I'm embarrassed to admit that I was one of those who believed that cows simply make milk, that it's what cows DO. I never drew the obvious connection between milk and babies.

Aw, thank you... and Joan!

Insemination isn't a punch to the eye or a helpful veterinary procedure. It's one species exerting complete control over another's reproductive capabilities, not for the benefit of the cow but for the profit of the human. It's an extreme abuse of power involving the cow's sex organs.

AgaIn: if it were to be done to a human, even a human incapable of understanding-- even a human who remains unconscious throughout, a human in a coma-- would you consider it sexual abuse? If there were a place where human women were artificially inseminated, made to carry babies to term, and then pumped so that their milk could be sold, would that be sexually exploitative even if the women were incapacitated? If so, then why is it not when the victims are non-human animals known to be sentient and intelligent beings?

I might have focussed overly much on your mentioning cows giving birth every year, because I've often seen this said or written in a way that seemed to imply that this is something unusual for cows. I thought (perhaps mistakenly) that people knew a cow would normally start giving milk only when she had a calf to nurse. Maybe it's necessary to point all this out to at least some people, and it needs to be said/written.

But for myself... I formerly was unaware that milk could be produced economically only if:
1) much of it, if not all of it, wasn't given to the calves;
2) most of the animals not producing milk were butchered; and
3) cows were bred to produce an unnaturally large amount of milk- more than her calf would need... and this increases her risk of developing certain illnesses.

Looking back, I just never thought about what happened to dairy breed cattle. I didn't think about what their calves were supposed to drink if we were taking the milk... maybe I thought there was enough for both us and them. I never thought what happened to male calves (who obviously couldn't give milk) or to their mothers once they became too old to lactate. I just never thought past the "fact" that you could milk a cow without harming her. These were the things I needed to become aware of.

To clarify, I mention the fact that cows are repeatedly impregnated not to highlight any inherent problem with the rate of one calf per year but to counter the notion that cows produce milk spontaneously without first giving birth, or that cows who have only given birth once are encouraged to continue lactating through extended breastfeeding or pumping, or whatever other mistaken notions a person might have about milk production. Whatever might be hypothetically possible regarding lactation, in the dairy industry cows are generally impregnated at a rate of one calf per year.

.......

I understand the desire to speak only truths, but I don't feel it's at all inaccurate to say that dairy cows don't produce milk spontaneously (because they don't, even if it might be technically possible for them to do so) or to say that it's abusive for a dairy cow to be repeatedly impregnated for her milk (because it obviously is.) Out of curiosity, how would you prefer to express those sentiments? Is there a way that's less ambiguous? The meaning seemed clear to me, but obviously there's been some confusion and I'm always interested in finding better ways to phrase these things.

A sexual assault isn't just an act of physical domination. A punch to the eye, while perhaps involved in the offense, doesn't qualify by itself as a sexual assault. A sexual assault is a sexual act, motivated by an urge to dominate sexually. There is no inherent hostility or violent urge suggested by the procedure of insemination. You can impute such a desire to people who go in for that line of work, but even if that is ever true, it's quite an assumption that it's always true. All large-animal veterinarians inseminate, among other procedures that can involve being in up to one's elbows. And since anyone can impute any motivation to any act, with or without a valid basis in fact, it doesn't get us anywhere. I'm not claiming you're misinformed. Our mastery of the facts has led us to different conclusions. It happens sometimes.

I'll point you here: http://www.responseva.org/#!sexual-a...hs-facts/c1df3

My view of sexual assault does require a perpetrator who is committing a sexual act for sexual gratification, whether or not the perpetrator actually ejaculates. That would exclude very, very few sexual assaults. And it would include a man sexually penetrating a cow, whether or not the cow minded or even noticed.

When you say that it makes people uncomfortable to speak of sexual assault happening to a cow, what you're really saying is that we want to believe that only we are entitled to bodily autonomy, dignity, and privacy, that only a human can be violated. I don't hold that opinion.

First of all, yes. All cows are slaughtered young.

The point of that “good Shepherd/good steward" schpiel isn’t to say these are wonderful people (to my mind genuinely pious does not necessarily equate to authentically good), but that they lack the evil intent of a rapist. And of course these dairymen are motivated by profit. That goes without saying. We’re all trying to make money, but we also want to feel good about what we do. You’re mistaken if you think dairy operators can’t honestly believe they’re contributing in a positive way to the needs of this world. I can disagree profoundly with them about the value of that contribution, but I can also take a farmer’s word about what keeps him in that line of work. Dairy operators believe their product is wholesome. They eat cheese, and they feed milk to their own children. Anyway, the point of bringing up the schpiel goes right to intent. The rapist has no such positive schpiel. There are valid reasons why a rapist’s intent is nearly always seen as evil and antisocial, whereas the inseminator’s intent is nearly always seen as positive and pro-social. Please keep in mind that I brought this up because you pointed to intent as being more significant than effect in your inseminator/rape analogy.

I got the 50% figure directly from the website of the Veal Farmers' Association of Ontario, not from AR literature. Maybe it varies according to country. Either way, I don't see the difference between slaughtering an animal for meat immediately or a couple of years later. I don't understand why that would change anything. All cows are slaughtered young.

Whatever a farmer might say about his motivation for raising dairy cows, we all know-- as does he-- that his real motivation is profit. Milk is a business and it's quite literally cutthroat. I don't buy for a minute that picturesque scene of a humble, pious farmer tending to his animals with quiet respect. It's a lie that we tell ourselves to distract us from the reality that the vast, vast, vast majority of milk available for consumption comes from large, industrial dairy farms and that even the small family farms which remain exist for one purpose only: to make money.

I don't know precisely what it's like to be a dairy cow. I can never know, but when it comes to determining whether or not it's an act of sexual assault to forcibly impregnate a female who can't consent, I think it's reasonable to err on the side of caution.

While I understand your perspective, I disagree. The factors you mention are all valid experiences not to be dismissed, but their absence doesn't render rape anything less than rape. A sleeping victim, a very young victim, a victim with severe mental disabilities, or a non-human victim is as much a victim as any other. I don't find it at all disrespectful to human victims of sexual assault to extend our compassion to dairy cows. As a woman and a survivor of sexual assault, I am deeply offended by the casual way we can dismiss the experience of ANY female who's being sexually exploited. I think that it's easy and convenient to assume that cows don't suffer during artificial insemination, but that doesn't make it accurate-- and even if it were accurate, the exploitation of another woman's reproductive system in this way should be enough, at least, to dissuade anyone with an interest in feminism from ever drinking milk. I think we do women a great disservice if we suggest that someone isn't a "true" victim unless she meets certain mental, emotional, or social criteria.

I specifically wrote "non-human mammals," not wishing to generalize to birds. Also, and how the heck were you supposed to keep track, I actually edited the "it's not gonna happen" out of my post. I get there are exceptions. I understand, for example, that tom cats have been observed to kill a kitten by mounting it, but that this is an aberration (the mother cats normally get pretty fearsome when their litters are messed with). It's true that with animals, as with humans, sexual domination can be more about the domination than about the sex. But when a dog mounts another dog outside of mating with a female in heat, is it actually penetrating and inseminating? I thought they were just sparring and establishing dominance. Man, so many scenes I should've broken up instead of letting them play out!

I don't know whether a cow experiences that grope as traumatic or merely annoying, or neither. A good example of why I believe it would be good to measure indications of stress right before and right after.

I don't know whether it's consensual or not, but when a wild goose's clutch of eggs is analyzed, her gander mate is the biological father of only about 40 percent of them. It's gotta be true, I heard it on NPR. :-)



An arm up a cow's rectum is a routine part of large-animal veterinary care. It's apparently not the trauma it sounds like. What bothers me about laying human concepts like rape on nonhuman animals is that it trivializes the experience of human rape while lacking most of the factors that make rape such a grave transgression. Understood that not every girl or woman faces all the social baggage that can attach to sexual assault. Not to belittle the social and emotional lives of non-sapient animals, but they aren't self conscious about anything, and specifically not about nakedness. They don't experience shame, or loss of virginity as cultural currency. They don’t fear the possibility of pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases, stigmatization, or being blamed for attracting unwanted attention, or losing their ability to respond sexually to males. I'm not writing here to defend any practice attached to breeding food animals. But I don’t think this issue is likely to resonate with the public as a source of animal suffering. Veterinary video footage of cows yawning their way through the procedure would just make us look overwrought.

While I agree with some of your post, I have to take issue with this. Not all species are alike in their sexual behaviors. For instance, most species of ducks mate for life, but drakes do "rape" females who are not their mates. This has been prevalent duck behavior for so long that the female duck anatomy has actually evolved so that a female duck will almost never be "impregnated" through coerced sex, but her eggs will be inseminated through consensual sex with her mate. See this article for a brief description of this phenomenon: http://www.science20.com/news_articl...ewed_human_sex

With respect to chickens, roosters do attempt to mount hens against their will, on a regular basis. Because their sexual relations are not penetrative (completely different reproductive organs than ducks), there are no internal injuries to the females.

And, as I said above, anyone who has lived a long time with dogs and/or cats and has been observant of their behavior will have seen firsthand that just because a dog or cat has been neutered at a young age will not necessarily mean that an individual will not attempt to forcibly mount another individual, also spayed/neutered. Sexual urges are strong, and, depending on the individual, survive early neutering.

Regarding insemination, my understanding of the standard practice is that the cow is restrained while a human arm is shoved elbow-deep into the cow's anus to manipulate the cervix while another with a syringe of semen is inserted into the vagina. I cannot imagine that experience being anything but traumatic, and I don't think that's anthropomorphizing! Artificial insemination is nothing like mating, and even the experience of mating among animals can be violent and nonconsentual.

While I agree with some of your post, I have to take issue with this. Not all species are alike in their sexual behaviors. For instance, most species of ducks mate for life, but drakes do "rape" females who are not their mates. This has been prevalent duck behavior for so long that the female duck anatomy has actually evolved so that a female duck will almost never be "impregnated" through coerced sex, but her eggs will be inseminated through consensual sex with her mate. See this article for a brief description of this phenomenon: http://www.science20.com/news_articl...ewed_human_sex

With respect to chickens, roosters do attempt to mount hens against their will, on a regular basis. Because their sexual relations are not penetrative (completely different reproductive organs than ducks), there are no internal injuries to the females.

And, as I said above, anyone who has lived a long time with dogs and/or cats and has been observant of their behavior will have seen firsthand that just because a dog or cat has been neutered at a young age will not necessarily mean that an individual will not attempt to forcibly mount another individual, also spayed/neutered. Sexual urges are strong, and, depending on the individual, survive early neutering.

^Those sound like the studies ---I can't think of her name but she's known for making changes how cafos operate, and known for being autisic-

But anyway, it still comes down to unnecessary exploitation for human greed

But with nonhuman mammals, if the female isn't in season she isn't receptive, and it's just not gonna happen.