“Neuter your ex” campaigns popped up across the country this year, from Maryland to Michigan to Washington state. Getting back at an ex can now mean neutering or spaying a cat because “some things shouldn’t breed,” as one New Jersey animal shelter put it.
I’m curious, do you have first hand experience with dogs before and after being neutered?
My father-in-law has three pedigree (blech) dogs, each one a different breed, one boy and two girls, who he refuses to neuter because he likes the idea of being able to breed them with other pedigree dogs and sell the puppies or give them to family.
Wait no sorry he HAD three dogs until the male started raping the females. That created a new generation of dogs in his household, and then the brothers started raping the sisters creating another generation. Now my FIL puts chastity belts on all the dogs, but that still didn’t stop another litter from showing up.
Even though he’s given away more than half the litter he still has 8 frenzied dogs occupying his household. The girls attack each other when they’re in heat, the boys fight each other and try to rape the girls even though they’re all wearing chastity belts so it just ends up being impotent acts of violence against each other. His house is a hellscape of barking and fighting but he still refuses to neuter because he has some ridiculous notions about God’s plan and procreation being sacred, even as he tries to prevent them from procreating using physical restraints.
In my own home I have two neutered rescue dogs, both mongrels, one male and one female. They don’t fight and the male never tries to rape the female. They’re very high anxiety dogs because of trauma in their early lives, but they’re calm at home with each other as long as no one rings the doorbell. The worst thing my male dog has ever tried to do to my female dog is aggressively sniff and lick her genitals, but we stop that whenever it starts up because that carries high risk of a yeast infection for her.
I don’t bring my dogs to the dog park anymore because too many assholes with large breed dogs that they refuse to neuter are unleashing their dogs there, and those big unneutered male dogs like to try raping my male dog. There’s no question that it’s rape because he tries to escape them, but these big dogs all swarm him and hump him like he’s a female. I’ve had to clean dog cum off of him before.
Now my male dog is traumatized and scared of larger male dogs by default, which is frustrating because there are some large male dogs in our neighborhood who are nice and would make good friends but my male dog is too scared to give them a chance.
So basically, I don’t really care about the semantic argument around whether or not neutering can qualify as sexual assault or sexual violence. Those terms imply harmful intent and/or harmful outcomes for the victim, and my personal experience tells me that there’s far more harm done by leaving dogs unneutered. I don’t believe in arguments about what’s “natural” because it’s part of human nature to manipulate our environment, and that manipulation can have positive or negative effects. We should judge the merit of our choices based on those effects. Letting nature run its course is not inherently virtuous.
I’m replying to let you know I’ve seen that you replied. I just got back from my night’s activities and am winding down. I look forward to reading your response.
Okay, I’m reading frustration- pointed at me- between the lines of what you’ve written. I’m going to drop the MrDebatePants persona I’ve adopted thus far and speak to you human-to-human. Regardless, I will still be making every effort to be respectful despite the difference in opinion we are having here. I hope and trust you will let me know when you feel disrespected and afford me the opportunity to correct it. /persona
Yes, I have. I was a kennel technician in a veterinary office for about 8 months. I was homeless at the time. Let’s see, this was… late 2020? early 2021? Somewhere around there. It was a nice deal. The shelter and the vet had some sort of arrangement with the government that they could basically lease out their tenants, pay them less than minimum wage. It’s a win win win, because the vet gets cheap labor and a tax break, the shelter gets some sort of kickback from the government, and I get shafted on pay and come “home” smelling like dogshit every night, much to the dismay of the other men with whom I was sharing a bunk/room, considering the extreme dysfunction of our showers and laundry.
I didn’t care. I was working with animals. Would you believe I have always been much better with animals than people? At first it was nice enough- take the dogs out three times a day in the remarkably well appointed attached private park specific to the vet’s office. Clean up their feces, feed them, later I was entrusted with medication and grooming tasks. The owner of the place, a retired vet, took great care to make sure there were facilities for the care of homeless dogs and cats. Humane, empathetic, I thought. And I guess, yes, actually it was, in comparison to the nothing he could have otherwise done. But it was also depressing. Not just for me. For them.
Prudence. A beautful, sweet 6-7 year old malamute/pyrenees who was in our care after being discovered in a crate not even big enough for her to stand up in. She had been sitting in her own filth, unrelieved, for an unknown but extended period of time. She was only discovered when the elderly demented man who was supposed to be her caretaker finally passed. He had been feeding her, and nothing else. Prior history unknown. She was going to be written off as a lost cause and euthanized. I begged to be allowed the opportunity to attempt to rehabilitate her. The vet kind of rolled her eyes and I guess decided it would be a teachable moment for me. So she went ahead. And I did. I took her on walks with an improvised sling, bearing most the weight from her hips on my shoulders. She would kind of kick the air with her back as we walked. Before long her front legs were strong enough that I could start easing her weight down a bit, lengthening the strap little by little. She would always be panting like mad when we got back in, but also happy in that dog way. About two months of this treatment and she was standing and walking short distances on her own. And she loved walking, so so much. I’ve never met a dog more happy to just be walked. I know, I know. All dogs like walks. This dog loved walking. Just the act thereof. I don’t do it or her justice in this description. She didn’t care one iota about being fixed. She was taken to a farm upstate (literally, I checked) and enjoyed another year of life before developing hip dysplasia severe enough that even she didn’t want to walk anymore. She was humanely euthanized, and I have every reason to believe she consented to that procedure. If I had not been there, simple and naive enough to actually try where the “professional” had given up before even starting, she would have been simply murdered by the same procedure. And nobody would have seen any problem with it.
