rpanons | Your privilege at any time is only as strong as the wifi signal

Your privilege at any time is only as strong as the wifi signal

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I've been wondering. People get super upset about overweight pets because it's cruelty/a slow and painful death/whatever, but the same people get upset when you suggest that humans being overweight is unhealthy. How does that work? What's the logic behind it?

Bonus points if someone can explain this to me without descending into a cesspit of wank and hate. I'm legit curious.

i'm guessing it's probably because humans can make the choice to be overweight, knowing all the health consequences. pets don't really have a choice and don't have any idea that there are consequences.

...or what this fine anon said in two lines!

...really?

you think people choose to be overweight?

humans are (generally) aware of the consequences of obesity. those who remain obese without genetic or medical reasons do so in full knowledge of the likely future implications of their weight, and they take responsibility for their decision to maintain or increase it.

on the other hand, the average pet doesn't know being obese increases its health risks. pets do not take responsibility for their own weight, since they lack the awareness and information to do so. as the caretaker, it is the owner's responsibility to avoid pet responsibility.

the logic boils down to: you can do whatever you want with your own body, but you owe attention and close supervision for those you take in your care.

*to avoid pet obesity

also, add to this the fact that a lot of pets are domestically fed mass-produced dry or wet food, which can contain ingredients that increase the chances of the pet's becoming obese than whatever the pet originally had in its natural diet. this doubles your responsibility for minding the pet's weight.

What about the "health at any size" people though, who claim there aren't health consequences to obesity? I get fat acceptance taking that stance on pet obesity, but what puzzles me is the health at any size people doing it.

But yeah, fuck most of the pet food companies. Cats and dogs are not vegetarian and do not need corn meal as a dietary staple.

i imagine the 'health at any size' people agree that an overweight pet that is still medically and physically apt is all right. unlike us, pets generally have a smaller margin between a good weight and obesity, and their happiness depends much more on physical activities than does ours - as soon as a pet exceeds a certain weight, either it stops being all that healthy, or the additional weight encumbers some of its physical activities and therefore its overall happiness. a dog that derives most of its happiness from guarding its territory or playing with the master won't be happy anymore once it's too fat to properly run around.

i feel you, anon. i have a pet with allergies, so i can't avoid getting him hypoallergenic dry food, but i sure as hell wish i could.

yeah, if I have a roly poly cat that's still physically active, running around, climbing on stuff, etc., I'd want to keep an eye out to make sure it didn't get too much fatter, but I wouldn't go out of my way to make sure it loses weight – that just seems like it'd be a pain in the ass for both me and the cat. If it's fat but still active then I don't think there's anything to worry about, unless it was the result of a sudden change in weight.

my best guess is that it's because pets don't really have a choice. we know that we can and should eat sensibly and exercise regularly to keep ourselves healthy. your cat just knows that it's hungry, there is food in its bowl, and it has no reason to expend energy if there's nothing prompting it to do so, and it's incapable of connecting its eating habits and lack of exercise with its inability to groom itself or jump up onto the bed like it used to.

it's kind of like comparing boxing to dogfighting. they're both dangerous to the participants, but one activity is being entered into consensually with a full awareness of the risks, and the other is exploiting the instincts of an animal that doesn't know any better.

and everyone else beat me to the punch already. c'est la vie.

because humans don't point out overweight in other humans for health reasons. that's a lie, they're only commenting on your looks. if it was about health, they would comment on other things like drinking or sleeping habits, but saying you've been up partying and drinking the whole week only gets you a "cool!!!!"

yeah nobody ever says 'hey that's enough drinks' or 'hey you have raccoon eyes you okay'

yes, the raccoon eyes are also a comment on the looks. if you say you haven't slept but look fine isn't a problem. if you're fat but have good health isn't enough for them.

i frequently get asked if my makeup is running because i'm perpetually exhausted from working two jobs, and when i tell people i'm not wearing makeup and that's just how my face looks, literally no one has ever made it into a case about physical beauty. it's always "omg i'm so sorry are you going to be alright?? take some time off, get some rest, don't work yourself to death." and idk maybe i'm the asshole for thinking they are actually concerned about my health and not just saying that because they don't want to look at the dark circles under my eyes because it aesthetically displeases them.

and to your other point, if you just say you haven't slept but you still look fine, people will assume you're probably exaggerating or just making conversation via hyperbole because you're not showing any visible symptoms of legit exhaustion. yet. the concern will come when people can actually see that you're not in a good way.

i'm a whiter than white girl and very anemic and i constantly have dark circles under my eyes. they get worse the more tired i get, sometimes to the point where i've had people think i've been hit and have black eyes.

sometimes it just is what it is. i'm not going to pile on pounds of makeup to hide something that's going to be there no matter how good/bad i feel.

I disagree with the people who say an animal doesn't understand that being obese is bad for them, because animals tend to have much better instincts than we do and they don't ignore them.

But still do agree with the fact that it usually isn't the animal's choice because the same animal in the wild would have a very different diet from the average domesticated animal. The problem isn't so much that the pet overeats, it's the food being given to them. Like with humans, diet is the biggest part of whether someone will have a healthy weight or not and an animal that eats the diet that nature intended for them to eat will be healthy assuming that said animal doesn't have any conditions that would prevent that from being true.

However, it isn't always the owners fault. The fault lies with the fact that people are told that store bought pet food is best for their animal when usually it is not. It is also the fault of the fact that pet food is not as regulated as human food is, so they can get away with a lot more and often things that by law cannot be sold to humans are sold as pet food. For example, cat and dog food tend to have a lot of grain as filler, and the diet of a cat and dog are meant to contain raw meat mostly, and very little, if any grains.

no, they do not connect that to the problem. domestic pets like cats and dogs aren't self-aware.

Pets are the same as small kids, IMO, in that they're dependent on someone more capable to feed and take care of them, so over/under-feeding is the same sort of maltreatment. I think most people would flip the fuck out on somebody with say, a two-year-old who was massively overweight, because that two-year-old can't easily procure their own food, set the time and frequency of their meals, etc.

Older humans, meanwhile, have a choice, barring certain health circumstances. Let's be honest, though: 90% of the time when a comment is made on someone's weight, it's just unsolicited cruelty and not done out of genuine concern.

animals are not self-aware, that's it.

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Your privilege at any time is only as strong as the wifi signal

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