as a librarian that has to explain to people on a regular basis that yes, libraries are here to serve the needs and wants of kids too, not just adults, and not just their parents, arguments like this annoy the shit out of me.
Like, up there with PETA’s women = meat campaigns annoys the shit out of me.
La Lubu
“That more people don’t realize this never ceases to amaze me.”
I’m guessing it’s more of the privileged of not getting what it’s like to be someone that is not them.
The only person that I know personally who was a victim of domestic abuse* not only fit a lot of the stereotypes (young, not terribly assertive, a little desperate for male approval), she was also able to get out very quickly because she could move back into her parents house. The same parents who then proceeded to not only pay off the debts he had accumulated for them both during their short marriage but also subsidize her housing for the next several years. And I don’t mean by letting her live in their house rents free.
*meaning: the only person I know that ever told me, obviously