this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Yes, there's definitely a core of this element here. At one point in time, women were legally the chattel property of their husbands. Do you own a child like you own a pet? Is sending your kid to school like sending your dog to doggie daycare?
Quoting one of my favourite sci fi writers, Becky Chambers (in: A Closed and Common Orbit) -- an alien reflecting on humanity:
Becky Chambers! Now that's a crossover I didn't expect here. Love her work.
To push the analogy to its breaking point, it was also used to justify slavery and is still used to justify mistreatment of animals.
I think this ultimately all stems from a lack of empathy, which I consider a foundation of conservatism – the indifference to the fact that one's desires may not align with the preferences of the person to whom they are directed.
Sample bias, probably. We nerds are the early adopters. ;)
A couple of communities on server that might be interesting to you, one of them of my own creation: [email protected], PrintSF
It's probably at least one vector. Religion is another one. The ironic thing, of course, is "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". But it's hard to teach empathy through rote memorization of a text that hasn't been updated in nearly 2000 years. Knowing the words, and living the words, are two different things. And even then, many of the words are out of date (pork is delicious!).
Not that ironic if the parents' views genuinely differ from their child's. The parent can be homophobic and genuinely see it as an abhorrent thing that should be remedied.
This is the scary thing about conservatism/religion. It gives people the tools, through an absolutist and precsriptivist system of beliefs, to otherize people, and rationalize away the empathy that they do feel. Or perhaps use their empathy to justify doing horrible things to someone "for their own good", like the parent trying to remedy their child's "abhorrent behaviour" for example.
TBH, I try to give my pets as much autonomy as is safe for them. E.g., they're going to the vet whether they want to or not if they're sick. But I try to let them decide when they want attention, and what kind of attention and interaction they want, rather than forcing them. They seem to be happier that way.
I also don't worry about training them, because they're all cats.