Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
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ORIGINAL: stella40
I generally divide behaviour into two types - instinctive and premeditated. Consent for me applies mainly to the latter.
Pretty much. Close enough for this discussion, at least.
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I am part of the animal kingdom. I am a human being, homo sapiens, the most successful of the insect-eating, omnivorous apes which has managed to survive and evolve through its ability to adapt to different circumstances.
Human beings have no ability to adapt beyond the mental level. And I'd argue that the distinction of "most successful" goes to the cockroach before it goes to humans. We aren't very successful by the standards of biology, and we don't adapt ourselves, we change our environment to suit our needs.
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I do not subscribe to the opinion that humans are unable to live outside buildings. Homeless people tend to adapt fairly well to living in open spaces and some are able to do so for years.
Put a homeless person in the wilderness with no clothes and no tools, and see how well they fare. Unless the climate is very favorable, they will usually die from exposure. I can cede that it may even work for a few persons, however, but humans as a species cannot live without shelter and/or tools. The arguments against anarcho-primitivism apply well to this bit.
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Other animals are also able to reason and follow thought processes by which they can give consent or not. However they are not humans and even when they are social animals their development, socialization and even structure of moral thinking is something quite different from humans.
Definitely. Which is why I'm fine with someone putting honey on their whatever and having someone eat that, or otherwise act in accord with the consent they are capable of giving. I'm not okay with forcing them to act contrary to their consent for other reasons than their best interests, however.
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Some animals share a symbiotic relationship with humans - dogs, cats and horses, as a few examples. They are conditioned to live with humans as part of the same social structure, and thus it is possible for such an animal to be able to interact with humans and consent or refuse to consent on terms similar to humans.
~nod~
As the guy who owned the farm where Mr. Hands was killed said, "If the horse doesn't want to do something, he isn't doing it. And he's got about a thousand pounds of muscle and sharp hooves to back that up with."
Not that I'm advocating the practice, just making the comparison / example, with regard to ways in which an animal can indicate the presence or absence of consent by their own standards.
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But just because a cat is able to discriminate and give or withhold consent like a human, it doesn't mean it does it in human terms or that it's a two way street. Have you ever tried to do something with a cat against its consent?
Taking it to the vet would count. 
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Cats are perhaps the best equipped animal around for preventing any non-consensual behaviour. They are intelligent, extremely perceptive, they have sharp claws, sharp teeth and are quite good contortionists. If you have any doubts as to whether a cat is able to withhold consent or not try giving the cat a bath or teaching it to swim.
Some cats actually like bathing and/or swimming. And if they have a close enough relationship with you, many of them will put up with being washed, if you don't take too much time doing it, and make sure to reward them for their patience. But that's kind of off topic, except for the part about putting up with it if they are close enough to you.
I've tried giving a cat antibiotics that emphatically did not consent to that.
Suffice to say that the cat got its antibiotics, and I got 4-6 inch (10-15cm) scratches along my legs, hips, lower torso and lower arm. It had just arrived from an animal shelter, however, so I'm not faulting it in any way. It's not a good way to start building trust, forcing it to eat, but it wouldn't have made it otherwise. Next time, I was more careful.
That same cat would stay inside the house while the windows and doors were open, however, and spent endless hours curled up in our laps, following us around wherever we went in the house. It learned a few different meows that sounded vaguely like words and were used as such, one of which corresponded to "food", two of which corresponded to calling our names (and did indeed have a similar quality in terms of timing, pitch and such, to the extent that cat vocal chords can emulate the vowels in the names). I'm pretty sure it was happy about things in the long run; we didn't have any trouble with future rounds of antibiotics or whatever.
Animals of sufficient intelligence do have an idea of cause and effect, so if you build trust, and they get a sense that your actions, even the ones they don't like, are good for them, then they'll put up with your minstrations in much the same way as a kitten does with the mother cat.
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Animals, through not being socialized or conditioned like humans, view consent completely differently to the way we do.
Actually, most people I've met deal with consent in the same way as animals, unless they stop to think about it explicitly. This talking about vanillas; the BDSM crowd is usually more explicit about it from the get-go.
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I give you another example. Or a series of examples. I am an animal lover. I love animals. But my feelings are not always reciprocated.. and I have a tendency to be bitten by animals. Usually I have not threatened the animal in any way, most often there hasn't been any interaction whatsoever, but I have been bitten.
