this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2025
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It's especially crazy when something like 65% of humanity is lactose intolerant. No we don't need to steal milk from cows to live we are no way close to a parasite species to them.
What's funny is that almost any other kind of milk is considered gross and unfit to drink: dog milk, cat milk, pig milk, horse milk, etc. That's true even for human milk! (Unless, of course, you're a baby.)
Human milk actually doesn‘t taste that bad, it is very sweet however.
(Don‘t ask me how I know)
You will pry milk from my cold, hypercalcemic hands
I have two words for you: ice cream.
I rest my case.
Your sensory taste pleasure vs a living beings suffering. I know which I value more and apparently which you do. That's not an argument it's like defending rape by saying it brings you pleasure completely irrelevant.
milk = rape
thanks for raising the bar for discourse with the calm, open-minded, delightfully reasonable people at lemmy 😄
Do some reading about milk production. Rape is actually part of the process.
This had me go from
to
However, I'm also reading artificial insemination for dairy cattle reduces chance of injury from large bulls jumping on smaller heifers & minimizes stress on the heifer's body. The source adds it reduces risk of genital diseases that cause sterility. Can a heifer consent to breeding bull or artificial insemination? In principle, that's possible, but I don't think we can in practice positively know.
It may suffice to treat animals humanely, and I see an argument that artificial insemination is more humane for dairy cattle than insemination by breeding bull. I'm not sure it's in the best interest of heifers to inseminate only by breeding bull if it results in more injuries (and may also amount to rape for all we know).
that's not rape
I only mention this because I have the same rhetorical tendency and people always somehow seem to think I'm equating the two: it's not a statement that milk equals rape. It's highlighting (with a stark example, arguably an unnecessary one) that a person deriving pleasure from an act doesn't make the act immediately good (I dunno, stealing candy from a baby? For a less "vivid" counter example; I admit, I tend to use super obviously morally bad counter examples too, thinking it'll make things more overly clear, and, instead, causing someone to think I think they're the same thing rather than just operating under the same principle, of differing degrees).
(all that said, their argument doesn't hold water, to begin with, as it's not cruel or painful to the cow unless under factory farming and cows have no sense of ownership and don't feel like their property is being "stolen"; a meal isn't a proper meal if dairy isn't involved, as far as I'm concerned)
I know what it was saying: it was just weird & poorly explained.
A good analogy should compare subjects
and it should hold up with other subjects featuring the same relevant similarities & lacking the same relevant dissimilarities in satisfying the conclusion.
That milking cows necessarily leads to suffering isn't obvious, needs to be explained. The analogy comparing milking to rape seems to break down for those aware that dairy cows are bred to overproduce milk, so they need milking (or a very hungry calf) to prevent pain & mastitis. Rape seems quite dissimilar in that respect: no amount of it is necessary to ease pain or prevent infection. It's harder to conclude that something thought to be needed qualifies as suffering.
Therefore, a clearer argument (that was provided elsewhere) is needed.
There's also the matter that the comment they were responding to wasn't arguing about morality, since it wasn't clear the top comment was stating a moral position, either. The top comment merely referred to milk as "crazy" (due to lactose intolerance) & "stealing from cows", which come across as hyperbole for unnecessary when the cows presumably don't care & lack any concept of property rights. That's where unexpected moralization with rape analogy raised the charm of lemmy as
to new, exciting heights.
I think that'd make more sense if we're considering the actual, underlying topic under debate but they were responding to
gramie's comment which didn't challenge their assertion that the cows were hurt but just went (more or less): "counterpoint: ice cream is yum yum".In that context, going "sex is pleasurable, too, but rape is still wrong" isn't terribly out of left field, to me.
But I get what you mean, for sure.
I edited my earlier comment too late: it wasn't effectively asserted either.
late edit
Haha; I hate when that happens.
Mmm; that's a really good point. I could definitely buy that; fair.
When their calf gets taken away so that you can get their milk, you bet that cow has an emotional reaction to having their baby stolen.
The vast majority of milk comes from factory farming. I wouldn't even know where to buy milk that doesn't come from factory farming.
I mean, that's fair – I expect a lot of people don't or don't bother to do the research – but that's still, definitionally, a contextual framework and isn't universal. The premise that dairy consumption is universally (in all possible circumstances) evil assumes these arguments always apply; and they don't.
You can get milk from a cow without harming the cow or violently ripping away her calf. Maybe it's difficult, etc. But it's not impossible. So such a universal argument is simply incorrect.
Can you give an example of an argument which is universal?
I mean, – if the answer is I can't – we probably shouldn't be framing our arguments universally, then; especially when there are relatively easy counter examples that disapprove the universality.
I would say that moral arguments against killing people aren't universal, because they don't apply in cases of self defense. Does that mean that it's okay to kill people? No. It means that in most cases killing people is wrong.
A cow will continue to produce milk for years after raising a calf so long as someone continues to milk her. The amount and quality of the milk will decrease, but for families in rural areas it's more than adequate and doesn't harm the cow. Symbiotic farming techniques are possible; we just choose not to pursue them.
Having a discussion about milk.
Someone brings up rape.
😳
There's actually a direct connection between milk production and rape. They have to artificially inseminate the cows to make them pregnant so that they keep producing milk. Cows are unable to consent to this.
Oh I completely understand that and I have a big issue with it.
That’s not what was brought up though.
They brought up the subject of a human raping another human.
The point was that doing something because it feels good doesn't mean that it's right.
artificial insemination is a veterinaryprocedure, not a sex crime
I never said that it was a crime. I said that it was rape. There are lots of things that are immoral but not illegal.
rape is a crime. artificial insemination is neither immoral nor illegal.
You've never had Ben and Jerry's dairy-free ice creams? Or even just blended a lot of frozen fruit, a bit of sweetener, and just enough soy milk to get a treat with a roughly similar consistency? You're missing out.