I think it’s really weird to see a therian say “it must be nice not living in reality”. Hasn’t the cultural lionism of objective physicality hurt the Otherkin community enough? We’re constantly criticised for not agreeing with others’ perceptions.
Huh? In this screenshot @Milo_H4 has posted a transphobic prejudice, to which @patternscreamr2 responded with an opposing anecdote. I don’t see how this is relating to the Otherkin community at all or if that’s just a trigger phrase for you. I just really don’t think it would be desirable to allow anyone to claim fuck all about anything
@patternscreamr2 is a therian. That’s what theta delta in the username means.
What otherkin (including therians) and trans people have in common - and I speak from experience as both - is that the world doesn’t perceive us the way we want to be perceived without a lot of work. Bigots are constantly claiming that our body has some essential, objective nature that we can’t change. They say their perceptions are reality.
The antidote to transphobia and kinphobia alike is the fact that our perceptions are socially constructed. We have the power to change them. Consensus reality is just a bunch of sensory data we’ve decided to interpret a particular way due to culturally bound semiotics. “Objectively”, humans are fish and sexual dimorphism is a mutation. We’re all just mutant fish if you’re seeking objectivity in science. But science isn’t objective, it’s subjective. Beliefs are independent variables, and uncontrolled, they change the outcomes of our experiments. Pretending that observer bias doesn’t exist is intellectually dishonest. We’re creatures of perspective, we can’t do science without a subjective point of view to interpret it. Look at the Ugly Duckling theorem, which argues that objective categorisation is mathematically impossible. Science is based on our nonscientific beliefs, and that’s okay.
What we need to do is choose kind and just beliefs, and examine what the science says when we interpret it using those. @patternscreamr2 is not a human. Chuds say they are, according to objective reality, and they’re wrong. Pattern Screamer is an animal, and we believe that because it’s the kind thing to believe. There is no objective answer, there’s just kindness and cruelty. Choose kindness.
I think what you’re describing isn’t science being subjective (imo it is the most objective thing humans have made - if done right), it’s that a full definition of something just isn’t possible because the world isn’t black and white. The subjective thing is where science intersects with philosophy. For example:
science: how humans have evolved over time
philosophy: what defines being human
In that sense, it scientifically very much is possible and plausible for something to be scientifically more and less human on a scale in comparison to what philosophy says a human is.
The exact same way how gender isn’t M or F, a living being doesn’t have to be exclusively Human or non-human.
According to science the body temperature of humans is petty consistent. We could use philosophy to declare this as the defining trait of what is human. This way we can now already compare how human everything is on a scale!Just by looking at a thermometer!
We can make objective measurements of temperatures, but do you think these measurements would hold any objective meaning over how human something is⸮ Of course not. Our definition of humans was entirely subjective and flawed on top. There is no way to objectively define humans, it would all be based on your subjective perception.
And since we don’t have objective definitions for such things, it would be pretty rude to tell the shadows on the wall what they are or aren’t casted by, especially when they tell you otherwise. Even if you’re not trying to stuff everything into a neat little box.
We can make objective measurements of temperatures, but do you think these measurements would hold any objective meaning over how human something is⸮
Yes absolutely. The scientific human is the current average. In a sense, how scientifically close to one is could be better described as how close to the average human one is. And in that sense, nobody is the scientific human. Nobody actually is the average.
Our definition of humans was entirely subjective and flawed on top. There is no way to objectively define humans, it would all be based on your subjective perception.
Well, through a turn of events the entire group of scientists who were put in charge of finding out what the average of human is are all lizardpeople. They think that being able to lick your eyeballs is an essential part of human. So when they were recruiting their subjects they have only been choosing those who can lick their eyeballs.
So they make a scan of all of their subjects and crunch through the numbers and come up with the average. This average sure is objective, but the group they’ve sampled obviously isn’t.
But well, this average now has been accepted as the scientific human. A human. Who licks their eyeballs. Not being able to do so is now considered weird, according to science.
…what? Those lizard people suck at science then. Doing research requires you to get a sample size that broadly encompasses everything. Specifically choosing your sample doesn’t hold up to modern scientific standards.
But what do we mean by “everybody”? That already depends on what the study tries to achieve in the first place. Let’s take your example of “can humans lick their eyeballs” and add the extra issue in there of human/lizard crossbreeds being a thing. In this case, you would have to take a sample of humans, lizards and everything in between. With that, you could create a dataset of who can and can’t, and would probably come to the conclusion that the more lizard-like someone is, the more likely they are to be able to lick their eyeballs.
