littleshebear@gmail.com — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 10:22:52 GMT

There's a few things I need to get off my chest after reading a couple of animal rights wanks. Not exactly a rant more a...clarification. Hell, maybe I should link to it for the benefit of some of the screaming veggies that got wanked in the first place.

There are lots and lots of different types of vegetarians, so it's not a good idea to lump them all together.

Moral vegetarians: What it says on the tin, refusing to eat meat for moral reasons.
Non-moral vegetarians: Refusing to eat meat for health or aesthetic reasons. Please note the inclusion of aesthetic in this category. People who don't like meat or think it's disgusting, the "Ewww you're eating a rotting corpse" brigade are NOT moral vegetarians, the aesthetics of the food is not a relevant moral concern.

Moral vegetarians can be further sub-divided into other groups, negative and positive vegetarians (note; I'm not saying one is superior to the other by using these labels, that's all they are, just labels. "Postitive" just means a strategy designed to alter an exisiting state of affairs, negatives would rather see it end altogether. These terms could apply to anything, not just moral vegetarianism.) :

Positive Vegetarians: Vegetarians who boycott meat in to effect change in farming and slaughtering processes. They are not against eating meat per se, they just oppose certain methods that employed in order to raise animals for slaughter; meat boycott as an economic strategy.
Negative Vegetarians: Vegetarians who think that eating meat is morally wrong no matter what the circumstances and therefore avoid meat as a moral credo regardless of the methods used to raise and slaughter the animals.

There's a further subdivision here, it's possible to be a negative vegetarian yet also wish to acheive positive concerns so...

Negative/Positive Vegetarians: Those who personally believe that eating meat is wrong in a negative sense but also believe that the majority of society aren't going to follow suit any time soon so would also wish to see current practices change. (I fall into this category)

Now a few rebuttals to some things that I hear time and time again yet never fails to grate with me:

"Meat tastes good, why shouldn't I eat it?": Like I said before, aesthetic reasons are not moral reasons. I'm told long-pig is quite tasty, that wouldn't give me a justification to kill my next-door neighbour and chow-down on him. In morality, palate is irrelevant.

"Animals eat other animals in nature so why shouldn't we?: Two points; first of all, non-human animals are not moral agents. They are incapable of making moral judgements, they cannot be held responsible for killing eachother. When a cheetah brings down a gazelle, he's just doing what a cheetah has evolved to do. He doesn't think about what he does. It's not right, it's not wrong, it just is. Humans however are capable of overcoming their evolution and making rational choices. I may well have evolved to be omnivorous but I can choose not to eat meat and remain healthy. I have the choice, non-human animals don't.

Secondly; just because something is natural, that does not automatically make it morally justified, so the whole argument is fallacious to start with.

"Veggies who eat meat substitutes i.e. textured vegetable/fungus matter that's specifically designed to mimic meat, are inconsistant/silly/deranged/laughable": Back to my aesthetics point again. It's completely irrelevant. I happen to like the taste of meat, I just choose not to eat it. The fact that I eat meat subtitutes helps me keep on the veggie straight and narrow, so what if it looks like meat? It doesn't make me inconsistant; I'm not paying for meat, I'm not supporting the industry and not ingesting the flesh of an animal. The aesthetics of the food does not impact on it's moral status at all.

Now, on the other side;

"Animals are beautiful/noble/cute 'n cuddly/our friends/so you shouldn't eat them.": Aesthetics has no place on this side of the debate either. Mole-rats are ugly little fuckers, does that make it okay to be wantonly cruel towards them?

"Animals have morals too so we should respect them.": No, they don't, see my points above about the "nature" argument. You don't need something to have morals in order to have reason to treat them with resect. Appeal to the principle of significant interest; they may not be capable of having morality in return to us, but they can be significantly interested in not being harmed. If they can feel pain/fear etc, then that's good reason to avoid crueltly towards them.

Secondly, anthropomorphising them damages your case more than it helps because it encourages much eye-rolling from the other side. Over-emotional stances do not help anyone in this movement, it just discredits the rest of us.

littleshebear@gmail.com — Sat, 16 Aug 2003 12:36:00 GMT

Okay fuckers. I've never had the urge to go to the library on a weekend before. But this weekend I thought I'd be a good studious little girl and go to the library today. So I checked the opening times on the website, and it said; Vacation - Saturday 9am til 1pm. Cool I thought, I can get in a good couple hours at least. So, fuckers it would be really nice if the opening hours on the website actually corresponded with the actual opening hours! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! I got out of bed early for no reason! DAMN HELL ASS YOU BUNCH OF PASTY FACED ASS CLOWNS!!!

Anyway, happier news. DESPERADO SEQUEL!!! Antonio Banderas! SQUEE! AND Johnny Depp! DOUBLE SQUEE!!!

littleshebear@gmail.com — Fri, 15 Aug 2003 15:10:15 GMT

Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti

AAhahahahahahahahaha...

waves

littleshebear@gmail.com — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 20:09:40 GMT

I've finally decided to update this thing. I'll usually just be cross posting from my LJ. So here we go.

Oh my god. Please let this be a joke.

Little she-bear

*waves*

waves