Why cockfighters are crying fowl

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Glenda Buya-ao Claborne

Gov. Jane Dee Hull, Janet Napolitano, Carol Springer, Betsey Bayless and Lisa Graham Keegan may be celebrating, but opponents of Prop. 201 which bans cockfighting and raising roosters for fighting, are definitely not crowing.

For some cockfighting aficionados, the roosters might as well have been dead.

According to an Associated Press news report, someone called the Arizona Humane Society in north Phoenix and saying he was going to dump dozens of roosters at the shelter to be euthanized.

According to the report, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Wednesday dispatched 50 deputies and posse members to the shelter just in case cockfighters disgruntled by the passage of Prop. 201 would create trouble. Nothing happened, however.

Maybe the cockfighters chickened out. I mean, with one fighting rooster alone costing thousands of dollars, dumping dozens of high-bred roosters over to the Human Society so these roosters will never, ever again strut and crow would have been foul cockiness.

Especially since Arpaio suggested turning those roosters into meals for prison inmates.

To have bred such handsome cocks only to be eaten by cocksure inmates would have meant the ultimate castration for the cockfighters.

Sociology students might recall Clifford Geertz' notes on the Balinese cockfight which, among other more important things analyzed in the study, noted that the Balinese man identified himself with his penis by identifying with his cock.

If that is true with American cockfighters, and if we consider that roosters are naturally combative, then the passage of Prop. 201 must be a double emasculation of man and his cock.

But "Friends of Gamefowl," as they call themselves on the Internet, seem to have none of those Freudian fears, at least from reading their concerns about the increasing loss of individual freedoms in these United States of America.

A Leon Dutton of Sierra Vista posted this question on his box on the Internet, "This country used to be a democracy, what happened?"

Here's my theory: Americans have evolved to a higher plane of consciousness in which there is enough goodwill to extend to squirrels, wolves, pygmy owls and roosters. The only problem is that there are still bozos who just don't get it, meaning they just can't let go of the lower levels of entertainment and jump up onto enlightened, ecological thinking.

That explains why Spain can never catch up with the United States, what with those Spaniards clinging stubbornly to that ancient, barbaric sport of bullfighting. That explains, too, why Great Britain is at par with the United States because those Brits had the good sense to outlaw cockfighting in 1850 after indulging in it as their national sport for many years.

No matter that the great men of this country, like George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and Thomas Jefferson (yes, it's not just Sally) raised and fought cocks.

Those were different times, when there were no fears yet of overpopulation, pollution, endangered species and such worries that any postmodern man now must face, if he wants to save his place in relation to all other living things.

But those cockfighters likely still remain unconvinced. They're asking, does cockfighting truly destroy the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community?

I really do not know. Certainly for someone like me, who grew up in a poor country where human misery is a permanent feature of the landscape, the debates about the right to life of roosters gives me the giggles. Nay, it bewilders me, especially if I think of all those humans killed in Nicaragua and Honduras by Hurricane Mitch.

Perhaps it is hard to understand how the rights of all living things should be balanced to preserve our planet Earth when the alternatives to sports such as cockfighting seem to be computer simulations of aggressive wars.

But I am not complaining. May Arizonans vote more women in future elections. I just wish we can find other ways of maintaining a balanced biotic community without making men feel that roosters have more rights than they.

Glenda Buya-ao Claborne is an undeclared graduate student and can be reached via e-mail at Glenda.Buya-ao.Claborne@wildcat.arizona.edu. Her column, Sitting on the Fulcrum, appears every Monday.