This should be something from the Onion but apparently isn’t: Amber Roberts at Vice: Otherkin Are People Too; They Just Identify as Nonhuman.
Well no. If you’re nonhuman then you’re not people too. That’s just definitional, so it’s silly to claim otherwise. People are human.
But that’s not even the silliest part; the silliest part is claiming to “identify as” nonhuman. I can “identify as” Shakespeare if I want to, but I’m not a bit more Shakespeare for having so “identified” than I was before.
Otherkin are people who identify as partially or entirely nonhuman. A dragon, a lion, a fox—you name it—there is probably someone out there who feels like they are more these things than they are human. The otherkin community can be found lurking on Reddit, Tumblr, TV Tropes, and other online forums.
A dragon, a lion, a fox – such a narrow range. What about a 1964 Cadillac, a baked yam, a canyon, a fart, a poem, a hurricane, a red sweatshirt with a hole in the left elbow?
I spoke to John on Reddit, a 19-year-old from Knoxville, USA, known on the web as Noslavic. He introduced himself: “I am a red fox-kin who was, as we call, awakened about a year ago.” He said that awakening felt, “at the very least, relieving,” because “everything seemed to come together for me.
“I started getting odd dreams where I would change physically into a fox, and they were very realistic—honestly. And after a while, in real life, it felt quite real, like I actually had a tail, I actually had ears, I actually had paws.”
And people really think they’ve had visits from extra-terrestrials, or that their teacher took them on a rocket ship, or that there’s an exciting new world hiding behind a nearby comet and the way to get their is to kill yourself.
While some otherkin identify as the animal, others identify with the animal—in more of a spiritual way. This is the case for Ri Na Gach, an 18-year-old “lionkin” who wishes to remain anonymous:
“I feel a special connection with the lion. I feel like I demonstrate many of the same characteristics as the animal. It’s mostly a secret in my day-to-day life, but the traits that I share with lions do help me. In pagan religions of the past, it wasn’t uncommon to believe that humans would be reborn as animals, so the idea that I was, in a past life, a lion, is not as far-fetched as some would think.”
Again with the lion. Notice it’s all glam animals. Why don’t they feel as if they demonstrate many of the same characteristics as the slug, or the oyster, or the pigeon, or the rat?
And the fact that something was believed in a pagan religion of the past does nothing to make it not far-fetched.
I’m going to go knit myself a giraffe suit.
Counting down the minutes till some jerk says this is just like being trans and that isn’t real either.
I saw this article earlier today, but didn’t read it carefully. It wasn’t that interesting to me at the time (though I did see that the guy who got plastic surgery to look like a lion was dead… which I thought was sad… but I digress).
Your blog post has made this more interesting (for me).
First, about people only choosing “glam animals” instead of animals like “the rat”. Haven’t you heard that a guy in Canada has been going around robbing stores in a mouse mask?
http://www.cp24.com/news/robbery-of-barrie-store-by-knife-wielding-mouse-makes-headlines-around-the-world-1.2472957
Dan, if you read on the article does go into that, though not in order to say it isn’t real either. (Though she points out others who do say that.)
C’mon, Ophelia, some of those animals are really quite glam! Wereslugs would leave huge shiny, glistening trails perfect for parades and slip-n-slides! Wereoysters would produce the largest pearls ever known! Wererats could find wereturtles for TMNT re-enactments!
I’m with you on the pigeon, though. Not glam.
(And yes, I’m aware they’re not really claiming to be wereanimals. Don’t interrupt my fun with facts.)
Leaving aside the otherkin, people or being a person (personhood) is not defined as being human. It is not a biological designation but a legal and philosophical one and within those fields there is no one definition. In fact I guess it is a somewhat controversial subject.
Personhood was originally a theological concept to differentiate between god and christ. Later it was applied to the holy ghost and angels and later still to humans. There have been and I believe are still ongoing attempts to extend the status to at the least some of the other higher mammals such as some of the great apes and cetaceans, in order to gain them greater legal rights and protections.
Ophelia in the OP:
I disagree with your interpretation.
There are two separate assertions there: that they are people, and that they identify as nonhuman, so the claim is not that nonhumans are people, but that some people identify as nonhumans*. Neither silly nor controversial.
—
* I doubt many are really that deluded about it, but for those who are, it’s better than something like Cotard’s Syndrome.
On a more serious note…
.
You wrote:
.
.
I disagree. Vehemently. (If you’ll let me).
.
As others have suggested here already, the distinction between human and person is very important.
.
Intelligent extra-terrestrials (e.g., Vulcans, if they were real) would be or should be considered persons.*
.
Do you agree with me?
.
Maybe I should have started with a non-fiction (and extremely important) example of something human not being a person.
.
