798: My Plantation, My Choice

I skinned my cat last night.

I have always been told that there are a million different ways to skin a cat, but based on my experience last night I can’t imagine that any of them are easy. She howled with pain on the first incision, and scratched out at me. I had to tie down her limbs in order to continue the operation, but after about an hours worth of work the cat had been skinned. A lot of the fight was out of her by that point in time. I could see her little heart beating in her chest, and the eyes in her skinless head followed me plaintively around the room. A couple hours later she stopped breathing.

I am well aware of the naysayers out there who will criticize me for skinning my cat. Many of them, having read my description of the incident, will criticize me under the false impression that the cat was still alive when I skinned her.

The reality is that nothing could be further from the truth.

The cat was in my house, and I am a firm believer in the adage that in my house I make the rules. Shortly before I began skinning her I came to the realization that the cat was not alive. As any reasonable person will plainly see, the cat could only be alive in my house if I recognized her to be alive. So because I did not recognize the cat to be alive I am in no way guilty of skinning a live cat. I am well aware that there will be some naysayers even to my iron clad defense. To such people I say this: you can disagree with me, but you have no right to make the rules in my house.

There are many example throughout history of bigoted moralists attempting to force their views on the rest of society. One of the biggest examples from American history is the question of slavery. While some individuals argued that black individuals were human regardless of the situation, a more nuanced understanding saw that the reality was much more complicated. A black individual could be a human, but only if they were recognized as such by the person who owned that individual. The American founders, in their wisdom, stipulated that each slave should be counted as three-fifths of an individual. The rational behind this is simple: black individuals were recognized as human about three-fifths of the time, so the best way to keep track of them was to count each one as three-fifths of a person.

As Shakespeare so aptly put it, “man is a giddy thing.” Meaning that it is almost impossible to accurately define exactly what constitutes a human being. The essence of bigotry is trying to define the meaning of humanity in a way that inconveniences others. The inflexible moralists who proclaimed that every slave was a human were unwilling to deal with the obvious truth that only the person who owns a slave has the right to decide whether or not that slave is human. Humanity is an attribute that can only be granted or taken away by the owner of the plantation. Whether or not I deem the slaves on my plantation to be human beings is entirely my choice.

We can see these same concepts playing out in our present day when it comes to the issue of abortion. As any sane person will know, whether or not an episode of fetal development constitutes a human is entirely dependent on whether the woman in whom that episode is taking place deems it to be. To create a false equivalency between pregnancy and life is just as ridiculous as saying that all slaves are human regardless of the decision their owner makes on the matter.

Dictating upon others what does or does not constitute a human being is one of the basest forms of tyranny imaginable. It stems from the same warped ideology as those who claim that my cat was alive when I skinned her. Only I have the power to make that decision. Anyone who would make it for me is a bigot in the first degree.

That type of bigotry must be ended.

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