Azealia Banks owns the skull of a six-year-old girl

[Lilbit 1,596]

Taxidermy is weird when it’s a fully coated dog on your mantle. This is whatever. 

[Babel 41,495]

I’m so unimpressed about this sensationalist thread...she has said/done way more problematic things. 

[JazzGa 14,621]

Pretty sure it's illegal to buy or trade in human remains in the US  I wouldn't be surprised if this is the tomfoolery that finally gets the authorities involved

[Patrickern777 610]

I'm not shocked anymore

[kinniejuice 5]

I know if I say this I'll probably get a lot of flack, but hear me out with an open mind. TW for people sensitive to death and medical practices! It's easy to invision body horror with this topic! DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT SUPPORT AZEALIA BANKS, I AM JUST HERE TO EDUCATE.

After reading this and seeing how she conducted herself, she seems like someone who is more in-tune with the morbid side of mortality. There can be more than one side to this instance, especially if taken in different contexts. Firstly with the cat thing, yes it is strange that she would bury it and then dig it up after the fact to practice taxidermy on it, but for some people that's their way of keeping their deceased pet with them. (And yes, t is more than a tad bit strange, but there indeed are people like that out there who exist- I am not one of them.) Most people would immediately get to work on preserving their animals after they have died to avoid prolonged decomposition and what biological effects that comes with it. Boiling is a way to harvest bones from cadavers, and is often practiced in medical research facilities. This is not equivalent to taxidermy, in which you carefully remove the skin/fur coat of an animal from its body (which is what Azalea said her interest was). She may have been misinformed, or didn't have another way to explain it. 

 

As for the child's skull; I don't exactly have an explanation for this other than it was probably taken long ago ( circa 1700's ) back when medical practises on humans were conducted much more frequently and publicly. When you die, you have the option for your body to be donated to science for medical/research purposes. If you are over the age of 18, you can choose this option on your own through legal documents. If you are a minor and you die, then the closest parent/guardian/next of kin can choose this for you. In this case the little girl's parents most likely chose for her body to be used in the medical science field. Your family is reimbursed in the case of selling a member's cadaver for science. It is unclear as to what the girl's guardians' intentions were, but this is the most likely case. The head trauma most likely came from an accident of sorts, but in the age where people were still figuring out how and what caused death, morbid practises were commonplace. People were much more unfazed by death back then because it happened often with plagues and lack of proper immunizations.

 

As for Azalea's statement on purchasing it off of a medical research website, that is entirely possible. Not everyone who possesses cleanly remains are psychotic maniacs that require immediate mental attention, often they are people who are curious about death and the spiritual side of it. They want to know about Ether, and if there are souls then where do they go? In many spiritualistic rituals bones are used to draw answers to the questions, because they were once a driving force of life. Of course, if you have a problematic history and are a Celebrity on top of it, a morbid curiosity is the bad-vibes cherry on top the questionable sundae. I personally don't think she's ill, I just think she has a hobby and interest that's best not shared with the world. 

[StrawberryBlond 14,900]

17 hours ago, hoeslay said:

I'm sorry but this isn't shocking to me. Y'all are boring.

If Gaga had a child's skull half of y'all would be like OMG YES DARK QUEEN LG7 IS A DARK POP ALBUM. 

I certainly wouldn't. Owning a real skull of an actual human, especially a child who died in such tragic circumstances, is highly concerning. I'd give Gaga the benefit of the doubt and hope it was just a misguided idea but with someone like Azealia, who has shown how mentally unstable she is many times, is a different story. And as regards to saying that we view western practices as above all else, it's not that, it's that everyone naturally attunes themselves to their culture's moral code. Why should westerners be made to feel like their culture is behind the times or bad and that adhering to it assumes that we want to impose it on everyone. We're talking about this from our points of view that work for us. You're free to disagree but there's no need to pit cultural differences against each other.

