• Thordros [he/him, comrade/them]
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      4 years ago

      Take your post and replace 'horses' with 'Jews'. Pretty anti-Semitic now, isn't it? Not a good look fam.

        • EthicalHumanMeat [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          Damn, I guess we gotta stop looking at turtles because they can't consent to that.

          Oh, my dog has to go to the vet? Well he can't consent to that so I guess he's just fucked.

          Stop anthropomorphizing.

            • EthicalHumanMeat [he/him]
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              4 years ago

              Zoos are a fuck. I agree you shouldn’t look at turtles, if they’re in a zoo. I’d take a dog to the vet the same way I’d take a kid to the pediatrician.

              First of all, I guarantee turtles do not care as long as their needs are being met and they don't feel threatened, but I wasn't even talking about zoos. If you're arguing that using an animal for any strictly human purpose, that specifically doing anything with an animal solely for your own enjoyment, is wrong, then it follows that it is wrong to observe an animal for your own enjoyment, whether they're in the wild or in a zoo, which is ridiculous.

              I’d take a dog to the vet the same way I’d take a kid to the pediatrician.

              But what justification do you have for this? An animal or a child cannot consent to this since they aren't capable of it, and they will (and do) communciate their displeasure with receiving medical treatment when it makes them uncomfortable.

              http://veganfeministnetwork.com/nonhuman_consent

              https://hopeferdowsian.com/the-meaning-and-importance-of-consent-for-people-and-animals

              These are just repeating the same thing: consent is important and should apply to animals.

              But again, this precludes things like treating animal or interacting with them in any way. Petting a dog is nonconsensual, since they cannot make the informed, rational decision to consent.

              So it's not an adequate basis for deciding how animals can be interacted with ethically.

              You should practice some basic empathy here. We know non-human animals like horses can feel happiness and pain. They’re not mere objects to use, but persons in their own right whose interests ought to be considered and whose boundaries ought to be respected.

              Buddy, all I've been talking about is animals' feeling. I'm saying that those are what matter. It's the interests of the animals, not some metaphysical idea of natural rights, that should determine how we interact with them. Playing with an animal just for fun, keeping it around because it just makes food or wool which can be useful to us, giving them medical care and intervening in their lives when they need it, observing them, studying them, and so on, when it doesn't do them any unnecessary harm or run against their interests, is all fine and good.

              If it is against the interests of a horse to ride it, which is an empirical claim that has to be answered with evidence, then it is wrong to ride it. If it is against the interests of a chicken to harvest its eggs, or an alpaca to shear its wool, or a dog to guide the blind, or a fish to eat a sick person's dead skin, then it would be wrong, but those things wouldn't be wrong merely because the animals are being used for something, or because they can't rationally agree to them.

                • EthicalHumanMeat [he/him]
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                  4 years ago

                  This is a terrible standard for evidence, as I’ve already demonstrated. You’ve already been shown multiple times by multiple users here that riding horses is detrimental to their health.

                  My standard of evidence is literally just evidence. You and one other poster have cited studies, claiming that they demonstrate that riding horses causes them horrible pain and injury, when the studies do not actually demonstrate that as I showed by quoting them directly. You aren't actually engaging with either the source material for your claims or the substance of my arguments; you're just repeating the same nonsense like chickens suffer horribly from laying eggs and no I will not actually prove that just trust me bro I can tell I speak chicken bro and becoming more and more personally accusatory.

                  Do you have anything to say about interests and rights being categorically different and conflicting ethical principles? How can you demonstrate that animals can ever give informed consent to anything? Is it acceptable to fuck a dog just because it's humping you?

                  There clearly needs to be a different set of principles dictating how to treat animals, specifically one that centers the interests of all sentient beings, which, turns out, doesn't forbid just using animals for things so long as you don't subject them to cruelty (which reminds me: you still continue to ignore sheep, llamas, alpacas, service dogs, medical animals, and so on, who are clearly just fine physically and emotionally), and doesn't place a naive and absolutist concept of consent at the center of all ethical behavior - one that would, by the way, prohibit both necessary but unwelcome medical interventions and revolutionary violence due to "violating the bodily autonomy" of counterrevolutionaries.

                  You’re right, they wouldn’t merely be wrong due to lack of consent, but for other reasons too.

                  I wasn't even addressing consent here; this is another totally separate line of reasoning based on use and objectification, which is totally irrelevant. You just don't like the vibe of it, which, sorry, isn't very convincing.

    • EthicalHumanMeat [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      Rape is itself harmful. This is a stupid false equivalence.

      Also, read my fucking post. I'm down with the idea that forcing horses to do acrobatics is fucked, but I don't see any proof that just sitting on them is.

      Like, I can carry smaller animals on my back for a while without getting spinal injuries.

      And I gotta say I'm not a big fan of you lunatics saying that I'm defending cops and rape just because I don't think the existence of livestock under all circumstances is an atrocity.

        • EthicalHumanMeat [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          Rape is a violation of someone's body, and so their interests.

          Petting a dog or riding a horse or shearing a sheep without asking them is not necessarily a violation of their body or a violation of their interests.

          Insinuating that it's a justification of rape to say that is pretty fucked.