At least in my state, it is illegal to use certain types of traps because they are considered inhumane. You also must use a certain minimum caliber of firearm for larger game, so that the animal has less chance of wandering off and dying, suffering or just being wounded.
I see those as little more than symbolical/political gestures for the benefit of those of us who care, society at large still tolerates the unnecessary suffering & killing of beasts just the same. You think hunter's bullets, arrows/bolts, spears, hooks and traps get one-hit-kills like clockwork? Do you know of many humane ways to kill a snake?
Perspective: even the ammunition used by military worldwide undergoes the same sort of scrutiny and regulation in its design in order to lessen the suffering of injured combatants, yet you'll get your legs shot off just the same.
And the whole point of hunting (for food) is NOT to have the animal suffer because a heightened adrenaline level taints the meat.
Let's not be naive here, most hunting in the western world(also the porn producing world) is done
for fun, not for food/need.
I don't really see the point of arguing that hunters have reasons to not want the animals to suffer either. Adrenaline tainting the meat? Short of a surprise bullet to the brain I don't know of many ways in which an animal won't die before flooding its system with adrenaline. You think animals in slaughterhouses aren't terrified of what's about to happen? The documentaries/footage shows otherwise and yet the meat tastes fine just the same. Evidently any desire a hunter has to lessen an animal's suffering is made irrelevant by
his desire to frigging kill it to begin with. Sounds like one of the absurd pro-hunting arguments IMO.
And it's funny you should bring up tainted meat too. Do you eat pork? Because pretty much any male pig raised as livestock had its balls cruelly ripped off as a baby, leaving it with a bleeding stump just because the testosterone would otherwise give the meat a lesser flavor. Do you think that's humane? Piglets are even as cute as puppies yet
nobody gives a shit because nobody has to watch it. We throw away half the food we produce too, so how much of that suffering, how many of those deaths were really necessary?
And on TV based hunting shows, you do not see the animal take the hit or the arrow strike. I don't know if it's the FCC that prevents that or if it's the decision of the producers or broadcasters.
Don't know about TV but I've seen documentaries about rich westerners paying good money to kill captivity-bred lions and such and they show the killings and they weren't clean.
I assume on Fear Factor they eat worms, grubs or whatever - not mammals or even rodents. I've never seen the show. Even if she had me tied up and Megan Jones shot me with her little BB gun, I couldn't be forced to watch reali-trash TV. But I'm relatively certain that under no circumstances would these shows be allowed to torture so much as a snake, a gold fish or a frog without PETA (or law enforcement) coming down on their heads.
Pretty sure PETA has complained, but then they'd even complain about disney movies using furry characters, they've made themselves irrelevant.
On fear factor you see them eat live insects, animal semen and feces, blend frogs/amphibians, bite live rodents, smack around pigs and often the contestants will accidentally roll on/stomp live rats, snakes, frogs etc (at the same time they won't show the contestants puking because that would be too gross for TV apparently).
Nobody cares because:
-None of those animals are cute.
-It's not porn
It's not just fear factor either, I've seen people killing/eating live animals on food shows in exotic locations. If these girls had decapitated chickens, killed vermin, skinned rabbits and boiled live lobsters for a cooking show instead nobody would have given a shit and I'm sure PETA regularly complains about those shows too. To an insect getting crushed for a video it doesn't really matter whether the spectator is going to be masturbating to it as a fetish or laughing his ass off at the look of disgust on some reality tv bozo's face as he chews on it. The animal is suffering just the same.
Not knowing what was actually in the full sosbarn videos(the previews were obscene to me but not what I'd consider animal abuse/cruelty) it's hard to judge whether this was a legitimate case of protecting animal rights rather than persecuting the vilest of pornographers for doing something that wasn't illegal and that other media get away with doing.
But going off what we do know of how society treats livestock and vermin I have a hard time buying this narrative that these arrests were primarily out of concern towards invertebrates, rats, chickens and rabbits, especially considering that they arrested the girls after letting the statute of limitations pass. They weren't really interested in trialing them for a crime(if there was one), they just wanted to send a clear message to pornographers to stop making this kind of garbage.
On the one hand I'm glad since I care about animals(the cute ones that don't eat people at least) and like the principle that animals shouldn't be harmed/killed for something as trivial as entertainment/pornography. On the other hand I am suspicious of any attempt at censoring or ostracizing pornography. Imagine a college cop who lets white kids jaywalk all the time but suddenly arrests a gypsy kid for it. Would you see it as an overall victory for road safety or discrimination against a minority?
But yes, you are correct: my question more focuses on how far is too far for certain fetish videos.
That's the real question and a very hard one considering pornography hardly has an objective legal definition to begin with. Until it is clearly defined/recognized then the only way to limit what can be shown/done in pornography will be to limit all media in general/freedom of speech. If reality TV can show it should it still be illegal for porn to do so?
Obscenity is decided based on community standards, as determined by the Supreme Court.
And the "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value, prurient interest" schtick simply boils it down to the standards of a particular judge/jury, IMO it's a useless definition since it allows them to apply double standards. People vomiting in a teen comedy? A-Ok! People vomiting in a porno? Obscene! In most european countries if something is illegal to depict it is explicitly stated so in the law, otherwise you can have at it. Of course they try to make anything they find gross illegal just the same, they just have to find a different reason for banning it(BDSM for promoting violence against women, zooporn for animal torture, scat for health hazard).
Right now, the (selective) prosecutions by the current Holder-led DoJ seem based on factors such as race, gender, religion and political party affiliation - sadly, no different than many of the other crooked Attorneys General that we've had. I have a VERY libertarian view on the matter. Although there is a great deal of fetish porn that I do not care for and would never watch, as long as the people involved are of an age of consent and are capable of consenting to the activities that they are engaging in, I say have at it.
Yeah, freedom ends where other's rights begin, the only rational way.
But once you involve animals, children or the (mentally) incapacitated, in my view you are a predatory animal and may deserve what you get.
I wouldn't equate a human being's
right to have consented to sex on the same level as a beast's inability to consent to anything. We don't grant them the same rights as human beings, starting with the same rights to life as has been the topic of this thread. Considering Mr Ed has no say on whether he's turned into glue/dogfood I'd say getting sucked off by Ava Devine is pretty low on the list of transgressions against his well-being.
To make my point even clearer, there is a reason why many of the men in M/f-Maledom scenes wear hoods or disguises and the women in F/m-Femdom porn don't have to. Obama/Holder *may* pay a visit to your door if you are a dominant male actor doing an identical scene that a dominant female actress has done, if the woman is in a sub position. In the Megan Jones case, a male actor is the same position would surely have been castigated and would likely be in hiding, if not jail, right now. Max Hardcore, anyone?
As in many other areas, Obama/Holder seem content to let certain types of people run wild, as long as they are on their list of "protected members of society". My fear is that their selective and irresponsible actions now may eventually lead to another self-imposed Cambria List that is MUCH more restrictive than the original one. And that may affect some of the fetish porn that I happen to enjoy. The pendulum always swings back.
As long as the statistics say that the majority of inter-gender violence(sexual or otherwise) is perpetrated by males there will be an argument against pornography for promoting objectification/violence/etc against women, and you can't have a different opinion without looking like an asshole.
Just have women start raping men more often, statistical problem solved. :rofl: