your dog is not a person

This is the other thing I've been meaning to write about!

The other night when we were walking to trivia, we passed by one of Mr Barma's neighbors and he said something mildly--well, maybe "disparaging" is too strong a word, but--disparaging about the way the neighbor and his wife/girlfriend treat their little rugrat dogs. (Apologies in advance to whomever I've just offended with the "rugrat dogs" tag, but seriously, who likes those little yappy things that you have to carry around and put stoopid sweaters on?) Anyway, in response I said, "Oh! Have you heard that term some people use on the internet for their pets? They call them 'furkids'. I bet your neighbors don't have dogs, they have furkids."

I don't make this shit up, I just report it.

Anyway, I then also said that I have just within the last week seen the horrible endpoint of this: someone referring to actual real human children as "skin kids." The mind, it fucking boggles. Even besides the sorta discomforting Silence of the Lambs imagery the term skin kids calls up, do we really have to explain that children are children, and dogs and cats are dogs and cats? I love Evil Kitty enough to *not* have killed her when she ruined every single screen in my house, but I know the difference between her and a human being.

In the forum where I first saw the furkids thing being used, a forum that has nothing whatsoever to do with pet ownership by the way, it has become very clear to me that many of the posters actually care far, far more about dogs than they do their fellow humans. I suspected it--one conversation about "what you would do if you came into a million dollars" engendered about 15 responses of people wanting to set up animal shelters or dog breed rescues and none suggesting that anyone would use their theoretical money to help homeless people or sick babies or abused women, which WTF?--but then in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake when someone actually posted a link to somewhere you could donate money to help Haitian dogs, I almost lost my shit. Seriously? You don't care about orphaned, starving children with no water and no homes, you care about the dogs? Seriously?

It makes me wonder--and I know this is judgmental of me but it makes me wonder--what kind of fucked up relationships these people have had with other humans such that any and all impulses towards love and compassion and generosity that they have are directed towards non-humans. I mean, there are plenty of people like me who love animals and babies and their fellow mankind (in general, if not always in specific, sigh) and I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the kind of person who would say "skin kid." I'm talking about people who use the word furkids when they have, or have had, actual human children. I'm just glad one of them wasn't my mother, KWIM? I'm sure I'd be far more fucked up than I already am had I come in second to a Pomeranian. Truth.

xoxo