God put man in charge of the lesser beings,and as father explained to me,we have lord and dominion over them

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But the corollary of what you’re suggesting in this thread is that it is worth pursuing an evil / morally reprehensible act in the interests of reflecting upon it afterwards, and therefore ‘deepening’ the human experience. This is simply false logic. You have your ends and your means confused.

Yes we can learn from terrible experiences. And it is possibly good to do so. But alas that does not justify the act (or acts) in the first place, for if the terrible deed hadn’t happened, then we would obviously not NEED to reflect or learn from it.

And by the way, I wouldn’t necessarily expect a virgin to give me an “accurate” description of sex. But I might nonetheless enjoy or be inspired by his or her description of it. And who knows, I might even prefer it.

If you meant this as a meaningful analogy, it’s redundant since having sex is not a crime comparable to killing a defenseless animal in cold blood; plus “the virgin” would be writing from a victim’s point of view, not a perpetrator’s. A more accurate analogy would be whether I would expect a rapist to accurately describe his (or her but mostly his since most rapists are statistically men) assault of an innocent victim. And the answer would be the same as my initial response to the Gill incident: I’d rather they imagined it than acted it out.

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What I would argue is this: IF Restaurant Critic A. A.Gill had systemically murdered millions of Jews, Gypsies and enemy combatants in a convoluted plot to create a “pure” race AND he wrote a deep, moving, introspective work about exactly how he feels during the process, THEN I would conclude that maybe we would be best to learn something about human nature through those writings.

(I would argue that such lessons about the holocaust have already happened–lessons that were not learned prior to WWII and thus cost millions of lives)

Finally, let me answer your question with a question: Would you expect a virgin, possessing brilliantly eloquent writing skills, to accurately describe sex? Surely a “good” writer can watch a few YouTube videos and “imagine” that, no?

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I really, really hope there is such a thing as bad press.

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He is, thank God, honest about the uselessness of shooting ANYTHING in this day and age. By contrast, your average hunting/NRA-member TV show host will glorify every little death as some sort of contribution to the world’s safety/the morality of mankind/national security/the nutrition of their spouse/children; this, right before thumping their chest and pissing on the carpet to notify others about their property ownership.

On an individual level, I abhor the thought of unnecessary death (I grew up and live in the land of rifle deer hunting, with many friends who hunt, yet I, personally, have never pulled the trigger on a living thing). However, Gill approaches this topic with a combined eloquence and disassociation that makes it almost a service to his readers. Gill is, quite simply, in a different position than most of us–he can approach things as a form of “public” thought experiment, provided they are legal.

If I were to attack anything, I would attack a country that allows rich white men to meander across their borders and shoot anything they pretty much want. Hell, you can kill whitetail deer/black bear/turkeys/foxes/etc., in Wisconsin, but if you do it outside of season the DNR will take your car, confiscate your weapons, fine you in the TENS of thousands–and they are VERY proactive in this endeavor.

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