I hope you don't mind, I'm gonna focus my reply mostly to this previous response, since I was zonked out last night, and feel out of my depth in the focus on persons with intellectual disabilities without extensive research.

Violence implies that harm is happening. In mind, the most harmful thing about neutering a human without their consent is the subsequent trauma that the person needs to live the rest of their life knowing that they will not be able to reproduce. Non-human animals don’t carry that burden and therefore won’t experience that trauma. They can go about the rest of their lives in perfectly happy ignorance.

I would say the most harmful thing done to an unconsenting person who suffered a neutering procedure would be the lack of ability to reproduce thereafter. This disability, its consequences is what humans would consider traumatic, not necessarily the knowledge thereof. Being ignorant (I do not concede this ignorance but for the sake of argument) of the harm doesn't mean the harm doesn't occur, though I would grant it could prevent trauma. Further, I think you might accidentally be smuggling in an unsupported assumption. On the one hand you say animals can't communicate (ie, we can't ascertain their consent) but on the other that they aren't traumatized. If they can't communicate well enough to ascertain their consent, how can we ascertain their emotional status? Given that, on what basis can you say they definitively aren't traumatized by this procedure, categorically?

The physical aspect of the operation is a negligible concern. They recover from that just fine. Animals of all kinds need to undergo surgical operations for many reasons, and it’s not considered violence.

Tentatively granted. Medically necessary surgeries are not violent, though they very often do entail trauma.

but I’m still of the mind that I should choose to adopt instead of giving birth even though there is a part of me that wants to have a biological child very badly.

I am incredibly empathetic on this line. I feel a huge urge to reproduce despite, y'know, gestures broadly. I hope I have the moral courage to do the objectively right thing here.

So the difference is, a human can be reasoned with and make their own decision. Whether or not people ordinarily do make reasoned decisions about important matters is another concern; the salient point is that they can.

My reading of this works out to "A human can make a rational decision, but sometimes doesn't. By implication, animals are incapable of thinking rationally. By extension, animals will never control their population on their own. Therefore, animal populations should be controlled by mass sterilization." [heavily paraphrasing, please let me know if I have taken any inappropriate liberties with your arguments here or elsewhere. I am not looking to argue with a straw man.]

I hope that you will agree once I point it out- this doesn't answer the question. I'm not asking whether/how the practice is justified, I'm asking why it doesn't it constitute sexual assault. (Obviously, since animals are (strictly legally speaking) considered chattel and therefore don't have rights (their owners have rights over them), they aren't protected by e.g. sexual assault statutes. I'm asking the moral question, rather than the legal one.) "If we don't practice what you are arguing constitutes sexual assault, then there could be disastrous consequences for society," [heavily paraphrasing] doesn't answer the question "does this action constitute sexual assault?"

I can foresee an objection in your mind- I'm being too dismissive of your arguments and saying only the answer that I want will fit the question. I disagree. For one, I am not looking for any specific answer. For another, I'm not dismissing your arguments, I am defeating them (in my opinion😊).

but I’ve also known people with Down’s syndrome who can’t get their own pants on without assistance (I mean this literally and objectively as a reference point for cognitive function, not as a joke).

I'm feeling comfortable enough around you not to worry about that. It's hard to tell with internet strangers sometimes, but you seem earnest enough. You get the Dark Night of the Soul 🦭 of approval.

I don’t believe in forced sterilization or forced prevention... so what I’m suggesting is not eugenics.

I did want to come back to this point, though. With the greatest possible respect, you have been advocating for animal eugenics all along (in my opinion), and I don't see how you're going to successfully argue that you weren't, except perhaps in that nominal legal sense I referred to in parenthesis above.

I give you full marks for honesty and conviction. I've already taken my sleepy pills so I'll be increasingly stupid until I pass out. That said, I want to take this point up: I ought to take you to task on this point of eugenics in the "feebleminded" (another word that fell off the euphemism treadmill in the 40s or so) but I would have to frankly learn a lot about that specifically, and while I think a good comparison is there to be made (which is I guess why I made it), I'm not convinced that it's a perfect or generally useful comparison to the point that I'm trying to make, and was only offered in response to my perception of similarity to authors of eugenics papers, including Down himself. I will say that I think you're painting with a very broad brush, especially in that last paragraph. I gave the specific example of down syndrome. Based on what I've read of you, I don't think you'll laugh when I point out that a woman with down syndrome was recently appointed to the spanish parliament. I don't know whether that woman has a carer or if the genetic syndrome is even compatible with reproduction, but

oh no im rambling i've lost the thread help no please i want my brain for a little while longerrr

Look i dont know if you even want (or wanted for that matter) to have me write all the things I was going to say. If you do, I'll write them tomorrow. If you don't. thanks for this brief debate, it was genuinely stimulating, and I figuroed out my library has access to most of the NIH library and several important scholarly journals which I have always thought to be locked behind paywalls forever. I thank you for that boon, even if You did not grant it to me.

stupid bipolar disorder stupid insomnia