you have no option but to transgress

somewhat inspired by that rabbit meme lol

Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi botanist, is a brilliant and hopeful read about the ways that indigenous peoples learned from and related to the land, and the ways that the rest of us today can draw from that knowledge to realize kinder, more reciprocal ways of living with the world. Check your local library for it if you can't afford a copy; if mobility is limited, check to see if your library offers ebooks via Libby.

For a shorter read (but honestly do read Braiding Sweetgrass if you at all can), The Myth of a Wilderness Without Humans is an article that addresses a number of the same topics.

Some additional context: one of the most subtle but insidious forms of racism that we see in the community is this attitude that Humans Are Inherently Bad For Nature (which then often generalizes to Humans Are Inherently Bad). People so often treat this as Obvious Fact, when... it's really not! The idea that humans and nature Can't coexist, that they are Fundamentally Separate, is a myth constructed by an exploitative and imperialist society, which erases all of the indigenous cultures that have very different ways of relating to the earth and its beings.

Panel 1: A rabbit walking away on two legs with a bindle. Text reads, "Chase me if you wish, for I have the legs to outrun you."

Panel 2: Close-up of a rabbit crying with their paws held up. They are saying, "Honey, don you trust me & know it makes me sad."

Panel 3: Rabbits in the poses of see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.

Image ID needed

This is super super important and a topic that is significant to me personally.

Mutt is a slur. When you use mutt in reference to human-bodied beings (even yourself) it perpetuates the idea that it's okay to call people that slur. It hurts beings within the community and humans outside of the community. Please do not perpetuate the dehumanization of people of color.

The use of this slur may not be a common problem where you come from, but there are many places and contexts where it is still a big problem, and people coming across your posts may not recognize that.

Image ID: 3 screenshots of a conversation between the users Honour and PsychWolf.

Image 1:

Honour: "one of your pronouns, (mutt) is a racial slur and those of us the term is used against feel very negatively about human bodied individuals using the term for things like names, identities, and pronouns. The problem is that even if you can reclaim it (which I always assume the benefit of the doubt and assume a person is able to use the slur they choose to make their pronoun), it furthers the belief that the term is okay to use. White people think "mutt" is an okay pronoun because they saw someone else use it with no disclaimer that it is a reclaimitory slur, if that makes sense. Sorry to be a bother, I went to your profile because your pride flag thing seemed interesting and I was curious, but as someone who is viscerally uncomfortable with the word, I felt the need to let you know instead of digging further into your profile"

PsychWolf: "I specifically use said set of pronouns as it connects to the mix of what my labels are - being alterhuman, therian/otherkin, and the sub sets of xenogenders I am (fauna, pup, etc). For a shorter explanation that doesn't get into deeper more personal chunks of my identity - I do not view myself as human or human bodied ( also please do not refer to me as such) . The closest is more specs of it throught my perception like sand in sugar or salt. I originally was introduced to using them do to the large mix of species that were related to said identifies and the fact it didn't belong to one singular breed. These are common in these spaces"

Image 2:

Honor: "While your reasoning may make sense to you, there are a multitude of other terms that can mean mixedbred dog, and ignoring the request of someone who is genuinely affected by this use of a word which is, no matter what you believe, a recognize racial slur, is wrong. I did not call you a human, but you do need to understand the fact of the situation. You may not be human and I am not here to tell you otherwise. But mutt, when used on someone with the /body/ of a human, is a racist SLUR. You are choosing to label yourself with a slur and trying to excuse it in the face of someone the slur is against."

PsychWolf: "The line about not referring to me as human was added to include the point - not a human body. The top message was explaining the meaning behind using them - as in alterhuman and therian spaces it is commonly used for a long list of reasons"

Honour: "I didn't see a reason listed that trumps the fact that you are using a racial slur and encouraging others to use it as well in reference to you while continuing to have to clarification anywhere that the word is a racial slur"

Honour: "you are sporting a slur against me in a gif. asking people to refer to you as a slur against me, a racial slur. The word does not only have history in meaning mixed breed or unknown breed animals,"

Image 3:

PsychWolf: "It isn't used in the therian and alterhuman communities because they " like the term" it is used do to the existence of mixed breed animals, and for a larger chunk of the community that do not have singular species identity because of the issues they faced because of said identities. As multiple groups spent years harassing them which lead to it spreading and other issues that I don't have the current spoons to go into."

Honour: "you haven't answered any of the questions, you are just deflecting. I am a therian, I know that the therian community has the ability to coin new terms. I know that there are terms that are not related in any way shape or form for people who have multiple, complex, confusing, mixed breed, and other similar relating theriotypes. there are options that are not slurs. people like yourself who choose to continue to use the term are, in fact, using it because they "like the term", because if you had any genuine care for anyone in any minority besides your own, you wouldn't use a racial slur as a fucking pronoun. being harassed for being a therian is not equal to being harassed for being a racial minority and you know that. again, I ask: Why, in any position or universe, should it be okay to use a word that you now know is a slur, to encourage others to say a word that you now know is a slur, when someone who is directly affected by the use of the slur is telling you intently that they are hurt by it? How is that appropriate?"