Ricky. 2-4 year old boxer mix who had spent too long on the streets and was badly socialized to both humans and animals. I was warned about ricky when he came in for all of those reasons- aggressive, snappish, foul mannered, defensive, food guarding, all the hits. People mistrusted him without ever meeting or interacting him because of his history. I’m ashamed to say, so did I. One day we were feeding and I had accidentally forgotten to start the dishwasher for their bowls, so we used paper bowls instead. I put out the food and came back about twenty minutes later (far too long with paper, I should have known) to find Ricky chewing his bowl to shreds. I said, exasperated “Ricky…” and he looked kind of ashamed, in that way that some dogs will. I opened the cage and reached out my hand and- he recoiled. He absolutely drew back in the expectation that I was about to hit him. I tell you, my heart broke for him in that moment. I sat down next to him instead of cleaning up the pieces and just loved on him for a while. And he needed that, so so badly. I guess so did I. He pressed himself into me and I whispered that it’s okay and he’s a good boy and please don’t chew up your bowl. From then on he and I were best friends, and he seemed to come around to the rest of the staff quickly thereafter, too. If things had turned out differently, he’d be in my care right now here at home. But they didn’t. I liked ricky, you see, and he liked me. And he was extremely jealous of my attention. I was trying to work closely with him to socialize and was going to begin muzzled contact with other dogs soon, but… One day I had him out in the park. It has a few fenced off areas for holding troubled dogs away from the main area. I was in on one of my off days, playing in one such area, tug toy, fetch, that sort of thing. And he was being such a good boy… until another dog who was playing in the main area wandered over and saw that I was playing with toys and he wanted to play toys too and ricky didnt like that so he bit the other dog through the fence. Hard. And refused to let go. And tore his lip open. we stuck the needle in his arm and he died, knowing what was happening to him. I held him, and I tell you I wept like I never did before or since.
Have I seen the before and after? Yes, I have. I have seen dogs come in for humping the pillows go home not wanting to hump things anymore. I have seen the dog who got out because of owner negligence come home and have a litter of puppies they couldnt afford so they just give them away to god knows who without worrying too much about neutering, they’re just puppies, someone else will take care of it, no longer able to have puppies anymore. hooray, another victory. Dogs come in sexually aggressive and leave confused and worried while the staff laughs about the cone of shame preventing them from investigating the stump where there sex once was. Never is any sort of therapeutic intervention even considered. “Dog psychologist? Dont be naive.” Never is it suggested that it might just be the fault of the person nominally responsible. When people get bored or their charge becomes inconvenient, they dump their responsibility onto the street. Never had I seen that illustrated so literally as the day we were outside smoking at the shelter and someone just did a fucking drive by dump off. I guess they saw “shelter” and got the wrong idea. Fortunately I happened to work at the actual shelter they needed and was able to get that poor animal- abused, obviously, and sick- where it needed to be to get some help.
My mother is disgustingly similar to your FIL, except she had just the one dog at the time that I was still talking to her. Walking around whimpering all day long in heat with no way to satisfy her sexual needs. She let that poor girl just bleed on the floor and whine and lay around and yelled at her relentlessly for relentlessly trying to get out. “she knows better than that.” I begged her to please neuter that dog. Repeatedly. Literally on my knees at one point. She thought it was funny. That dog- let’s see, Daisy was her name- did manage to get out one day. And was hit by a car. And died of her wounds. My mom did not go to see her while she lay dying. For many reasons, this high among them, I do not speak to my mother anymore.
I didn’t develop these radical views even from all of those experiences combined. I wanted to adopt a rescue dog. I wanted to know what kind of rights that dog would have. I was shocked, angry and I don’t know the word to adequately express the magnitude of my disappointment because that word just doesn’t quite cut it- but somehow not actually surprised- to find that they have no rights. Animal rights do not exist, at least in america, atleast as far as I was able to find in a quite extensive (though necessarily not exhaustive) search of my state and local district and several other districts in my state and several other states and at a federal level. All “animal rights” legislation is actually a list of how hard you can “work” your animals, what treatments they may not be forced to endure (almost universally, they may not be subject to any treatment that will lead to death or inability to perform their “work”). They are slave codes. Animals are slaves. Legally defined, literally, as chattel. Moveable property. This is my real point. The question about sexual assault, while valid and I think important, is a framing device to get us to here and the larger more important question, “What are we supposed to do about this?”
I had to delete about a paragraph and a half here where I started to get back into MrDebatePants mode, because I told you I wouldn’t do that. There is just one thing I must say as a point of clarity, however: I am not arguing from nature. I understand how you could infer that from what I’ve said, but I’ve never implied it and it forms no part of my argument.
I hope this wasn’t too much. It was a lot, for me at least. Scrolling back up, it’s a lot to look at, too. I haven’t dressed my ideas up or tried to hide anything or tried to make myself sound as smart as I can. It is the plain, ugly, unvarnished truth as I recall it.
Actually, I’m at the character limit, so I bette
It’s been a few days and I haven’t heard back. I feel an obligation to myself and to anyone who might be reading this in the future to reply as MrDebatePants:
Your reply consists of non-sequitur and has the effect of begging the question. I cannot possibly agree that sexual assault or what constitutes sexual assault is a merely semantic question- as if describing my argument in terms of “what constitutes truth, what is logical, what is the meaning of ideas” (i.e., semantics) in that way was somehow damagingly epithetical to that argument instead of your pathos, ethos and logos simultaneously. Neutering animals and not neutering animals is a false dichotomy: that these are the only options society is prepared to seriously consider do not make them the only options, or even good options.
Stay slept.