The last week of my life has sucked.
I'd been super busy these holidays until last Wednesday, when it all suddenly... stopped. I've forgotten how to be with myself, and where I would normally rejoice in the freedom and watch movies/read books/paint, I have been filling the vacuum by reading the Daily Telegraph (srsly), stalking facebook (UGH!) or watching crap on youtube. Not all of it's crap, actually, Jane Eyre definitely isn't, and I found these old 50's educational documentaries for young ladehs. They are so funny! Anyway, among the other pathetic things I've done in the last few days, I started re-reading posts here, some for the first time since they were written. Something is definitely wrong with me because when I got to the part about street dogs in this one, I was suddenly overcome and just... burst into tears! I'm not usually a weepy person at all, and I am emotionally quite uncomplicated, so it's not like I had something repressed inside, or anything like that.
Eventually I was back to my normal self, albeit a little bemused. Then I started thinking. Why is human society so pathetic when it comes to taking animal rights seriously? On the one hand, animal activism isn't taboo like environmentalism or feminism might sometimes be. It doesn't raise eyebows in the same way, but unfortunately it doesn't draw much more than lukewarm responses either. Practically everyone will AWWW!! at cute kitties on the net, but why aren't there any hacks on campus, inflamed about their plight in the same way they would for refugees or marriage equality? No subjects taught that address the issue? Well I assume that's the case, haven't actually checked. Why aren't they having any spirited debate *cough* on QandA about the barbarity of vivisection? What about the people that stop me in Glebe/Broadway? They're always on about poverty unless it's the Wilderness Society (which I've actually signed up to, they seem solid) who always feel the need to make their selling point: "imagine, if your kids can't get to see the Great Barrier Reef...". I have this problem generally with a lot of green campaigns, the human-centricity of it all. Most crucially, just HOW is something as vile as hunting for leisure not criminalised? Yes I've heard the "overpopulation" story... well, there's also an overpopulation of Indians in India, let's all pull out our shotguns and take them down, why don't we?
It's not considered politically incorrect to speak crudely of animals, as it is o women or coloured people, but both of these until recently used to be acceptable... so might we hope that things will change in the future? Nah. Our superiority complex is entrenched and the animals don't have voices to fight back with, so I doubt it. Not to mention that it also goes against the interests of capital. I assume that in part, people have been desensitised by well, eating them. I also partly blame the Abrahamic religions (I'm sorry guys, but this really irks me), specifically, the bit where Adam and Eve get chucked out of Eden and God says they are his own beloved creatures and they have priority over the rest. Who knows, maybe He was being sarcastic but it slipped past them. I really don't know, but this story doesn't make any sense to me.
I have definitely found my calling in ecofeminism. Maybe. I'll explain what that is in a later post, it's a little complicated and the wikipedia article on it is a bit rubbish.
Good night my lovelies <3
EDIT: bored, so imma add more words. Soz, flippant/pointless:
I want to write about the third-wave feminist influences on Indian movies these days... what with this Sunny Leone girl (who's like... not even that pretty) and The Dirty Picture, etc. etc. I haven't actually seen an Indian film in months though. hmmm
I don't think I will ever want to be an author again. Writing stories is even more painful than marking them.
I'd been super busy these holidays until last Wednesday, when it all suddenly... stopped. I've forgotten how to be with myself, and where I would normally rejoice in the freedom and watch movies/read books/paint, I have been filling the vacuum by reading the Daily Telegraph (srsly), stalking facebook (UGH!) or watching crap on youtube. Not all of it's crap, actually, Jane Eyre definitely isn't, and I found these old 50's educational documentaries for young ladehs. They are so funny! Anyway, among the other pathetic things I've done in the last few days, I started re-reading posts here, some for the first time since they were written. Something is definitely wrong with me because when I got to the part about street dogs in this one, I was suddenly overcome and just... burst into tears! I'm not usually a weepy person at all, and I am emotionally quite uncomplicated, so it's not like I had something repressed inside, or anything like that.
Eventually I was back to my normal self, albeit a little bemused. Then I started thinking. Why is human society so pathetic when it comes to taking animal rights seriously? On the one hand, animal activism isn't taboo like environmentalism or feminism might sometimes be. It doesn't raise eyebows in the same way, but unfortunately it doesn't draw much more than lukewarm responses either. Practically everyone will AWWW!! at cute kitties on the net, but why aren't there any hacks on campus, inflamed about their plight in the same way they would for refugees or marriage equality? No subjects taught that address the issue? Well I assume that's the case, haven't actually checked. Why aren't they having any spirited debate *cough* on QandA about the barbarity of vivisection? What about the people that stop me in Glebe/Broadway? They're always on about poverty unless it's the Wilderness Society (which I've actually signed up to, they seem solid) who always feel the need to make their selling point: "imagine, if your kids can't get to see the Great Barrier Reef...". I have this problem generally with a lot of green campaigns, the human-centricity of it all. Most crucially, just HOW is something as vile as hunting for leisure not criminalised? Yes I've heard the "overpopulation" story... well, there's also an overpopulation of Indians in India, let's all pull out our shotguns and take them down, why don't we?
It's not considered politically incorrect to speak crudely of animals, as it is o women or coloured people, but both of these until recently used to be acceptable... so might we hope that things will change in the future? Nah. Our superiority complex is entrenched and the animals don't have voices to fight back with, so I doubt it. Not to mention that it also goes against the interests of capital. I assume that in part, people have been desensitised by well, eating them. I also partly blame the Abrahamic religions (I'm sorry guys, but this really irks me), specifically, the bit where Adam and Eve get chucked out of Eden and God says they are his own beloved creatures and they have priority over the rest. Who knows, maybe He was being sarcastic but it slipped past them. I really don't know, but this story doesn't make any sense to me.
I have definitely found my calling in ecofeminism. Maybe. I'll explain what that is in a later post, it's a little complicated and the wikipedia article on it is a bit rubbish.
Good night my lovelies <3
EDIT: bored, so imma add more words. Soz, flippant/pointless:
I want to write about the third-wave feminist influences on Indian movies these days... what with this Sunny Leone girl (who's like... not even that pretty) and The Dirty Picture, etc. etc. I haven't actually seen an Indian film in months though. hmmm
I don't think I will ever want to be an author again. Writing stories is even more painful than marking them.
