Hey, hostile visitors! Do you have an opinion about, for example, Mary Koss’ rape research? Do you want to discuss it even though the topic has not actually come up by itself in any of the threads and none of my recent posts really have much to do with the specifics of anyone’s rape research? Well, from now on you can discuss it here with anyone who wishes to follow you to this thread.
Added bonus: If you continue to try to discuss it in other threads you’ll be banned!
This also applies to future derailers riding hobbyhorses of their own having nothing to do with Koss.
Happy discussing!
Note: If you wish to discuss the topics at hand, you know, topics directly related to my posts and/or to what other people are discussing and that aren’t, you know, personal hobbyhorses of yours that involve long screeds and various things that you’ve probably already cut and pasted into the comments sections of various other websites until you were banned from them for endless derailing and general asswipery, feel free to remain in the original threads.
Just from the things I’ve read in this thread, PETA sound like they’re not actually an animal rights organisation at all. Killing animals because they don’t agree with the idea of pets? Um, what, so do they want domestic cats and dogs and cattle and sheep and horses and goats and whatever other animals humans interact with to become extinct?
(That sounds beyond extreme but now I begin to wonder …)
I learned a new word today. (earlier, I too thought that sapient was basically a funny spelling of sentient, and that they both meant human like intelligence as in being able to speak/communicate whatever
…
I realize it is probably not a good idea to get most of my vocabulary from young adult science fiction
@kittehs
“Sentient: able to feel or perceive things.
Sapient: wise, or attempting to appear wise. (I didn’t make that wording up!)”
Thanks for info. Always assumed they were just different spellings of the same word
::blushes again::
“But arguably humans as a species are a helluva lot worse than the other inhabitants of the planet. We’re the ones given to genocide among our own kind, causing extinctions deliberately or through carelessness, environmental devasation”
Meh. Gonna argue with that. I guess in terms of scale of shit done, but I’m pretty sure some animals are dicks to each other too. Don’t know much about the subject though… Gah worn out today. Idk if I’m even making any sense.
marinerachel – yup, but I’m talking (was I specific enough?) about mammals, because they’re the ones most prominent as food animals, and the cruelty of farming methods applies most to them. (Australia has a totally noxious record on allowing live animal exports and the cruelty there is appalling – we really should ban it, the so-called regulations aren’t doing a thing.)
Oh dear god, a PETA member came out of the woodwork?
I’m a little agnostic about what animals can actually feel and perceive, but generally follow the guideline that they should be treated as though they can perceive what they appear to be perceiving. And obviously I’m a big fan of animal welfare; I mean, I frakkin’ care for homeless kittens.
But riddle me this: If animals deserve to be treated the same as humans and have the same rights, then it follows that animals a) should have the same responsibilities as humans (because human relationships are reciprocal) and b) should treat other animals the same way that people ought to treat other people, and animals that fail to do so are just as bad as people who mistreat animals. Thus, carnivores are all evil. You’re also well on your way to sheep-fucking territory.
If, on the other hand, you posit that animals have fundamentally different relationships with each other, including predatory ones, and that such relationships are not only not morally wrong but in fact necessary and obligatory for the health of the ecosystem, then it follows that humans may also have a different relationship with animals than with other humans, and said relationships might include predation.
Marie – I’m not talking about individuals being nasty to each other, any more than “male privilege” means individual men are guaranteed a cushy life. I’m talking about what our species has done to the environment, how many other species we have destroyed (think of how close the bison came to extinction, or how the passenger pigeon was wiped out, just for two examples from the US; or the thylacine, from Australia). Think of how many animals are in danger of extinction now because we are destroying their habitats. Think of the lovely things we do to kill each other off on a mass scale. There’s no other animal can compare with humans in the inventive and rampant ability to destroy.
I’m actually not sure what they propose should happen to cows, chickens, and so on. Goats for example could probably survive quite well in the wild, but cows? Probably not so much.
I mean the animals that exist now. I assume that part of the plan would be to stop breeding them? But again, if you follow the idea that humans and other animals are exactly the same and one has no right to have power over the other to its logical conclusion then we have no right to sterilize animals, since we have no way to tell whether or not they’re OK with that and we don’t consider it ethically acceptable to do that to people without their consent. And that would then apply to animals kept as pets too, like dogs and cats.
Part of the problem I have with the people who talk about other animals being just like people in terms of us having no right to exercise control over them is that their actions often don’t gel with what they claim to believe. The attitude towards sterilization is a good example. PETAs believing that they have the right to euthanize strays is another, much starker example of the same problem – if they believe what they claim to believe then what gives them the right to do that?
