yeah... they're nuts...
sometimes, the humans get it...
Congress Brings
the Crush Video Industry to Heel
by Jason Vest
December 1 - 7, 1999
WASHINGTONThis town is incredibly sexually repressed, and hardly a
session of Congress passes without a legislative attempt,
successful or not, to reign in some aspect of sexual behavior,
usually of the commercial variety. Oftentimes, despite the private
predilections of members, support for these bills is unanimous.
Such a measure passed just moments before Congress went home two
weeks ago, but this one may ring true in its unanimity; even
several Washington dominatrices with Capitol Hill clients were so
disturbed by what inspired the bill, thatwhile stopping short of
endorsing a regulatory solutionthey were nonetheless for it in
spirit.
While it didn't get a lot of attention, passage of HR 1887 did,
nonetheless, provoke conversation, like at an "end of the session"
party right after Congress adjourned. Sitting on a porch, beers in
hand (as a coterie of chic young women stumbled out of a nearby
house they'd quickly popped into, clutching their stomachs in that
all-too-familiar post-hit-of-heroin way), a few Hill rats tried to
parse the behavioral question behind the new law: Exactly what is
sexually gratifying about watching a dominatrix in stiletto heals
crush the life out of small rodents and amphibians?
Clearly this would have been a delightful discussion to observe in
the World's Greatest Deliberative Body. But perhaps still reeling
from the tawdry details of Bill Clinton's oral copulations
presented at trial earlier this year, with nary a word the august
members of the Senate decided on November 20 to quickly and
unanimously pass a bill criminalizing the interstate sale or
distribution of so-called "crush videos." A sort of subniche of the
foot-fetish segment of the porn industry, and often referred to as
"animal snuff films," in crush videos, all manner of beastsfrom
chirping crickets to squealing mice to even writhing kittens and
puppiesmeet their demise in a foot-stomping, heel-grinding frenzy,
all in the service of the viewer's masturbatory gratification. (For
evidence of the enthusiasms of crush fetishists, one need look no
further than the Internet; on one site replete with still photos,
one surfer recently wrote of a crushed scorpion series: "I would
have liked to see it sticking to your sole or mushed to pulp by
twisting on it with your whole weight. I love these sneakers and
specially the sole which so great on tits . . . It's like a saw on
them." Another visitor, who noted he likes to see animals
"stomped," said of photo depictions of squished, ground vermin: "I
really like you new pictures with the mouse and the frogg.")
While all manner of curious bills are introduced each congressand
while many a legislator or staffer has perused pornography in the
name of "research"this measure was, by turns, exceptionally
offbeat and unsettling. "It might be quirky, but it really is a big
problem," said Caitlin Hills, legislative director of the Humane
Society of the United States (HSUS). "I don't know much about the
porn world, but I understand that these types of fetishes grow
stronger and more popular, and that's what we've been seeing."
Crush videos first came to the Humane Society's attention eight
years ago; since then, the group has not only seen the number of
titles grow to 2000, but, over the years, has noticed a disturbing
shift in content.
Whereas the first crush videos involved the squashing of bugs, says
Hills, they've gradually gone up the size ladder, from insects to
amphibians, then to mice, next to guinea pigs and up to puppies and
kittens. "We even have one with a monkey," says Hills. "There was
an interview I saw with the producer of one of these films, who was
trying to make his clients out as misunderstood people who have a
need for crushing for sexual gratification," she says. But, she
adds, the issue is not fulfillment of a need, but the reqirements
of that need for increasingly larger animals to achieve rapture. "A
roach will only struggle so much," she says. "Eventually, you need
to see something bigger [to get off]."
The cricket as "gateway drug," fetishistically speaking? While this
area of sexuality has not, to the Humane Society's knowledge,
undergone serious scientific, quantitative analysis, there is some
anecdotal backup for Hills's contention. In the realm of fetishes,
as some may know, one in particular deals with fantasies that
revolve around giant women, or being crushed by giant women.
According to Hills and others, while some crush video viewers
relate to the crusher's heel, the majority view the squirming
animal as a proxy for themselves. "They want to be crushed by a
woman in high heels, so they project themselves into the animal as
a way of doing it over and over," she says.
"On one level, this is just a different level of the domination
standard of trampling," says a veteran Washington dominatrix. That
said, she concedes, it's "still pretty fucked up." For more
realistic simulation, the larger the animals, the better; for more
realistic sensation, however, something much, much larger is
required. [b]Which is how one crush video
aficionado recently met his demise. Two months ago in Okeechobee,
Florida, the body of Bryan Loudermilk was discovered in a shallow,
specially dug trench under a plank of plywoodwhich just happened
to be under the wheel of his SUV. Police concluded Loudermilk's
pulpy demise came as a result of an attempt to fulfill his ultimate
crushing fantasy. Up until his death, Loudermilk had apparently
been deriving additional but perhaps incomplete pleasure from
videos of his wife Stephanie letting her boots and heels fly on
mice and rabbits. (Though no charges have been filed in
Loudermilk's death, the widow was charged with cruelty to animals,
which carries a maximum five-year prison sentence.)
Save that case, the only other fatalities in crush videos have been
the unwilling animal actors. Bringing their assailants to justice,
however, has not been any easier. Perhaps the first investigation
of crush video-related mayhem took place on Long Island in 1998,
when 28-year-old Thomas Capriola was arrested after the local SPCA
chapter noticed his online sales of films depicting everything from
toads to turtles being tortured under the boot. His case has been
stalled for over a year (it's finally scheduled to be heard on
December 14). After a yearlong investigation into crush video
producers, prosecutors in Ventura County, California, discovered
last year that most of the tapes essential to their case fell
outside the very short statute of limitations on state animal
cruelty laws. Ventura County prosecutor Tom Connors then brought
the crush video issue to the attention of his congressman,
Republican Elton Gallegly, who in short order held the first
congressional hearings on crush videos.
It was not, by all accounts, a pleasant affair. In addition to an
array of still photos depicting crushing, the Humane Society showed
a three-minute clip of a guinea pig being tortured. (That there
were 22 additional, unseen minutes of footage ultimately
culminating in the rodent's death was all the more sobering.) The
issue of dead animals brought a couple of career-dead celebrity
activists out, too: M*A*S*H's Hot Lips denounced the videos, as did
Mickey Rooney. From there on, the bill sailed through Congress,
meeting only with brief, bizarre opposition by Representative Bob
Barr, Republican of Georgia, who apparently took the hardline
conservative view that this simply wasn't something that merited
federal legislation.
Nonetheless, the House voted 372-42 in favor of Gallegly's bill
prohibiting the interstate sale and transport of crush videos; the
Senate version of the bill, championed by the right-wing troika of
Orrin Hatch, Jon Kyl, and Bob Smith, met with no objections, and
became one of the last pieces of legislation passed by the first
session of the 106th Congress.
An animal lover who, like the other dommes she knows, would never
consider torturing animals in her scenes, Mistress 2Ka Washington
domme who has "disciplined" some of Capitol Hill's
denizensnonetheless sees a certain irony in Congress taking action
against crush videos. "No one was better suited, really," she says,
"as they know all about crushing small, helpless, beings."
(source: Village Voice)
