Cockfight Video Censured by YouTube
Cockfight Video Censured by YouTube
As a part of my research on writing an article on Cockfighting in Honduras for Cafe Abroad Magazine I published a video of a cockfight on YouTube. For six months this video stood embedded on on the Song of the Open Road Travel Blog to illustrate to readers the reality of a cockfight. I just received an email from YouTube today stating that the video was disabled for a violation of the community guidelines.
My seemingly benign anthropological research was deemed offensive enough by YouTube to be censured.
To read the article go to, Of Cocks and Men: Notes on a Honduran Cockfight
or read the blog post at
At the Cockfight
Cockfight in Honduras Photographs
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Upstate New York, USA- September 22, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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Email reply that I sent to YouTube:
The video was a part of an anthropological research project on Cockfighting in Honduras that accumulated in the publication of an article in Cafe Abroad InPrint.
In addition to publishing articles in numerous magazines I run a variety of travel related websites and use YouTube to show my videos. I link very often to your site. If my content is going to be edited for minor moral issues that are tantamount to someone's personal opinion then I think that I may need to find another way to display my videos.
My video was of a cockfight. My job is to show the world as it it through writing, photos, and videos.
I cannot allow for my videos to be edited.
Please reinstate my Cockfight video.
Thank You,
Wade Shepard
It is not my impression that this video was offensive. The cockfight is a normal part of many cultures around the world. It never ceases to amaze me how people in western countries think that they own a standard of morality that should be imposed upon the entire planet. In Latin America, Spain, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, and many other large regions of planet earth the Cockfight is a community celebration; there is nothing inherently violent, offensive, or wrong about it. For YouTube to censure and delete a video of this celebration on moral grounds is to essential say that these culture are morally defunct.
This is ethnocentric.
My job is to show the world as it is. I try not to edit my work through a lens of western holier than thou mentality. If Cockfighting is a part of the cultures that I visit, then I will write about cockfighting. For YouTube to attempt to edit and stomp out certain major cultural practices on the planet is not only ignorant but culturally insensitive.
I do understand that YouTube is not my website and that they should have complete control of what content is displayed on their pages. But the fact remains that they offer a public service which thousands of people employ, and that deeming the cultural practices of some of these people as being morally superior to others is incredulously 19th century. I must remember here how many cultures have been wiped off of the planet through the moral spring-cleaning of dominant societies.
The cockfight video that I published showed no pornography, no profanity, and nothing that can pan-culturally be called violent. I only showed a video of a cultural practice that the Honduran people have been engaging in for hundreds of years.
In a world in which the long honed traditions of minority cultures are rapidly disappearing it is a slap in the face for my documentation - my attempt at cultural preservation - to be censured.
This is how cultures and traditions disappear.
Links to previous travelogue entries:
Cockfight Video Censured by YouTube
* Travel Blog Directory * Vagabond Journey.com * Travel Photos * Travel Questions and Answers
As a part of my research on writing an article on Cockfighting in Honduras for Cafe Abroad Magazine I published a video of a cockfight on YouTube. For six months this video stood embedded on on the Song of the Open Road Travel Blog to illustrate to readers the reality of a cockfight. I just received an email from YouTube today stating that the video was disabled for a violation of the community guidelines.
My seemingly benign anthropological research was deemed offensive enough by YouTube to be censured.
To read the article go to, Of Cocks and Men: Notes on a Honduran Cockfight
or read the blog post at
At the Cockfight
Cockfight in Honduras Photographs
--------------
Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Upstate New York, USA- September 22, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
--------------
Email reply that I sent to YouTube:
The video was a part of an anthropological research project on Cockfighting in Honduras that accumulated in the publication of an article in Cafe Abroad InPrint.
In addition to publishing articles in numerous magazines I run a variety of travel related websites and use YouTube to show my videos. I link very often to your site. If my content is going to be edited for minor moral issues that are tantamount to someone's personal opinion then I think that I may need to find another way to display my videos.
My video was of a cockfight. My job is to show the world as it it through writing, photos, and videos.
I cannot allow for my videos to be edited.
Please reinstate my Cockfight video.
Thank You,
Wade Shepard
It is not my impression that this video was offensive. The cockfight is a normal part of many cultures around the world. It never ceases to amaze me how people in western countries think that they own a standard of morality that should be imposed upon the entire planet. In Latin America, Spain, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, and many other large regions of planet earth the Cockfight is a community celebration; there is nothing inherently violent, offensive, or wrong about it. For YouTube to censure and delete a video of this celebration on moral grounds is to essential say that these culture are morally defunct.
