Through Empathic Eyes: A Survivor’s Story

Jasmine Afshar, army veteran

We regard crimes against the vulnerable as the most abhorrent in our society. Those who target children are intentionally seeking out the most vulnerable victims to exert power over for their own gain. When individuals are abused and exploited in their youth, it affects their physical and mental well-being for the rest of their lives.

At age five, my mother gave me the option to begin visiting my father’s house on weekends. Before long, he moved in a woman and her young daughter. Soon after, she started behaving in strange ways, such as pouring water on me in the middle of the night while I slept and depriving me of meals when my father wasn’t home. When I tried to tell him, she convinced him that it was my “childish imagination” and all was dismissed. One weekend when I returned to my father’s house, I found most of my clothing and toys had been sold, but his girlfriend claimed she thought they were her daughter’s items from when she was younger. She escalated the interactions to sexual assault when she began touching me with her hands and my bath toys during my bath time. It was excruciatingly painful, but when I tried pushing her away, she shamed me for misbehaving.

Finally, one evening at dinner, I threw my fork down and ran to the phone to call my mom. All I could divulge was, “Help me! She touched me in places she’s not supposed to, and she keeps calling me fat,” before the phone was ripped out of my hand. Very soon the door swung open and I was hoisted up by my stepdad and put in the car, as a tussle not meant for children’s eyes took place in the building that had become the center of darkness in my life. Many memories from this time in my life have been suppressed. The psychological trauma is still being undone over twenty years later.

I remember smelling the feces from nearly a mile away the first time I stepped onto a farm. The dairy industry demands the repeated sexual assault of the females trapped behind bars with the intent of growing as many cows as fast as possible into dairy laborers. Workers tie the females to a rack and stick their arms into the cow’s vagina to find the cervix. Then they insert a rod with defrosted semen collected from a male bull—stimulated through anal electrocution—into the cervix of the restrained female. Bulls often endure this process biweekly. When anal electrocution is not used, physical stimulation or arousal through manual manipulation of an AI doll is the common alternative.

As I stepped onto the farm, I began to see a wave of individuals rolling and flicking their tongues in the air; a desperate and ravenous version of dogs with peanut butter stuck to their mouths. I made my way toward a building on the side of the property, and upon entry, saw long rows of pens not much larger than the beings confined by them. The newly born calves had the largest, most soulful eyes with eyelashes that seemed to extend beyond the bars that bound them. As we walked by, they slammed their frail bodies toward the back of their pens to distance themselves from those who looked like their kidnappers. While examining the conditions of the facility, I passed by an individual whose curiosity exceeded her desire to retreat. I knelt next to her pen and extended my hand. This startled her; however, after a minute, she began to slowly inch forward before wrapping her tongue around my hand. I attempted to give her a tender pat on the head. Her anxiety was fleeting, as she began shuffling with pleasure from being scratched. Bouncing back and forth, I taught her a game, and like a puppy, she started to bounce around, hitting the sides of her pen with every movement. She was never given a name or identity to match her unique and exuberant personality, so I offered her the name MILA. It grew to stand for My Inspiration to Liberate Animals. Seeing such a vulnerable, inquisitive individual caged for profit compelled me to make a promise to devote every piece of myself to animal liberation.

Later, I realized I had given MILA a false impression that the interaction she experienced that day was one she could expect from humans. What awaited her was forced impregnation like that experienced by the mother who birthed her and the theft of every being that left her womb. The memory of that day haunted me so much that I went back to see what had become of her on my birthday nine months later. I had an employee search for which lot she might be on, and I looked for her number to no avail. As a last-ditch effort, I called out the name she had only heard that one day, and, to my surprise, she came bounding forward. Her eyes were hazy and her fur was patchy. Like other cows, she had succumbed to the overwhelming environmental stress and had begun tongue rolling. I fell to my knees sobbing. The lively, curious being I once knew now stood before me damaged and broken. This was supposed to be the ideal farm. a humane, family-owned “grow lot.” Yet, because of humanity’s inclination toward domination, we treat animals like objects, and even the best treated objects fall short of the needs of an individual. Today, I would not be able to find MILA. She was sent to another farm, where the remainder of her life will be spent as a tool, and the milk meant for her children fed to the humans of the world instead. She will be killed around four years of age even though she could live to twenty if given the chance.