16 hours ago, Economy said:

If she did i dont see whats so overly problematic if she ate cats. I know celebrities are held to higher standards but most still arenr vegetarian

 

If they arent vegetarian i dont see the difference betweeb eating a cat vs beef or pork just because in the western world we decided they are fluffy animals we consider pets

 

But in principal either u are against eating meat or you are not. I dont get why ppl cherry pick and suggest one animal species is ok but then not another...

Yes, we view cats as pets but that doesn't mean we're being hypocritical meat eaters. People are entitled to eat whatever meat they deem right and refuse that which they deem wrong. I eat meat but I draw the line at infant animals because I don't see a need to kill ones that young and would prefer them to get some sort of life first. And I also go with the western culture of treating cats and dogs as pets. As for other common pets like rabbits, I just see it as as long as it's not someone's pet, it's fine. I also feel certain animals are more likely to carry disease. As a cat owner, I don't feel comfortable with them being eaten and I also would be wary about eating them due to potential diseases. I don't know, I just feel like cats would be likely to pass something on to humans and they can eat mice and birds from outside and they wash themselves, so you don't know what they're picking up. I do know that when avian flu was going around, we were advised not to rub noses with our cats or go near their mouths in any way in case they'd eaten an infected bird. There's a very good reason for cherry picking, particularly when it comes to health. If all meat is meat and if we're ok with one type of meat, then we should be fine with everything, then why does no one challenge us by asking why we don't support cannibalism? That's still cherry picking, right? You can think something is right to an extent but don't condone everything within it. We don't use the whole "if you fine with one type of ____ then you should be fine with all forms of ____" to any other element of our lives.

16 hours ago, buzzkill said:

Some comments in here are boderline racists. I think it comes from her religious views, and she brought from a store... what’s the real problem? 

Race was never mentioned and disliking someone's morally questionable religious practices isn't racist. You're hating on the religious ideals, not the race, all races can join any religion and all religions should be open to criticism. You can't use "it's my religion" to get a free pass when you do something blatantly terrible, that's a very dangerous way of thinking. And you know there's some behaviours that you wouldn't accept as religious and therefore, acceptable. If being racist was a religious practice, would you say it was ok? If not, then you must think not all religious practices are defensible.

13 hours ago, AJRocketMan said:

Serious replies only: How would you guys feel and react if Gaga had pulled out a dead child’s skull? Not the witchy stuff, but just the skull ownership. What would you do if you found out she had these weird obsessions with this stuff?

I'd very concerned. I'd hope she was just messing about with fascination with morbid curiosity like some people do but I'd fear it was a sign of a deeper rooted issue. Fascination with the dead in healthy ways (being a research scientist or an undertaker) is one thing but collecting body parts of people you weren't even related to and who died in awful ways, when those parts should be with their families or laid to rest is quite troubling.

12 hours ago, Killa said:

I have yet to see the dead cat thing, did yall really see the corpse a cat and can we be sure it was hers

I dont believe anything, she does this just for crisis of attention imo. If anything this tells you she buys bones and whatnot to make this videos, for whatever reason

Yes, there's a bit of footage in the link I posted. I didn't watch it myself as it's highly disturbing but she filmed herself pulling her cat out from a bag under the ground and then boiling it in a pot and keeping its skull as part of a crude display piece along with champagne bottles and Chanel No. 5 in a pink bucket. I think she was framing it as "I'm moving, so I had to take my dead cat with me" but that doesn't explain why she chose to do what she did in such a frightening way and post the evidence.

11 hours ago, River said:

Why I don’t believe her lol

it’s most likely fake or from the bronze age

daily mail + problematic person = fake? Lol

It looks pretty real to me and about the size of a child's head. She said she got it from The Bone Room's website which I found out is a store where you can buy human bones (so she didn't buy it off a research website as she previously claimed). And it wasn't just the DM reporting it, many other publications did too, this was just the first place I saw it.

2 hours ago, River said:

About the chickens..

