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thedandelionresistance · 7 months ago

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So, something that has still been bothering me about misanthropy in nonhuman spaces, as a pankin fae endel is that... not all humans have access to human privilege and hegemony. Not all humans have power over nonhumans or benefit from our society being human-centric. The fact that even alterhuman spaces can still be centered around humanity even, doesn't always benefit all humans in those spaces.

The easiest example: We have human headmates in our system. They are, for all intents and purposes, otherkin in a way that those of us who are fae AREN'T. While we are all perceived as human, they are essentially humankin, humans in a physically nonhuman (or magically modified to pass for human) body. Their internal identity is fundamentally altered by our plurid and bodily identity.

In fact, the experience of being a changeling has also fundamentally altered our faeness as well. Culturally, having been raised human, we have some connection to human culture as well as to the fae culture we long for but haven't gotten to know. It's similar to our experience having been adopted into a blended family, where we have a complex relationship with both our Mexican and white american heritage, especially with the fact that what our body and our cultural heritage are, are different.

We feel fundamentally somewhere in between fae and human while still being fully fae, or more accurately we are still fully fae while having become a bit human on top of that. Our faeness+humanity aren't two fractions equalling a whole, but something greater than a whole. The faeness itself, while influenced and changed by the humanity, isn't itself any less fae.

Here are some other examples of marginalized humans, most of which we have personal experience with:

1. A werewolf who is both human and wolf.

Not all werewolves consider themselves to be human due to their lycanthropy, but some do. Lycanthropes face extreme oppression which is often sanist in nature, and is certainly anti-nonhuman. For those that identify as human, them being BOTH human and wolf is a fundamental part of the oppression they face. In the same way, multigender people who are men and women are oppressed for being both, while monogender trans women and trans men are oppressed for being noncis. Nonhumans and marginalized humans/humans who are also nonhumans can both be oppressed. This also applies to other weres and those who are nonhuman AND human.

We should mention here that some of us are weres, though our main shifter identity is tied to our fae identity. We do have were identities separate from it though. I would also say that some objectkin identities might be essentially the same as this, particularly dollkin where the doll itself is a doll version of a human? At least, some of my dollkin identity does seem to fit this in the same way, where it's explicitly related to humanity or both human and nonhuman.

2. People who are fictkin or factkin of a specific human character/person, even when that character or person presents as or is human-standard in appearance and abilities.

They have their otherkin identities refused and denied, despite it being a human identity. They are marginalized for an identity which is directly human, and have also faced exclusion and hate from otherkin communities during our history for those same identities.

3. Human members of nonhuman (especially physically nonhuman) systems.

This is itself more because of pluralmisia, but human members of nonhuman systems are often oppressed because they are seen as the same person as the nonhuman headmate and therefore as nonhuman themselves.

Much in the same way that a butch cis woman being attacked by transmisogynists is still that butch cis woman being affected by transmisogyny, so too are human headmates being marginalized by anti-nonhumanity. The target of a form of bigotry or oppression is the person who that bigotry/oppression was being used to hurt, regardless of whether or not they actually are that identity.

Moreover, because pluralmisia is widespread and constant, human headmates in nonhuman systems (and even sometimes just who have nonhuman headmates) are near-universally and near-constantly seen as nonhuman, not just occasionally. The only times they are not is when the system tries to pass for human, and passing privilege does not exist. That is to say, the only time they are not seen as nonhuman is when every nonhuman member closets themselves for safety and typically also when they pretend on top of that to be a singlet.

Conditional privilege that relies on not being out and open as every part of your identity/identities - of hiding part of your attraction as a bi or pan person, of hiding part of your gender as a multigender person, of hiding your plurality as a system, of hiding your transness as a trans man or woman - that's not privilege, it's a hostage situation. There's nuance to this, but fundamentally, if you can entirely lose any privilege and power you do have just by being open about your/your system's identities - often facing even more violence from people who feel they were "tricked" into treating you well only because they thought you weren't the identity they were bigoted about - because of coming out or being outed, it's not privilege as we understand it in the context of oppression.

4. A human with superpowers, mutant abilities, or otherwise not human-standard appearance or abilities, especially one with exomemories of having been considered nonhuman in their universe/past or parallel life.

