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It is a strange world we live in, when on the same day that people’s liberties are stripped from them, animal lovers proclaim a victory for the rights of California farm animals:
Prop 2, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, will provide more humane treatment of millions of farm animals by phasing out their confinement in small crates and cages where they can barely move for virtually their entire lives. The law would take effect in 2015 and would require that calves raised for veal, breeding pigs, and egg-laying hens are given enough space to turn around, lie down, and stretch their limbs.
In my humble opinion, if we really cared about animals’ rights, we shouldn’t be eating them.
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This week we’re on California. I’ve been looking forward to this essay, by a writer I admire: William T. Vollmann, and I was expecting something crazy. But the first half of the article is rather tame, with a brief overview of California’s industrial transformation, and then a tour of many towns: Mi-Wuk Village, Chinese Camp, Sausalito, etc. And then, all of a sudden, we came to this passage:
I put on lipstick and earrings, while my sweetheart, who now stood nude in the lovely wig I had bought her, told me to close my eyes until she was ready to surprise me with her new outfit, a dominatrix costume. You see, we were off to spend more expense money at a certain S&M club and dungeon whose workshop that night addressed a question of considerable interests to any loving couple: What are the most effective ways to inflict fear and spicy physical stimulation upon a submissive, employing hot and sharp objects as needed?
The story got interesting, and we read our very first report on an S&M workshop, with breast-slapping, pistol-sucking, electric wand, and a lot of screaming. This is the Vollmann I expected - a Californian, “a believer in the right of any adult to act upon her preferences beyond the point of extremity as long as whatever she does remains consensual.”
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