All the 3 Abrahamic religions STILL kills animals for their parctice.

so like stop being racist

I'm not aware of any form of actual animal sacrifice in these religions. Killing an animal for food is one thing, killing it as a sacrificial offering to a god is quite another and this view is shared by the majority of the world, it's an ancient practice that simply doesn't fly in the modern world. It's nothing to do with race, race was never mentioned, we are criticising a religious practice and nothing else. No religion should be exempt from criticism. And being a certain race doesn't tie you to any religion anyway.

1 hour ago, GLK said:

Taxidermy is weird when it’s a fully coated dog on your mantle. This is whatever. 

It just goes to show how you can have different views on it. I view the skull as worse because it came from one of our own kind. Stuffed animals, while more than a bit weird, we can distance ourselves from as they're not one of us. Having your own kind's body parts up on display is more than a bit morbid. And there are logical reasons for taxidermy, it's not just people stuffing their pets. The most common reason is for display in museums as well as zoological research so it has its applications.

[River 117,629]

34 minutes ago, StrawberryBlond said:

I'm not aware of any form of actual animal sacrifice in these religions. Killing an animal for food is one thing, killing it as a sacrificial offering to a god is quite another and this view is shared by the majority of the world, it's an ancient practice that simply doesn't fly in the modern world. It's nothing to do with race, race was never mentioned, we are criticising a religious practice and nothing else. No religion should be exempt from criticism. And being a certain race doesn't tie you to any religion anyway.

During Easter some Christians are killing lambs

During Yom Kipur, the Kaparot practice, the Jewish people takes a chicken, turns it around the head and then kills it

The muslims kills cows and goats during the Eid al-Adha holidays

so yup, to these days we kill animals for sacrifice, practice or just celebrations.

 

It's pretty common for families across the globe to bring a goat when the boy is 3-4 years old and kill it in front of his eyes so he will be a man..

we do so many things with killing animals

so this chickens thingy just looks so minimal compare what others do.. that it feels a bit.. racist yeah because it's an african practice

[StrawberryBlond 14,900]

1 hour ago, kinniejuice said:

I know if I say this I'll probably get a lot of flack, but hear me out with an open mind. TW for people sensitive to death and medical practices! It's easy to invision body horror with this topic! DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT SUPPORT AZEALIA BANKS, I AM JUST HERE TO EDUCATE.

After reading this and seeing how she conducted herself, she seems like someone who is more in-tune with the morbid side of mortality. There can be more than one side to this instance, especially if taken in different contexts. Firstly with the cat thing, yes it is strange that she would bury it and then dig it up after the fact to practice taxidermy on it, but for some people that's their way of keeping their deceased pet with them. (And yes, t is more than a tad bit strange, but there indeed are people like that out there who exist- I am not one of them.) Most people would immediately get to work on preserving their animals after they have died to avoid prolonged decomposition and what biological effects that comes with it. Boiling is a way to harvest bones from cadavers, and is often practiced in medical research facilities. This is not equivalent to taxidermy, in which you carefully remove the skin/fur coat of an animal from its body (which is what Azalea said her interest was). She may have been misinformed, or didn't have another way to explain it. 

 

As for the child's skull; I don't exactly have an explanation for this other than it was probably taken long ago ( circa 1700's ) back when medical practises on humans were conducted much more frequently and publicly. When you die, you have the option for your body to be donated to science for medical/research purposes. If you are over the age of 18, you can choose this option on your own through legal documents. If you are a minor and you die, then the closest parent/guardian/next of kin can choose this for you. In this case the little girl's parents most likely chose for her body to be used in the medical science field. Your family is reimbursed in the case of selling a member's cadaver for science. It is unclear as to what the girl's guardians' intentions were, but this is the most likely case. The head trauma most likely came from an accident of sorts, but in the age where people were still figuring out how and what caused death, morbid practises were commonplace. People were much more unfazed by death back then because it happened often with plagues and lack of proper immunizations.

