I live on a lake in a forest in mid-northern Ontario. It’s bad enough that people come here to kill animals they have no need to kill, in often painful ways, which they do every weekend all summer long, when the animals are struggling as it is, given what we’ve done to their homes and their food supplies, and call it sport no less, but yesterday I was struck—
Rounding a point in my kayak, I saw a little boy, maybe six years old, standing in a boat holding a fishing rod (his father was standing behind him). The boy saw us and pointed with delight, seeing my little dog perched on the prow like a little hood ornament. I smiled. But then he turned back, no doubt reprimanded by his father to concentrate, to pay attention, and resumed trying to kill.
How does that little boy turn from being delighted to see Keezi on the prow to trying to kill another animal? There must be a disconnect. He must not think of the barbed hook tearing at the lip of the fish, he must not think of its pain as he pulls the fish by that hook in its lip through the water as it struggles to get away, then up out of the water where it will contort itself trying to get free, unable to breathe—
And that’s how, I realized, six year old boys become twelve, and eighteen, and twenty-four year old boys—who rape. Oblivious to the woman’s screams of pain, to her squirming to get free—
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https://thehumaneleague.org.uk/article/do-fish-feel-pain
https://sentientmedia.org/do-fish-feel-pain/
Need I provide links that prove women are sentient as well?