Many of them faced oppression if not outright attempts at genocide for being human differently, only to come here and face oppression for being that person internally in a body which doesn't reflect it.

To have other people marginalized by humans then turn around and say that they're actually privileged just for the human identity they were denied and may have risked their lives for in their original universe, simply because here they are human in a way the humans in power don't actually allow to exist and continue to oppress them over... it's just cruel. It's like how trans men don't actually have male privilege, because they are trans (and they are trans because they are men and men because they are trans, inextricably). While patriarchal manhood is privileged, trans manhood isn't part of that. Even a stealth passing trans man who is outed can face extreme violence if his manhood is revealed to be trans, and any even conditional privilege gained from hiding a core part of his identity will be stripped from him.

Doing humanity "wrong" is similarly marginalized. Being a mutant, a human from another world, a magic user, or in any way internally having abilities that humans here don't have, results in oppression from normative humans and having your status (and therefore privilege and power) as human stripped from you, often permanently!

Alterhuman humanity is itself marginalized - their actual identities are denied in the same way nonhumans' identities are. They are denied in the way that genderfluid people being called cis women and cis men face. Acknowledging only part of someone's actual identity but mislabeling even that as something it's not is part of oppression. Moreover, facing violence over refusing to conform to the narrow expectations of your identity enforced by those in power is especially oppression.

Being locked up in psych wards for human identities that significantly diverge from anthronormative humanity, facing actual literal physical violence and abuse for atypical human identities, having zero legal protection for alterhuman human identities - these are all forms of oppression. These all affect marginalized humans.

Hell, anti-nonhuman and anti-alterhuman oppression even sometimes affect nonmarginalized humans. While there's a large overlap between furry and nonhuman (especially therian) communities, human furries face anti-nonhuman AND anti-alterhuman sentiment just for doing humanity wrong by dressing up as anthropomorphic animals.

Very few of the furries that use the anti-nonhuman "they believe they're actually animals" actually believe that about human furries (or even nonhumans, since part of our oppression is them not believing us) but they still use it to harm those human furries even to the point of trying to get them fired from their jobs.

They believe it's wrong for people they fully believe to be humans to even want to appear in any way animalistic - which affects human alterhumans with animalistic characteristics as much as nonhumans with the same. What's being attacked is as much non-normative humanity as perceived adjacency to nonhumanity, and affects both marginalized humans and nonhumans.

.....

Anthrocentrism and anthronormativity are structures of power used to maintain human hegemony. They are used to maintain the relationship of humanity as an oppressor class and anyone those in power consider not sufficiently or correctly human as an oppressed class.

Not all humans have power over nonhumans. Some humans are themselves marginalized by their very human identity itself, because it is considered human in "the wrong way".

So why is this all important?

Attacking someone's actual identity never actually hurts the people who have power over you, but CAN hurt other marginalized people of that same identity.

As an example, "kill all men" hurts trans, nonbinary, and otherwise noncis men, as well as those who don't have access to patriarchal privilege because of other marginalizations not directly related to their manhood such as nonwhite and intersex men. Patriarchy as a system is as much transphobic, colonialist, white supremacist, and intersexist as it is sexist.

Human hegemony is as much sanist, enforces consensus reality, against past and parallel lives and exomemories, anti-soulbond and against those from other universes, and fundamentally anti-alterhuman as it is anti-nonhuman. These are built inextricably into the very foundation of human hegemony. They are neither incidental to it nor an unintended side effect of anti-nonhumanity; rather, anti-nonhumanity is one (extremely major) part of the enforcement of the larger structure of human hegemony.

This is without even getting into intersectional nuances of privilege and power involving identities that aren't directly human. A white nonhuman still has white privilege over a human person of color, even if that person of color has managed to access human privilege (something that, because of how deeply white supremacy is baked into society, it could be argued that they don't - especially given how much white supremacy literally relies on dehumanization). Moreover, in our society the white nonhuman will often have power over the human person of color.

Privilege and power are complex, nuanced, and not clear cut, especially when you get into intersections of actually privileged and actually marginalized identities. They are more so when you get into where otherwise typically privileged identities themselves are marginalized.

Nonhumans and alterhumans are both oppressed by the majority of humans. Lateral aggression can in fact hurt alterhumans, and isn't "punching up".

