Anti-Pit Bull Rally Canceled Due to Security Concerns

Anti-Pit Bull Rally Canceled Due to Security Concerns

posted by DOMINIC HOLDEN on THU, SEP 1, 2011 at 11:19 AM

Ellen Taft was planning a rally this evening that called for a ban on fighting breeds in Seattle's off-leash areas, but she just sent us two follow-ups to this morning's post. First, the rally is off due to security concerns, says Taft, and she wants to make some clarifications. Second, Taft wants to share with you a short essay that attempts to answer the question, "Why would anyone choose an ugly, un-cuddly dog like a pit-bull?"

Item one:

It is unfortunate that you wrote many factual errors in this story about the rally (posted earlier today). First of all I was not attacked by pit-bulls, but two mixed breed dogs owned by a drug dealer, who later told me that he had vicious dogs to "get the blacks" and that if I had the dogs euthanized that he would "get more dogs and train them to be just as vicious". The dogs charged me, after they bit me from behind, I turned and faced them and swung my shoulder bag at them, the two dogs cowered which Pit-bulls would not have done because in the words of www.PBRC.org they have "terrier" tenacity. The owner was the worst possible owner, but the dogs were not genetically predisposed to kill. It is always a combination of DNA and environment, not just environment.

Also I had a speech prepared in which I quote Pit-bull Rescue Central, which agrees with most of what the Protection of Animals and People Act does. I certainly was not going to quote from an as yet non-existent online petition.

Unfortunately, the rally has been canceled because Seattle Security felt that the liability would be too much, so I was unable to hire off-duty police to guard me. Neither Animal Control nor the police department would send anyone.

We need public hearings.

In item two, Taft compares pit bulls owners and their dogs to Beauty and the Beast:

Out of all the physically attractive, cuddly breeds of dogs in the world, why would anyone choose an ugly, un-cuddly dog like a pit-bull? A dog selectively bred for generations to fight other dogs and bears? A dog which empties an off-leash area in record time, makes people shun their owners, and involves a huge liability risk?

In the press recently pit-bulls have now reached Victimhood status. “They are misunderstood, they only need the love of a good person (generally a woman) in order to become rehabilitated and reveal their essential goodness benefitting the individual rehabilitating them, and society in general.” is the essence of the media message.

It seems that a recurring archetype is behind this phenomenon-namelyBeauty and The Beast. In Western literature, the Beauty and the Beastarchetype is played out in a number of fairy tales: obviously La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast), in Beatrice and Benedict in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, in Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice and in Jane and Mr. Rochester in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

Each of these heroines represents a marginalized woman, not completely accepted by the society in which she lives, because of some culturally defined handicap, and therefore has no status within her milieu, resulting in diminished marriage potential. Violence is the trait the “beast-men” all have in common. The woman’s status is reversed when she tames the violence in the beast. She, thereby, scores off other women, by demonstrating that her sexual allure is greater than theirs. The “beast man” still strikes fear into everybody else, except the woman who has rehabilitated him. Mr. Darcy’s demeanor curbs the contemptuous behavior, directed towards Elizabeth, by the Bingley sisters, Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

The Beauty and the Beast archetype is being expressed by modern victimized women in the new fad of cheerleading for pit-bulls. Like Mr. Darcy, a pit-bull can be used to give one a false sense of enhanced self-esteem, as a status symbol among women, and to intimidate the rest of society.