Nobody is saying that humans and animals is an apples-to-apples comparison, carnists put these words in the mouths of vegans all the time and it's really fucking annoying and a straw-man argument. However, you'd have to be a moron to not see the parallels between human and animal suffering, because animals, just like humans, very much have a capacity to suffer. As for myself, I don't think "superiority" and "inferiority" are morally relevant characteristics anyways, so long as an animal has a capacity to suffer, which they do. If I have the choice to not participate in a cruel, sadistic industry that tortures animals by the billions, why the fuck wouldn't I abstain from that?
If we perceive ourselves as superior to all other life on Earth, one could argue that that's exactly why we should hold ourselves to higher moral standards and not needlessly slaughter billions of animals each year for human consumption when so many plant-based alternatives exist.
is it though? we mostly use the same words for animals as we use for humans, we dont have a whole parallel set of words we use. we would say someone would punch, kick, push, hurt, hug, help etc etc etc an animal (as we would also say an animal walks, runs, eats, likes, dislikes, is afraid of etc etc), and its mostly really in the particularly uncomfortable areas of animal agriculture where we start moving into specific euphemistic language.
and if someones dog was deliberately killed for pleasure, nobody would bat an eye at that person saying their dog was murdered. nobody would think that person was saying that people and dogs are apples-to-apples, they would think that this person understood their dog as a thinking, feeling being worthy of moral consideration. the apples-to-apples comparison thats closer to that is someone deliberately killing a pig for pleasure, and so the real question is what is the difference between a dog and a pig that justifies the difference in moral consideration between them?
If you ask a bunch of people to define murder, vegans would be about the only ones who would include animals without prompting. Even among non-vegans who might refer to killing a pet as murder, few would support treating pet killers they way we treat people killers.
the real question is what is the difference between a dog and a pig that justifies the difference in moral consideration between them?
This also strikes me as arguing -- at least from a moral standpoint -- that you can make a roughly apples-to-apples comparison between how humans and animals should be treated. Of course you're going to get people thinking you're saying that.
If you ask a bunch of people to define murder, vegans would be about the only ones who would include animals without prompting.
does that matter though? for a spicy counterexample, if you asked those same people to define murder, leftists would be about the only ones who would include "dropping bombs on people for empire" or "denying people food because theyre poor in a wealthy country" unprompted. the whole point is that people should think of these things as murder even when people generally dont
Even among non-vegans who might refer to killing a pet as murder, few would support treating pet killers they way we treat people killers.
strongly disagree. john wick is a very popular blockbuster three-movie revenge fantasy about how righteous and cool a man is for killing hundreds of people after someone killed his dog. look at any r*ddit thread about someone who killed a pet dog and see what non-vegans are saying about the perpetrator. most people (and the laws of most countries for that matter) think deliberately killing a pet dog for pleasure is a crime that should be punished by prison time (edit to add that core of the crime is the cruelty to the animal itself not "damage to property"). maybe a shorter sentence than for a human, but still as a very comparable (if not identical) crime to killing a human. as MF_BROOM was saying, not apples-to-apples, but very comparable
This also strikes me as arguing – at least from a moral standpoint – that you can make a roughly apples-to-apples comparison between how humans and animals should be treated. Of course you’re going to get people thinking you’re saying that.
sorry what do you mean? im talking about the comparison between dogs and pigs in the bit you quoted, not people. i genuinely dont follow
All I'm saying is that it should be obvious why non-vegans think vegans make a moral equivalence between humans and animals. It's because they do exactly that pretty often, either explicitly or through stuff like calling someone who kills an animal a murderer.