Following along that, assuming that lizards count as human, it would mean that there is no clear average of eyeball licking capability and would therefore not factor in to if it is human or not. Just like there also isn’t an average skin color. Maybe a majority but it’s a distribution.
People, on average though, do have a working liver.
Specifically choosing your sample doesn’t hold up to modern scientific standards.
But we have to, no? Because we don’t want to include the featherless chicken, right? They even have one (or sometimes multiple) livers.
Maybe a majority but it’s a distribution.
You’re right, perhaps humans are just a cluster of datapoints on an x-dimensional chart, but if we want to calculate an average of that, we are still going to need to draw a border around it, because we don’t want to include all living things.
That’s a fair viewpoint. But when I say science is subjective, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m saying it’s an opportunity. We have so much to learn about the science of subjectivity. My hobby is developing new technology that works by manipulating subjectivity. Subjective technology. Rewriting perception through belief. You know, magic.
Magic is a really important field of technology for trans people and otherkin, because the subjectivities we’re forced to endure are so dysphoric. By creating tools to change our perceptions of ourselves, and our perception of others, we can create perceptual justice in the areas where biological technology isn’t there yet.
The Freedom of Form Foundation is doing really fascinating work to create prostheses for therians… But I’m not willing to wait for cyborg tails and genetically engineered fur. That’s thinking too small, too conservatively. Too realistically. Abandon the philosophy of realism, and we can do more. I’m a goddess in the astral plane, and My glamours, illusions, and rhetoric are expressing My species to those around Me. And I’ve been helping My community with this stuff, too.
Bigots are constantly claiming that our body has some essential, objective nature that we can’t change
That’s not bigotry though, that’s just science and objective reality. Calling it bigotry is no different than conservatives calling science “woke.”
It’s possible to literally alter your sex. Every human being is conceived with the full genetic potential to grow every single male or female primary or secondary sex characteristic or organ. How you develop is based on what hormones you’re exposed to in different phases of development. When a trans person goes on HRT, they are merely activating their latent genetic potential. They’re simply accessing previously dormant portions of their genetics.
But animals? Sorry. You do not have the genetic capability to grow into an animal. Yes, you can say that humans are descendants from other animals, but we’re still humans. You don’t have the genetic potential to turn into the fish that we evolved from. Calling us “mutant fish” is reductive and completely useless in describing actual human beings.
You’re doing sophistry. You’re stretching the definition of words so far that they don’t remotely resemble how those words are actually used in the real world. You’re effectively inventing your own language and then using it to justify points. It’s just circular logic and reasoning. Yes, we are sensory creatures. But that doesn’t mean objective reality - the shared experience that doesn’t go away when we stop believing in it - doesn’t exist.
You’re using the phrase “unscientific,” while literally denying the existence of objective reality. You are, by definition, engaging in unscientific behavior. Science is nothing but probing objective reality.
Show me a hormone pill or shot that you can take that will activate your body’s latent potential to take on the characteristics of another animal, and I’ll believe you have a point. Until then, it’s comical to claim that trans people and otherkin are remotely comparable. One is grounded in reality and seeks to harness human biology to produce development that everyone already has the genetic potential to activate. The other? There’s nothing remotely comparable.
The other key difference is that there is actually a logical justification for how someone can literally end up with a brain of one sex and a body of another. It’s entirely reasonable that if there’s a part of the brain that imparts gender identity, that when you’re in utero, you simply ended up growing the version that normally occurs with the opposite sex. People are born intersex. The brain is sexually dimorphic. A neurological intersex condition is entirely reasonable. And studies have backed this up. There is simply nothing comparable for human/animals. There is absolutely no way for a human being to grow the brain of a fox in utero.
The two situations are utterly incomparable. What exactly is the proposed developmental pathway that would cause a human being to be born with the brain of a cat?
You’re awfully concerned with biology. Genes this, pills that, brains the other. I think minds are more interesting than bodies. I like psychology, sociology, anthropology. Therian identities have always existed in various cultures. We have records of them going back thousands of years. Some cultures even promote identity schemas which I would be inclined to describe as “therian”, for the political benefits they bring. You should learn more about that kind of technology. The mind is really quite adaptable. Cultural constructs have a tremendous power to influence its development. We raise humans and dogs together, exposing developing minds to so much information about “dog” as a social category of being. It’s no wonder so many therians are dogs.
