I eat meat sometimes too. I greatly reduced my consumption when I moved out from my parents house ages ago. I can see why some care about it, but ultimately it shouldn't split us. Even the true zoo vegetarians wear leather or some drink milk etc. A vegan? Hey, he still breaths the air that could have benefited a magnificent deer in the untouched woods if we humans didn't exist. We come from nature and live in it. People discussing on the internet often don't make it there, but at some point you come to the conclusion that life is full of contradictions, and some unresolvable. Such a discussion will thus never end and never go anywhere. All I am still trying for myself is to not be a dick. Since I hope you don't bath your dish in cowblood and flick pieces of steak over to the vegan table in disrespect that this once was an animal, you know... relax.

Although I can really recommend well cooked and spiced tofu or deep fried vegetable/cheese dishes as alternatives to natural meat. You should try those simply because you'd miss out on something. I hope they will soon introduce artificial meat. If you "clone" animal cells in the laboratory and grow an artificial piece of muscle, cut it up, it is just like a normal steak when cooked, but the cow is still alive. That would somewhat solve the discussion actually.

That's the conclusion I ended up at once I was able to acknowledge meat-eating zoos.

I started that way because, for me, the entire argument about consent implicitly requires that the species in question is sentient (if they're not sentient, why does it even matter?) I also believe that all sentient life deserves protection against needless death.

Of course, as time has passed, I've realised I have no idea what "sentient" really means, so while meat is still totally icky to me, I can understand why most people are more… complicated?

Have you talked to them... most are lucky to have found us, and they don't find us by googling, but by coming across those of us who are out.

If you never heard of zoophilia, and google "beastiality" then you ain't going to find most of us. This is why, as the blacks, trans and gays say representation is so important. No one knows of online communities who isn't in one. Almost none are google search enabled and when you do search almost none appear in the listings without knowing what you are looking for.

To say we're off the hook because "the internet" is like saying. We have really good libraries, they could have always searched the card catalogue and found out that the scientific opinion of zoophilia is changing...

The internet is around and zoos are still killing themselves, if you believe otherwise you are operating under a false impression. You could have just said

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Maybe that's true, but I tend to believe that if we remain unobtrusive as we are by nature, surveillance may simply pass us by until we do something against the governing entity. As was seen in many former states (the DDR comes to mind), widespread state surveillance was used largely to hold power where the stakeholders wanted it. Thus, the government may know you're fucking an animal, but since we'll be seen as insignificant and unpopular, it probably won't concern itself with your prosecution until you say something against it, and then you'll find yourself in prison on bestiality charges.

Edit: it's also worth saying that work we do on the internet can be as valid as rights work in real life, and I think we'll see that even more in coming years.