When someone can post a picture of a beloved pet animal, and then post a picture of a meal made with a slaughtered animal that has undergone various mutilations prior to death, without pain relief ( such as horn debudding, beak, tail and teeth amputation, castration - all routine practices on most factories) they have moved from the category of friend - humanised, related to, object of affection and recipient of kindness, to the category of food - a mere means to satisfy a need or want or desire.
The same recategorisation makes it possible for men, in more patriarchal or traditional societies, to dote upon, venerate, rely upon, respect, and 'protect' a mother, sister, faithful wife - madonna, or to see a female merely as a means and tool for his own sexual/emotional gratification. In more modern societies the madonna may be replaced by a category of females as partners and allies and assets - in both personal intimate relationships, and in the world of survival, where they may show up as colleagues, bosses, professionals providing services, etc. But in the nether worlds of pornography, sex work, marketing, advertising and commodification etc the female is recategorised ...perhaps in an adjacent clump of neurons, so near and yet so far...as a mere means to the satisfaction of a need want or desire.
And so it is with prejudice vs embrace, inclusion vs exclusion, dehumanisation vs humanising, indifference vs empathy, friend vs threat. It allows some animal rights advocates to be completely indifferent to human suffering. It allows pro life advocates to turn a blind eye to street children and homeless adults and the abandoned elderly - and so on and so forth. We all have the capacity to mercurially move between I -Thou and I -It simply by shifting our orientation, and most of us do this with some segment of our relational field, everyday.
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