Hi, i’ve been looking at your post, talking about it, and sharing it with some friends. Honestly i’d even say i’m a fan of you and your work despite how little of it there is right now. I have a couple question.

First, I was wondering if you had any other accounts that I could follow your work on, like twitter and such.

Second, I saw that you took classes in etholgy and talked about advocating for the personhood of animals. I mean, I know they’re smarter than we sometimes give them credit for. Take for example the recent study with scientist communicating with whales with their own language for the first time. But I was hoping to get your insight in what you mean by personhood of animals and thoughts on the topic. (And also table napkin thought on how anthropomorphizing can harm or help our understanding of animals)

Third but a little more obscure, is that you use humanity, personhood, and the being of « more human » a lot. I was hoping if you could expand on the differences of these terms and how they interact with one another.

Sorry for all the questions, just honest to god fascinated with your perspective of things and the topic in general.

Here’s the whale communication study I mentioned: https://globalnews.ca/news/10182116/humpback-whale-conversation-talking-to-aliens/amp/

Oh my gosh thank you so much for your kind words! This, AO3, and YouTube are actually my only accounts online that I post anything on, and I just use my YT account to reupload other people's deleted videos. I used to use Reddit but I'm trying to distance myself from that account since half a decade of hot take type comments starting when I was 15 isn't exactly the best look for anyone.

Your last two questions are linked so I'm going to address them at once. Human is simply the term used to refer to a member of the genus Homo. There's nothing all that special about it philosophically when separated from personhood, which is more or less the description of what beings do and don't fully matter morally. Speculative fiction and philosophy tend to equate it with sapience, which is more or less a meaningless term made up to separate humans (or worse, specific groups of humans) from other animals and make ourselves feel superior. There have been attempts to give it meaning, but nearly every definition uses traits that are found in at least one other species of animal and/or are not universal to every group of humans (with the notable exception of artistry but I frankly find it absurd to discount something's moral worth over that). As such, if we're going to approach the topic logically, then some animals at the very least have traits of personhood.

Language, for example, isn't exactly common in animals, but it isn't unheard of either. Bats, cetaceans (whales and dolphins), pinnipeds (seals and sea lions), elephants, songbirds (a group that contains crows btw), hummingbirds, and of course parrots all learn different "words" that they apply meaning to and then use. Cetaceans, parrots, and some songbirds even use something akin to grammar.

Ritual behavior has been shown in chimpanzees, dolphins, and elephants as they grieve for their dead.

Self-awareness, the trait most commonly held up as making humans special, is hard to measure due to the language barrier, but there is still some evidence for it in certain animals. The mirror test isn't perfect when it comes to discounting a given animal's self-awareness, but if an animal can identify itself in a mirror, it's hard to argue with the idea that it has a sense of self. Animals that passed include various dolphins, great apes, elephants, magpies, and even certain fish. Furthermore, an African grey parrot named Alex once asked a question about himself, being the first recorded instance of an animal asking anything, and bottlenose dolphins use names for themselves and others in their pod.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. I don't really have a definitive list of animals that I believe should be considered "people", especially given all the legal implications of that sentiment, but you've probably noticed that same groups of animals showed up again and again. Dolphins were there in all of the different categories, and elephants only failed the grammar category because they largely communicate using vibrations which work so differently from regular sound that they're hard to meaningfully compare to human languages. Parrots, corvids (crows and relatives), and great apes all have stand out members that showed up in two or three of the categories in the African grey, magpie, and chimpanzee respectively, and the other members of those families as well as whales are all intelligent and social enough that I am of the opinion that they all deserve certain philosophical rights and even legal protections. It's so easy for us to see personhood as a black and white thing that something either has or doesn't have, but like most things, it really is more of a spectrum.

To answer your "table napkin thought", while I won't deny that anthropomorphizing real animals can often lead to a lack of true understanding of them, the harm done by people trying to avoid doing so is both more common and so, so much more horrific that I hesitate to critique it too much. I mean, I have straight up seen very influential people say that acknowledging the extremely well supported fact that other animals are capable of feeling pain is "anthropomorphizing" them because one specific area of the brain that is partially responsible for processing pain in humans is only present in primates, and that of course can, and historically has, lead to horrific abuse.

