Chamber of Horrors: Why I Blocked PETA and Other Animal Rights Organizations

"Animals go into slaughterhouses and come out in pieces, and people like to think something humane happens along the way." This powerful quote by activist Larry Fisher embodies the psychology that must be in place in order for us to continue to torture and kill animals while still enjoying sound sleep each night. This disconnect is a necessary psychological tool of our own survival. Any human with half a soul simply could not face the horrors of animal abuse in this terrifying world and continue to remain sane. We all push the facts from our minds so that we may continue to live, laugh, love, and sleep well.

But social media has made it possible for animal rights organizations to punch us all in the face every day with the facts. Horrific videos and still images of animals in the throes of terror and death are everywhere, fed through the stream of news feeds and platforms like Instagram and Facebook. People like myself, who follow these agencies on social media, are fed these chamber of horror images daily. We look, cringe, cry, and change our ways.

Last night, while scrolling though my Instagram feed, I was confronted with a video posted by PETA2, the world's largest youth animal rights organization. An undercover activist had entered an angora farm, where tens of thousands of rabbits are kept alive and 'harvested' for their fur for fashion clothing.

Since fur grows from the skin, and will grow back once its removed, the rabbits are kept alive so that their fur can be harvested over and over. To keep costs down, the protocol for harvest is streamlined to the bare bones. A rabbit is laid across a plank, his arms and legs are stretched to the limit to tighten the skin, and then tied front and back. A man sits on top of the rabbit's outstretched legs, and with his hands, yanks the fur in great chunks from the animal's skin. The pulling is fast and brutal, like the plucking of a dead chicken. The skin tears with each pull, and blood oozes from the wounds. But that's not the worst of it.

This video had sound. The rabbit's screams were non-stop and execrable. With each violent tearing of fur, the rabbit opened his mouth unnaturally wide, eyes bulging far out of their sockets, and let out a gut-wrenching shriek that would pierce the mind of anyone within earshot. Over and over and over again. It was surreal. It was a human-like scream. I never knew rabbits were capable of making such sound.

Last week, I came across a video released by the group BUAV, also one of the animal rights organizations I followed online. This one took us undercover into a fox fur farm, where young foxes with thick fur are submerged in boiling water to loosen their skin before being skinned alive, then tossed - still alive, bleeding, steam rising from their blistered skin - into giant garbage bins, where they die excruciatingly slowly. 

This video was the stuff of nightmares. On top of one writhing garbage pile of still breathing, skinless foxes, one young fox, eyes still open and darting around in terror, was looking into the camera and screaming, over and over. His agony was ablaze. Have you ever heard a puppy shriek in pain? Take that sound and amplify it a thousand times.

Neither video was posted with a trigger warning, an opportunity for a viewer to opt out of watching. They were on a continuous roll, sound on. Both videos, of the rabbit and the fox, left me ill for days. 

I didn't sleep last night. If I drifted off for a few minutes, the moment I woke, I heard that rabbit screaming. I saw his mouth, wide open in a paroxysm of terror, his eyes bulging from their sockets. I didn't sleep for several nights last week either. The screaming fox with the terror-stricken eyes kept me awake.

I solemnly believe that humans are the most compassionate species on the planet. But we are also the most violent. The ways in which we torture animals for unnecessary commodities like fur, leather, meat, milk, wool, keychains, bone, sexual gratification, and aphrodisiacs is the stuff of Hell. Driven by greed, animal industries thrive despite everything that science has unconditionally confirmed about animal consciousness and their capacity for suffering. We just keep abusing and killing, even though we know better.

It's tempting to hate humans for this. And videos like the two I just described would prompt anyone to feel that way. The intents and purposes of these broadcasts is to make us aware of what's happening, to make us think, and provoke change. That's good work. It's the work of our better selves. Living in denial won't fix a thing. 

Slaughterhouses and fur farms are positioned far, far away from our homes, schools, playgrounds, parks, and places of work for good reason. No one wants to see, smell, and hear death. We don't want to; and meat, dairy, and fur producers definitely don't want us to.

I recognize the validity and necessity of these images, the need for their existence. But I have to shield myself from now these manifestations. Maybe my sensibility is too sharp. Maybe my mind is too weak. Maybe my own traumas have made me vulnerable to the suffering of others in such a way that I can't draw a survival line between my suffering and theirs. I haven't a clue. And right now, sleepless and grieving, I honestly don't care.

At 2:30 this morning, while my husband slept beside me, I got up and went to our home computer and unfollowed, unfriended, and blocked from all my social media platforms all the animal rights organizations that do such vital work to tell us what we need to know and end animals' suffering. Social media has made it possible for well-meaning animal welfare organizations to pound us daily with repulsive images. I understand why they do it, and I support their intentions. But I have to turn away from this spectacle, or I'll never sleep again.

I'm not closing my awareness. Just my eyes, and maybe just for now. As a vegan and animal rights activist, I walk the walk I wish others would at least try. I was persuaded years ago. I know what's happening around us. I've made wholesale changes in my life that reflect that. I speak, write, and plead for the animals. I live with peoples' perceptions that I'm odd, silly, uninformed, stupefyingly ultra-liberal, not attentive enough to human welfare, and even mentally unsound. It all comes with the territory. I have no problem with any of it.

These far-from-nuanced undercover videos will continue to reach the uninformed, and alter their lives. Their shock will be followed by contemplation, and then, hopefully, change. I envision a future of this planet in which animal torture at the hands of human beings is a distant, harrowing memory, a source of collective societal shame. Future generations, who will have forged new and compassionate connections with other species, will wonder how we could have been the barbarians that we were. They'll shake their heads in disbelief. I see it coming. We're evolving, yes we are.

Barbie xo