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sudo wrote

Other animals can't consent to us owning them.

I'm not talking about ownership. I'm talking about living together.

They only seem happy because they were conditioned - brainwashed

On an individual level? How?

and because of their history of eugenics making them docile.

Eugenics is deliberate - this was natural selection. But regardless of how cats and dogs came into a mutualistic relationship with humans, the fact remains that they are in a mutualistic relationship with us. We provide them the basic needs of life and some happiness, and they provide us happiness in return. Would you break that relationship, thus forcing domesticated animals back into the wild where life would be much harder for them, just because you object to the way the relationship began? Even if a atrocities were committed to bring about domestication (which they weren't), you'd be committing another atrocity by abandoning domesticated animals, and forcing them into an environment they're not adapted to.

This idea that animals can consent can be used to justify bestiality or carnism; are you sure you want to use that argument?

But I am not using it to argue for those things. If I did argue for those things, I would be wrong, because animals can't consent to sex with humans, or consent to being eaten. They can consent to living with humans - I've seen it firsthand. There is no reason to believe that living with animals will lead to bestiality or carnism - to say that it will is a slippery slope fallacy.

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