On a recently locked struggle session thread, someone made the claim that

i love how people who hate my existence are just as evil as someone who doesn’t care about eating a McRib

meat eating is bad but I don’t think im going to compare them to people who don’t want me to exist

The user in question is a woman and I’m not, so I think the best way to respond to this is to discuss it in the context of an oppression that applies to me. Here’s a post where I’ve already done so:

I’m autistic. I struggle a lot with things that allistic people can typically do very easily or even effortlessly - things many would consider fundamental to being human, like socialization and romantic relationships. Over the course of my life, countless people have said and done things to me that make it clear that they view me as less than human. I’ve seen them say and do things to other autistic people because they make it clear they view them as less than human. This immediately gives me very good reason to be critical of the thought process that says “They’re not human, so we get to be cruel to them.”

I think this warrants elaboration, though.

I had the misfortune of being active for many years in communities were “autistic” was considered an insult. Just as most people are offended to be compared to animals, it was seen as demeaning and shameful to be compared to called autistic - “you’re like one of those inferiors!” I would be extremely suspicious of anyone who claims to be an ally to autistic people but who flies into a rage if someone dares suggest that a crime against us carries comparable moral weight to a crime against them.

Am I offended to have my struggle compared to our society’s crimes our fellow creatures? Do I think it carries with it the implication that I’m beneath moral consideration? No, because I don’t consider animals beneath moral consideration.

  • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
    10·
    1 year ago

    Drawing a hard line of inclusion/exclusion along the boundary of presumed categories is always going to result in a breakdown. One example is the category of “human”. Another is the category of “animal”.

    I wouldn’t go around maiming or infecting trees without a good reason for it. I would say that to some extent multicellular plants and fungi have a right not to be abused. On the other hand, there are lots of microscopic animals that I would treat closer to bacteria than to vertebrates. My body will extinguish millions of them without me even being aware of it, and I’m fine with this.

    As heterotrophs that can use technology, and among living things that have a tendency towards replicating exponentially, we are ultimately going to have to make some sort of comparative ethical valuation, some hierarchy, amongst living things. The question is whether that valuation framework is sheer and exclusive and merely self-serving, or if it has some connection by degrees to the not-self category.

    I use this same logic to say that a fetus is more of a prospective person rather than a living, breathing, perceiving human, and that someone with brain damage to the point where they cannot awaken or sense or process things does not command the same obligations as a human you could meet.