'animal lovers' who have not a surplus of compassion that overflows onto non-humans but a shortfall of compassion that turns humans away

we should all care about animals, but if your caring has that shrill quality I'm going to assume you're not a caring person so much as a white person who'd rather blow your whole quota of caring on animals than see a cent of it go to marginalized humans

related: the dodo, that 'cute animal' content farm that doubles as a ceaseless display of how many middle class white women who have nothing but suspicion for 'different' humans with a difficult past are absolutely salivating to care for a 'different' dog with a difficult past

there are white women literally seeking out the world's most suffering chihuahua on facebook so they can fly it across the country to take care of it and pay thousands upon thousands of dollars on specialized vet care and prosthetics and shit. it's incredibly... disproportionate

I think white people fetishize disabled & disadvantaged animals because animals come closer to their fantasy of the disadvantaged — i.e., affectionate, trusting, dependent but not demanding, optimistic, and able to ignore one's circumstances ('cooper doesn't know he's different')

related, 'animal lovers' who use their supposed love of animals as an outlet for aggression toward humans. like, do you love animals or do you love talking about torturing and hanging the humans who abuse them?

I feel eminently qualified to speak on this subject because in the course of my long dark dissociative 4am pilgrimages through youtube I have watched every single cute animal clip and read every single comment. I wish I were exaggerating

see for example @dodo literally branding white women driving their newly adopted dogs home as 'freedom rides' - invoking the black & white american civil rights activists who famously risked their lives by riding buses together in 1961 to protest segregated public transit

I also find it suspicious when these people wail about how abused animals (usually only domesticated ones) are 'innocent'. first, it feels like such an incoherent moral construct, especially applied to another species. second, it seems to suggest that some organisms deserve abuse