One example that we've specifically been hurt by is access to community and resources. We're fully nonhuman, yet barred from many nonhuman spaces and resources for also being human/having human members. Where do you draw the line? Is being nonhuman at all enough? Are only system members who are zero percent human allowed to participate in these spaces and receive support? Are lycanthropes too human for you, in some cases even if they don't consider themselves human at all? Are "humanoid" - elves, dwarves, fae - too close to humanity?

These are all actual reasons I've been excluded from nonhuman spaces. You may be horrified by some of them, but still think that there should be spaces "for nonhumans only".

I agree that there should be spaces that center nonhumanity, that are FOR nonhumans. The problem is, you can't have a space for only nonhumans by excluding humans, because people who are both exist.

The way you draw the line is by selective inclusion. It means letting people who are humans into the space because they are nonhumans. It means letting us talk about the nuances of oppression we face for the intersection of our human and nonhuman identities in nonhuman spaces, because it's directly related to our nonhumanity even when also related to our humanity.

It means when in wider alterhuman/nonhuman community spaces, acknowledging marginalized humanity. It means, even when expressing justified negative feelings towards humans as a class, remembering that there are humans that are oppressed by that same class who don't oppress you.

It means not acting like expressing your blatant hatred of all human identity is always harmless just because of the oppression we face, that I have directly faced myself as a result of being fully nonhuman. It means not hurting other nonhumans and marginalized humans over your very real and valid anger at how humans have hurt all of us.

It also means recognizing that while emotions are morally neutral and it's necessary to have safe spaces to process them, it doesn't mean that they can't hurt other people or that said hurt is always justified. It means that just because something isn't morally wrong, doesn't make it morally right or a form of justice or resistance against oppression.

It means recognizing that you are capable of hurting people and doing real harm to other marginalized people as a marginalized person yourself. It means recognizing that you can even hurt nonmarginalized individuals, and that while a good ally will be an ally even if you do, repeatedly attacking a friend over an aspect of their identity they have no control over can do lasting damage and is just shitty and wrong. It means "I don't know how to tell you that you have to care* about other people" and that just because you have the right to be cruel about someone's identity, doesn't mean that you're IN the right for doing so.

*care as an action, not a feeling. We have ASPD among other things. Idgaf how you feel internally as long as you are not hurting the individual PEOPLE in your life, especially over things they can't control

It means that treating a whole identity as horrible and worthless will only hurt the most vulnerable people of that identity. It will only hurt those that experience a marginalized form of that identity or are otherwise significantly marginalized. A man who commits suicide over everyone in his life constantly attacking manhood instead of patriarchy is still dead, and somehow I don't think my friend Brian who is a staunch feminist and all-around decent person dying advances the cause of dismantling the patriarchy, for example.

(I also don't find the argument that "well if they're not that kind of [identity], they should know it's not about them" if you are the one making it about the identity itself rather than the behavior AS a person of that identity in the first place. Talking about how someone's identity gives them privilege and power and therefore makes certain actions more harmful to marginalized people is very different than treating the identity itself as inherently harmful, and therefore everyone of that identity as both deserving to be harmed for it and incapable of being harmed about it.)

I do think there's a time and place to express and process those feelings, just like there's a time and place to express very real patriarchal trauma that directly centers around men as a class. I also think that while emotions themselves are morally neutral, that expressing hatred of someone's inherent identity can absolutely be harmful. When people start acting on their hatred, even simply by acting as if it is morally right (let alone praxis) to hate all people of a specific identity and express that hate, it can be harmful.

Demonizing any part of someone's identity, identity essentialism (treating an identity as if it is inherently harmful or makes you evil), and especially denying that people of a given identity can be marginalized on that axis; these are the tools of the enemy. We do not use them.

It's also simply ineffective and inaccurate to attack an identity, rather than the systemic power structures that benefit the majority of people of a particular identity. So often, even so-called "trans inclusive" rad/ical femini/sm which treats manhood as inherently corrupt and privileged not only harms trans men, but also reinforces patriarchal masculinity itself.

Misanthropy - or hate and vitriol towards human identity - doesn't actually do anything to deconstruct or challenge human hegemony. This is because it's not the identity itself that's the problem, but the class inequality and oppression.