 

As for Azalea's statement on purchasing it off of a medical research website, that is entirely possible. Not everyone who possesses cleanly remains are psychotic maniacs that require immediate mental attention, often they are people who are curious about death and the spiritual side of it. They want to know about Ether, and if there are souls then where do they go? In many spiritualistic rituals bones are used to draw answers to the questions, because they were once a driving force of life. Of course, if you have a problematic history and are a Celebrity on top of it, a morbid curiosity is the bad-vibes cherry on top the questionable sundae. I personally don't think she's ill, I just think she has a hobby and interest that's best not shared with the world. 

I actually think you explained that quite well.

Most of us now are cremating our pets so we can easily take them with us if we move house. Having a resting place be potentially bought by another owner (and, even worse, them digging it up one day) was a big reason why I was against burying any of my cats. Most of us are against the morbid sight of her dragging her deceased cat up from the ground and if she was going to need to move the cat one day because she was moving, she really should have thought ahead and cremated it unless she's against the idea of burning a body (which, seeing as she has a fascination with the bones, is understandable).

She got the skull from The Bone Room's online store. I looked it up and it's a store that sells animal and human bones. So, contrary to her earlier statement, she didn't get it from a medical research website. But it was that earlier statement that caused me and many others to question if this was the skull that was very recent and therefore the girl still has living parents who may not have consented to having her remains sold on to strangers online. But if it was from this store, it suggest it was much older though I don't know how they determined the age, sex and the cause of death in that case unless there's ways of determining those things by professionals. But it suggests that this girl was dead for quite some time at least, which is a bit different. Though I still don't know why you'd want body parts of someone who doesn't belong to you or think it's respectful to have someone else's body parts on display when that maybe wasn't their wishes.

it's been speculated for a long time if Azealia is potentially bipolar (can't remember if she actually claimed this or it was only speculated) and that she's on medication but doesn't always take it, which is why she sometimes goes off on online rants, physical fights and bizarre behaviour. She has multiple times been accused of making up false stories, been caught in physical altercations on planes and bleached her skin while also telling other black women to do the same all while preaching for years about how much she hates white people. While also uses slurs against POC. Add this to her animal sacrifice and bone fascination and it all amounts to someone who isn't well and needs serious help that she isn't getting.

9 minutes ago, River said:

During Easter some Christians are killing lambs

During Yom Kipur, the Kaparot practice, the Jewish people takes a chicken, turns it around the head and then kills it

The muslims kills cows and goats during the Eid al-Adha holidays

so yup, to these days we kill animals for sacrifice, practice or just celebrations.

 

It's pretty common for families across the globe to bring a goat when the boy is 3-4 years old and kill it in front of his eyes so he will be a man..

we do so many things with killing animals

so this chickens thingy just looks so minimal compare what others do.. that it feels a bit.. racist yeah because it's an african practice

They're killing all these animals for food, that's different. I don't recall hearing anyone do it for celebration or sacrifice. And in India, cows aren't allowed to be killed at all and whole regions are vegetarian, so it's not like we just associate animal killing as something non-whites do.

I can't speak for the goat thing, I don't know about that rite of passage but it's not something I condone. I really can't compare killing an animal for food to slaughtering chickens in a closet in a house (where their carcasses were embedded into the floor to the point where industrial equipment had to be used to clean it) and not even using their bodies for food afterwards, just a senseless killing. I don't get how something like that can be seen as "minimal compared to what others do." We're not concerned about whether it's an African practice or not, we're appalled by animal sacrifice regardless of who's doing it. You really think we'd give a white girl a pass for this, regardless of whether she said it was a religious practice or not? Can't we be morally outraged at the senseless killing of living beings over religion? I personally can't understand why sacrifice was ever a thing in any religion - if a god made everything around you, why would they want you to destroy their precious creation through killing? That's why killing is viewed widely as a sin. The Aztecs sacrificed humans to their god in ancient times. They don't do it anymore because we evolved past the thinking that sacrifice is ok. Up until the moment with the chickens, I didn't even know there were still religions existing where animal sacrifice is still a thing. There are some part of religions that have no place in the modern world and any sacrificial practices are right up there.

