07/09/2024
WHEN MORAL SA**SM IS PASSED OFF AS A VIRTUE
Recently, in the renewed debate over the use of bark-activated shock collars, prong collars, choke chains, hidden perimeter fences that activate shock collars and remote-activated "training" collars that administer shock, there's been a lot of hand-wringing.
To the extent that punishment is seen as virtuous.
To the extent that abuse is justified as necessary.
How can that be? Punishment is good?! Abuse is necessary?! It's KIND to shock dogs?
Stick with me: you'll see how it goes.
I've been party to these conversations as someone who investigated welfare abuses by so-called dog trainers.
"The dog has a shock collar on because he keeps escaping. He'll get run over eventually. It's for his own good."
"The dog is wearing a prong collar because he's too strong for his small, female, disabled guardian. He'll pull her over eventually. I don't like telling her to use prong collars, but what other option is there? He could kill her!"
"The dog has bitten someone in the past. He's got a shock collar on because it stops him doing it again. I don't want to keep shocking him when he lunges or barks at people, but he'll be euthanised if we don't."
"The dog barks all day. His owners have to work. Their neighbours have complained and unless they rectify the situation, the dog will be euthanised. What else can we do?"
There's A LOT of this from those who condone or perpetrate abuse against animals.
It's for their own good.
They can't go off lead without it.
Because I've harmed them, they have more freedom.
They'd worry sheep. They'd cause sheep to abort the foetus. They'd kill sheep.
I need to shock them because it's the only way the dog's life is possible or viable.
Without this harm, they would be dead.
I'm doing harm because of the ultimate good.
This is what's known as moral sa**sm.
We all know sadists derive pleasure from hurting others.
Moral sa**sm arises when we hurt others and we use morals or ethics to do so. It's not so much that a moral sadist gets pleasure from hurting animals (or humans, for that matter).
Not directly, anyway.
They hurt others because it feels right, necessary or proper to do so.
Whatever corporal, psychological or authoritarian means they use to do so, they feel it's right in some way to do so.
We can see that very often in the arguments such individuals use to justify using shock, choke or prong collars to train dogs.
And yes, some use arguments that it's NOT harmful. We'll get to that.
Whenever a person uses morality or "ethical considerations" to perpetrate, sanction and justify harm, we may think of this as a form of moral sa**sm.
Moral sadists at least appreciate that the harms they inflict ARE harmful. On the surface at least.
I mean there are those who use such tools on dogs who DON'T appreciate that it causes harm. I told you we'd get to them.
They may equivocate over words, over terms like 'aversive' and 'punishment'. Is a shock collar really harmful? Is it really painful? Is it truly aversive?
They'll tell you that Skinner or other behaviour scientists simply use punishment to mean an intervention that decreases the future occurrence of a behaviour, that things can be punishing without being aversive, that it's hard to know black from white, that only the animal can tell us (or the behaviour) whether what we did changed the behaviour.
Blah, blah, blah on the whole "punishment is technically ambiguous" notion and it's not really a harm et cetera.
But if they're truly honest with themselves, they'll look at interventions using shock and prong collars and they'll realise these are INTENDED to be aversive and punishing. That they don't change behaviour doesn't take away from the fact they can and do still hurt enough to sometimes cause injury or death.
I know dogs with collapsed tracheas or syncope who'll STILL pull on a slip lead, choke chain or prong collar. It doesn't change the behaviour. I can't just umm and ahh over the fact it hasn't worked to reduce pulling and say it's clearly not harmful or painful.
All that view shows is a deep and fundamental misunderstanding of behaviour.
I'm not going to mince my words. It's profoundly un-empathetic, too.
Oh, and it's also a manipulation of language and ideas that is deliberate in attempts to obfuscate these harms and render them more confusing, more opaque, more bewildering.
That method works for them because it destabilises those they argue against.
Got someone who is on the fence over using such tools?
Confuse them. Make it more difficult to understand how it works. Make them think it's not really harmful, that it doesn't hurt, that it's not a punishment in the way we think of that word outside of behaviour science, that it's not aversive, or it doesn't have to be.
Whether people do this deliberately or accidentally, I don't really care.
Punishment is what it is, and harm does what it does.
But if they're honest with you and with themselves, they'll admit that industries that have brought pain, wholesale, to dogs are DESIGNED to cause pain to change behaviour.
That's the INTENTION of these tools. It's how they function.
If you don't know that this medieval equipment uses pain to attempt to change the behaviour of an animal, I suggest you really shouldn't be using them at all.
No, today, it's the other camp that I want to talk about.
Those who acknowledge harm, pain and punishment but try to justify it as virtuous or necessary.
Sadistic utilitarians, if you will. This harm is for the common good.