Humans are not born oppressors. If they were, nonhuman liberation would very likely be impossible, because even if we gained significant number and powers, they would continue to try to oppress us forever. No human would ever be capable of being an ally to nonhumans.

Now, don't misconstrue me - humans are largely born into privilege (with the exception of human alterhumans) - because of the system of nonhuman and alterhuman oppression we currently exist in. It is their humanity which grants them privilege and power over us, because that system makes it so.

The existence of marginalized humans only proves this. The point is NOT that the majority of humans don't oppress nonhumans and alterhumans. The point is that they do, but that humanity itself as an identity isn't inherently oppressive and harmful.

Honestly, this is such a complex subject that I've only scratched the surface here. I could go into the way I define harm as largely hierarchical - as in, being based in having power over another person - but also how lateral harm where you don't have power over another can still happen, specifically as a result of leveraging people and systems that do have power over them to hurt them.

(A trans person calling the cops on another trans person would be a good example of this. Even if both trans people are the same in every other way - every marginalized and privileged identity, even the same exact gender - the first trans person who called the cops has USED people who have power over both of them to harm the other.)

I could go into how humanity and nonhumanity aren't actually opposites and how the creation of this false binary most hurts those who are both. I could go into how this is basically oppositional sexism but for nonhumanity/alterhumanity - oppositional anthroism? 😅

I could go into more detail about the need for spaces to safely process negative feelings towards identities that consist mainly of nonmarginalized people, without harming marginalized people of that identity. I could go into the complexity of spaces like tumblr, where a lot of personal blogs are essentially virtual extensions of your private bodymind on a public site, and how that means balancing autonomy and simply curating your own experience with wider interactions as members of a community and what conversations we even choose to have entirely publicly to begin with.

I could even go into how different systems of oppression function differently, and how I would not apply the vast majority of what I've said to racial justice and white supremacist systems simply because people of color know better than me whether or not this applies to a system I unequivocally have privilege and power in. I could talk about how the majority of stuff that I HAVE seen DOES focus on whiteness in relation to how it grants privilege and power within the system, but that because my whiteness isn't marginalized in any way, that I've never myself felt hurt by venting about whiteness-as-identity. I could talk about how white supremacy functions differently from just about any other oppressive system (including ones like patriarchy which rely on it) in that white people ARE the closest to inherently categorically oppressors, while I would argue under systems like patriarchy, even a good majority of cis men are oppressed explicitly by patriarchal masculinity, precisely because patriarchal masculinity is white, het, christian, abled, and so on. I could talk about how the reason whiteness itself can't be marginalized is because it is conditional and a social construct, which is often revoked societally over ethnic identities such as jewishness and irish travellers.

I could talk about how dehumanization is a frequent tool of systems of oppression such as racism and ableism, and how that's rooted in anti-nonhuman sentiment. I could talk about how significant enough dehumanization as a result of disability stripped me of access to human hegemony long before I was ever openly nonhuman, precisely because systems of oppression rely on one another to remain in power.

I could talk about how it's not nearly as clear-cut as "human=oppressor, nonhuman=oppressed" and especially that equating oppression with harmlessness itself is used to harm other marginalized people and avoid accountability for it, especially by painting other marginalized people as actually privileged over you. I could talk about how reductive it is to take a single identity, nonintersectionally, and treat it as eternal victimhood, and how deeply antithetical that is to the very concept of intersectionality.

I could even get into how identity doesn't guarantee safety, and that the only way you can judge if someone is a safe person is by their actual actions.

But my main point here is this: when I say I've been hurt and harmed by misanthropy in nonhuman spaces, as someone who has experienced significant oppression for being nonhuman, because I am also partially human and our system experiences marginalized humanity, and get my actual experiences with marginalized humanity denied, picked apart, asked for "proof" (this is a complicated one, but it was about my own personal experiences that I was explicitly sharing), had the goalposts moved and was ignored when aside from community I couldn't at the time effectively communicate what nonhuman resources that I'd been barred from due to already being extremely badly triggered, I just want people to take the fact that misanthropy can be harmful seriously.