This is ethnocentric.
My job is to show the world as it is. I try not to edit my work through a lens of western holier than thou mentality. If Cockfighting is a part of the cultures that I visit, then I will write about cockfighting. For YouTube to attempt to edit and stomp out certain major cultural practices on the planet is not only ignorant but culturally insensitive.
I do understand that YouTube is not my website and that they should have complete control of what content is displayed on their pages. But the fact remains that they offer a public service which thousands of people employ, and that deeming the cultural practices of some of these people as being morally superior to others is incredulously 19th century. I must remember here how many cultures have been wiped off of the planet through the moral spring-cleaning of dominant societies.
The cockfight video that I published showed no pornography, no profanity, and nothing that can pan-culturally be called violent. I only showed a video of a cultural practice that the Honduran people have been engaging in for hundreds of years.
In a world in which the long honed traditions of minority cultures are rapidly disappearing it is a slap in the face for my documentation - my attempt at cultural preservation - to be censured.
This is how cultures and traditions disappear.
Links to previous travelogue entries:
* Travel Blog Directory * Vagabond Journey.com * Travel Photos * Travel Questions and Answers
Labels: americas, central-america, honduras
posted by Wade Vagabond Journey.com at
2:19 PM
8 Comments:
Well, how about the cultural traditions of forced female genital mutilation, Chinese foot binding, the death penalty for adultery, the old Hindu practice of Sati (where if the husband dies first, the wife is burned alive with the remains of his body), or lynching of black people in the deep south for no other reason then being black, or human slavery, women/children sex slavery rings in Thailand, human ritual sacrifice, or how about the old Nazis cultural practice of exterminating Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and disabled people?
Should those traditions be preserved too?
Give me a fucking break. Do you honestly believe that cultural tradition is always inherently good, just because why? because a bad habit has become deeply ingrained over a long period of time where it has become accepted by people as just being the way things are? By the way not everybody in Latin America supports cockfighting. I checked and there are organizations all over the world, including Hondorus, that are actively petitioning against it. For you to defend a behavior just because it has become a cultural tradition, is a very flimsy reason. Otherwise you may as well defend slavery, torture, rape and murder as well. Tradition is merely the result of repeated habits, passed on from generation to another. Both good and bad habits become a part of a cultural tradition. Tradition is not inherently good in itself. There have historically been all sorts of evil barbaric practices that have been defended in the name of tradition, but that does not justify it, or make it good. If we all followed that line of logic, and just went along not questioning the status quo of tradition there would NEVER be any positive cultural change whatsoever. For example, slavery would never have been abolished in the U.S. and women would still not have the right to vote. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm also kind of thinking that cockfighting was probably a foreign cultural habit introduced to Latin America from Spain, by the same people that had the cultural habit of raping and pillaging and murdering the indigenious brown colored peoples of the Americas in the first place. So that the indians just ended up adopted the bad habits of their oppressors. Kind of like liquor and native north american indians.
I usually enjoy your writing and agree with you on many things, and I hope I have not offended you with this comment, but to defend a tradition for no other reason then it being a tradition, I feel that you are dead wrong. This is not to say that I support YouTube's removal of the video. I think your video should remain, not in defense of the practice, but more so for the sake of investigative journalism.
P.S. I still cannot understand how you can think "there is nothing inherently violent, offensive, or wrong" about getting off on watching two animals rip each other apart and in some cases fighting to the death. You don't think its wrong to force two animals to fight to the death for no other reason than giving people a cheap thrill and something else to gamble there money?
You honestly don't think its wrong in a universal sense, to derive pleasure from the pain and suffering and misfortune of another?
Cockfighting is also an American tradition. My neighbor in Connecticut used to raise fighting cocks when I was growing up, although I never went to one of the contests (illegal).
People tend to beleive their own morality superior to everyone elses. This may be a necessary evolutionary trait to strengthen their beliefs so as to help maintain their morals. And they will twist it to fit current necessities. Hence a very liberal friend of mine who thinks hunting is horrible and should be illegal did not see anything wrong with gassing all the woodchucks in his property and is contemplating killing some of the excess deer in a manner that any hunter I have ever met would consider unethical and cruel. And how my sister in law can spout out about how we need to clean up our act about man made global warming all the while driving her big car or sitting in her big hot tub in her big house.
YouTube is just an extension of all of this and will pull a video that others decide is offensive to them.
