<$BlogRSDUrl$> The Cyberactivist

Behind the scenes of the fight for the protection of animals and workers and the preservation of the environment - my experiences as a Tyson slaughterhouse hanger/killer turned activist. Exposing the evils of factory farming, by Virgil Butler. If you have arrived here looking for the Tyson stories, view the early archives. Some of them are now featured on the sidebar for easy searching.

Saturday, August 06, 2005

More of My Personal Story, Part Two 

Another aspect of all of this is the conditioning of the male from birth to turn off the emotions of empathy and compassion for "lesser" creatures. Or, maybe not necessarily turn them off so much as suppress them. This was driven into me as a child through hunting as well as the butchering of our own livestock. I was taught that women felt sorry for them, so men did the killing for them and that without this cycle, life would cease to exist. There would be no more food. This was further reinforced at the dinner table each night as everyone, including the women, partook of whatever meat was on the table.

Thus began my desensitization - one single kill at a time.

I even remember bragging to my friends about my kills just as they bragged to me about theirs.

By the time I was 14 and began catching chickens, I was well on my way to being desensitized to suffering. I was to the point to where if I accidentally broke a leg or a wing, I felt bad about it, but would never say anything to anyone about the way I felt.

I was one step closer to becoming a real killer. I just didn't know it yet.

I was, in the words of my stepfather, "becoming a man."

This was a sort of a right of passage - to be cruel and uncaring. I felt wrong about it, but didn't say so for fear of being called the dreaded word of "pussy" or of being made fun of in some other way.

So, I "put my emotions in my pocket" and went on about my business of becoming what I was taught was a "real man."

In fact, I was becoming a cold-blooded killer.

(To be continued...)
Posted by: # Virgil / 3:29 PM
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