I really don't mind all the questions! I love talking about things I'm passionate about, and this topic is certainly up there among the the things I care most about.

people stop having disordered attachment to your pets challenge

For mha fans:

I'm omegaverse, do only humans have second genders?

If yes, then what does Nedzu think of all these idiots being idiots with their second gender and in au's with hierarchies where does Nedzu fit?

If no, then what is Nedzu's second gender?

Please discuss.

no doctor you dont get it im not too fat to walk im cripple punk ok

and see how dialogue isn't possible when you block someone who doesn't even disagree with your movement, just with certain premises behind it? see how it doesn't allow for practicing harm reduction or nuance? when i'm struggling to get myself to eat anything at all, which can last for days or weeks at a time, what i do eat needs to count. sorry, i'm eating the cheese stick because it's the only thing that sounds palatable and it gives me seven grams of protein. sorry there's no room for women with eating disorders and deficiencies because "eat less animal products" isn't good enough when your ideology values non-human animals more than women's health. but of course the burden falls on women to make ourselves tired and weak while the male-led industry overproduces and overconsumes. at least you stayed true to your logically inconsistent, female-socialized emotion-based beliefs and allowed for zero compromise! there's no way your airtight ethical philosophy has blatant logical flaws at the slightest nudge of critical thought, the people who point out fallacies are just heartless!

the . coyote thint is happening full forc ejsdjkx i enrirely forgot about this djjfdmjdd ims literally ja coyote! das me !!!! the break in personhood you mentuined u think that might kind kf be whats happenin g with me? not full on but its there.. and has definitely happened before to a lesser extent coyotin time ! :3

I forgot to respond to this because you’ll never get what was also happening to me at the time

"why do people have a problem with trans shapeshifters, every trans person i've ever met wants to be a shapeshifter, and i am trans and i want to be a shapeshifter!"

okay but that's. never been the problem. the problems crop up when a character is the only trans character. or when the only asexual character is a robot. or when the only autistic character is also a robot. a character being the only one of those that has those traits is dehumanizing.

there's nothing wrong with making those characters. there's nothing wrong with liking those characters. there's nothing wrong with finding empowerment and freedom in those characters. but when creating those characters, having them being the only characters with those particular traits being nonhuman is kind of putting those traits in a box labeled nonhuman. like the only "normal human" characters you can imagine are cis or neurotypical or what have you.

and that's not a dig that's me asking you to keep that in mind.

anyone want to pull an edna pontellier with me

I wish animations in my head would just appear on the screen with no effort at all

Why do I have to draw them? This is such bullshit

Galadriel: Orc

Adar: We prefer Uruk

Babe, wake up! New shibboleth just dropped!

People online: [refer to babies and children with it/its pronouns]

Me:

pov I am your bartender I am flirting ruthlessly with u

I know we havent seen it in a few episodes but I thought it'd be cool if The Beast looked kinda like a distorted giant binturong with slight uncanny valley human traits (tho tbf binturongs already have horrifyingly vacant/mournful eyes)

philosophical question that has absolutely no relevance to whispers whatsoever haha what do you mean: does it count as cannibalism if the victim is a shapeshifter in a different form at the time of eating them

ok i absolutely Have to buy the official version for this manhua manhwa because the amount of Insane cronchy tropes has me feeling some kind of way

what if we had the lady and their lionheart knight trope but it's baked into the royal social structure and has toxic magical brainwashing as its foundation

what if we had (1) princess who didn't want to do that and actually refused to select a personal knight for years

what if there was (1) knight for that princess that became her personal lionheart knight that was also narratively expected to overthrow the royal monarchy

because the knights are magical homuculus humans, at any kind of balls or parties they are Required to wear gauzy black blindfolds to set them apart while in fancy dress