Bob L
Cym,
I do not think that there is anything inherently morally wrong with cockfighting. It strikes me as odd that someone could find it perfectly fine for a human to rip the head off of a rooster and eat it but it is wrong for a rooster to essentially do the same. The roosters at cockfights in almost all cultural scenarios are eaten.
What is the difference? I find none.
My point was that one cultures view of wrong cannot be applied to the world. The Spanish missionaries in the new world thought that the religious practices of the indigenous people were immoral so they forced conversion. The Europeans truly felt as if it was their moral duty - their "white man's burden" - to civilize the people of Africa and to prevent acts that they deemed barbaric.
You obviously think that there is something immoral and wrong about cockfighting - you were TAUGHT to think this way. It is a part of your culture to think this way. But many other people are not acculturated in this manner and find that their is nothing immoral about it at all.
My point was not that tradition should be preserved for tradition's sake, but rather that the views of a dominant society should not be applied to the world as a whole.
I am also not aware of any culture that readily embraces slavery, torture, rape, and murder.
It seems silly to me that you can call the practices of other people "bad habits" just because you are not familiar with them. There is often an underside to many cultural practices that you may deem wrong that in the end make a little sense in the proper context.
For example foot binding in China was done because the women as well as the men thought it beautiful.
Genital mutilation is still practiced in the west under the name of circumcision. I am circumcised, sex is less sensitive for me because of it. Was that wrong for my culture to do that to me?
It is just what my culture does. I do not think a value judgment can be placed upon it.
Welcome back!
I've missed you.
Wade
Hey Wade,
Thank you for publishing my comment and taking the time to respond. You know I don't mean any hard feelings by this, right?
Its unfortunate that this topic is probably a fruitless one to debate. And it doesn't really matter much what I think about it anyways, because cockfighting continues regardless.
But really I think the gist of the problem here is not cockfighting per se, but more so it is a clash of two very different points of view. The important question, that I believe is at the root of our conflict, is the question of whether or not you believe in an absolute truth, in a universal concept of right and wrong, and good and evil, versus a belief that all truth, and all concepts of right and wrong, good and evil, are relative?
I like this saying, that "there is no religion higher than truth". If good and evil were relative, differing from person to person, culture to culture, what then becomes of truth and justice, if it has no basis in scientific fact, no substance in reality, but is dependent on nothing more then the passing whims of man, a fleeting feeling, or an arbitrary amusement?
***
Still, for sake of understanding, I would like to add that it is well documented that bloodsports (and gambling which often goes hand in hand) are officially condemned by all the major religions of the world, including, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. And I may not know the exact figures, but I think it would be accurate to surmise that the majority of people attending cockfights claim an affiliation to one of those religions, especially in Latin America, at least to some degree. Also, it is a recorded fact that cockfights go hand in hand with gambling and similiar illicit activities: like illegal drugs, prostitution, and other criminal activities, which are also typically condemned by the majority of spiritual traditions.
Also for the record I for one don't think its okay to rip a head off of a rooster and eat it. I'm a vegetarian. Why? simply because I don't like the taste of meat, and I personally think vegetarian diet is healthier and tastes better. But I'm not opposed to other people hunting for food, what I'm opposed to is hunting for sport. What I especially don't like about cockfighting is that the roosters are often tied together, and are thus forced into the situation of killing each other. They have no choice.
I disagree with you that you think my opposition to cockfighting was culturally inculcated in me. I think for myself. There are people in my family that actually like bloodsports. My dad is a huge hunter. I am not. In many ways I have broken away from my family, and believe the exact opposite to them on many points. I have spent many years thinking about right and wrong, formulating a code of ethics for myself, that is not based on my cultural tradition, but is rather is based on my own independent reasoning. I was not raised with any kind of religious upbringing at all. And my parents are exact opposites. My dad a pro-military meat eating hunter, my mom a vegetarian pacifist. My dads a conservative republican, my mom a liberal democrat. I'm not kidding, and yes they did get divorced, but my point is that I grew up in an environment where I was often exposed to differing points of view. And my beliefs are very different from most people in my family. I'm very independent.
***
P.S. Female circumcision is a much much more painful procedure than male circumcision. And because the female in anatomy is internal, its much more dangerous and more susceptable to infection. Women die all the time from it.
P.P.S. Re. Chinese footbinding. Yes it was admired by both men and women, but the children had no say in the matter, it was an extremely painful practice forcibly done to little girls against there will, causing a permanent disability. Interestingly the practice has been outlawed, and is no longer a culturally accepted practice in modern China, but is in fact viewed as a barbaric practice by most.