[FrederickSpears 2,114]

23 hours ago, xoxo Craig said:

And for that she should be in jail. Why gays support her and give her a platform, I'll never understand 

And she has made it very clear she literally hates gay people  Anyone who is gay and loves her also probably voted for Trump 

[Economy 50,081]

1 hour ago, StrawberryBlond said:

I certainly wouldn't. Owning a real skull of an actual human, especially a child who died in such tragic circumstances, is highly concerning. I'd give Gaga the benefit of the doubt and hope it was just a misguided idea but with someone like Azealia, who has shown how mentally unstable she is many times, is a different story. And as regards to saying that we view western practices as above all else, it's not that, it's that everyone naturally attunes themselves to their culture's moral code. Why should westerners be made to feel like their culture is behind the times or bad and that adhering to it assumes that we want to impose it on everyone. We're talking about this from our points of view that work for us. You're free to disagree but there's no need to pit cultural differences against each other.

Yes, we view cats as pets but that doesn't mean we're being hypocritical meat eaters. People are entitled to eat whatever meat they deem right and refuse that which they deem wrong. I eat meat but I draw the line at infant animals because I don't see a need to kill ones that young and would prefer them to get some sort of life first. And I also go with the western culture of treating cats and dogs as pets. As for other common pets like rabbits, I just see it as as long as it's not someone's pet, it's fine. I also feel certain animals are more likely to carry disease. As a cat owner, I don't feel comfortable with them being eaten and I also would be wary about eating them due to potential diseases. I don't know, I just feel like cats would be likely to pass something on to humans and they can eat mice and birds from outside and they wash themselves, so you don't know what they're picking up. I do know that when avian flu was going around, we were advised not to rub noses with our cats or go near their mouths in any way in case they'd eaten an infected bird. There's a very good reason for cherry picking, particularly when it comes to health. If all meat is meat and if we're ok with one type of meat, then we should be fine with everything, then why does no one challenge us by asking why we don't support cannibalism? That's still cherry picking, right? You can think something is right to an extent but don't condone everything within it. We don't use the whole "if you fine with one type of ____ then you should be fine with all forms of ____" to any other element of our lives.

Race was never mentioned and disliking someone's morally questionable religious practices isn't racist. You're hating on the religious ideals, not the race, all races can join any religion and all religions should be open to criticism. You can't use "it's my religion" to get a free pass when you do something blatantly terrible, that's a very dangerous way of thinking. And you know there's some behaviours that you wouldn't accept as religious and therefore, acceptable. If being racist was a religious practice, would you say it was ok? If not, then you must think not all religious practices are defensible.

I'd very concerned. I'd hope she was just messing about with fascination with morbid curiosity like some people do but I'd fear it was a sign of a deeper rooted issue. Fascination with the dead in healthy ways (being a research scientist or an undertaker) is one thing but collecting body parts of people you weren't even related to and who died in awful ways, when those parts should be with their families or laid to rest is quite troubling.

Yes, there's a bit of footage in the link I posted. I didn't watch it myself as it's highly disturbing but she filmed herself pulling her cat out from a bag under the ground and then boiling it in a pot and keeping its skull as part of a crude display piece along with champagne bottles and Chanel No. 5 in a pink bucket. I think she was framing it as "I'm moving, so I had to take my dead cat with me" but that doesn't explain why she chose to do what she did in such a frightening way and post the evidence.

It looks pretty real to me and about the size of a child's head. She said she got it from The Bone Room's website which I found out is a store where you can buy human bones (so she didn't buy it off a research website as she previously claimed). And it wasn't just the DM reporting it, many other publications did too, this was just the first place I saw it.

I'm not aware of any form of actual animal sacrifice in these religions. Killing an animal for food is one thing, killing it as a sacrificial offering to a god is quite another and this view is shared by the majority of the world, it's an ancient practice that simply doesn't fly in the modern world. It's nothing to do with race, race was never mentioned, we are criticising a religious practice and nothing else. No religion should be exempt from criticism. And being a certain race doesn't tie you to any religion anyway.