I existed in the world without aspirations until I turned twenty-two. Every time I felt a seed of hope, it seemed to be ripped away from me, and I wanted to do everything in my power to prevent others from feeling such despair. After my childhood abuse, my stepdad who had saved me developed cancer and died. In school, I was harassed and bullied because I looked and thought unlike others. After high school, my mother gave me the options of full-time college, the military, or homelessness. I knew I would waste money in college because I did not care about structured learning at the time, so I joined the army, naively thinking I would be able to help the world that way. The first day of boot camp, a drill sergeant approached me and whispered in my ear, “I will make sure you don’t make it to graduation. Barbies and hajis don’t belong in my army.” I took it as a harmless scare tactic that is commonly displayed in movies, but reality would prove me wrong. Before every physical fitness test, he discreetly pulled me aside and made me work out until the walls dripped from the humidity and my body lay entirely lifeless. The night before the final physical fitness test, he came into the women’s sleeping area and informed us that he wanted us to move all the lockers and bunks into a separate room before the sun rose. This meant we would be fatigued the following day for our mandatory test. No man was required to do the same. He added extra weight to my sack the day of our eleven-mile march, causing me to develop a pelvic hip fracture. I left basic training with degenerative disc disease, arthritis in my back, slipped discs, a pelvic stress fracture, carpal tunnel syndrome, migraines, and fibromyalgia. When I went to my next duty station, I was asked to “power through it” unless it became intolerable.

I woke up one night a couple months later screaming and profusely bleeding. The sergeant on staff rushed to get two soldiers to carry me to the on-base medical clinic. Poking, prodding, and testing commenced to find out what was causing such immeasurable pain. After searching for about four months to no avail, the doctors began to question whether I was imagining the pain. My mom took it upon herself to begin researching potential causes, and she linked me to a site for endometriosis. I exhibited all the symptoms, including the inability to find physical anomalies on scans and other tests. I brought the potential diagnosis to my gynecologist, and she accused me of being a hypochondriac, which was reinforced by my on-base physician when I requested a second opinion.

I could not understand why my pleas for help were being ignored. After another month of attempted therapy, the army realized it would cost more to fix me than it would cost to provide me benefits after removing me from service. Since I was a broken tool, the military no longer had any need for me. A month after being discharged, I went to see a civilian gynecologist, who agreed to check for endometriosis, which had spread throughout nearly my entire pelvis. The surgeon told me I would likely experience chronic, lifelong symptoms. Had it been caught sooner, it could have potentially been effectively suppressed. I have had seven surgeries for my endometriosis. With each year that passes, my illness becomes more of a hindrance and also becomes more normalized, blinding those around me to my daily battles. I was told at one point that my best option was to learn to sit with the pain. Then, after seven years of fighting, I met a vegan local gym owner who saw through the facade I had created to mask the pain. He had me lay down and pressed gently into different stress points on my body, each movement and exertion of pressure creating a deeper sense of ease and contentment.

I thought I knew the depths of pain, until I had to stare someone in the face who was trapped in constant pain. It was dark; the wind whipped and slashed across our faces. We walked for what seemed like miles. It wasn’t until we began to smell the putrid scent of death, feces, and ammonia that we knew we were approaching the city-like entity confining innocent beings to unimaginable conditions. We arrived at a large bush that concealed us on all angles from the building less than half a mile north of us. I sprinted around the two-hundred-foot-long barns. You could hear the mother pigs smashing their foreheads against metal, driven mad from confinement. My sense of urgency grew as babies and mothers began to vehemently wail, and I found an opening.

The team and I stopped for a moment to observe the moonlight caressing the cesspool of pig waste poisoning the earth, our bodies, and the animals trapped just feet away. We entered to see babies who should never have been born trampling one another to get to the nipples of their mothers. The mother pigs did not have enough nipples to accommodate all of them, but the babes were so hungry they chewed on whatever flesh they could find. I expected to see some fight from the mothers, but there was nothing. They lay there, submitting to their babies’ hunger, instinctually feeling a responsibility to feed them at all costs. I walked toward one mother, who stood in defense as I slowly approached. I reached out my hand, knowing she had the power to damage it should she choose. Instead, she gently pressed her doughy, fuzzy nose against my open palm. I reached further to extend a touch of comfort, yet she flinched so hard you would have suspected I struck her. As she warmed to the idea of a soft caress, I glided the palm of my hand down the length of her spine in the hopes of alleviating pressure that had built up from stagnation. Tears streamed down my face as I watched an exaggerated version of the sensation of pain relief I had experienced just a week earlier at the gym. When I left the industrial-sized farm, I knew that my touch would be the only kind touch from a human that this mother pig would ever experience.

Hardship does not discriminate based on species. Pain is pain, regardless of the victim. If we can alleviate the pain unjustly inflicted on another being, we should never hesitate to do so. Especially when we, as a society, could abolish it entirely. I understand what it is like to have someone control your every movement, sense of reality, and basic needs while manipulating everyone around you to believe they are acts of benevolence. Yet when it is done to nonhuman animals, it is intentionally and legally obfuscated with lies about humane treatment.