No one is straw-manning anything here -- people are telling you what you're communicating.
is it a confronting word to use? of course, its making an inescapable statement that the act is not morally-neutral, which the word "kill" can be ambiguous on. it invites people to think of justifications for why such a deliberate killing for pleasure of a thinking, feeling being that doesnt want to die shouldnt invite moral judgement. thats a confronting thing to have to do, especially when youre not used to thinking about it
no leftist legitimately thinks that its wrong to use the word murder because of dictionary definitions or because it implies animals are the exact same as humans, we both know that. everyone here is smarter than that. they think its wrong because it makes them uncomfortable to have to make a moral examination of something they participate in every day, that perhaps theyre not as certain about the morality of as they think
they think its wrong because it makes them uncomfortable
This really isn't it. The most immediate reason people are annoyed by it is because it's aggressive and hostile without being funny or novel.
To the extent they engage with it, it's just a sloppy argument. When people hear "meat is murder" they see that as arguing that killing an animal is morally equivalent to killing a person. They usually disagree with this. They are then told it's not 1:1 equivalent, but killing animals is still really bad. This gets more traction -- most people like most animals -- but it also begs the question of why shouldn't we treat things that are different (animals and people) differently? The issue is then further confused when "murder" rhetoric is mixed back in; it's arguing it both ways.
It absolutely is straw-manning, you cannot seriously see a vegan use the word "murder" to refer to the slaughter of an animal and jump to the conclusion that that same person is saying that there is a moral equivalence between a human and animal being killed, that's just asinine. We literally just don't want animals--which have the capacity to suffer--of any kind to get killed for our own selfish needs if it is avoidable, it's not rocket science.
edwardligma is right about the confrontational nature of using "murderer", the OP may have used the word in part to be provocative and draw attention to the suffering of animals.
When non-vegans hear "meat is murder" their #1 thought is "so you're saying killing a deer is the same as killing a human?" That's what the words are communicating, regardless of what you intend to communicate.
It's like talking about the dictatorship of the proletariat to a non-leftist. Their #1 thought is "so it's a dictatorship?" It doesn't matter what we're trying to communicate with that phrase -- what is actually communicated is what the recipient gets out of the message. Maybe you can salvage it with additional explanation, but maybe not.
When you say "animals are objectively inferior to humans" what you mean "non-humans are objective inferior to humans." Since humans are animals, there must be some trait that you think makes a human more worthy of moral consideration. What is that trait?
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Nobody is saying that humans and animals is an apples-to-apples comparison, carnists put these words in the mouths of vegans all the time and it's really fucking annoying and a straw-man argument. However, you'd have to be a moron to not see the parallels between human and animal suffering, because animals, just like humans, very much have a capacity to suffer. As for myself, I don't think "superiority" and "inferiority" are morally relevant characteristics anyways, so long as an animal has a capacity to suffer, which they do. If I have the choice to not participate in a cruel, sadistic industry that tortures animals by the billions, why the fuck wouldn't I abstain from that?
If we perceive ourselves as superior to all other life on Earth, one could argue that that's exactly why we should hold ourselves to higher moral standards and not needlessly slaughter billions of animals each year for human consumption when so many plant-based alternatives exist.
Using "murder" to describe killing an animal is kind of saying that, right?
is it though? we mostly use the same words for animals as we use for humans, we dont have a whole parallel set of words we use. we would say someone would punch, kick, push, hurt, hug, help etc etc etc an animal (as we would also say an animal walks, runs, eats, likes, dislikes, is afraid of etc etc), and its mostly really in the particularly uncomfortable areas of animal agriculture where we start moving into specific euphemistic language.
and if someones dog was deliberately killed for pleasure, nobody would bat an eye at that person saying their dog was murdered. nobody would think that person was saying that people and dogs are apples-to-apples, they would think that this person understood their dog as a thinking, feeling being worthy of moral consideration. the apples-to-apples comparison thats closer to that is someone deliberately killing a pig for pleasure, and so the real question is what is the difference between a dog and a pig that justifies the difference in moral consideration between them?
Maybe we're supposed to use the carnist-approved term "humane slaughter" instead
If you ask a bunch of people to define murder, vegans would be about the only ones who would include animals without prompting. Even among non-vegans who might refer to killing a pet as murder, few would support treating pet killers they way we treat people killers.
