Is it wrong to wear fur?

[fortyplus]

I have launched a fairly venomous attack on Xenia, glibly implying that 10,000 of you will agree with me. Here are some 'edited highlights' of what started it...

By Xenia on Sunday, 10 December, 2006 8:45:30 ...The girls have a huge range of interests (including intimate knowledge of London nightclubs.. I think one got into conversation with a famous chef at ChinaWhite one night when he ought to have been dealing with his children and being with his wife, rather than chatting up pretty blondes wearing fur?.)

By aliceband on Sunday, 10 December, 2006 8:55:19 PM
wearing fur?

By Xenia on Sunday, 10 December, 2006 9:00:13
Fur... of course. Surely from my posts you could tell my family would wear fur? 160,000 vicunas now roam Peru I think it is because they had been dying out but then were farmed for their fur. It saved the species and yet Blair bans fur farming. There is no hope but thankfully the planet is big and the world our oyster.
Later...
Did you mean I wasn't clear on fur ro you think we can wear leather shoes and murder plants but not something that looks sweet and fluffy (unless it's a calf in which case then it's okay to kill it but only if the skin is a by-product even though we no more need to eat meat than we need to wear skins)? Thankfully a week today I will be somewhere amongst many fur wearers and away from the warped collective British conscience.
By Queenmummy on Monday, 11 December, 2006 3:25:09 PMOne of these days Xenia will disappear up her own a**e and suffocate herself (hopefully before she bores us all to tears with the one track argument we are all fed up with listening to. Xenia - if you really are a well-rounded and interesting person, how about talking about something new besides than this dull and done to death SAHM/WOHM thing......

By fortyplus on Tuesday, 12 December, 2006 12:00:26 AM
I take back what I said about Xenia's views being to the left of Attila the Hun.

Abhorrence of the fur trade has nothing to do with whether animals look cute & fluffy, Xenia. It's all about the pain and suffering caused to the animals and stupid bitches wanting to look like prostitutes quite happy to wear the skin of a big cat that's been killed by having a red hot poker stuffed up its anus so as not to mark the skin.

You say that you've 'worked hard to fit in' with British society since coming to this country.

You haven't got a clue. Why do you think that out of 10,000 people on mumsnet the only one who consistently agrees with you is mohze?

Your smug, sanctimonious opinions are despised by every apparently decent person on this site.

I'm a vegetarian precisely because I live in the real world (where else would I be living I wonder?), but more so because I live in a very privileged position where I don?t have to contribute to the misery that constitutes the lives and ends of billions of animals in the industrial meat market to meet my daily nutritional needs.

blood and guts is OK. Killing an animal for fun or vanity, isn't.

Killing a turkey so you can help increase your size from 14 to 16 is no better than wearing a fur because you look pretty in it.

Very true - over eating at feast times is reprehensible. I hate wasting meat for that reason.

wearing fur for reasons of vanity is still worse though.

You should wear fur to keep youself warm, not for vanity

Don't eat turkey

blimey! wearing fur is just vulgar

beautiful animal skins only belong on beautiful animals

well said south eastastra....... anyone seen wearing fur should be stoned publicly

I'm just thinking about all those vulgar cavemen

Do you do your assessment by skin colour? What about the native indians in London to meet the Queen the other week? Or the innuit?
I could understand an argument that all nice clothes are vanity. I'm sure my Catholicism would get me to that position hence nuns' outfits, burkhas and the like. In fact the standard of some stay at home (and some working) women's dress of a kind of shapeless leggings, old jeans etc is probably morally the most correct.

Do you think you add to the suffering of sheep by wearing wool?

Ahem..that's a bit extreme Laneydaye - and that's a bit of an understatement

""old jeans etc is probably morally the most correct""

I am morally correct by your novel definition

economically correct too

Now I'm getting a kind of deja vu feeling...don't know why...

Are you asking me?

I'm off to watch the television now, maybe I'll get out my fake fur to watch Gordon Ramsey at 9pm
Have fun

mateychops you donot need to eat meat. You like meat, as it happens I like meat as well, but we don't need meat. As ominvores we need some animal stuff, but milk and eggs are adequate for this.

You don't like fur for some reason, fair enough, but that's not a sound ethical position when you cause animals to die because they taste nice. Don't see that as different them looking nice.

Fur farming can be cruel, but then again so can all animal farming. Recall how maliciously cruel animal rights trash "liberated" a horde of mink ?
Killed damned near every wild mammalk over a huge range.
Mink are pound for pound about the most vicious thing on legs.

I'm afraid none of you have convinced me of a case against fur. Thankfully the nation is wise and fur is not as unacceptable as before. Reason has prevailed.

why should i try and convince you i find it wrong?

you either have compassion for animals or don't

Wouldn't go so far as to say that fur wearers in the UK should be stoned . Pitied for appalling fashion taste, yes, but stoned, no.
However - can't see why anyone would want to. Not a warmth issue really is it? Personally I think they make wearers look like gangster's molls/pat butcher.
I have an ethical dilemma. Have an antique fur coat left to me when I was 8 by my great-grandmother (so dates from the early 1920's).
Wouldn't dream of wearing it. Find it rather creepy. Can't donate to charity as feel it's wrong for it to be worn. Can't throw it away either as would feel that would be so wasteful -sad for the animals that were killed to make it (assume not edible creatures).
So it sits in storage and probably will for evermore. Might give it a decent burial.

