tala

The Dilution of Topics

It's important to understand that when something like this comes up, POC are chiming in to explain the situation and how it affects them. It is not the time to bring in unrelated things in an attempt to use that as credentials for weighing in. I'll use the K-9/police dog example again because it's honestly such a good discourse to dissect for this. The main focus of the conversation was between black and brown people (not exclusively, because other POC included, but mainly) and those who identify as police/military dogs (therians, otherkin, whathaveyou). Not anyone else.

"As someone with a problematic (or villain) kintype--"

This isn't about you.

"I'm police or military creature from another world--"

This isn't about you.

"I acknowledge it but don't glorify it--"

This isn't about you.

What these comments do is not only watering down what our actual concerns are, but it speeds up the "internet telephone" until the conversation morphs into something different entirely. This happens all the time when people of color try to bring to light something that bothers us. Everyone wants to make it about themselves but it's not about everyone. The topic of "Glorification of these institutions that actively harm isn't good" is not the same as "What kintypes/theriotypes/etc. should people be allowed to have?", but it was turned into that very quickly because way too many people failed to realize and understand what isn't about them. Many, with a quickness, found a way to victimize themselves.

All that is without even getting into people adding exclusions that were not originally there. "This discourse is US-centric and doesn't apply to other countries" is not only incorrect but you need to educate yourself on how police brutality (and police brutality that utilizes attack animals) exists outside of the United States. This isn't even just for the dog thing. This also extends to racism in general because people love to talk about how not racist their country is (when in fact it often is).

White Privilege and Nonhuman Superiority

This section is probably going to ruffle some feathers, but if it does ruffle your feathers then it might be time to start deconstructing why exactly that is. White privilege in particular is important to point out here because it is common to assume that privilege is a "balance scale". Privilege doesn't cancel out from marginalization. You can be queer, or disabled, or neurodivergent, etc. and still benefit from white privilege. I point all of that out because the nonhuman communities have a large portion that are in one or many of these marginalized groups, and the assumption that it "cancels out" white privilege may be part of the driving force behind what's covered in this post.

An easy starting example of white people underestimating exactly how deep things can go is the entire gatekeeping discourse about defining therianthropy as "wears gear and does quadrobics". How this whole thing started with people insisting therianthropy required these performative aspects, I'm not even gonna pretend to know. What I do know is that it is a form of gatekeeping popular on photo and video-based social media websites like Instagram and TikTok that then subsequently bleeds over into other places like Tumblr and Discord group chats.

"Real therians wear gear and run around outside on all fours" makes me desperately hope for young POC to be careful. Black people especially have a disproportionately higher chance of being arrested or shot. I never want anyone to be pressured to do dangerous things from these imaginary guidelines on what makes nonhumanity "valid". It's exclusionary from both a "therianthropy doesn't require any of this" standpoint and a "you are overestimating how safe this activity is to do" standpoint. This isn't fearmongering, I'm not saying that this is never safe. I'm saying that those who are unable to safely do it may subsequently feel like that disqualifies them from identifying as a therian. Similar things can be said for other minorities other than racial ones, but that's a different topic (and I encourage anyone wanting to talk about that to make their own posts about it, rather than using this one).

The insistence that nonhumanity should have "racial colorblindness" and "be above politics/apolitical" are also very privileged takes. Identifying as nonhuman doesn't erase the fact that most of us still live in and are affected by human society (whether some want to be or not) and people of color especially do not have the freedom to completely divorce ourselves from the world because our very existence has been made political. Not only that, but culture is still important to a lot of people as well. We are not all the same just because we identify as nonhuman. We are not a monoculture. We are different and there needs to be room to celebrate that.

The aspect of "everything is for everyone" that often comes with white privilege appears in even blatant ways. I've witnessed people in the community saying that closed cultures are silly. Although slightly less common today (and by slightly I mean very slightly), at one point it was common for people to constantly appropriate North/South American indigenous cultures because their understanding of it was as shallow and stereotypical as "Pocahontas Colors of the Wind". I've even had someone say "well it's not our fault black people are so trendy" directly in a conversation about how black people regularly have our culture taken from us when we're barely even allowed to have it ourselves without being looked down on. It's gross and insensitive, and the very reason so many people of color leave these nonhuman communities. "Do whatever you want forever" exists within reason.

Identifying as nonhuman isn't an excuse to look down on humans either, especially in the misanthropic sense. Being anti-human and blaming humanity as a whole for the results of colonization (species extinction, habitat loss, climate change, etc.) goes against the marginalized people that have been harmed historically and currently and lumps them into the same category as their oppressors simply by existing.

It is Always That Deep

The last point that I'll use to close this whole post is that I can't stress enough how often us POC are told again and again and again that what we are seeing is either not real or irrational, or "just drama".

I remember the reaction to "maybe don't say you're an entity from a closed culture if you're not from that culture".

I remember the reaction to "don't use monkey/ape as a derogatory term for humans".

I remember the reaction to "don't glorify institutions that actively harm and kill us".

I remember the reaction to "please don't say dehumanization is good actually".