Dog Fighting - Respectable tradition or ugly sport?

of course i don't. not personally. i couldn't sit through a minute of watching it. but i'm not THEM. i don't quite understand it, but i AM trying to find a perspective on the issue that isn't based on my cultural biases. starving, beating, terrorizing, etc, are not things i believe in. but there's enough people who draw no distinction between me hunting and anything discussed here that i have to wonder how much of my personal stance on it is purely social in construct. i mean, they'd likely see the abuse of these dogs and the abuse of food cattle in much the same light and i have to wonder if they're wrong.

 

Are you comparing forcing caged animals into a frenzy for entertainment to wild animals competing for females and territory?

I personally feel that they are 2 different things.

 

as i said earlier in this thread i dont think that sog fighting can be justified in any way shape or form..

i think that the whole meat eating argument should be for a different thread..

 

sorry, i was responding to mrs oh.

 

sure they are. but human enjoyment of it is all one thing.

 

First off, any food cattle treated as such are wrong. Secondly cows aren't forced to fight to the death aside from bullfighting which I've also condoned.

Secondly, there are other cultural diffences which are also happening in parts of the world where dog fighting is practiced commonly, which are also wrong. Like slavery.

Just because something is ritualized in another part of the world, doesn't mean it automatically deserves apathy. It's just their culture. Cruelty is not culture.

What's wrong is wrong, and shouldn't be tolerated.

 

i don't think so, either. but i don't think we're all right, either. i'm wandering a mental path here and finding a whole lot of things i don't think are right at all. dog fighting just being the start of it.

 

And people enjoy some horrific things. That doesn't mean they should be condoned.

 

and cruelty IS frequently cultural

 

No, but this isn't about societal norms. This is about the very real issue of dogfighting which is vile no matter what the social views about it are.

 

Then that element of culture has no right to exist.

 

i dont think i completely understnad what kc is saying, but i dont think she is saying that dog fighting is justified or ok..

but its a morality thing, which is cultural. we all know that no person with a heart would ever force a dog to fight. or stone a woman to death. or put a gladiator in the ring. but no matter how much you would like to think that we have "evolved" from our primal insticts, sports such a dog fighting just show that stuff like that is always going to be there no matter how morally wrong it is

 

i feel you getting incredibly angry at me. but i'm going from a more philisophical than emotional standpoint. i'm not going to stop hunting. and people are going to continue believing that my enjoyment of it is cruel and sick while they continue to eat their store bought burger. taking an animal that's treated it like a pet and subjecting it to a hammer to the head doesn't seem all that great to me either. which is why i decided to go the more natural route in the first place. at least i accept that i'm forcing suffering, forcing myself to see it. suffering is suffering, whatever the cause for it. i'm just trying to understand why people would continue such a thing as dogfighting. i know enough people consider me unreasonable. am i being just as bigotted?

 

no it doesnt. but you cant deny that it is there

i am soo sensitive to this subject. i have had pit bulls all my life. i am no stranger to animal abuse neglect or any sort of violence. and it makes me sick that shit like this is here for sport

 

nicely put. i don't quite understand it, but it persists. in every culture (in some form) to this day. WHY? what is the purpose? what do they get out of it? is there some other way we can address that? is there something else we can do that will alleviate this sort of thing? i mean, besides getting on a high horse and pitching a fit?

 

I'm not angry with you at all, I'm not sure where you got that. Here will it help if I throw in ol' smiley?

No, I don't think enjoying hunting is wrong if you do it for substanence. I am less then thrilled with it if it's for the purpose of sport, however I still see clear and I mean freaking clear distinctions between hunting and watching and betting two dogs rip each other apart.

 

Just because people eat meat it doesn't make it ok for anybody to do whatever they want.

It's like saying "You eat meat, so Jeffrey Dahmer was an ok guy who just liked to eat what he killed."

 

even if it werent a public participation sport violence in some way or another will always be the undercurrent of our society. it is a fucked up thing..

i beleive i told you guys about this when it happened, but when i was in 10th grade i used to walk home along the railroad tracks.. one day i saw two dogs tied to the railroad tracks. well, half of those two dogs. their other halves were flung in all different directions. these dogs were someones pets and someone just decided to tie them to some railroad tracks with electrical tape. what i saw and the smell of it like seriously scarred me for life..

and then a couple years ago my brother got locked up. he never told any of us that he had gotten a cat. but a couple months after he was locked up my mom gave me the spare key to his apt and had me go get some of his things.. what i found there was fucking disgusting. i will never know why he didnt fucking tell one of us about the cat. sometimes i wonder if he did it on purpose..

 

i do, too. but as someone who has held an animal's heart, liver, stomach, whatever in their hand....sometimes i wonder what the difference is. i DO have a bloodlust. so does much of society. yeah, it really fucking chaps us raw to see soemthing as beautiful as a dog put through that for nothing that we actually understand. but not everyone is just in it for money, as evidenced by people who put other animals through it for nothing but bragging rights. i don't get where it comes from, but i've identified this cruelty in enough people in my life to know i'm not the only one. it's just a variation at this point. i dunno. it's bizarre and mind paralyzing for me.

 

that was for lode, btw.

mitten, chill. seriously.