You talking to me Dom? I know I don?t need meat. I?ve been a vegetarian for years. Never liked it neither but I?m still primarily a veggie because of ethical reasons ? don?t wear leather either, defo don?t wear fur. It is very beautiful, but I?m beautiful enough without it .

Like I said further down, I am well aware that I am only able to maintain a veggie lifestyle because I am privileged to live in a society where I don?t need to eat meat to maintain a healthy lifestyle. If I wasn?t so privileged I wouldn?t be a veggie, but I?d also not be part of the western meat industry with its accompanying myriad ethical and moral problems. In fact, I might well be hungry precisely because of that.

Similarly, if I was an Inuit I would wear fur ? as long as I wasn?t Inuit diasphora in the Bahamas of course.

as it happens DC I heard that mink are quite scared of otters & if otter fur was as popular now as it once was, I doubt they'd be making the come back they are... and consequently helping the repopulation of water voles too. huzzah

The more I think about it the more i consider it to be a really nasty comment about stoning fur wearers. Am I supposed to respect and listen to the views of someone who thinks like that? What's worse someone who wears fur or someone who would stone another human being? That's lunacy. It's comments like that that actually are making me side much more with xenia.

My opinion herte is that Xenia has become something of a scapegoat, merely for holding veiws that are different from the majority, and refusing to be ashamed of them.

I may not agree with what she says, but I will defend her right to say it. I have seen several threads started about how mad/bad/awful this poster is, and am yet to see solid evidence of thus. These threads are reminiscent of note-passing 13 year olds in an all girl school.

If I was a Mod (I'm not, but just if) I would tell a lot of the posters on this thread to stop being so damn spiteful.

also, as this thread actually goes against the mumsnet code, I would ask for it to be pulled.

PS, FWIW, I don't think avoiding fur is a nobrainer at all. I don't avoid meat or leather, why is fur so very different? I think Xenia has a point about the fluff factor.

Ahh mojomummy, that hoary old chestnut about animals chewing off their leg to avoid the traps. You know what? I've never seen it happen. I have many friends and aquaintences who, like me, did the odd bit of trapping in their youth for extra cash. They've never seen it happen either. I know the fur lobby use that argument often, but as far as I can tell, it's a bit of a myth. There is one photo in circulation of a wolf with an injured leg that is used on just about every website and piece of propaganda the fur lobby puts out. This wolf may well have chewed his leg off, but in reality that's something animals simply don't do because the resulting injury would kill them anyway.

Most traps kill outright, they catch the animal around the neck and break their neck. Failing that, they strangle fairly quickly. Any animal caught by a leg generally dies of stress or blood loss, which is not ideal. But hey, the rampant destruction of native flora and fauna isn't ideal either.

I guess I'm just pragmatic about it. Possums kill native wildlife. Trapping keeps the population down and saves the native wildlife. The fur industry makes it economically viable for trapping to happen. I've actually been involved, abeit in a small way, in the fur industry myself. I'm yet to be convinced by some of PETA's propaganda which seems to me to be hysterical and poorly researched.

Though I agree, fur coats just look naff.

My personal opinion is that if someone wants to wear fur, then it is up to them and quite frankly, it is nobody else's businesses what somebody else chooses to wear.

Many of you will quite happily sit at home pontificating about the evil fur trade whilst at the same time display indifference to the millions of children around the world who don't have much to eat. Many of these same children and their parents will work in factories producing garments that you all buy but they are paid pittance for their labour and work in atrocious conditions.

We have asylum seekers and immigrants trying to come here and do they receive a warm and fuzzy welcome? Nope, they are viewed with disdain, disgust and vitreole by many of the same people who protest about the bad treatment of animals.

Also, has anyone ever the considered the environmental impact of wearing synthetic clothes? At least fur is natural. I wonder how many of you would attack an Innuit who visited the UK and wore their fur clothing?

And before anyone jumps on me, I do not wear fur. I just get fed up of this herd mentality that thinks it is OK to personally attack others for wearing fur whilst at the same time, ignoring the poverty and suffering that millions of people around the world endure.

Feeling like buying some fur in the Alps at the weekend now..... laughing as I type. We have some animals. I'd never harm any animal. I don't mind abuse. It usually just wins arguments for the people on the other side.

Also don't forget we stone women around this planet for being raped or adultery or having a child our of wedlock. May be we should concentrate on that sort of thing although I tried to avoid that argument on there because deflecting from one argument to something else which is worse (like abortion units that have to kill the child born alive) is not a good means of arguing. I don't actually often wear and don't have much fur (it's very expensive) but that's beside the point.