The 'I wouldn't if I didn't have to!' argument.
By the way, some of those do a remarkable job of passing the blame. I *especially* find it abhorent when these arguments are used by able-bodied white males to pass the blame onto women, onto people with disabilities or onto people who are economically disadvantaged.
"It's cheap and quick - it's all they can afford!"
"That woman's dog isn't manageable without it, so I wouldn't... but... what else am I to do?"
"I have this client in a wheelchair who has a mastiff who's reactive to other dogs - what am I supposed to do?"
Not just moral sa**sm, but victim blaming. Whoo.
Reminds me of the spouse who beats or hurts their partner and says, "I hate that you make me do this to you!"
But it's not all about individual stories. They are only a part of how moral sa**sm is passed off as a virtue.
It becomes part of a narrative.
Rather than simply being about one-off stories of the lady with a cane who can't walk her German shepherd without a shock collar or the time you had to recommend a shock collar to some noisy huskies whose 'poor', busy working owners had had complaints via the police, it becomes so general that it becomes an ideology.
Take this one.
"Being lax or permissive puts dogs in shelters. Shelters are full. Ergo, being lax or permissive kills dogs."
I mean, you don't want to kill dogs do you?
It's a hop, skip and a jump to the inference that kindness or rewards-based approaches kill dogs.
"Rewards are great, but they don't teach dogs not to do things or to stop. Dogs need boundaries. Without them, it's a death sentence."
Same. You don't want to kill dogs, do you? If you use food or toys, it kills dogs.
"There's so many dog bites to kids. Using rewards with dogs doesn't teach them respect. We've got to be cruel to be kind, because kids get bitten and deaths caused by dogs are up!"
This one's a doozy. You don't want to kill dogs AND kids, do you?
"Rewards, toys and food are causing an epidemic of dog bites!"
Here, whole belief systems are created around moral sa**sm to justify the perpetration of widespread harm against animals.
And if you don't?
You're an enemy to what is right....
What is proper...
What is social...
What is good...
What is kind.
That's a messed up way to turn harming animals into a belief system about what is kind, right and proper, isn't it?
Worse, these beliefs create a kind of vision of the thing they want you to fear: the mad, bad, out-of-control aggressive dog at risk of euthanasia, with the reckless, irresponsible, antisocial and disorderly guardian; the lax liberal with an out-of-control spaniel rampaging through sheep fields; the selfish, irresponsible "caregiver" who can't do what's necessary to own a dog; the irresponsible wimp who bought a collie for the sports world who won't curb the dog's worst impulses to make them so much better than they were.
THEY are order; you, by the fact that you stand against them, are disorder.
Moral sa**sm can operate at individual levels for this or that dog who is an exception.
It can also become part of a false belief system that rarely goes challenged by reality.
It's a belief system designed to preserve the status quo and protect sadists with vested interests.
You'll no doubt know how these belief systems work. Every time you hear a journalist try to nail down loose propaganda and lies from politicians or indoctrinated members of the public into named specifics, you'll feel that challenge at work.
Moral sa**sm is clever and insidious.
In the dog world, it treats cooperative ways of training dogs as code for permissive or even antisocial, unscientific, unstructured and ineffective caregiving. It's wishy-washy. It's feminine. It's ineffective. It's effeminate. It's lightweight. It's for liberal, uneducated middle-class white women or q***r folk or any "other" group that seeks to destabilise society.
Actually, it's worse because THOSE people (who won't use shock, chokes and prongs) are MAKING them do more because they won't be responsible and accountable. Like me, here on this page, irresponsible and reckless because I won't admit that harming and hurting animals with medieval torture devices is necessary, just or right.
Yikes.
Harming dogs and using shock, prong or choke chains becomes a virtue.
Rewards-based approaches that are gentle and cooperative are a threat to social order.
There are plenty of people who object to using "training tools" (how ironic!) on dogs. You're probably among them. Those who are not permissive; those who use rewards-based methods to create structure; those who value integration and society; those who know it's a lie about rescues being full of dogs who were supposedly failed by gentle methods of caregiving; those who say 'f*ck you!' to harm; those who believe dogs should live completely unrestrained lives. It's a broad church here.
But because we don't fall into one neatly unified ideological camp as they do, it's easy to find division when you look for it in those who stand against harming animals in the name of love or the greater good.
Moral sadists exploit this fact rather than seeing it simply as resistance by the majority to their narrow ideology that seeks to frighten people into passivity when it comes to harm, or even into indoctrination.
This unspoken ideology not only incites fear. It also *exploits* that very fear in order to render people complicit. It renders kindness and gentle guidance, rewards-based methods, humane approaches and dog-centred approaches as methods that should be feared.
