From the THS thread:
Says Timebandit, in response to what I said (quoted in TB's quote)
Actually, it's very like - you're making a moral argument by saying "The only reason that most dogs exist is that it gives us some kind of pleasure. That to me has seemed increasingly wrong over the years."So from your words, it's easy to infer that if you regard it as wrong, it's something you probably don't like. And that you've linked the pleasure that people derive from having a pet as part of that wrongness.
What I find most interesting about this sort of argument (not you specifically, but other arguments have been made similarly, like in the hunting thread that was opened a couple of months ago) is that pleasure and wrongness are so closely aligned. It's very.... Catholic, for want of a better descriptor.
It's not the pleasure derived from owning a pet that I have a problem with as you say. It's the means through which the pleasure is derived. Most dogs have no freedom. From the time that they are born in a kennel by the will of a human, to the time that they die at the will of a human, dogs live in complete domination. My problem is that this is viewed as a legitimate way of deriving pleasure in life for humans. And it is put on the same universal scale as sex, as if "we" have always owned dogs as pets because we are human. Many people globally (most even?) do not keep dogs as pets.
I'm trying to look at dogs/pets as a system. One that could very well be part of the larger web of oppressions that make up the racist, imperialist, capitalist patriarchy in which we live.
Thoughts?