P.P.P.S. This is not about me passing a negative judgement on someones culture just because I don't understand it. I'm NOT calling other peoples cultural practices bad habits just because I'm not familiar with them. I'm merely making the recognition and presenting the possibility that there could be cultural traditions, that may have been based on bad habits. There are a lot of things in my own culture that I have problem with. Like I said in my previous comment, all a tradition is is a set of repeated patterns of behavior, a collection of habits that get passed on from one generation to the next. You see the same thing in the intercity Ghetto culture of America - people born into poverty into dysfuntional households, where crime and substance abuse and domestic violence problems and teenage preganancies are a normal occurence - usually the children end up like there parents in and out of prison, and these negative cycles just keep perpetuating themselves from one generation to the next. Would it be wrong to call those habits bad, simply because it has become a cultural tradition?
My point is that just because something has become a tradition doesn't mean its a good tradition to follow, especially if its based on some dysfunctional pattern of behavior. But believe I'm by no means holding America or western culture up on a pedestal. I see lots of problems here too. I just don't believe in the blind acceptance or promotion of any cultural tradition, including my own.
Cym
Hey Wade - one last comment, and then I'll shut up.
I reread your comment and I failed to address this, "My point was that one cultures view of wrong cannot be applied to the world."
Here's what I think, I believe that cultural change must come from within, from the people of that culture themselves, and should not be imposed upon them by other cultures. If cockfighting remains popular in Latin American countries, and is supported by the majority of people there with only a tiny opposition from within, well they have every right to keep that tradition. Only if the minority group of opposition within that country itself becomes a majority, should the practice be changed. The people of the culture must want to change, and if they do there is nothing wrong with that. Similar to how Chinese foot binding is no longer practiced. It would be wrong to reinstate it, against the wishes of the people, solely to preserve a cultural practice of the past.
But I have the right to express my opinion as does everyone else. Just because I am an American, doesn't mean that my opinion should be dismissed as being ethnocentric. I'm not going to force my opinion on anyone else, but I have the right to express it. Also people are individuals. I am an individual. I don't care for this assumption of yours that the only reason why I oppose cockfighting is because I was taught to oppose it. I am not a slave to my cultural programming. Are you telling me that I have no right to condemn different cultural traditions, simply because that would be ethnocentric. That you would only take my opposition seriously if I were born in a culture where I was supposedly taught to to accept cockfighting as a normal celebratory practice. There is always at least a minority of dissenting opinion in every culture. We are not all just cogs in a machine. We are not all slaves to our cultural conditioning. I am not America. I am not western civilization. I am not capitalism. I am not a slave to my culture, I am an individual human being.
Hello Cym,
Good response. I am going to put up a new post for it.
Thanks,
Wade
If you quote me though, feel free to edit where you feel its most appropriate. I noticed lots of spelling errors and general sloppiness - certainly not my finest work. But thanks, I'm glad to have at least generated some potential food for thought and inspiration. That was really my main objective for commenting, not to be confrontational and bitchy. :)
Well, I have no idea who you folks are but I had to make a few comments after reading through this whole thing. I googled cockfighting and youtube to see if anyone had been flagged. I have a BSW with a minor in anthropology so found many similar arguments to my studies. I think anthropologists have to be careful about labelling themselves as value-free in order to report ethnologies, etc. I think it's an excuse not to deal with world problems. It's not okay to just say 'yeah, that's what some folks do' and leave it at that. If everyone was an anthropologist with that kind of attitude, where would we be? We'd have a whole lot of factual drivel about traditions and cultures, but the world would be at a stalemate in terms of enlightenment. Wade, if you're as informed as you say you are, then surely you must be familiar with the concept of oppression. People participate in their own oppression all the time. Chinese footbinding would be a good example. So would the women who shunned the women's movement in favour of remaining 'lesser than'. I have to say I think Cym's arguments have it all over yours. I think you've become a victim of your own values, that is, not to have any values. That's a shame. I'm glad YT banned your cockfighting video and I hope they continue to take a stand against animal cruelty, or any other cruel tradition. Cruelty should never be a part of tradition, and it's okay to say that out loud, and live the philosophy. I think you're taking yourself too seriously. People need to speak up about what's wrong in the world, not just report it.
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Feel free to comment on these posts, ask questions, or give any feedback that you would like. Walk Slow, Wade
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