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Humans raise mink in horrible conditions just to be slaughtered so we can make a fashion statement. Then, when the very conditions we created become an inconven
by pinipedman 6y ago
Humans raise mink in horrible conditions just to be slaughtered so we can make a fashion statement. Then, when the very conditions we created become an inconvenience to us, we slaughter them and fail to make even frivolous use of them, rendering their tortured lives even more pointless and sad.
After all that you have to be pretty callous and self-important as a species to think "Humans > Minks"
- apazzolini 6y agoI completely agree with your first paragraph, but humans > minks by literally any measure.
- recursive 6y ago> humans > minks by literally any measure Not by the measure of the luster of their coat.
- bigbubba 6y agoOur coats now.
- throwaway889900 6y agoTime to engineer some humans with lustrous fur then
- learnstats2 6y agoThis is a bit self-referential. 'Humans are the best therefore human measures are the best therefore humans are the best' [Caged] minks probably don't think that humans > minks by any measure that they value.
- rootsudo 6y agoCan you prove minks reason, think or have values? The fact that we're arguing this, means that it's understood it isn't a win/win factor.
- pinipedman 6y agoI can't prove that a sufficiently impaired mentally disabled human can reason, think, or have values. But I suppose if I wanted to raise thousands of mentally disabled humans in cages for the purpose of skinning them and selling their hides I would probably justify it to myself by asserting my inherent superiority based on their potential inability to replicate certain biological processes in the fatty organ within their craniums.
- rootsudo 6y agoHumans are animals, there really isn't any difference with the handicap you've used in your example. What is morally right, what is ethically right, what is legal, what is against the law, what is allowable, what is doable - Is all social construct.
- pinipedman 6y agoThat was my point. Humans celebrate themselves for possessing the ability to reason, think, or have values. But judging other species by this standard is a preposterous notion. Just as a dolphin judging humans inferior for our limited ability to catch fish in our mouths via echolocation. But if one can't judge species according to their own natural abilities we can still judge them according to their interactions with other species. This is where humans, come out looking poor. Mink do not negatively impact humans, and would have essentially no interaction with humans, but humans willfully imprison and brutalize millions of mink for frivolous pleasures.
- pinipedman 6y agoYou're giving human measures of value undue precedence here. It's the same way racists give precedence to their own race, colonialists give precedence to their own culture, and how most humans give precedence to their own species. You belong to a certain group, in this case humans, and your tendency seems to be to apply measures of value that reward the traits at which your group naturally excels. Which all reduce to physiological traits which were no choice of your own. If you can't judge one race superior to another for physiological differences (e.g skin color), then how can you in good conscious judge one species superior to another for the same thing, i.e. physiological differences? I'm always surprised that people generally reject sexism, racism, nationalism, and various other forms of tribalism yet speciesism never seems to register as directly analogous and similarly worthy of condemnation.
- ornornor 6y agoFully agree with you. But this is inconvenient to think about and a lot of people will make you feel like you’re an idiot for challenging our torturing of animals because it makes them uncomfortable. In a way it’s similar to how the most homophobic men are the ones who are the most afraid of their feminine side.
- klaudius 6y agoGreat comment. Speciesism is just another form of bigotry similar to racism. Bigots try to justify this by pointing out some differences between humans and other species, but differences exist within human species and they are not the basis for discrimination.
- lumberjack 6y agoWhy are you putting the blame on the whole of humanity? Go place the blame on well off white western women, who are probably the main consumers of such products. I literally never owned anything made of out fur, let alone mink fur.
- Igelau 6y agoThe ACTAsia report "China's fur trade" points out that China is the world's largest importer of raw furs, and also consumes 80% of finished fur goods domestically. (https://www.actasia.org/resources/ https://www.actasia.org/resources/) If you've got something that says otherwise, let's have it. When you jump to conclusions you don't describe the world at large, you only describe yourself.
- learnstats2 6y agoThis may need to be modified for the fact that Western 'fake fur' often tests out as real fur with an obscured supply chain.
- Igelau 6y agoNow that is an interesting angle. What are the figures on that?
- Igelau 6y agoIt's a dismal reality, but the fact that they shouldn't have done this in the first place doesn't have an iota of bearing on what has to happen now. Good luck selling anyone on a rationale that asks them to risk human lives to buy a couple more years for the world's most miserable minks. Ergo, Humans > Minks.