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Very substantive.
RosaL: well, I am a big believer in rights over here... and perhaps because I am, I find myself being both argumentative and mocking where people use the term in what I perceive to be a casual manner. I think there are major distinctions to be drawn between rights, entitlements and claims and they are all too often bandied about as if they were identical. The most immediate analogous situation that comes to mind is when someone uses the terms racism, bigotry and chauvinism as if there were totally interchangeable. I think you are right that we may need a new thread to talk about rights, more specifically about the nature of rights themselves.
In a general sense, I've had a problem with discussions around "rights" for some time. Trouble is, there's so much focus on what constitutes a "right" and what doesn't, and everyone gets caught up in the semantics and forgets about the goal of these discussions, which is to improve our little corner of the world. So folks will say, jobs are a right, healthcare is a right, everyone has a right to a respectful workplace, etc etc etc. All good things, but maybe the focus needs to be on wrongs instead of rights.
In the US over the past year, there's been the debate over whether or not healthcare is a right. Aside from the evident absurdity of that country where healthcare is not a right, and firearms ownership is, the whole "rights" discussion sucked the focus away from the sheer practicality of universal healthcare; that it's more humane, economical, and good for business.
Surely the whole of babble is proof that even like-minded folks will never, ever, ever agree on statements of principle; that people get worked into a lather over choice of words. Someone uses the wrong word, and it's proof positive that a person is a closet sexist/racist/homophobe/climate change denier/wears white socks with sandals, and certain folks rally round the torches and pitchforks, and it's all meaningless hair-splitting at best, nasty bullying at worst.
So what I'm get to is, instead of having a discussion of whether or not animals have rights, a discussion that would consist of a small number of folks slagging each other while the rest of us munch popcorn, maybe a discussion of how animals should be treated would involve more folks.
Is meat murder?
What motivates vegans to make that choice?
How about more on Temple Grandin, and the ethical slaughter of food animals?
Debating animal rights would be just as divisive and ultimately pointless as all those other rights discussions.
Grandin.
Well, I agree that a discussion of a theory of rights doesn't belong in this thread and that theoretical discussions can be a distraction. I also think there comes a point where you have to take a stand. On the other hand, I think theory - or how we construe reality - matters. It matters whether we think about it or not. It can be coherent and well-grounded or utterly incoherent and baseless or somewhere in-between. It informs our thoughts and feelings and actions and our babble postings on how animals should be treated. So I do think we need to pay attention to it.
I usede to be in some animal rights groups on facebook. I removed myself because the majority of people were against spaying and neutering their animals. That and there was a large degree of anti-abortion/anti-woman's rights and those people I jat cannot deal with.
I think the thing is, and I'm a vegetarian, is that from what I can see many people who are heavily into animal rights are anti a hell of a lot of things I am in support of. I'm sure this would be a disappointment if the forum turned into debates about abortion and strong drug laws.
Yes, I know what you mean. I feel the same way on babble and in many other places - I agree with people on some things and not on others.
If you're saying: don't discuss a theory of rights in an animal rights forum because we may agree on treatment of animals but disagree about "rights", yes, I think that's a good rule! I took the issue up because someone was using a particular theory of rights against "animal rights" but that wouldn't happen in an animal rights forum.
I've noticed that too, Star; it's almost as if they love animals and hate people.
Maybe it's a power thing - some people like animals because they are easier to control. And wanting to have anti-abortion laws and strong drugs laws is completely about power and control.
That's a part of what I mean, for sure.
People are irrational, and language is inexact at best. So many discussions seem to be between people who would agree in the real world about what actions they'd take, but they start slagging each other because he says tomay-to, and she says, tomah-to. Pointlessly divisive and tiresome - and as the drama with the OSPCA and the THS in the past year shows, it's especially a problem in the animal care world. Howcome?
Fixed! (Thanks!)
It's fairly common for disability rights advocates to want anti-abortion laws too. I'm not defending that but it's not evidence of a hatred of people or a desire for power and control either.
I think animal rights people in general "lean left". There's a strong anarchist contingent for example. (Take a look at the Vegan Freak site. They explicitly mention this leftist tilt.) The "they love animals and hate people" theme is wearisome. I don't think there's any evidence for that - in fact, the historical evidence would appear to support the thesis that love of animals and love of humans is linked. (And, no, Hitler wasn't a vegetarian.)
Vegans come across as loving animals and hating people when it is in the context of vegans wanting to protect dinner animals. I want this animal to live a long happy life, you want to kill it and eat it. Of course we are going to get sideways. That doesn't mean I hate the people at that point, just that I think the cow needs protection more than you do. After all, no-one is raising people for meat and if that were the case I would be just as anti-human-meat as I am with cow/pig/chicken.
Years ago I saw what I thought was a neat cartoon - a big fish eating a smaller fish eating a smaller fish eating a smaller fish.... and so on until you get to sardines eating bacterium or whatever. I remember long ago cleaning a fish I caught with a smaller fish in its gut.
Fish have to eat smaller fish. They are not eating smaller fish because they are tender and lemony, they are eating them because they have no choices in their undersea supermarkets. :) And so on right one down to bacterium.
Yesterday I was cleaning a pepper and it had a wee pepper in its gut. Circle of life.
You sure about that? The jury still seems to be out and he was a aniaml welfare nut and the nazis animal welfare laws were very advanced
Good article in yesterday's Globe:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/toronto-humane-soci...
The article is about animal rights versus animal welfare, Bandit the pit bull symbolizing the divide between two different philosophies of how animals should be treated. Bandit helped support the case for Ontario's controversial pit bull ban, while former THS head Tim Trow kept this dog in a special cage in his office for the purpose of menacing people who would threaten his leadership.