You’d really be less invalidating to others if you used questions, rather than accusations, when you come across a new queer identity you don’t understand.
I think it’s really weird to see a therian say “it must be nice not living in reality”. Hasn’t the cultural lionism of objective physicality hurt the Otherkin community enough? We’re constantly criticised for not agreeing with others’ perceptions.
Huh? In this screenshot @Milo_H4 has posted a transphobic prejudice, to which @patternscreamr2 responded with an opposing anecdote. I don’t see how this is relating to the Otherkin community at all or if that’s just a trigger phrase for you. I just really don’t think it would be desirable to allow anyone to claim fuck all about anything
@patternscreamr2 is a therian. That’s what theta delta in the username means.
What otherkin (including therians) and trans people have in common - and I speak from experience as both - is that the world doesn’t perceive us the way we want to be perceived without a lot of work. Bigots are constantly claiming that our body has some essential, objective nature that we can’t change. They say their perceptions are reality.
The antidote to transphobia and kinphobia alike is the fact that our perceptions are socially constructed. We have the power to change them. Consensus reality is just a bunch of sensory data we’ve decided to interpret a particular way due to culturally bound semiotics. “Objectively”, humans are fish and sexual dimorphism is a mutation. We’re all just mutant fish if you’re seeking objectivity in science. But science isn’t objective, it’s subjective. Beliefs are independent variables, and uncontrolled, they change the outcomes of our experiments. Pretending that observer bias doesn’t exist is intellectually dishonest. We’re creatures of perspective, we can’t do science without a subjective point of view to interpret it. Look at the Ugly Duckling theorem, which argues that objective categorisation is mathematically impossible. Science is based on our nonscientific beliefs, and that’s okay.
What we need to do is choose kind and just beliefs, and examine what the science says when we interpret it using those. @patternscreamr2 is not a human. Chuds say they are, according to objective reality, and they’re wrong. Pattern Screamer is an animal, and we believe that because it’s the kind thing to believe. There is no objective answer, there’s just kindness and cruelty. Choose kindness.
I think what you’re describing isn’t science being subjective (imo it is the most objective thing humans have made - if done right), it’s that a full definition of something just isn’t possible because the world isn’t black and white. The subjective thing is where science intersects with philosophy. For example:
In that sense, it scientifically very much is possible and plausible for something to be scientifically more and less human on a scale in comparison to what philosophy says a human is.
The exact same way how gender isn’t M or F, a living being doesn’t have to be exclusively Human or non-human.
According to science the body temperature of humans is petty consistent. We could use philosophy to declare this as the defining trait of what is human. This way we can now already compare how human everything is on a scale!Just by looking at a thermometer!
We can make objective measurements of temperatures, but do you think these measurements would hold any objective meaning over how human something is⸮ Of course not. Our definition of humans was entirely subjective and flawed on top. There is no way to objectively define humans, it would all be based on your subjective perception.
And since we don’t have objective definitions for such things, it would be pretty rude to tell the shadows on the wall what they are or aren’t casted by, especially when they tell you otherwise. Even if you’re not trying to stuff everything into a neat little box.
Yes absolutely. The scientific human is the current average. In a sense, how scientifically close to one is could be better described as how close to the average human one is. And in that sense, nobody is the scientific human. Nobody actually is the average.
Yep, there’s where philosophy starts.
Well, through a turn of events the entire group of scientists who were put in charge of finding out what the average of human is are all lizardpeople. They think that being able to lick your eyeballs is an essential part of human. So when they were recruiting their subjects they have only been choosing those who can lick their eyeballs.
So they make a scan of all of their subjects and crunch through the numbers and come up with the average. This average sure is objective, but the group they’ve sampled obviously isn’t.
But well, this average now has been accepted as the scientific human. A human. Who licks their eyeballs. Not being able to do so is now considered weird, according to science.
…what? Those lizard people suck at science then. Doing research requires you to get a sample size that broadly encompasses everything. Specifically choosing your sample doesn’t hold up to modern scientific standards.
But what do we mean by “everybody”? That already depends on what the study tries to achieve in the first place. Let’s take your example of “can humans lick their eyeballs” and add the extra issue in there of human/lizard crossbreeds being a thing. In this case, you would have to take a sample of humans, lizards and everything in between. With that, you could create a dataset of who can and can’t, and would probably come to the conclusion that the more lizard-like someone is, the more likely they are to be able to lick their eyeballs.