@hellkell
“Does he really think that nursing is a safer job than STEM? Because his ideas are so poorly thought out, this is what I’m thinking. Getting punched by a drunk in the ER is SO MUCH SAFER than STEM. So much.”
Yeah, missed that part. Its so icky, since the woman I know in nursing talks about people coming in the ER she works in with knives… Totally safe.
Marie: yeah, and depending where you are in the U.S., some schools aren’t all that safe. GNL is full of shit and fail.
@katz
“But riddle me this: If animals deserve to be treated the same as humans and have the same rights, then it follows that animals a) should have the same responsibilities as humans (because human relationships are reciprocal) and b) should treat other animals the same way that people ought to treat other people, and animals that fail to do so are just as bad as people who mistreat animals. Thus, carnivores are all evil.”
Yeah :/ and I’d really rather. People not decide carnivores shouldn’t exist.
@kittehs
“There’s no other animal can compare with humans in the inventive and rampant ability to destroy.”
O_o like…are we not counting invasive species at all? (Hope I remembered the word right). I guess I don’t really follow your point…
re the whole vegetarianism thing:
I don’t have a dog in the fight. I think archeoholmes stepped into a hole, and then didn’t know how to stop digging.
I think zie dug too far, too fast, and too wide.
Are animals important? Yes. Do they have feelings? Yes. Are they the same as “people”? Probably not. Even if they were, well we prioritise people.
Someone wants to be a vegetarian/vegan, fine. They want to work to change the view of the world on eating meat? Fine.
They want to be assholes about it, and attribute malice to others, not so fine. They want to get everyone to stop, all at once. Not gonna happen. Certainly not by shaming them. Best to take it in steps. Work on making meat less a central food item. Work on more humane raising/slaughter. Fine.
Telling me (as happened yesterday at work) that “I am offended that this exists. I’m a vegan” about a piece of cookware I was telling them how to use to make tofu… not conducive to making me more sympathetic, but I digress).
I was going to sit it out (this sort of thing almost never ends well), but archeoholmes; you implied that those who don’t agree with you don’t give two shits about animals. That’s not cool. I am willing to believe this was a moment of passion; in the heat of a difficult (and heated) exchange. I am sure you felt people were treating you harshly, even dimissively.
As to the PETA thing… they are evil. Full-stop. I don’t know what the directors think. If I had to guess they like power. They may (once) have had a deep desire to help animals, but they created a movement; and it was a radical movement, and it made them well-off, and powerful.
Power tends to corrupt. They decided they needed a rhetoric in which animals were more important than people (this is, when one looks at it, the core of their argument). In pursuit of “purity” they came up with some oddball ideas (that being a pet is worse than being dead; and that allowing people to adopt the animals they sheltered would “perpetuate the cycle of violence and slavery).
PETA is a cult. It’s a cult which trades on the fame of some of its members (like scientology). They don’t like women, because they don’t like people. Women are easier to exploit then men (And they get more hits; which adds to their fame; the controversy is a feature, not a bug; and actual change isn’t really the object; notoriety is).
I have a definitional quibble.
All animals are sentient. Not all are sapient. I think the list of sapient animals is well above 1 (i.e. H. sap), but I don’t know how many more than one it is. A number of cetacea, a number of primates, a number of birds (esp. corvids, and parrots).
After that it gets a lot harder to test.
But sentience is (almost) de rigeur for (multi-cellular) life. I think it was fibinachi who pointed out that there is strong evidence of some level of sentience for plants.
GNL: You all think that men are the one and only category that it’s impossible to ever disadvantage in any way.
Nope. Do you suffer from seasonal allergies? I think the straw is affecting your thinking.
Could men; as a class, be disadvantaged? Yes.
Are they? No. Have they been? No.
If you think they have been (or are, as a class; not individual men), prove us wrong. Cite some examples (studies with data would be good).
If not, then you are trying to blow smoke up our ass; and while YKmightBOK, it’s not our kink, so please stop; or I’ll fart in your specific direction (yes, I DO like to play word games; the audience can keep score).
katz – wouldn’t it be more like us having more responsibilities to animals precisely because we do have our particular form of thinking, power and so on? I’m thinking it’s sort of like children in that way; they don’t have the right or expectation to vote, drive and so on. But because a small child does something like hits its sibling, does that make it acceptable in adults?
I don’t by any means think we’re identical to mammals (I’ll limit it to them as being closest to us). There do seem to be more studies coming out that suggest we underrate animals a good deal, iirc.
I am wary of the “they’re just animals” line because of what it can lead to; I hate the dismissivenes that too often comes with it, or the ridiculous idea that you can’t care about animal rights AND human rights that some people seem to think is the case, or the notion that cruelty to animals is just a bit of fun. (No, I am not reading that into anything anyone here said!)