Odd. Could be body language. I only get that problem with mosquitoes, wasps and such, unless you count play-biting puppies (which I play with at their own level, unless their owners disapprove of me doing so; I've never had any problem getting them to understand that such isn't okay with others). I've dealt with snakes, cats, dogs (including hostile ones), and even a pair of wolves, with no biting.
I've also dealt with a horse that had been in an accident. It was bleeding severely from one of its legs, where it had been cut to the bone. Me and two women a bit younger than me were dealing with it. We cut it loose from its harness, got the harness free so it could stand up, applied compresses, and helped it get to a safer place (this was by the side of a road in a sharp turn). When the vet took a long time in arriving, we had to use a light tourniquet. Despite being clearly hurt, it wasn't afraid of what we were doing, and it stayed calm throughout everything up until the police arrived. It was a bit afraid of them, so we got them to stay back a bit, and things worked out. They eventually saved it in surgery, as I recall.
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I have been bitten by dogs, cats, a couple of rabbits, a snake, a horse, a cow, a pig, mosquitos, horse flies, and ants. Only on a couple of occasions have I done something which has caused an animal to react in this manner, I put my hand too close to a viper nest whilst picking blackberries, I fed a horse in the wrong manner but on most occasions it has been unprovoked and premeditated. Not all animals I come into contact with bite me, but there is a strong tendency. I guess it's perhaps one of my destinies in life, or Karma, to be bitten by animals.
Ouch. My sympathies.
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I have even had a dog I've never seen before see me, jump over a fence, run 200 yards down a street and bite me before running off.
Smart move: kick it in the side, but not with the tip of the foot. That gets them to back off. If they go for the neck or face, offer your arm instead; that gives you a good indication of how hard it was going to bite. If it bites lightly, kick it. If it bites hard, or the light kick doesn't work, then it's really attacking, and a blow to the spinal vertebrae close to the skull will (AFAIK) be the most painless way to kill it.
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On no occasion did any animal seek my consent before biting me. It just came up to me, bit me and ran away.
Funny. My experiences along those lines have been exclusively with humans. Perhaps we were both incarnated as the wrong species?
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On one occasion I was systematically attacked by a cat over three months on each weekly visit. I even tried protective clothing.
Cats are pretty intelligent, and they can carry grudges. Siamese were bred to be guards at one point. I'd not care to mess with a siamese. Brings to mind the one about the thief who broke into a house, and all they could find was a bloody trail after him, and the cat sitting on the front porch, contentedly licking blood off its paws. All he had seen was a pale shadow, then all hell broke loose; they found him at the ER, getting stitched.
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I have even had to give up a relationship with someone because the dog would bite me on the bottom whenever I got too close or intimate with this person.
You have to earn a pet's trust. Think of it as entering into a poly relationship.
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But was this consent or expressing that consent was not given? Did the cat not want its owner to learn English for some reason? Or the dog decide I was an unsuitable partner?
It may have been an expression that you were not welcome in their personal space, but it's hard to tell. You could just have the animal-kingdom body language that says "kick me", for all I know. ~lol~
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I have also been sexually assaulted by a Great Dane. Did it seek my consent? No it didn't. It just jumped on me and started well.... I guess you can all use your imagination. It happened whilst I was cleaning someone's house. One minute I was vacuuming a carpet, the next I had my face in the sofa with a big dog on top of me.
Dogs and horses are sluts, to borrow a quote from someone.
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However I have managed to stop dogs biting me. If ever I think a dog is about to bite me I will growl at it, using a very low pitched growl. I know that I shouldn't bark at the dog in such a situation as it might upset the dog, but by baring my teeth and growling I am showing the dog that I do not consent to being bitten. This usually works.
Indeed. Personally, I don't growl. I just stare them down until they place nice, then I pet them. That doesn't work for everyone, though. A friend of mine tried to copy it, and that just ended up with me having to tackle the poor dog. Guess there's a bit of animal in my soul.
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Therefore I conclude that while animals as well as us understand consent they tend to have a different interpretation of the meaning of consent and when they need to seek consent because they have not been conditioned or socialized as humans.
Indeed. Humans have the capacity to translate and interpret between these paradigms if they care to learn how, however. And so they should, IMO. Especially if involving them in anything kinky.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: creepy crawly consent - 
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