This may come across as a bit of petty trolling of pet owners, but I think it actually goes to something quite deep, i.e. that we humans so often like to pretend that the emotions of other animals aren't 'real' in the same way ours are. And that our feelings about a given situation somehow 'overwrite' whatever they're feeling about it. So hugging a dog (or stroking a cat) is framed as a lovely, warm experience for both parties, even if the animal is actually stressed and merely tolerating it.
(This, incidentally, is also the way that more privileged people are trained to think about the emotions of more marginalised people. Many authors have drawn attention to the ways in which objectification and subjugation in human society are patterned on our collective treatment of animals)
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"We found that spanking was associated with unintended detrimental outcomes and was not associated with more immediate or long-term compliance, which are parents' intended outcomes when they discipline their children," IFL Science
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Surprise, surprise! UK immigration officials have been unlawfully deporting Eastern European women - many of them sex workers - since 2012.
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As a form of labour comes to be considered "women's work", pay and conditions tend to decrease. So it's no surprise that academics have been increasingly relegated to precarious adjunct roles as the proportion of women in academia (particular in the humanities) increases.
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So the Copyright Term Extension Act in the US is sometimes called the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" because a) Disney lobbied intensively for it; and b) it maintains the character of Mickey Mouse as the exclusive intellectual property of Disney for some time to come.
Question: when was the last time you saw a film produced by the Disney Corporation in which Mickey Mouse was actually featured as a character? Would you say that Disney is making effective use of its exclusive control over this major piece of our common cultural heritage?
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