I agree with what you are saying, for the most part. But I don’t see it as clarifying many of the questions of my prior post. Not that it needs to, since the topic here is more about consent generally.
I can appreciate that perspective, but I acknowledge that it could also simply reflect self-serving biases. Humans attempts to negotiate fair treatment of humans still has apparently resulted in an extinction event, and possibly collapse of the ecologies even humans themselves depend upon. So there is also an argument that can be made that human morality has been a failure in its shortsightedness, and insistence upon the ideal of separating human and non-human life. If being moral requires belief in human superiority, then it is a self-perpetuating problem.
The presupposes that consent is only privileged with regards to sexuality. And furthermore that sexual relationships have distinct characteristics from other kinds of consent. What good does the consent of a sheep to avoid sex do if it cannot consent to being property in the first place, or being eaten? For better or worse, making non-humans property completely obviates most forms of consent. There is also here an artificial and arbitrary distinction between sexuality and mating. Again, why is consent irrelevant to forcibly mating non-humans? Because I can argue that inseminating it with a turkey baster was not pleasurable for me, and hence not sexual? That’s inconsistent, because consent or rape are never defined in terms of the aggressor’s degree of enjoyment, it’s supposedly to protect the victim.
Here’s a real-world comparison. I met a kid who was about 12 years old at the time, who was proud of the Polish rabbits he was breeding. He was looking for certain traits, pairing off rabbits to mate. Not unusual experience for a kid on a farm. But if he was watching humans mate, suddenly it would be “a crime”, and the kid supposedly “a victim”, somehow suddenly suffering damages which did not exist in the other scenario. It just seems to me that despite how hot people get about this, there is really no cogent argument to explain the difference. The best I hear is that somehow non-humans do not actually have sex, because we can’t prove that they know what sex is, despite witnessing them do it. That humans have sexuality while others merely “mate” in a non-sexual way. I think that explanation is contrived and unconvincing, but it also undermines consent because if they are incapable of having “sexuality” then they are never in a true sexual relationship with a human, but presumably think they are mating.
Perhaps a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of my little mind!