Good thing the Allies were able to stop the vegetarian scourge!
Seriously, is this being used as some kind of argument against animal welfare and vegetarianism?
I'm pretty sure he liked music, art and walks in nature, too---Oh my god, I'm a nazi!
I don't think I have any friends who aren't anti-something that I consider myself supporting. It makes conversation that much more interesting, after all how dead boring would it be if we were all totally on the same page and just nodded and smiled at group speak?
For the record I am on a half dozen different vegan/veggie sites. I have run across some fairly strange ideas, but have never seen abortion or drug laws debated.
I humbly suggest that a forum could be called, "Animal Welfare," a more neutral handle than "Animal Rights."
Well I always had my suspicions Jas
I have never thought that you could draw any comparison between facets of someones character/beliefs and evil. For every 'good' person you can find with a given trait (vegetarian, christian, socialist, conservative, teetotaler, athiest, etc) you will be able to find a equally 'evil' one.
In this case the anti-vegetarians love to point to Hitler as a vegetarian and the vegetarians are equally desperate to make him not one
He may have been a vegetarian, but he sure as hell wasn't vegan.
This is what I mean by babble never being a place to discuss animal rights. How long did it take to get to "Hitler was a vegetarian, so there!" in this thread?
And in my opinion, babble already got lots of places for people to do the "aww, poor kitty in the shelter" and "look at this cute cat video I found on YouTube" and "Meat is murder, tasty, tasty murder" posts, which are apparently what pass for "animal welfare".
To do it right, a forum on animal rights and animal liberation would require a separate forum, and require a hardcore name and some hardcore moderating and a critical mass of people willing to defend the space for it to get beyond, "I love animals! I like my doggie and my kitty and my adorable little hamster, and hamburgers are yummy! How dare you say eating a hamburger is mean! Hey everyone, look at the meanie vegan who hates people!" kind of discussions. I doubt there is enough appetite here for that.
P.S. I used to frequent vegan web sites, and I don't remember any that were against abortion, or even right-wing. Doesn't mean there aren't any out there, of course. But there is absolutely nothing inconsistent about being vegan and pro-choice. Vegans have never denied anyone the right to do or eat anything from their own bodies or anyone else's with informed consent. (Which is why it is also "vegan" to consensually give and receive oral sex and "swallow" or in some way ingest bodily fluids.) Vegans who consider the fetus to be part of the woman's body (and I'm betting that the majority do, since vegans tend to be progressive) have no problem whatsoever with a woman making the choice to have an abortion. There are probably conservative vegans out there, and sure, they might consider the fetus to be a separate entity. Basically, if you fall in the "fetus is a baby and separate person from the mother" camp, then you might fall on the pro-life side, and if you fall in the "fetus is part of the mother until born" camp, then you might fall on the pro-choice side if you're a vegan. But that's how people who aren't vegans also divide on the debate, too, for the most part. That is a philosophical difference that ultimately doesn't have anything to do with being vegan or not.
In fact, remember that case that the mainstream media went nuts about - those supposedly vegan parents who neglected their baby and then used "we're vegan" as an excuse for not having breastfed or given their child formula? Every vegan site I went to not only condemned the couple (every vegan on the planet will tell you that there is absolutely nothing wrong with breastfeeding and nothing non-vegan about it - after all, their slogan about milk is that cow's milk is for BABY COWS, not humans), but also got very upset at having been, yet again, vilified by the media and ignoramuses who accepted this idiot couple's excuse for harming their child as some sort of spokescouple for vegans everywhere.
Michelle, you rock.
Start a thread and keep it alive, Keystone. M Spector and others have created threads with the same title that are spread over years and the threads become treasure troves of reading and information.
I'm not sure I like the dismissive "babblers don't get animal rights\welfare" and the hierarchy of progressivism being bandied about in this thread. The checklist is getting pretty long at this point.
Thanks for the link to the vegan freaks site. It's a movement I need to understand better, for sure.
If we have a place for animal rights, shouldn't there be one for animal responsibilities?
At our house, the cats are responsible for rodent control, and the dogs for greeting/alerting us to visitors and playing with the kids. Both contingents are acquitting themselves admirably.
At our house, the cat (named Piglet, incidentally) is responsible for waking us up in the morning by walking on our hair, lying on the top of my head and purring in our faces, and then tripping us on our way downstairs for breakfast. He does a fine job of it all.
Anyone in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) need a kitten? I have 2 desperately needing homes. A ginger/orange kitty and a tortiseshell. Adopted together would be nice but homes are really needed
Is there any response from the rodents (and if the cats get outside, from the songbirds) on how they feel their rights are being impacted by the actions of the cats?
No songbirds yet, since the Calico Wickeds haven't figured them out - they were indoor cats until last fall, when we began having territorial issues in the house and began letting them out now and then to relieve the pressure. Joulsie the Spook doesn't go outside anymore, too much noise and foot traffic, but in her youth used to go after the sparrows.
We did have mice migrating into the house via our elderly masonry basement wall (now stopped up), but the only comment we got from them was a fit of twitching on expiry. Rosie is a particularly merciless mouser, although Penelope is pretty avid herself. Joulsie is no slouch for a 17 year old cat, either.
Yeah, and she's in awesome shape. She's a little less active, but still limber, the only real sign of age is that she's missing a few teeth and is starting to go from black with a white smudge on her chest to having a little "salt" sprinkled through her coat. It seems she and I are going gray at about the same rate...