I missed the memo where pldennison was appointed master of the thread.
The OP was about the running of the bulls and NOT about bullfighting. Other folks injected bullfighting which is an entirely different topic. Then Sparc compares it to other customs in other cultures which might seems peculiar to other cultures. I think it is very valid and very relevant. Either that or we stick with the running of the bulls.
Grrr . . . I am going to try to explain this in small words.
A straw man argument occurs when someone attacks a position which is different from the one that has been expressed. Sparc stated, in essence, “People are upset about bullfighting but aren’t concerned with rodeos or with killing snakes because they’re yucky.”
But nobody in the thread has said anything remotely like that. That opinion is not the opinion of any of the posters to this thread, as far as he knows, and it certainly isn’t the position of PETA, either. So who is he arguing with? Wouldn’t it make more sense to – I don’t know – find out what people’s opinions on rodeos and snake-killing are?
I was very disappointed when I was in Spain last year to find we had missed the bullfighting season by less than a week. Always wanted to see one; maybe next time I’m over there.
At any rate, I don’t see bullfighting as any worse than the way animals are treated in any other country. I don’t think you can make a reasonable argument that a bull killed in the arena suffers any worse than a bull raised and slaughtered in a modern stockyard. Certainly, more cattle gets slaughtered on any given day in the stockyards than are killed in an entire season’s worth of bullfights. And for no less selfish a reason: I don’t need to eat a steak, I just enjoy the taste. So that’s one cow that died purely for my enjoyment. And in a bullfight, it’s not some sanitary process that takes place miles away, out of sight, so that I can buy my nicely shrinked-wrapped steak at the supermarket without ever having to see the animal that gave up it’s life for my enjoyment. Bullfighting isn’t any more barbaric than McDonalds, but at least it’s a bit more honest about the whole thing.
And, at the end of the day, it’s just a bunch of fucking cows. Aren’t there more important things in the world to care about?
>> A straw man argument occurs when someone attacks a position which is different from the one that has been expressed.
You mean like the OP talking about the running of the bulls and a bunch of people going ballistic about bullfighting?
pldennison didn’t “brush off” Sparc’s argument, he refuted it. Sparc was (and is, it seems), building straw men and beating the holy living Hell out of them. This line:
…assumes that the reader thinks snakes are “yucky”, and doesn’t care about this alleged cruelty to them, whatever it entails, because we’re too comfortable in our “upholstered mass consumption reality”. And that’s profoundly offensive because Sparc has no reason to believe, at all, that anyone who could conceivably be reading this thread believes those things.
I don’t intentionally kill insects. I catch them and carry them outside if they are in the house. I’m sure my car kills some when I drive, and I probably step on some accidentally (though I do watch where I walk to avoid doing so when possible) but I most certainly DO hesitate at swatting a fly or a gnat or a spider or an ant or whatever.
Regarding rodeos: I think they are cruel, unneccessary, and I wish they would go away. I don’t attend them or support them in any way.
Regarding slaughterhouses: I’ve been a vegetarian for 16 years, draw your own conclusions.
Regarding bullfighting being part of Spain’s culture: take a huge guess at why I’ll never be returning to Spain? Went once. Hated it. Never will again. And I don’t give a flying turd if it IS part of their culture. It is cruel and morally indefensable. As is dog fighting and cock fighting. As is slavery. As were gladiator fights. There are a lot of things that were once common that are not done anymore. I know that dog & cock fighting are still common and I wish like hell they weren’t. They are sick.
Not killing the bull? Oh yeah it’s SO much more kind to torture them and kill them later rather than on the spot.
Ritual? When you get a signed consent from the bull I may stop rolling my eyes.
I’ll just leave aside any insinuation that I would be building straw men., since that is absolutely ridiculous. sailor got it and so did Gaspode; I’m not building them I am trying to tear them down.
San Fermin needs to be seen in its cultural totality.
So far the only posters that have delivered any contribution towards that direction are; Gaspode, Matt, Johnny, sailor and myself.
Every single other post has been about the atrocity of bullfighting or at best the idiocy of running with the bulls. Mostly however the posts have been about our right to be cruel to other animals or rather the right we do not have to be thus in conjunction with bullfights. That has something to do with San Fermin no doubt, but what the flaming fuck?
You pull my leg and yank my chain, no? I ask you once Pedro, and then I tell you twice; San Fermin is more than just a bullfight or the running of the bulls. It is also not just a fraternity dumbass event on a BASE jump level level with the added element of cruelty to bovines. IT’S A SERIOUS FUCKING CATHOLIC HOLIDAY for the people of Pamplona.