Following along that, assuming that lizards count as human, it would mean that there is no clear average of eyeball licking capability and would therefore not factor in to if it is human or not. Just like there also isn’t an average skin color. Maybe a majority but it’s a distribution.
People, on average though, do have a working liver.
Edit: my point still stands but fuck I can’t read
But we have to, no? Because we don’t want to include the featherless chicken, right? They even have one (or sometimes multiple) livers.
You’re right, perhaps humans are just a cluster of datapoints on an x-dimensional chart, but if we want to calculate an average of that, we are still going to need to draw a border around it, because we don’t want to include all living things.
That’s a fair viewpoint. But when I say science is subjective, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m saying it’s an opportunity. We have so much to learn about the science of subjectivity. My hobby is developing new technology that works by manipulating subjectivity. Subjective technology. Rewriting perception through belief. You know, magic.
Magic is a really important field of technology for trans people and otherkin, because the subjectivities we’re forced to endure are so dysphoric. By creating tools to change our perceptions of ourselves, and our perception of others, we can create perceptual justice in the areas where biological technology isn’t there yet.
The Freedom of Form Foundation is doing really fascinating work to create prostheses for therians… But I’m not willing to wait for cyborg tails and genetically engineered fur. That’s thinking too small, too conservatively. Too realistically. Abandon the philosophy of realism, and we can do more. I’m a goddess in the astral plane, and My glamours, illusions, and rhetoric are expressing My species to those around Me. And I’ve been helping My community with this stuff, too.
That’s not bigotry though, that’s just science and objective reality. Calling it bigotry is no different than conservatives calling science “woke.”
It’s possible to literally alter your sex. Every human being is conceived with the full genetic potential to grow every single male or female primary or secondary sex characteristic or organ. How you develop is based on what hormones you’re exposed to in different phases of development. When a trans person goes on HRT, they are merely activating their latent genetic potential. They’re simply accessing previously dormant portions of their genetics.
But animals? Sorry. You do not have the genetic capability to grow into an animal. Yes, you can say that humans are descendants from other animals, but we’re still humans. You don’t have the genetic potential to turn into the fish that we evolved from. Calling us “mutant fish” is reductive and completely useless in describing actual human beings.
You’re doing sophistry. You’re stretching the definition of words so far that they don’t remotely resemble how those words are actually used in the real world. You’re effectively inventing your own language and then using it to justify points. It’s just circular logic and reasoning. Yes, we are sensory creatures. But that doesn’t mean objective reality - the shared experience that doesn’t go away when we stop believing in it - doesn’t exist.
You’re using the phrase “unscientific,” while literally denying the existence of objective reality. You are, by definition, engaging in unscientific behavior. Science is nothing but probing objective reality.
Show me a hormone pill or shot that you can take that will activate your body’s latent potential to take on the characteristics of another animal, and I’ll believe you have a point. Until then, it’s comical to claim that trans people and otherkin are remotely comparable. One is grounded in reality and seeks to harness human biology to produce development that everyone already has the genetic potential to activate. The other? There’s nothing remotely comparable.
The other key difference is that there is actually a logical justification for how someone can literally end up with a brain of one sex and a body of another. It’s entirely reasonable that if there’s a part of the brain that imparts gender identity, that when you’re in utero, you simply ended up growing the version that normally occurs with the opposite sex. People are born intersex. The brain is sexually dimorphic. A neurological intersex condition is entirely reasonable. And studies have backed this up. There is simply nothing comparable for human/animals. There is absolutely no way for a human being to grow the brain of a fox in utero.
The two situations are utterly incomparable. What exactly is the proposed developmental pathway that would cause a human being to be born with the brain of a cat?
You’re awfully concerned with biology. Genes this, pills that, brains the other. I think minds are more interesting than bodies. I like psychology, sociology, anthropology. Therian identities have always existed in various cultures. We have records of them going back thousands of years. Some cultures even promote identity schemas which I would be inclined to describe as “therian”, for the political benefits they bring. You should learn more about that kind of technology. The mind is really quite adaptable. Cultural constructs have a tremendous power to influence its development. We raise humans and dogs together, exposing developing minds to so much information about “dog” as a social category of being. It’s no wonder so many therians are dogs.
You’d really be less invalidating to others if you used questions, rather than accusations, when you come across a new queer identity you don’t understand.