This also strikes me as arguing -- at least from a moral standpoint -- that you can make a roughly apples-to-apples comparison between how humans and animals should be treated. Of course you're going to get people thinking you're saying that.
does that matter though? for a spicy counterexample, if you asked those same people to define murder, leftists would be about the only ones who would include "dropping bombs on people for empire" or "denying people food because theyre poor in a wealthy country" unprompted. the whole point is that people should think of these things as murder even when people generally dont
strongly disagree. john wick is a very popular blockbuster three-movie revenge fantasy about how righteous and cool a man is for killing hundreds of people after someone killed his dog. look at any r*ddit thread about someone who killed a pet dog and see what non-vegans are saying about the perpetrator. most people (and the laws of most countries for that matter) think deliberately killing a pet dog for pleasure is a crime that should be punished by prison time (edit to add that core of the crime is the cruelty to the animal itself not "damage to property"). maybe a shorter sentence than for a human, but still as a very comparable (if not identical) crime to killing a human. as MF_BROOM was saying, not apples-to-apples, but very comparable
sorry what do you mean? im talking about the comparison between dogs and pigs in the bit you quoted, not people. i genuinely dont follow
All I'm saying is that it should be obvious why non-vegans think vegans make a moral equivalence between humans and animals. It's because they do exactly that pretty often, either explicitly or through stuff like calling someone who kills an animal a murderer.
No one is straw-manning anything here -- people are telling you what you're communicating.
is it a confronting word to use? of course, its making an inescapable statement that the act is not morally-neutral, which the word "kill" can be ambiguous on. it invites people to think of justifications for why such a deliberate killing for pleasure of a thinking, feeling being that doesnt want to die shouldnt invite moral judgement. thats a confronting thing to have to do, especially when youre not used to thinking about it
no leftist legitimately thinks that its wrong to use the word murder because of dictionary definitions or because it implies animals are the exact same as humans, we both know that. everyone here is smarter than that. they think its wrong because it makes them uncomfortable to have to make a moral examination of something they participate in every day, that perhaps theyre not as certain about the morality of as they think
This really isn't it. The most immediate reason people are annoyed by it is because it's aggressive and hostile without being funny or novel.
To the extent they engage with it, it's just a sloppy argument. When people hear "meat is murder" they see that as arguing that killing an animal is morally equivalent to killing a person. They usually disagree with this. They are then told it's not 1:1 equivalent, but killing animals is still really bad. This gets more traction -- most people like most animals -- but it also begs the question of why shouldn't we treat things that are different (animals and people) differently? The issue is then further confused when "murder" rhetoric is mixed back in; it's arguing it both ways.
It absolutely is straw-manning, you cannot seriously see a vegan use the word "murder" to refer to the slaughter of an animal and jump to the conclusion that that same person is saying that there is a moral equivalence between a human and animal being killed, that's just asinine. We literally just don't want animals--which have the capacity to suffer--of any kind to get killed for our own selfish needs if it is avoidable, it's not rocket science.
edwardligma is right about the confrontational nature of using "murderer", the OP may have used the word in part to be provocative and draw attention to the suffering of animals.
When non-vegans hear "meat is murder" their #1 thought is "so you're saying killing a deer is the same as killing a human?" That's what the words are communicating, regardless of what you intend to communicate.
It's like talking about the dictatorship of the proletariat to a non-leftist. Their #1 thought is "so it's a dictatorship?" It doesn't matter what we're trying to communicate with that phrase -- what is actually communicated is what the recipient gets out of the message. Maybe you can salvage it with additional explanation, but maybe not.
When you say "animals are objectively inferior to humans" what you mean "non-humans are objective inferior to humans." Since humans are animals, there must be some trait that you think makes a human more worthy of moral consideration. What is that trait?
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So it's language? Or intelligence?
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Do you think a 2 year old has morals?
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Answer the question.