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Comment by jessaustin | Hacker News Reader

rape

Ummm, maybe I've seen different feedlot videos than you have?

How else would you describe the practice of forcing animals to be repeatedly and forcibly impregnated against their wills with long steel devices that shoot semen into their vaginas for the entirety of their insufferable lives?

"Rape" implies a lack of consent, when there could have been consent. Animals are unable to give consent, so the idea of "rape" is nonsensical.

What is nonsensical is a definition of consent that denies that animals are able to give it. You know how when you try to do stuff to them, and they run away or attack you or whatever? It's not a subtle message they're sending. At least in most cases.

Of course, it's probably important to admit that 95% of Western civilization (and maybe all civilization; and maybe all of humanity) agrees with your perspective on this topic, to my dismay.

Edit: although when you consider all relevant issues about the morality of how humans use animals, the ethics of forcefully inseminating them come pretty low on the list, imo.

I've raised free range chickens on my small personal farm for years and let me assure you, they don't need to any human intervention to be inspired to procreate.

If anyone is committing rape on my farm it's the roosters, not me.

Maybe the parent was referring to artificial insemination...?

Perhaps, but of words to water down into meaninglessness, I think "rape" is a poor choice. We ought not diminish the experiences of actual rape victims. If humans have determined that it's ethical to consume the flesh of an animal, that would seem to imply it's also ethical to perform a veterinary procedure that causes pregnancy on that same animal.

I don't agree with the term choice here, but we haven't determined that it is ethical to consume meat.

Generally meat eaters just do it without considering ethics, mmm tasty.

Is this bad or good? Dunno. Such philosophy.

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