Why their new .xxx site may backfire on the animals
A still from a banned PETA Super Bowl ad
By Michael Mountain
PETA’s plan to develop a www.peta.xxx website, where they can reach out to porn viewers by mixing sexually explicit content with animal rights messages and videos, has already drawn comment from hundreds of news and web sites around the world. So, whether they really go ahead and develop such a site is probably beside the point. They’ve already garnered all the mainstream publicity they were looking for. PETA is nothing if not a huge PR and propaganda machine, and keeping itself out there in the daily news cycle is always a first priority.
But if the triple-X site really does manifest, the question is: Will it really help prevent cruelty to animals? I’m not a psychologist, but I’m very uncertain about that. If PETA goes ahead with it, I’m afraid that it’s playing with fire, and that there’s a real possibility people with certain deviant proclivities will, in fact, be turned on by images of cruelty to animals displayed next to pornographic photos and videos. The whole campaign could easily backfire in a dangerous way.
That’s because there’s already a well-known link between cruelty to animals and sexual deviancy. The best known examples of this are the infamous “crush” videos, sold by marketers of porn, in which lanky women wearing stiletto heels and not much else murder kittens and other helpless animals by crushing them under those heels. An attempt by Congress to ban such horror shows was struck down by the Supreme Court and had to be rewritten earlier this year in order not to run afoul of the Court’s somewhat radical interpretation of the First Amendment.
I doubt PETA will be showing that kind of cruelty on their porn site. More likely, they’ll show animals suffering serious abuse at factory farms and vivisection laboratories. But even so, they’ll be walking a fine line.
Some people get a kick out of immobilizing rabbits, chimps, dogs and others, and then causing them pain.
It’s already been shown that certain people who work at factory farms take pleasure in torturing helpless cows, pigs and chickens. The same applies at circuses and some zoos where the trainers get a kick out of beating and whipping elephants and tigers. And it’s the case yet again at vivisection laboratories, where some people get a kick out of immobilizing rabbits, chimps, dogs and others, and then causing them pain.
So there’s every reason to assume that there are people who will get a kick out of watching this kind of torture in the privacy of their own homes, too, especially if it’s on the same website as pornography.
Very simply, cruelty is a turn-on to many people. It shows up in human-to-human sadism, which is also usually tied to bondage (rendering the victim immobile). And while it’s one thing to enjoy erotic fantasies of human bondage (typically between two consenting adults), I’m guessing that watching helpless animals being immobilized and then tortured is a few steps further along toward the extreme and dangerous end of that particular spectrum.
Bondage and sadism are exactly what you see in pictures and videos of animals being tortured at factory farms and in laboratories. Just consider the rows of rabbits (call them bunnies) who are lined up and immobilized in special devices that prevent them even from flinching as caustic chemicals are dropped into their eyes.
To most of us, seeing photos of this kind of torture has a similar effect as seeing a crush video. The reaction is actively physiological – a creeping horror that makes your blood run cold and sends an unpleasant, squirming shiver through you. It’s a chilling horror, whose very iciness lies in the fact that the rabbit, dog, chimpanzee or whoever is tied up, caged, immobilized and helpless. But there are also people whose physiological reaction is different from the rest of us.
It’s one thing for PETA to show ads of young ladies announcing that they’d “rather go naked than wear fur.” It may be altogether another to invite people to a website where they can see pictures and videos of animals in captivity being tortured alongside titillating sex photos and videos.
I’d say to PETA: You’ve got your publicity fix out of the .xxx announcement. Just be careful if you’re really planning to show pornography and animal torture together on a triple-X web site.
PETA, Porn and Propaganda
By Michael Mountain,
Why their new .xxx site may backfire on the animals
A still from a banned PETA Super Bowl ad
By Michael Mountain
PETA’s plan to develop a www.peta.xxx website, where they can reach out to porn viewers by mixing sexually explicit content with animal rights messages and videos, has already drawn comment from hundreds of news and web sites around the world. So, whether they really go ahead and develop such a site is probably beside the point. They’ve already garnered all the mainstream publicity they were looking for. PETA is nothing if not a huge PR and propaganda machine, and keeping itself out there in the daily news cycle is always a first priority.
That’s because there’s already a well-known link between cruelty to animals and sexual deviancy. The best known examples of this are the infamous “crush” videos, sold by marketers of porn, in which lanky women wearing stiletto heels and not much else murder kittens and other helpless animals by crushing them under those heels. An attempt by Congress to ban such horror shows was struck down by the Supreme Court and had to be rewritten earlier this year in order not to run afoul of the Court’s somewhat radical interpretation of the First Amendment.
I doubt PETA will be showing that kind of cruelty on their porn site. More likely, they’ll show animals suffering serious abuse at factory farms and vivisection laboratories. But even so, they’ll be walking a fine line.
It’s already been shown that certain people who work at factory farms take pleasure in torturing helpless cows, pigs and chickens. The same applies at circuses and some zoos where the trainers get a kick out of beating and whipping elephants and tigers. And it’s the case yet again at vivisection laboratories, where some people get a kick out of immobilizing rabbits, chimps, dogs and others, and then causing them pain.
So there’s every reason to assume that there are people who will get a kick out of watching this kind of torture in the privacy of their own homes, too, especially if it’s on the same website as pornography.
Very simply, cruelty is a turn-on to many people. It shows up in human-to-human sadism, which is also usually tied to bondage (rendering the victim immobile). And while it’s one thing to enjoy erotic fantasies of human bondage (typically between two consenting adults), I’m guessing that watching helpless animals being immobilized and then tortured is a few steps further along toward the extreme and dangerous end of that particular spectrum.
Bondage and sadism are exactly what you see in pictures and videos of animals being tortured at factory farms and in laboratories. Just consider the rows of rabbits (call them bunnies) who are lined up and immobilized in special devices that prevent them even from flinching as caustic chemicals are dropped into their eyes.
To most of us, seeing photos of this kind of torture has a similar effect as seeing a crush video. The reaction is actively physiological – a creeping horror that makes your blood run cold and sends an unpleasant, squirming shiver through you. It’s a chilling horror, whose very iciness lies in the fact that the rabbit, dog, chimpanzee or whoever is tied up, caged, immobilized and helpless. But there are also people whose physiological reaction is different from the rest of us.
It’s one thing for PETA to show ads of young ladies announcing that they’d “rather go naked than wear fur.” It may be altogether another to invite people to a website where they can see pictures and videos of animals in captivity being tortured alongside titillating sex photos and videos.
I’d say to PETA: You’ve got your publicity fix out of the .xxx announcement. Just be careful if you’re really planning to show pornography and animal torture together on a triple-X web site.