So either debate me or tell me that the topic has changed, but for the sake of fucking reason and sense, do not ask me to debate something else than the topic announced. Which, however badly phrased seemed to be the validity of the running of the bulls and San Femin.
Sparc
I’ll add this:
I respect Opal’s most recent post for expressing her views and the inalienable right she has to hold those views.
However, could someone, please tell me what the hell that has to do with San Fermin?
See my point?
We are debating straw men.
Sparc
This sentence from the OP was why I chose to respond, and why my response treats the subject of bullfighting.
FWIW, I think that Sparc’s point regarding rodeos and cobras is germane to this topic.
Cultural importance or continuity is, in and of itself, a piss-poor reason to defend anything. A similar argument could, after all, be made for ritual female circumcision/clitorectomy, and I hope to high heaven nobody’s about to defend that.
And as far as the Catholic holiday part of it, perhaps the United States provides an instructive example. A law of general applicability and neutral intent which has the effect of prohibiting a group from exercising some portion of their religion freely is generally not held to be unconstitutional. So, for example, Native Americans prohibited by drug laws from using peyote, or Santeria practitioners prohibited by animal cruelty laws from sacrificing animals, are shit out of luck. I realize something like this probably would not fly in Spain, but there you have it.
Rodeos are detestable, IMO, as is any torturing of an animal for entertainment purposes.
I wasn’t aware that Fedex handled corpses.
“maim”
Oh, and for what it’s worth, Sparc’s cobra/mongoose comparison is most certainly not a strawman, since many, many people ascribe to the “cute and cuddly”/“scaly and icky” distinction he points out. Neither pldennison nor Opal has expressed any such sentiment, however, so it’s perfectly appropriate for them to point out that the criticism does not apply in their cases. That does not negate the argument, however.
I wonder if urban rush hour J-walking will ever become a cultural and spiritual tradition?
I don’t think that that follows. Here’s some of what Sparc wrote:
Bolding mine in both cases.
If those you’s in the bits that I quoted aren’t referring to anyone participating in this thread, then who on are they referring to? Sparc, please by all means be explicit, when you talk about these terrible you’s who are guilty of all sorts of moral hypocracy, then who do you mean?
And if those you’s did not, in fact, refer to anyone currently posting to this thread, then whose arguments are they a refutation of? The entire “cute vs. scaly” argument is an attack on the people making the argument, and not an unjust one if it’s true. But it doesn’t stand alone without a target.
hypocracy? Rule of the hypos? Is that in “Pampalona”?
It reads to me like a generic use of “you.” You know, the informal American equivalent of “one.” YMMV.
I think at least some of the posters need to read up on what happens at a bull fight.
To argue that the animals are not tortured is simply incorrect. They are stabbed in the neck with a series of lances for no other purpose but to cause them pain and, consequently, anger. The “painless death” they eventually receive – some time after this – is only painless if it’s done correctly, which quite often it is not. These are the facts of a bullfight and I don’t believe they admit to dispute by anyone who is honest about what goes on.
I’m not a vegetarian; I love meat. But to torture animals is IMO in all cases morally indefensible. You can make all the arguments you want about the suffering of meat-producing animals, but they are not intentionally tortured with no other goal in mind than to entertain people. So the parallel people should use is not the slaughter of beef cattle, but cock-fighting or dog-fighting – “sports” in which animals are hurt or killed for the entertainment of people. And IMO bullfighting is worse, because at least with cock-fighting or dog-fighting, totally reprehensible as they may be and are, the injuries are not caused by humans directly.
And the argument that worse things are done to other animals in other situations obviously does nothing to make what happens to bulls in bullfights any more justifiable. Two wrongs, or forty wrongs for that matter, don’t make a right.
Culture, my ass. If your “culture” includes the torture of animals, it’s time to redefine it. As COLDFIRE pointed out, all our cultures contain distasteful elements of one kind or another, but that is no reason to continue to embrace them. What’s next: defenders of bear-baiting? Because there’s a fine old Anglo-Saxon “cultural tradition.”
>> Cultural importance or continuity is, in and of itself, a piss-poor reason to defend anything.
Don’t the Indian tribes get to do stuff on that account which is forbidden to the rest of mortals?
Damn, you’re right. Hypocrisy. Hypocrisy hypocrisy hypocrisy.
I think it’s “rule of the relaxed” (to stretch the hyper-hypo duality far out of its intended context).