PETA Has New Target: Fetishists, S&M And Dominatrix Queens

By Mistress Strict

Reykjavik, Iceland – Members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and Animal Friends – including a woman wearing a sexy, sinthetic dominatrix outfit, a gay man wearing rubber bondage gear and a Reykjavik resident wearing a cow costume and waving a sign reading, "Pride Not Hide" – will demonstrate on the eve of the Leather Summit in Reykjavik and the Reykjavik Gay Pride 2004 festivities which follow to expose the cruelty to animals that is inherent in every leather boot, jacket or whip while revealing that you don’t need to wear animal skins to look hot.

Why do PETA and Animal Friends want fetishists to give leather the boot? Buying real leather shoes, jackets, pants, accessories and sex gear not only supports the suffering of animals in abattoirs, but also devastates the environment and can harm human health. Millions of cows, pigs, sheep and goats who are slaughtered for their skins are castrated, branded and dehorned and have their tails cut off – all without painkillers. Production-line speed-ups and inadequate stunning measures at abattoirs mean that cows who are killed for their skins and flesh are often dismembered while they are still fully conscious. Tanneries are notorious water polluters, and tannery workers have rates of cancer many times higher than the general population. The skins of dogs killed for meat in Korea, China and the Philippines are often marked, "cow hide," before they are exported to the West.

PETA wants gays and straights alike to know that sex appeal is far more than skin deep. "Animal skins belong on animals’ behinds, not humans’, no matter what their sexual orientation", says PETA dominatrix Poorva Joshipura. "With today’s stylish and comfortable synthetics and faux exotic skins, it’s easy to have a look that kills without actually killing."