I sometimes see people who complain about the general trend of defaulting to they/them pronouns when you don't know what the person uses yet on the basis of "it enables those who degender trans people and gives them plausible deniability". What I'm curious about in those cases is, what would the alternative solutions be?
Should we roll back years of activism, throw nonbinary people, trans people who can't or don't want to pass, gnc people under the bus, and go back to assuming pronouns based on superficial presentation, something I genuinely saw being suggested? This only serves to make life harder for the more vulnerable members of the community, while doing nothing to fix the underlying issue - transphobia. Only a minority of gender-conforming, perfectly passing and usually stealth binary trans people benefits from this in any way.
Bigots who refuse to acknowledge trans people's actual pronouns will do so either way. If it's not "they/them"-ing people who don't go by that set of pronouns, it's refusing to use any pronouns at all, or misgendering them using any other pronouns, or awkwardly refusing to address them completely and pretending the trans person doesn't exist as far as they are concerned.
It's exhausting and infuriating that so many people don't see ableism and structural inaccessibility as actual serious issues that literally kill people but rather like. minor nitpicks that we'd prefer to not deal with
This is a post complaining about anthropocentrism in QAI. (Or MOGAI, or LIOM. I'm spiritually an old maver, I cannot keep up with which new acronym is correct in the moment. 💔)
If you are reading my tone as being fed-up and a bit annoyed, you would be SOOOOOOOO very correct! That, however, doesn't mean I have any malice in making this post and I do genuinely believe that most people perpetuating the issues I discuss in this post are not doing so willfully or with ill intent. If you feel threatened, that's on you.
Anthropocentrism is a philosophical belief that humans are superior to all other life on the planet. As far as I can tell, it's mostly used in reference to environmentalism and the ideologies that perpetuate harm to the environment, but I first heard it used by another alterhuman on this site, being used in the same way I am using it now.
Anthropocentrism is baked into literally every aspect of the alterhuman community. Even the name. "Nonhuman" is even worse as community shorthand (unless you are literally using it to mean the community of those who are not human, which I can understand needing its own place). It shouldn't be! We should be trying to dissolve that!
*SO* many coins in the speciesqueer (hi I coined that) community are entirely based around the assumption that whoever is identifying with them is coming from a starting point of humanity AT LEAST, and many also assume that the viewer is identifying as nonhuman. There are so many coins that specify identifying as "other than human", or "nonhuman", when it is just really deeply unnecessary.
This is harmful to humans and nonhumans both.
For humans, we* have to have our humanity be assumed to be normative, nontransformative, and boring, completely disregarding humankins, human alters in nonhuman systems, humans in physically nonhuman bodies, people inbetween humanity and another species, and people who have been dehumanized. We are defined out of identifying with terms that could have been meaningful and important to us.
For nonhumans, we have to have our species be treated as in contrast to humanity rather than its own set of characteristics and way of being out of infinite possibilities. We have to have our species minimized and made out to be something only defined by its relation to another, even though humanity is really just as insignificant to any other.
This is not just an issue in speciesqueer spaces either. I see countless gender and orientation terms coined with the exact same methodology and it pisses me off just as much!
Exclusivity
[pt: exclusivity]
I also see a lot of terms that are not just implied to be anthropocentric, but are literally made to be "nonhuman exclusive" or "alterhuman exclusive." Sorry but I FUCKING HATE THIS!!!!!!!! Some I've seen go as far as to exclude anyone who identifies as human in any way. It breaks my brain a little bit. Why???????? I think at a certain point, a term stops being exclusive for good-faith reasons and starts being exclusionary just for the sake of unpacked biases or hatred. In my mind this is non-negotiably one of those scenarios.
What exactly is lost when a human finds solidarity in a term that describes their relationship to their species? What are you afraid of? I feel like I know the answer: you see humanity as something that is solely oppressive, something that cannot ever be as beautiful as your Sacred Nonhumanity™, and you take it out on humans because you would rather be exclusionary than have to share space with us.
I don't really have much more to say on this topic but it genuinely pissed me off so bad I had to make it a whole section.
TO CONCLUDE!
[pt: To conclude!]
I probably had more to write, but look. I have to go practice my flute. I have to shower. I have to COIN!!!!!!!! It has all completely fried my brain and I can't think anymore but I NEED. To post this. Just imagine little old me begging you on my hands and knees with my humankin aura radiating off me to stop assuming humanity as the default PLEASE. PLEAAAAAAAASE I AM BEGGING SO BAD PLEASE BE MORE INCLUSIVE WITH YOUR COINS.
Not everyone has the same idea of what is "normative". Not everyone has had to fight for the same things you did. Some people have had to fight for the same things you have fought to get rid of.
Humankinner 8000 OUT!!!!!!!!
*Since this is the piss on the poor website, I want to be clear that when I when I say "we" to refer to humanity, I'm including myself in that plural pronoun, not necessarily the reader.
finished decking out my cane- thought the alien/space theme would be fun for my first one. did it with some stickers and charms i ordered from etsy a while back (when i had the spare cash lol💔), as well as the beaded keychain i made myself. even put on some glow-in-the-dark stickers to find it easier at night :))
The Republic of Molossia is a small micronation located in Nevada, near the city of Dayton. It occupies an area of 0.0053 km², or 0.002 square miles and has a population of “34 (including dogs)”.
History
Molossia has its roots in an earlier micronation known as the Grand Republic of Vuldstein, of which Kevin Baugh (founder of Molossia) was Prime Minister under King James (Spielman) I. Vuldstein went dormant after some time, until February 21, 1999, when Kevin Baugh declared himself President over land he owned in Nevada, calling this new nation the People’s Democratic Republic of Molossia. Later that year, it became simply the Republic of Molossia, the name it has possessed since that time.
Since its inception, the Republic of Molossia has been a very active member of the international micronational community.
An important event occurred in 2008, when a “long-forgotten declaration of war” was discovered. According to this document, war had been declared on the nation of East Germany in 1983 (when the nation was still Vuldstein). The Republic claims that East Germany lives on in the form of an uninhabited island off the coast of Cuba, and as such the war is still on-going. Since 2008, the Molossian government has sold “war bonds” to fund the war against East Germany.
In 2010, the Republic was invaded and government deposed by a group who renamed the nation Kickassia. Kickassia soon fell, and Molossia was reformed several days later.
The small republic has its own national anthem, called Fair Molossia Is Our Home. The official languages are English and Esperanto, and the official government website even has a 10 course lesson on the language.
All information from the official website, http://www.molossia.org/countryeng.html.
saw a genuinely mega dumbass take so here's a reminder
if you are a traumagenic system/CDD system that supports endos, I love you, you are so appreciated and needed in this community just as much as endos, please NEVER let anti endos tell you that you arent a valid system or that you're harming system communities by loving your plural and system siblings. You are so important and loved here and you are so needed just as much as every other person. Y'all are so strong for dealing with the bullshit thrown at you so often and i feel nobody recognizes it as much as it should be recognized
Perisex people need to fucking listen to intersex people when they say something is intersexist, you do not know better than them on their own lives experiences shut the fuck up
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