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RaveWomen and animals
I'm a sucker for animal rescue stuff (shows, YouTube videos, charities, &c.) and you can't help but notice that it's, oh, 90% or more women.* Whether it's in shows like Hope for Wildlife, or Dodo videos, or you look at who's organizing animal welfare fundraisers or adoption events, or rescue and sanctuary contacts, it's almost ALWAYS women.
Yay, women!
*I'd like to give a special shout-out to lesbians, who seem to really stand out when it comes to special needs animals.
Unpaid labor? Of course it's mostly women! I personally have a bunch of rescue pets.
I saw a video online of a crow who landed on a person and made an instant connection, and then documented many future interactions... the person was hardly on screen and for some reason I felt warmth towards them despite my absolute indifference to all men... yeah, it was a TIF. The handle at the end was @ _____transguy. Her female socialization came through despite the beard, voice etc. Animals are TERFs too🤷♀️
I ended up with an abandoned crow as a child. We called him Russell/Sheryl as we never got them sexed. Fantastic creatures.
OMG I love crows (obviously lol). The family who hangs out in our yard are like honorary pets who are spoiled rotten! They are so cute and entertaining though.
Aaah, I love your username!
I don't have much of a garden in my own place, I have a wee family of blackbirds instead.
Very jealous of your crow action! Say hello for me :)
Hahaha! So you and a crow both knew instantly. But apparently there's no real difference/it's impossible to tell. You must be a Psychic Corvid Queen!
And men absolutely love to torture animals.
They punch, hit, kick, throw, etc family pets all the time. So many rescue dogs are afraid of men for precisely this reason. I think men who do this are aware they could go to jail if they physically assaulted their family, so the family pet is a more acceptable target. Also, other human beings are clever enough to sometimes fight back. A family pet is typically much smaller than the man, and it's been raised to love and obey him. Sure, the dog might bite back, but he can easily subdue it.
There are also way too many videos of men setting cats in cages on fire, or cutting off their tails, or putting them in sacks and drowning them.
I mean, men love murder and violence. Killing animals for fun is a major hobby of men, and it's state sanctioned violence. The state literally hands out licenses for men to go kill animals for fun. They take pleasure and pride in how many animals they successfully kill. They think this has ZERO effect on their psyches overall, but I highly disagree.
Then think about how many serial killers and rapists started out by torturing and executing animals. I'm going to be honest, I consider smashing harmless bugs and other small creatures as part of this phenomenon. I've never seen a little girl take pleasure in burning ants alive with a magnifying glass, but I've seen entire groups of little boys cackle with pleasure and glee at the torture of those ants.
Yes to all of this.
As a girl I used to constantly rescue bugs from boys, and sometimes when I found a cool one and I showed it to them they would squish it in my hand, something is very wrong with them from a young age.
It's very common for male abusers to target a woman's pets as a way to further the abuse. TBH it is common as a abuse strategy regardless of gender but obviously thats the most common instance and males tend to be much more depraved about it. There are now orgs in some places that will foster animals for women escaping abuse since a lot of women won't leave or go to a shelter if they know they have to leave a pet behind with someone who will hurt or kill them.
It is bizarrely normalized for boys to kill and torture animals. In modern day US its mostly only excused now if its bugs and stuff but taking potshots at birds and squirrels, killing and tormenting frogs, trapping animals in pits or makeshift traps for funsies used to be common boy pasttimes that were widely endorsed. By this I dont mean learning to hunt small game for food with a relative or something. They used to openly sell pretty functional slingshots and low power rifles with the expectation boys would use them to hurt and kill creatures as a fun kids game. Some girls do this kind of thing but it is markedly rare, its fascinating that girls interested in boy stuff usually don't cross this line and girls who play with boys generally aren't accepted into this kind of play even if they are allowed by boys to play sports and roughhouse with them.
Its very taboo to talk about. Not enough women think about this secretive world of male children and adolescents and that many men around them were like this as boys even if they stopped at some point. Its a kind of homosocial initiation rite that boys develop among themselves and oftentimes girls don't see the worst of it even though sometimes boys will do it AT female children to make them angry or upset. Its a unspoken way girls learn their moral and personal boundaries are considered inferior and can be crossed without being able to do anything about it. You can't raise an animal from the dead if its been killed and no one seeks justice for these small creatures. Girls who witness this just have to watch helplessly
yes yes yes yes yes why is it always the little girls admiring and caring for small animals and little boys trying to kill the little animals??!
It's as if that's the way they learn to asset their domination as children, by killing the little creatures we care for. It's the way for the small male humans to go "I am become death the destroyer of worlds" and feel powerful by literally extinguishing little creature's existences, they feel like their existence is more important than theirs, and that what they care for (themselves) is more important than what little girls care for. It sets them up for the rest of male socialization afterwards. It's the base upon which all the other shit is built.
I constantly see little boy's agressiveness on the playgrounds but nobody ever seems to want to recognize it or talk about it. Male violence starts somewhere, and it starts very very young.
Women have a more profound and sensitive connection with nature, the earth and the other creatures of the earth. We understand that we share this world. Animals often respond instinctively to women. They recognise our intuition.
Partly we are socialised to care for and nurture other beings. But partly, I believe, we are just more in touch with the natural world because we are female: we are the creators, the life-givers, our bodies are in tune with the natural cycles of life. Because we have the capacity to create life, we have a greater understanding of its value.
I think a lot of is social too - we are ourselves oppressed due to our ability to be pregnant and give birth, and we can see (whether we vocalize it this way or not) that the environment is likewise oppressed for her reproductive capacities.
We see that other animals are sentient, that they feel, they think, and we know firsthand how our foremothers have often been disregarded, seen as less intelligent and therefore less deserving of rights. We don't want to hurt a creature that is sentient like us. I honestly think it's a huge contributor to the fact that a HUGE number of vegetarians/vegans and the original humane societies were and are dominated by women.