It just goes to show how you can have different views on it. I view the skull as worse because it came from one of our own kind. Stuffed animals, while more than a bit weird, we can distance ourselves from as they're not one of us. Having your own kind's body parts up on display is more than a bit morbid. And there are logical reasons for taxidermy, it's not just people stuffing their pets. The most common reason is for display in museums as well as zoological research so it has its applications.

I get that but im not disputing that. My issue tho is not with ppl having their preferences. U can have western culture values and cherry pick which animals u you are ok with eating all you want. My issue is with ppl judging other people who dont share the same cherry picking which the original comment i replied to was implying

 

Also about the desieses... it honestly has just as much to do with how they are handled and prepared than anything else consodering most commercial meat is grown in plants and not caught randomly in the wild

 

In those asian countries theres a tendency for individual markets, individual hunters and small companies to hunt and sell stuff without much standards and sold even in flea markets. Its not necessairily always grown in some controlled plant following strict safety standards like it is in North America or Europe

 

If we decided to commercialize cats and dogs and sell it as meat and take away the wild catch or poor safety practices aspect of it, it would not be any more dangerous than pork or beef. Which lets be honest os not risk free either, remember mad cow desiese?

 

Again tho my issue isnt ppl cherry picking. My issue is people judging others who dont make the same cherry picking decisions on which animals they eat and dont eat and look at them in disgust as if their typical Western Values on animals has to be everyone elses values too 

[CubbyGaga 2,547]

[StrawberryBlond 14,900]

24 minutes ago, Economy said:

I get that but im not disputing that. My issue tho is not with ppl having their preferences. U can have western culture values and cherry pick which animals u you are ok with eating all you want. My issue is with ppl judging other people who dont share the same cherry picking which the original comment i replied to was implying

 

Also about the desieses... it honestly has just as much to do with how they are handled and prepared than anything else consodering most commercial meat is grown in plants and not caught randomly in the wild

 

In those asian countries theres a tendency for individual markets, individual hunters and small companies to hunt and sell stuff without much standards and sold even in flea markets. Its not necessairily always grown in some controlled plant following strict safety standards like it is in North America or Europe

 

If we decided to commercialize cats and dogs and sell it as meat and take away the wild catch or poor safety practices aspect of it, it would not be any more dangerous than pork or beef. Which lets be honest os not risk free either, remember mad cow desiese?

 

Again tho my issue isnt ppl cherry picking. My issue is people judging others who dont make the same cherry picking decisions on which animals they eat and dont eat and look at them in disgust as if their typical Western Values on animals has to be everyone elses values too 

Unless we start farming cats in the same way we do other animals that we eat, then, no, there won't be an opportunity for completely risk-free consumption of them. And if they're the result of wild hunting, you don't know if you've killed someone's pet if they're still widely kept as pets (outside the US, there's no regulations on putting cats on leashes outdoors, they're frequently allowed to roam free). And yes, there's no promise of risk-free food from other sources either but it's considerably rarer. It's all about buying ethically sourced meat and aim for it to be organic wherever possible. Most businesses will be aware that they'll go under if any customers get sick so they'll make sure there's no underhanded practice going on. Provided that it's in a country with the best welfare regulations, naturally.

It is of course a difficult issue when you're talking at opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. And it is hard to impose those values. The way I see it is, we technically shouldn't criticise the way people in other countries with other cultures choose to live their lives. I'm sure we do practices they disapprove of also but we don't want to change. But if you have been raised in/moved to a country where the practice you're engaging in is widely considered to be wrong, you should adhere to their cultural norms. If someone is found to be serving dog meat here, their business gets shut down and they're arrested because even if it's legal elsewhere, it's not the way here. Azealia was born and raised in America so it really doesn't matter what religion she associates with (and it wasn't even a religion she was born into), she should realise that her country doesn't support these norms she's adopted and shouldn't open herself up to ridicule by being so public about them. Living in America, she must have been raised on the generally accepted idea that cooking/eating cats was wrong so why did she adopt a religion where this practice is done? That's more the question I'm asking.

