Sometimes I wonder about the nonhumans who say they donโt want to be called a person. Imo โpersonโ does not imply humanness except to anthropocentrics who canโt see things other than humans as having personhood. Iโm a wolf and Iโm also a person. My wolfness does not take away my personhood; my being a person doesnโt mean Iโm not a wolf. It feels like a very anthropocentric worldview to see โpersonโ and read โhuman.โ
And. I wouldnโt say this to someone actively telling me not to call them a person, but: if youโre not a person then you donโt have the agency to decide what you are or arenโt called. Right? Is personhood not our individual sovereignty? Personhood is our agency, our possession of rights, our consciousness. If you donโt have that then do you have the right to say you arenโt a person? To me saying โIโm not a personโ reads as saying โi am not the kind of thing that gets to decide what kind of thing it isโ
Iโm ALSO very curious about the demographics of nonhumans who say they arenโt people. How many are white, able bodied, and/or neurotypical? I feel like a good amount are probably at least one of those things and that probably is affecting their view of the word โpersonโ and what it might be like to not be a person
