If Only We Could Talk About Abusing Women Like We Do Abusing Cats [View all]

[ashling]

(and this is not just a way to get a cat picture into GD)

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/25/if-only-we-could-talk-about-abusing-women-like-we-do-abusing-cats/



I’m hoping many of you saw this story about Wendell Overton, a 10-year-old boy who came across a group of boys, ages 5-13, torturing a cat to death and who saved the cat. Because of Wendell’s intervention, Jackson the cat will make a full recovery from being thrown in the air and even run over with a bicycle.

The Outer Banks SPCA says the boy came upon four boys, between the ages of 5 and 13, who were throwing the cat in the air, running over him with their bicycles and squirting an energy drink in his face. view full article

I read about this story in three different places: Jezebel, Huffington Post, and Buzzfeed. I looked at the comments at all three places and found that the comments were restricted to two major themes:

What a great kid Wendell is and how we should all raise our kids like him.
What terrible little shits the cat-torturers were, complete with condemnation of a society that lets this behavior flourish.

Missing from the discussion: Wondering if the cat was asking for it by being so cute and easy to torture. Blaming male hormones or implying that because it’s so sexually gratifying to torture a cat, some boys can’t help themselves. Making excuses for the cat torturers by saying that they don’t understand the difference between playing with a cat who wants to play with you and torturing it. Claiming that while cat torture is bad, we shouldn’t be too eager to punish the cat torturers.

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I’m guessing you can see where I’m going with this. To be blunt, men who rape women do so for the same reason that boys who torture cats do so: Because they’ve been raised to believe that dominating others makes you a big, tough man, and they take pleasure in exerting power over this being they’ve been taught is beneath them. Most boys don’t torture animals, but we aren’t confused about those who do. Even if they do find some kind of visceral satisfaction from it, we don’t think they’re confused and simply think they’re, say, preparing a meal. When boys torture animals in groups, we know that there was probably a ringleader who used pressure to “be a man” to get the other boys to go along with it. We also know some boys torture animals in secret, taking pleasure in the conquest of these animals. If you understand why boys torture animals, you understand why teenage boys and men rape. The same codes of masculinity and sadism are underlying the behavior, and I’m guessing the overlap between the two behaviors is really high, with a lot of youthful animal torturers growing up to become sexual predators who get a thrill out of conquering women, especially considering how much more cunning you need to dominate and control a woman than an animal.