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tributarium

DAE find the attitude of most pet-owners to be more repulsive than that of most meat-eaters

lemmy.world/post/12269882

lemmy.worldDAE find the attitude of most pet-owners to be more repulsive than that of most meat-eaters - Lemmy.WorldI’m in a pretty vegan-friendly country with a long tradition of plant-based eating. Most people eat meat, but they are basically sympathetic to every meat-free argument: ethical, environmental, health. They sometimes do an awkward little shuffle & apologise for eating meat in front of me or say they’re part-time vegetarians and so on. I think this is all quite nice. What bothers me is when these same people talk about their pets. Eating meat, especially in contemporary urban settings where the origin is factory farms, indisputably objectively does more harm than keeping a pet, but people basically acknowledge meat-eating is a matter of habit/skill/knowledge. Whomst among us lives totally plastic-free, fuel-free, in the woods, etc? But people fucking rhasphodise about their pets. People will buy an animal from a breeder and keep it locked in the house or a cage completely bereft of any stimulation, they’ll make it do stupid tricks to earn its food, they’ll hound it or punis it for behaviours the owner finds inconvenient, use it for emotional comfort while having no real curiousity about the non-human animal’s internal life or perception or needs beyond food and water and maybe some exercise, and then they’ll talk about how it’s their best friend. Guess what–I wouldn’t “own” my friends! At least eating meat, in principle (though obviously not in practice in the modern world) is part of the natural circle of life and can be part of a respectful predator-prey relationship & sustainable ecology. At least people don’t generally defend their meat-eating. But suddenly they’re saints and best friends in their own eyes for taking a captive. To me, even though the objective harm is lesser, this is actually much more sadistic on an individual level. Obviously there’s a spectrum, bla bla. Dogs are an especially complicated case as a primeval co-domestication relationship with humans. One can absolutely make the case that because of the danger of our anthropocentric/anthropogenic built environments, it’s the humane thing to do to keep a cat in the house instead of destroying wildlife or geting run over by a car or drinking antifreeze somewhere. The attuned, curious, considerate shelter-adopter is not the same as the owner who gives her dogs narcotics so they stop whining and disturbing the neighbours while she’s gone 8 hours a day. But while interspecies companionship is not wrong, ownership imo aways is. I think people should at least be very self-critical and ambivalent about it. On the contrary, most people see it as unproblematic and a hobby. To me, destroying non-human habitats and taking them into our own homes and completely flattening their internal lives & turning them into “good boys” and restricting their freedom (while calling them “friends”–friendship is a fucking voluntary dyadic association with no collars involved!) is a much blunter manifestation & affirmation of speciesist ideology imo. Every time I encounter it I find it very hard to deal with. I just stayed with someone who kept dogs leashed up 24/7 except for two daily walks who talked about how much he loved them and how ethical he was with them (there is no animal protection agency here, all of that is legal). A friend of mine just whined to me about how sad he is that he can’t stroke his rodent because it died because another rodent pet of his bit it–well, don’t fucking keep animals captive together in unnatural circumstances where they can hardly avoid conflict that was absolutely forseeably fatal? Again, to me, it is just sadism. This is such a deeply-held position for me and it’s so unpopular and impossible to talk about. I can’t actually connect with anyone who is a proud or uncritical pet owner. I just smile and nod and think about how much muchness is in every consciousness and how close we are to most animals we keep captive evolutionarily and how much suffering that is both extremely easy to imagine and sympathise with if you bothered to consider it (no mammal or bird likes to be caged up/understimulated/told what to do/eating ultra processed garbage, fucking duh, Vox has a pretty good article critiquing pet ownership that lays it out convincingly & plainly) & difficult to understand bc every being has its own unique perceptions & desires & needs & skills many of which are opaque to humans…is created by pet ownership! And it makes me very very sad. I’ve distanced myself from relationships bc of it. Death to speciesism, death to anthropocentrism, death to the myth of human superiority.
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PM_me_trebuchets

Honestly, I’m being honest, you need to touch grass. Humans have domesticated animals and lived with them since time immemorial. I feel like you have just never experienced the companionship and pure unadulterated joy having a pet can bring you. Genuinely I haven’t ever seen such a strange take from someone regarding pets. Now I do agree some people ought not have pets, or they do get pets that are “too much” for them and they don’t realize it. But your argument is strange and goes against the whole of human history.

Also humans are top of the food chain purely bc we are endurance hunters (basically we can run longer than our prey and effectively tire them out long before we tire out ourselves).

Again, I feel like maybe closing your laptop and going out and speaking with normal people and maybe even petting a dog / cat / rabbit etc would do you some good. Look into health benefits of having animals, the benefits to children, etc, and maybe you’ll start to understand.

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ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)

@PM_me_trebuchets @tributarium While domestication of several plant and animal species is clearly a "thing" when looking at human history (many of our most common crops are domesticated, for example), the shift from nominally seeing your pet as a partner (in, say, hunting, which is what dogs were originally domesticated for) to an object to be owned is *much* newer (and problematic IMO).

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ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)

@PM_me_trebuchets @tributarium It's particulary problematic with pets because we see fit to *literally cut off their ability to reproduce*, among other things. People say pets are like family, but if you locked your child up in the house (for their safety, ofc) and neutered them without their consent, you would be thrown in jail for child endangerment.

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PM_me_trebuchets

All imma say to this is a dog is not and never will be and cannot physically be the same as a human being. You lost me with this right here. I’m not abusing my dog by having her fixed.

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ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)

@PM_me_trebuchets But what gives you the right to decide if your pet is allowed to reproduce? And I'm not the one claiming pets are part of my family - pet owners are! So it makes sense to examine whether that actually holds up upon closer scrutiny.

ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)

@PM_me_trebuchets Not to mention stuff like declawing (for the convenience of the *owner*, we rip out cat's claws?!) or locking up pet birds (not to mention 'exotic' pets, a.k.a. wild animals!). In so many ways, pets are treated as objects whose agency is denied.

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