[River 117,629]

1 hour ago, StrawberryBlond said:

I actually think you explained that quite well.

Most of us now are cremating our pets so we can easily take them with us if we move house. Having a resting place be potentially bought by another owner (and, even worse, them digging it up one day) was a big reason why I was against burying any of my cats. Most of us are against the morbid sight of her dragging her deceased cat up from the ground and if she was going to need to move the cat one day because she was moving, she really should have thought ahead and cremated it unless she's against the idea of burning a body (which, seeing as she has a fascination with the bones, is understandable).

She got the skull from The Bone Room's online store. I looked it up and it's a store that sells animal and human bones. So, contrary to her earlier statement, she didn't get it from a medical research website. But it was that earlier statement that caused me and many others to question if this was the skull that was very recent and therefore the girl still has living parents who may not have consented to having her remains sold on to strangers online. But if it was from this store, it suggest it was much older though I don't know how they determined the age, sex and the cause of death in that case unless there's ways of determining those things by professionals. But it suggests that this girl was dead for quite some time at least, which is a bit different. Though I still don't know why you'd want body parts of someone who doesn't belong to you or think it's respectful to have someone else's body parts on display when that maybe wasn't their wishes.

it's been speculated for a long time if Azealia is potentially bipolar (can't remember if she actually claimed this or it was only speculated) and that she's on medication but doesn't always take it, which is why she sometimes goes off on online rants, physical fights and bizarre behaviour. She has multiple times been accused of making up false stories, been caught in physical altercations on planes and bleached her skin while also telling other black women to do the same all while preaching for years about how much she hates white people. While also uses slurs against POC. Add this to her animal sacrifice and bone fascination and it all amounts to someone who isn't well and needs serious help that she isn't getting.

They're killing all these animals for food, that's different. I don't recall hearing anyone do it for celebration or sacrifice. And in India, cows aren't allowed to be killed at all and whole regions are vegetarian, so it's not like we just associate animal killing as something non-whites do.

I can't speak for the goat thing, I don't know about that rite of passage but it's not something I condone. I really can't compare killing an animal for food to slaughtering chickens in a closet in a house (where their carcasses were embedded into the floor to the point where industrial equipment had to be used to clean it) and not even using their bodies for food afterwards, just a senseless killing. I don't get how something like that can be seen as "minimal compared to what others do." We're not concerned about whether it's an African practice or not, we're appalled by animal sacrifice regardless of who's doing it. You really think we'd give a white girl a pass for this, regardless of whether she said it was a religious practice or not? Can't we be morally outraged at the senseless killing of living beings over religion? I personally can't understand why sacrifice was ever a thing in any religion - if a god made everything around you, why would they want you to destroy their precious creation through killing? That's why killing is viewed widely as a sin. The Aztecs sacrificed humans to their god in ancient times. They don't do it anymore because we evolved past the thinking that sacrifice is ok. Up until the moment with the chickens, I didn't even know there were still religions existing where animal sacrifice is still a thing. There are some part of religions that have no place in the modern world and any sacrificial practices are right up there.

The jewish are spinning them alive around the head, so all your sins will move to the chicken and then kills them, not for food, because the meat is now sinful.

we give all the religions a pass for their practices, because they are.. "normal" but when a different one, that we don't know is doing something a bit "weirder", we get a thread like this one.

Azealia may be not the right person to be their ambassador yeah, but most of these threads are trashing the acts of the religions, rather the person.

And at the end, honestly, most of the people in this forum are not that far than Azealia's behavior, they believe that they are better, but they are toxic as her.

[Economy 50,081]

18 minutes ago, StrawberryBlond said:

Unless we start farming cats in the same way we do other animals that we eat, then, no, there won't be an opportunity for completely risk-free consumption of them. And if they're the result of wild hunting, you don't know if you've killed someone's pet if they're still widely kept as pets (outside the US, there's no regulations on putting cats on leashes outdoors, they're frequently allowed to roam free). And yes, there's no promise of risk-free food from other sources either but it's considerably rarer. It's all about buying ethically sourced meat and aim for it to be organic wherever possible. Most businesses will be aware that they'll go under if any customers get sick so they'll make sure there's no underhanded practice going on. Provided that it's in a country with the best welfare regulations, naturally.

