cliterature

There are some things happening out in the world that most of us would probably be happier not knowing.  So if you haven’t already heard about “Crush” videos you may want to stop now.   The basic idea of crush or squish video is a women in barefeet or high heels squishing small animals of some kind, any thing from baby mice or ducklings to a puppy.  This is not the kind of movie with a happy ending for the animals.

Selling Crush videos was criminalised in the United States in 1999, along with making or trading an depiction of illegal animal torture in the absence of any “serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value”.  Now online sites are largely limited to unprotected animals such as insects and plush toys.

This is a law that largely escaped comment.  However, yesterday a New York Times columnist perked up and decided to belatedly protest this terribly restriction to free speech. Now ordinarily you could depend on me to be sympathetic.  The key exception to first amendment protection is obscenity–and it is routinely misused.  But another is child abuse.  And I bet any depiction of people actually being hurt against their will would also not be protected.

We don’t let people profit off violence against the helpless.  It doesn’t matter if they do it here, or overseas, or on a train, or to a goat.  We don’t trade in blood diamonds, or the parts of endangered species.  We don’t let people buy and sell their children or their organs.  So I don’t see why we should let people stamp on kittens for fun and profit, or buy the products that support this activity.

If it is a book, a cartoon, a clever Poser simulation fine.  If it is an actual animal–make them stop.  If they are outside our jurdistiction and we can’t make them stop, we can stop them from get rich off selling it here.  No amendment offers a protection that is absolute or immune to criticism.  I certainly believe that people have a right to their fetishes, so long as nobody gets hurt unless they consent to it.  And animals, like children, cannot general give consent and if they could wouldn’t sign up to be stomped to death.

The reason said columnist is talking about the law now is because it has been struck down to protect a man’s right to “fee speech” in the form of dog fight videos.  That isn’t something I have a huge amount of respect for.  Fascinating, isn’t it, that that bastion of public moral, President Clinton, signed the law in on the understanding that it would be limited to “wanton cruelty to animals designed to appeal to a prurient interest in sex.” 

That is do say:

 Women stomping on animal to cause sexual excitement=felony.

Men urging dogs to kill each other to experience sadistic excitement=free speech.

Got that, sex=bad.  Violence=good.  Business as usual.

Animal torture is obscenity, not just a kind of tawdry sex you wouldn’t want your grandmother to know about, but real outright outrageous obscenity.  It is the one true real obscenity of violence just to exercise power, hurting for the enjoyment of hurting.  And free speech is *talking* about it, depicting it fictionally, reporting it journalistically–not doing it or profiting from at as an intermediary trader.  This is not free speech because it is not “depiction” of a crime, it is collusion after the fact for the purposes of profit or ideological approval.

Take away my bleeding heart liberal card if you like, but abstract principles come second to the interests of people and animals who actually can bleed and so have a real claim on my heart.

So if you want to combine kitty cats and high heels, try this lady instead.

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