As long as the main value of a being, whether it is human or animal, is on color, size, shape or overall visual flair, we are walking in the wrong direction.
It is hard for me to see any progress in this society toward kindness. . .when we put so much emphasis on flash.
Some dump or pass by unmarked young horses at auctions because they didn't have the flash the breeder hoped to find. They could have a steady mind, be solid all around and willing, but without the right markings, right color, their fates are sealed. It hurts in rescue because we know adopters will also want to pass those animals by when they become adoptable.
It is the same with dogs and cats and goats. People ignore the medium sized black dogs in kill shelters in favor of anything else, and it is true of cats. In the farming world, where conformation means longevity, spots win out over anything else that actually makes sense. It hurts in shelters when works see the same ordinary dogs waiting . . .forever.
In humans, it depends on who is looking, but appearance matters first and most. The interpretation of it varies, but the reasoning is the same:
Some decide that if you're a woman and particular pretty, you must have no other value of any kind. It never makes sense how the outside must, in the minds of so many, connect to the inside.
or they decide if you're not a certain size, you should be afforded less of everything, especially dignity. It never makes sense how we can all have been treated, at least occasionally, different than seemed fair because of our external parts and continue to play that same horrible behavior forward by doing it to someone or something else.
I always think about Lettie, a Morgan type mare without much size who was pretty sharp but plain, and she'd had an eye removed on one side. It didn't effect anything about riding her at all or present future health concerns.
She was sane, safe and sound. She was only 10 then. She was never adopted. Email after email came, but no one could stand to look at her "blind" side.
It did not bothered us. She was a heck of a nice mare, and we knew it. We knew her. She was with us for 3 years. She died with HOP in a foster home of natural causes unexpectedly (a brain aneurysm and unconnected to the eye).
I was sad, but the only thing I said when Suzanna let me know was, "I wish something better could have been for her. No matter how long she had lived, no one was ever going to offer her a home but us."
Move forward and past making real assessments about the value of life based on what your eyes first see. You will need someone to do the same for you eventually, I promise.
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