It is of course a difficult issue when you're talking at opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. And it is hard to impose those values. The way I see it is, we technically shouldn't criticise the way people in other countries with other cultures choose to live their lives. I'm sure we do practices they disapprove of also but we don't want to change. But if you have been raised in/moved to a country where the practice you're engaging in is widely considered to be wrong, you should adhere to their cultural norms. If someone is found to be serving dog meat here, their business gets shut down and they're arrested because even if it's legal elsewhere, it's not the way here. Azealia was born and raised in America so it really doesn't matter what religion she associates with (and it wasn't even a religion she was born into), she should realise that her country doesn't support these norms she's adopted and shouldn't open herself up to ridicule by being so public about them. Living in America, she must have been raised on the generally accepted idea that cooking/eating cats was wrong so why did she adopt a religion where this practice is done? That's more the question I'm asking.

I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. Its very rare that i disagree with you but in this case i do

 

Now if in her state its also illegal, i can agree with criticism on the basis of breaking the law

 

But purely from an ethical standpoint i dont see what the difference is whether its a cat or a pig. In fact pigs are one of the more intelligent animals according to studies so if we were to assign value of an animals life based on intelligence we do in the western world normalize consumption of animals that are pretty high up in that ranking

[StrawberryBlond 14,900]

10 minutes ago, River said:

The jewish are spinning them alive around the head, so all your sins will move to the chicken and then kills them, not for food, because the meat is now sinful.

we give all the religions a pass for their practices, because they are.. "normal" but when a different one, that we don't know is doing something a bit "weirder", we get a thread like this one.

Azealia may be not the right person to be their ambassador yeah, but most of these threads are trashing the acts of the religions, rather the person.

And at the end, honestly, most of the people in this forum are not that far than Azealia's behavior, they believe that they are better, but they are toxic as her.

Well, I wasn't aware of that practice. I'm sure many others aren't either. I'm sure they would disagree with this just as much. We're not giving them a pass, we don't know they exist, so until we know it does, we can't pass judgement. I don't support any animal abuse for whatever reason. It's nothing to do with Brujeria or whatever other religion she engages in being "weird" or unknown to us it's that it involves a practice we don't agree with. We're criticising the practice and the person doing it, not necessarily the whole religion. No one's even brought it up by name until I just did. I think it's our right to say that we don't agree with animal sacrifice, it's hardly a radical perspective and certainly not one that needs to have racially charged motivations.

I don't really want to make a pronouncement on other members here. It's hard to compare Azealia's behaviour to faceless people on a forum.

8 minutes ago, Economy said:

I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. Its very rare that i disagree with you but in this case i do

 

Now if in her state its also illegal, i can agree with criticism on the basis of breaking the law

 

But purely from an ethical standpoint i dont see what the difference is whether its a cat or a pig. In fact pigs are one of the more intelligent animals according to studies so if we were to assign value of an animals life based on intelligence we do in the western world normalize consumption of animals that are pretty high up in that ranking

I've never researched the legality of disturbing graves of animals in America. As it's on her own property and it's her own pet, she technically isn't doing anything wrong. But it is down moral perspectives. Most of us can't imagine boiling and dismembering our own pet cat, even if they're already dead. It's her reasons for doing so that we're questioning.

Well, it comes down to just don't domesticate pigs. I know some people do, even as far as having them in a house and raising them like a dog, which I think is a bit far. Keep them as a pet if you must but let them live outside and live like a normal pig. I don't really want to get caught up in the intelligence levels of pigs as it all becomes more uncomfortable. Honestly, pork is something I rarely eat anyway but if I want to keep eating it, I'd rather just relegate pigs to farmyard animals. I tend to believe that you shouldn't domesticate animals that you plan to eat.