I know what it is like to be sexually violated, to have someone pin you down and touch you without consent because they perceive you as an object to be controlled. When an animal’s consent is violated, it is frequently done with an entire human arm forcibly penetrating their sexual organs to birth replacements for those whose bodies have begun to fail them, even though those beings with declining health are only children themselves at just a quarter of their natural life span.

I have felt a fraction of the physical torment that relentlessly stalks nonhuman beings. Even though I experience chronic pain daily, I cannot fathom being in their place for a day. I know the helplessness of having my pain ignored and my medical needs neglected. However, the animals see no relief. Their injuries, illnesses, and suffering go ignored until they are driven mad and eventually killed.

When I was rescued, my parents were celebrated for their impassioned display of breaking down the door and threatening my dad and his girlfriend for a victimized child. When the truth was brought to light, all who found out wept. When rescuers expose the lies of “humane washing” within industries that exploit animals and try to provide rehabilitation to the damaged victims they rescue, they are tried in the court of law with felony charges of theft and massively fined. Not only is animal suffering far worse than what many humans can ever imagine, but the powers that be have a vested interest in ensuring there is no way to save the victims.

None of this came full circle for me until I personally experienced persistent and immense discomfort daily, paired with being shown the suffering of another person—a pig. The video I saw in early 2016 began with a lone pig being coerced into a room by a human. When the animal breached the room and saw the red-stained floors and smelled what I only imagine they acknowledged as the stench of death, their eyes widened with utter fear. Their eyes were the same color as mine, and their desperation to seek safety reminded me of some traumatic moments in my own past. The human gripped the terrified being by the feet and hoisted them upward, causing their thrashing and struggling front half to come crashing down. I felt the same shock wave of fear when my body was violated as a child. Nausea overwhelmed me as a shiny knife struck the pig and blood spilled outward. I felt faint and full of sadness for the disregard of this individual who was desperate for life. Only then did I understand the urgency of destroying the perception that animals are commodities to be used. When I think about why I am compelled to take direct action and speak unapologetically on behalf of the animals, I realize that no deep philosophy is needed. The answer is simple—they are me, and I am them. Once you have experienced hell and crawled your way out, it becomes impossible to turn your back on those left behind, especially when they are closer to the flames than you could have ever imagined possible.

If I were a female cow in the dairy industry, a hen in the egg-laying industry, a sow in the pork industry, a queen bee in the honey industry, or any other female animal that humanity exploits, I’d be dead, because my reproductive organs don’t function adequately. I can smile each day because I know whenever a knife is taken to my body it will be with anesthesia and medication, and, most importantly, I will—most likely—wake up. I can smile because I know my value within this society is not strictly dependent on my bodily systems. I can smile because I have the luxury of human privilege. The fate for the beings who suffer in exploitative industries is much bleaker. Society views them as a vessel to grow organs, tissue, and by-products, entirely neglecting the sentient individual enduring unimaginable suffering to accommodate human desire. I have no more inherent value than them. Our bodies and autonomy should not be perceived differently because of a superiority complex inherent in the human species.

I’m tired of it all. Tired of the smell of urine that burns my throat and lungs, making me feel suffocated whenever we document the suffering of nonhuman animals. Tired of hearing the piercing cries that remind me we aren’t coming through in the ways they need from us. Tired of the gory slaughterhouse footage that exists because we don’t have the will to stop unnecessary violence when it is within our ability. Tired of the blood staining everything it touches, including our hands, in a way that cannot be washed away. Tired of the manipulation, the corruption, the lies, and deceit; the hiding and the billions of dollars spent to sell the public misinformation. I’m tired of human privilege, privilege that is causing an irreversible mass extinction. I’m tired of the talking, pleading, and convincing, when we as rational beings know this is wrong and unnecessary. I’m tired of seeing fear-stricken faces, exhaustion, and mutilations scarring the bodies of the most innocent of those who grace this planet. I’m tired of the notion that it is only those who are evil who are culpable for our horrifying history of destruction. No longer do we have the option to point the finger anywhere else but at our own mirrors.

For the past few generations we have declared a one-sided war on the world and its inhabitants. A new framework of advocacy is needed, one using every tactic and approach, on every level, to ensure injustice no longer persists. We will need to support the aboveground and underground movements equally, as both serve as propellers catapulting the animal liberation movement forward. We need all voices and strategies so long as they are striving to remove the notion of human supremacy that leads to the exploitation of nonhumans. It is not just the blatant abuse we oppose; it is the very notion that we have a right to dictate the movements, relationships, and lives of nonhuman animals when there is no significant distinction between humans and nonhumans other than the way we look and speak. The supremacy that is believed to exist was built upon a foundation of deception. We cannot rightfully own or use sentient beings capable of self-rule, and we must use all necessary means to free animals when they are unjustly imprisoned, as we would for any innocent captive. We must remove the lenses that have blinded us and begin to see the world through empathic eyes. Until they are free, we as a society can never be.