Crush Videos
"Crush videos" depict insects or small animals being crushed, usually by women wearing spiked
high heels and other fetishistic garb. This obscure genre and its tiny subculture have lately been
targetted by animal rights activists, local prosecutors, even the U.S. Congress.
The anti-crush video campaign raises difficult moral issues, pitting the humane treatment of animals
against the principle of free speech and the rights of sexual minorities. The denunciation and prosecution
of crush video producers is clearly about sexual squeamishness as well as animal rights.
Most people find the torture and murder of animals for sexual pleasure morally
repugnant, but is it really more repugnant than the torture and murder of animals for,
say, food or sport or scientific research or product testing (all of which take place on a much wider scale
than crush video production)?
ARTICLES
Robert Masterson reports on the upcoming trial of a Long Island
crush video producer
and explores this bizarre fetish world. Animal rights advocates plan to protest at the courthouse over what they
see as excessively light prosecution.
Westchester County Weekly
A District Court judge reached a plea bargain with a
Long Island "crush video"
producer on animal cruelty charges this week, though the prosecutor had pushed for a heavier charge and longer prison sentence. Until his arrest in 1998, the defendant had produced and sold videos of women in high heels crushing small
animals to death. Publicity around the case led Congress to ban interstate traffic in crush videos, though some web sites
still advertise such material.
Newsday
Vanity Fair ran a piece last spring about the subculture of furries, "the thousands of Americans who've gotten in touch with their inner raccoon, or wolf, or fox." Vanity Fair doesn't put articles on the Internet, but a furry fan site has reprinted the piece. Furry fans hated this article for its condescending tone and focus on sexual fetishes. The article looks at three phenomena without really drawing distinctions: "furries," who cultivate animal alter egos, often with elaborate costumes, and who have their own well-organized subculture and annual "cons"; "plushophiles," who have a strong attraction to stuffed animals; and "crush videos," which depict live animals being stomped to death, often by women in high heels. There's much overlap between the furry and plushie subcultures (though some touchy furries consider their fandom completely non-sexual and resent the association), but there's virtually no connection between those groups and crush video fetishists.
Vanity Fair (Feb 2001; via Pressed Fur)
British prosecutors have sent four people to jail for making crush videos. (May 2002)
COMMENTARIES
Patrick Califia-Rice addresses the
moral panic over crush videos.
Personally I find the idea of crush videos morally repugnant, but Califia-Rice makes some good points about the
double standards in applying animal cruelty laws and the chilling impact of selective prosecution
based on sexual fetishes.
Good Vibes