Methods that, according to their vague ideology, kill dogs and children, in fact.
They manufacture and manipulate fear for the very purpose of perpetrating and perpetuating practises that keep our lives with dogs in the dark ages, before we knew better. Methods that have more in common with an inquisition than with good welfare. Methods that come from a barbaric time when both corporal and capital punishment were normalised in authoritarian societies.
The task in front of us remains.
Keeping up the pressure on legislators and politicians is a part of that.
Understanding moral sa**sm is another.
Understanding the nature of moral sa**sm is easy. We've been here before. Some cultures have been able to move away from justifying and sanctioning corporal punishment with humans in the same way we can with animals. This is clearly tougher in places where harms are still regularly perpetrated on humans, or where those harms are still close to the surface historically.
Not falling for it is another of those tasks. It's so easy to fall into traps about moral sa**sm being little more than a lack of education. It's not about sitting down at tables to educate those who see such "tools" as necessary.
Education can be useful as part of how we counter this phenomenon, but it is not enough in itself, especially when moral sadists are well-practised in constructing hypothetical situations to justify their methods and indoctrinating others, whether consciously or not.
In fact, the offer of education can horrify those who believe so categorically that harm is necessary. Think of the best book, the best paper, the best course you've been on related to dog training, and they will not have done it or read it. You can firehose them with as much science as you like.
But know that your science frightens them and will go unread.
The very suggestion that they might not understand how to work with animals is an affront, and they fear that they will be seduced by us, the dark side, with our treat pouches and our kindness, our other-ness, our literature and our gentle methods.
I remember one of these moral sadists on his podcast, unable to deal with the delightful evangelical zeal and technical expertise of trainer Susan Garrett, for instance. He simply could not fathom how her methods could succeed when training a 'hold'. Has he seen Susan as an expert and paid for her mentorship? I don't need to know from him or her that that he has not. I imagine she could teach him in less than an hour.
It goes without saying that moral sadists reject every attempt to educate them as indoctrination by a 'dark side' that would somehow undermine everything they believe to be right. They don't seek it out. They won't seek it out. We terrify them.
Sometimes, it is enough to see trainers stand up and hastag (a trainer who uses corporal punishment with dogs in the name of learning) It affirms the moral majority is not that of the sadist who profits from harming animals.
At other times, it is enough to acknowledge that we do not have to be united or share the full range of the exact same beliefs as every other person who opposes the use of moral sa**sm to justify harming animals. We stand together sometimes if only to oppose one single, specific wrong.
It's also our task to counter myths shared by such individuals who pass off harm as necessary or even virtuous.
I forget that sometimes, so busy am I in getting on with learning and living and loving dogs. I tell myself you can't argue with them or reason with them, so there's no point trying.
It's funny that what brought out this decision to affirm what I stand for and to shine a light on sa**sm dressed up as virtue was the same one that always does: that shelters are filled with dogs who have been failed by gentle methods.
I reject this lie so vehemently, so adamantly, that it reminds me of the importance of doing so in order to stop the spread of pernicious mistruths used by moral sadists who harm animals.
So, in case you were ever unsure.
I see through their powerful accusations about those who reject shock, choke and prong in the same way we reject beating dogs with sticks or whipping them. It is a dangerous ideology.
At the same time, I acknowledge that we are all on a journey to a more understanding and enlightened existence. Questioning and remaining open to answers is enough. There is a difference for me between those who wish to and will move away from this dangerous ideology, and those who preach it or facilitate it.
No shame for ever having accepted the periphery, the grey areas that now seem less grey to you, or the black-and-white that now seems less cut and dry. Punishment is seductive, especially when it comes dressed up as a virtue, and those of us who reject it are not all proud or virtuous saints ourselves.
But there comes a time when we have to acknowledge the harms we do in order to move from them.
We also have to stand up and be accountable. Public statements do that. They hold us accountable. I thank trainer Victoria Stilwell for reminding us of that. I don't have to agree with everything Victoria is or does to know that for this single, specific harm, we stand together, accountable.
If we can't be honest with ourselves about that, it will always be more comfortable to accept the status quo and to be seduced into accepting harms passed off as educative or beneficial in the long run.
Tough, I know. But it's a conversation only with ourselves. No one will see. And it's a conversation that every one of us who rejects this form of harm to animals has had with ourselves, I promise.
But one day, we've got to have the conversation with ourselves that we can't keep harming animals and pretending that shock or prong collars are not harmful. Or that it is in some way morally justifiable.
And we also have to help deconstruct this dangerous ideology that sanctions their use.
Onwards, I say. Down tools, move on. Stand up, remember it is not shameful to use gentle, cooperative methods to live and work with dogs, take a breath and hold your head up against this twisted vision of what it means to live with animals.
