(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)

khym_chanur
2007-01-11 05:56 am UTC (link)

I always thought the notion was that neither children nor animals have an informed understanding of what's going on, the thousands of years of symbolism and cultural relevance and mores.

On the one hand, you could say the same thing about neutering pets or deciding who they're going to mate with: they can't have an informed understanding of what's being done to them, but we do it to them anyways. On the other hand, if you applied the same consequentialist argument to having sex with animals to having sex with children, you get very skeezy results. But this raises an interesting (to me, at least) question: for what things do you treated an animal's lack of informed understanding the same as a human's lack of informed understanding, and for what things do you treat them differently? Is there anything besides sex for which an animal's lack of informed understanding becomes an issue?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	serai 2007-01-11 06:28 am UTC (link)
	Yes, I've thought the same thing myself, and it's some of the reason I brought this up. The way I've heard people talk about animal issues over the years, it always seems to me that the issue of consent and what we do to animals is almost always based on what the speaker happens to believe, rather than what actual evidence exists. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

napalmnacey
2007-01-11 06:43 am UTC (link)

I'm only going to give my opinion on this once cause the whole subject makes me wretch.

Domesticated animals are bred to be submissive to us. So that 'consent' you think they're giving can't be trusted to be consent at all. They're raised to let us do whatever we want to them. As their caretakers, it's our responsibility to treat them well.

I think the problem is that people are anthropomorphising these creatures and not understanding how they view relationships with other living creatures.

Bestiality/zoophilia is abuse, and there's no other word for it.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

serai
2007-01-11 08:17 am UTC (link)

Well, physical mutilation is abuse, yet we do that to animals constantly. Tying up babies and forcing them to live on thin gruel until they're soft enough to eat is abuse, yet there's a whole industry that produces and sells veal.

We constantly do horrible and stomach-turning things to animals. It seems to me that there's only some things that are OMGWRONG because they can't consent, and they're the things that only a few people would want to do. The ugly shit the majority of us approve of is accepted as perfectly ok.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	napalmnacey 2007-01-11 08:21 am UTC (link)
	Yeah, it's a double standard. Some live with it, some don't. If I had the constitution to be a vegan, I wouldn't eat meat or animal products ever again. But I don't, so shrugs. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	serai 2007-01-11 09:09 am UTC (link)
	Oy, indeed. I actually was a vegan for a while, and enjoyed it. But that was in a town that made it easy to do. Here in L.A. it's much more difficult, and yadayadayada. But there's just so much wrong with modern life, there's no way to counteract it all. sigh (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	napalmnacey 2007-01-11 09:15 am UTC (link)
	Too true, too true. When it gets too much for me, I go to cuteoverload.com and zen. (Reply to this)(Parent)

kahrohseh
2007-01-11 06:44 am UTC (link)

Hoo... Let me be clear, I have total respect for you and this line of questioning, it's all very valid, but I'm starting to wish I'd kept strictly to the macros and teh funneh.

But in answer to the questions you pose, well, I can't claim to have any solidified theory on that. If I were to fall back on what I remember from formal Ethics class, I'd say the dividing line comes down to potentiality: an animal is never going to grow up into something more cognitively advanced, whereas a human child will, barring a few exceptions. Parents take formulative steps with their children on an assumption they are preparing them for some outward-expanding future, whereas pet owners seem to be of a psychology to do things that will ensure their pet, at best, something consistent, uneventful and peaceful.

But then, people use the same potentiality argument against abortion and the mentally disabled, so, I just... aiyaiiigh. ><; I'd still put it down to the fact that an animal has no full comprehension and never will, whereas a child someday will, and that's what bears the most weight.

Or, if all this is unstable, it may just come down to the fact that humans, as humans, are more accountable to fellow humans than to animals. But if humans develop something called humanity and the property of being humane, then out of at least our reputation among fellow humans we should apply the basic fundamentals of civility to our treatment of other species.

Or we just all go out for ice cream.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	kahrohseh 2007-01-11 06:49 am UTC (link)
	*Formative, not formulative. See? I did need that ice cream. (Reply to this)(Parent)

(Read comments) -