I’m not a vegetarian and never will be. I do think the meat industry needs to be turned on its collective head and fixed.
@pecunium
“Are animals important? Yes. Do they have feelings? Yes. Are they the same as “people”? Probably not. Even if they were, well we prioritise people.”
Yeah. :/ I actually do care what happens to animals, just feel like I’ve been way too…befuddled by this conversation. Hope I haven’t been being a jerk to you guys…
katz nails it: If, on the other hand, you posit that animals have fundamentally different relationships with each other, including predatory ones, and that such relationships are not only not morally wrong but in fact necessary and obligatory for the health of the ecosystem, then it follows that humans may also have a different relationship with animals than with other humans, and said relationships might include predation.
That predation (because we are sapient) ought to be humane, and we may choose to not do it either, but it’s not, ispo facto irremediably evil.
Thing is, there is an environmental component to this discussion. Cattle farming on a large scale is really bad for the environment. It would be better for the environment if people on the whole ate less meat, especially beef. However, the jump from “less meat” to “no meat” isn’t as obvious or necessary as some people think it is (people could instead eat smaller quantities of meat or eat meat less often, or shift consumption towards kinds of meat that are produced in less environmentally damaging ways).
But, again, that’s a complicated, nuanced conversation that’s really hard to have when people are insisting that all meat production happens in exactly the same way and has the same (terrible) environmental impact, and that people who eat meat do so because they’re callously indifferent to the suffering of others.
Marie – I was talking about when you said you were sick of the “humans are no better than animals” line, upthread. I said I don’t think many people would argue that humans are more important, but that “better” is a value judgment and not one I share.
Invasive species aren’t deliberately, knowledgably wiping out others: they are behaving in the way they’ve evolved to. A hell of a lot of invasive species are introduced by humans in the first place, so if there’s morality involved there it’s our fault anyway. No other species has the capacity to destroy life through nuclear war – not only the capacity, but the record of having done it. This is what I’m gettng at: “better” isn’t really much of a word for our history. We’re pretty crap tenants of the planet and I don’t think we’re gonna get our bond back when we move out!
Ah… someone else covered the sapient/sentient issue.
I blame SF for that. Someone in the 50s used it, and someone (I’d suspect John Campbell allowed it; maybe even promoted it as house style, and it took over).
“Hope I haven’t been being a jerk to you guys…”
Nah, you’re fine with me. And vice versa, I hope! 🙂
Goats would survive; and wipe out a lot of habitat in the process. They are too good at making deserts.
For better or worse we have made a world in which we (so long as we are here) must steward. I hate the, “we have to save the planet” meme.
The planet doesn’t care. When we die, there will be a huge rearrangement of things, as the imbalances we made adjust. We may not be able to maintain an equilibrium, in which case “nature” (to personify a non-motive force) will have failed in the experiment at a cultural, tool-using, animal.
I care about how we do things, not for the planets sake, but for humanity’s. I like people. They have amazing talents (and some of those talents are for bad things). I’d like us to have a long run.
FWIW, my gut feeling is that we have a moral responsibility to minimize suffering if and when we can. Which means that methods of raising and slaughtering animals that cause more pain or fear than is necessary should be avoided. Some of those methods are chosen because of cost/expedience, and those are the ones that are going to be hardest to persuade businesses to give up. Others happen because people just don’t stop to think about the idea that minimizing pain and fear is a thing that we should try to do, and those should, in theory, be relatively easy to get changed.
Part of what bothered me about the earlier part of the conversation was the implied assumption that efforts to take the above considerations into account while still maintaining the production of meat for human consumption were not already happening in many parts of the world. It’s not as widespread a trend as I’d like it to be, but it is happening in some places, and again, stigmatizing all people who eat meat as callous and uncaring about the suffering of animals really isn’t helping to support that trend.
@kittehs
“Marie – I was talking about when you said you were sick of the “humans are no better than animals” line, upthread. I said I don’t think many people would argue that humans are more important, but that “better” is a value judgment and not one I share”
Ah. That explains it. I guess I was thinking a ‘we shouldn’t be treating humans like animals’. Even though we do need to be treating animals better. Idk, i just phrased it poorly. I wasn’t thinking about morality or intended consequences.
Cassandra: Those videos are great! Never thought I’d see a tiger and a lion playing tag. And the pumpkins… all I could see was Cat wandering around Red Dwarf: “This one’s mine, that’s mine, that shiny thing is mine…”
And again I wonder how much of this is regional, or based on age. Where I live the idea that factory farming is cruel and more humane alternatives should be sought is pretty common, which is part of why the whole “but you’ve obviously never thought about how cruel factory farming is!” thing had me going “huh?”.