For the record, community itself is a resource - actually multiple. It is support - emotional primarily, but also sometimes financial, legal, or other structural forms of support. It is often access to other resources that aren't fully public - guides on managing dysphoria and living as your kintype or theriotype, on safety, on where to get species-affirming gear and even medical procedures, sometimes on exclusive discounts and community-run grants for the same. It is to some extent safety, depending on how the community is run - safety in numbers, essentially, if they are willing to stand by you in a storm. It is understanding and acceptance.

There are not a lot of public nonhuman resources outside of our communities, and that's a problem itself, but even of the material resources that are publicly visible, they often explicitly exclude even part-humans, human nonhumans, and marginalized humans who still would otherwise benefit from or have need of those resources. I have been told that it's not actually exclusion just to explicitly say that something is not for someone who needs it, because they can't technically stop you from using it anyway.

This was said by a person who just recently had been venting with me about people who will say bigoted shit like "endos f/uck of/f" on trauma recovery and general plural resources (both ones they created and ones created by inclusive people), who otherwise recognizes attempts at emotional manipulation and verbal gatekeeping as such, so it was very clearly just a double standard for marginalized humans and nonhuman humans.

My point is that we are hurting other marginalized people when we deny their experiences with oppression on the axis of humanity/nonhumanity for their non-normative human identities. My point is that I as a nonhuman have BEEN hurt by this. My point is that misanthropy is neither harmless nor all that useful in nonhuman and alterhuman liberation. My point is that nonhuman separatism is just as unhelpful and ultimately antithetical to liberation as any other separatism movement.

My point is that when even other nonhumans are telling you "hey, misanthropy hurts ME too", you should believe them. You shouldn't erase or ignore their nonhuman identity, you shouldn't deny that it's possible for you to laterally hurt or use oppresove systems to harm other nonhumans and marginalized humans, and you certainly shouldn't act as if hurting marginalized humans is actually morally justified.

My point is that you don't have to participate in it, but alterhumans and nonhumans ARE part of a wider marginalized community together, and that misanthropy will affect people in that community before it ever actually affects anyone in power (which it never will). My point is that our marginalized human siblings/cousins in this community are not our enemy, and we shouldn't be hurting them, let alone acting like it's morally justified to do so because of their identity which is actually marginalized even if you personally deny that it is.

My point is that hate is not praxis, humanity is not inherently bad or privileged, and that hurting and harming people who are not oppressing us is still wrong.

I know a lot of people in nonhuman and alterhuman communities already agree with me about misanthropy, but I've seen enough of an uptick in it lately to say something.

Misanthropy is not "fighting back". It's not always harmless. It's not always "punching up".

The way we achieve liberation may require violence - as a last resort, but still. Attacking other marginalized people, allies, and an identity itself isn't how we get there. Organizing, demanding recognition, acceptance, and rights, with support from our allies and other marginalized groups, is. We can't mistake revenge fantasies and lashing out for action and progress.

Again, there are and should be spaces for processing misanthropy. It's just bog standard bigotry, however, to be cruel toward other marginalized people on the basis of that very same marginalized identity. Denial of that marginalization is part of that bigotry (and can be used by our oppressors to further oppress them, no less. Don't be a pick-me or a token for them).

True misanthropy - hate directed at human identity itself - shouldn't be prevalent in nonhuman spaces outside of those spaces for processing it. It's not worth the harm it does, and it's not even helpful in the end. Misanthropy should not be tolerated, because it is most intolerant to other nonhumans and marginalized humans, and just cruel and unhelpful to boot.

#nonhuman #endel #otherkin #therian #alterhuman #alterbeing #I just know someone's going to start ranting about how I'm saying that ppl of color shouldn't be able to hate white ppl for being white #when I explicitly said I wasn't saying this about racial identity because I don't feel qualified to speak on it #(they'll probably be white themselves too)#and that I'm 'tone policing minorities' and shit for saying 'hey if your actions are harming other marginalized ppl that's not okay'#because some people can't ever take accountability for their actions #and are more concerned with appearances of moral superiority and correctness than actual material harm reduction and liberation #(specifically people who claim that addressing lateral harm is 'tone policing' I cannot be more clear about that)#I'm never going to get through to those willfully and maliciously misinterpreting and misrepresenting my words #but a currently vaguely dogthing can dream #anyway cw for misanthropy mention

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