Consider the abortion debate. I identify as pro-choice, but I would never say that a fetus is not human. What else would it be? Consider just a fertilized egg. A zygote is human. What else would it be? It has all the DNA needed to make a human. It could make more than one human (given the possibility of identical twins, triplets, etc). But (with the exception of sperm/ova) every cell in a human body (including cells that fly out when in a human sneeze) have all the DNA needed to make a full human. No one’s assassinating doctors or blowing up clinics or making misleadingly edited videos or demanding the federal government defund organizations to defend those cells.
.
*One might even call a Vulcan “human”… but you might want to wait till he’s dead, since he might be offended.
Didn’t Kafka already write about this?
I did read a book in which one of the characters turned out to be a werebunny. It made me laugh out loud when I read it
Soooo… I identify as otherkin. I used to think it was via reincarnation (most commonly seen) but as I moved towards atheism I figure it’s just a psychological quirk.
When I think of ‘me’, I don’t see my human face. I see something like a naked dromeosaur, with wings. A ‘dragon’ for lack of a better term. I do get phantom limb sensations, primarily the face, the feet, and wings in that order of how constant I feel them.
And you’re right, there is an issue with glam animals/mythos just as people tend to think they’re reincarnations of people who were famous from history. You never see peasants. There are even people who claim to be reincarnated gods, though I’ll admit I had a lot of fun debunking their claims of omgamazingpowers. I’ve had an army of astral dragons sicced on me, and a couple death curses. I’m still here.
And while I recognise the absurdity of it, I figure it might just be a case of a deeply internalised archetype. Some people feel drawn to the idea of the Mother, Teacher, Warrior, Healer, etc… and some of us add in other archetypal creatures as well.
Knowing it’s absurd doesn’t change the fact that if you asked me to draw a self portrait, an honest one would be a dragon.
As an addendum, I have not participated in an otherkin forum for at least two years. There was an upswing in the idea that if you asked for proof, or questioned the falsifiable claims someone made that you were ‘intolerant’, and that if you didn’t believe in reincarnation that you didn’t belong. And that became such a large segment that it became truth, I no longer belonged and the sheer level of ridiculousness was too much for me. I’d participated in that online community for 13 years.
People really identify as, say, cuttlefish?
Sounds fine to me.
I have seen squid’kin in the past, yes, so I imagine someone out there feels they are a cuttlefish.
I’m mainly commenting on this to subscribe. I mean… I know I can subscribe without commenting, but I much prefer the subscription I get via commenting. I prefer getting the emails with the HTML intact. :p
I want to see how this conversation turns out. I fear, if I post my thoughts, I will offend people, so instead I’ll keep my mouth (or in this case, fingers) shut and read, instead, to try and learn.
I don’t care if it is “real” or just elaborate role playing. It seems pretty harmless to me.
I’m really just in WhatTheFuck mode right now. Seriously, in 14 comments, we’ve already had:
* Personhood because Jesus — yeah, no, people had the conception of personhood before Christ, thanks.
* Personhood because Vulcans — assuming other intelligent species will manifest identity in the same ways humans do is not logical, Captain.
* Phantom wing pain — not only is that insulting to actual people with amputations, I’m going to assert that nobody has neural pathways connected to their never-existing wings.
o.O O.o O.O
P.S. This post mainly for NateHevens.
Yiffing?
You’ve but scratched the surface, Ophelia. Wait till you read about otakukin, who feel they’re incarnations of the souls of anime characters.
Some people feel drawn to the idea of the Mother, Teacher, Warrior, Healer, etc… and some of us add in other archetypal creatures as well.
Back when we used to go camping en famille, this other family joined us for a while. Since they’d drive up after work in their RV after my kids and I had been there a coupla days already, I’d have the dinner we’d planned together ready when they got there, because it always took hours longer for them to get there because RV. And while we were there, I would take all the kids to the beach or rock climbing, because that’s what we’d gone there to do. One time I asked if she’d like to come along, since her kids were going, and she said she’d rather just sit. O-kay.
So then she started talking about how people fit in different category. She, unsurprisingly, was a Warrior. Her husband and son were Priests. And she informed me that *I* was a Servant! Oh joy! That meant that I did not need to be thanked or appreciated – I was basically doing all this thoughtful stuff because that’s just what I was compelled to do because type and not because I was actually deciding to do nice things because i was a nice person. The friendship didn’t last too much longer after that…
Seems legit. You can tell they are bear because of the terrible typing. And because they are on Tumbler, which is exactly where bear love to go.
PS Do you have any idea how hard it is to type a resume with 6″ claws? Fuck you all and your human privilege!
***
And I might draw myself as a unicorn with dragon wings, aka a Pegasus.
***
PS This whole thing is a troll.
@ 1 Dan
At the risk of stating the obvious, people who do say that are being very, very silly.
We know there are such things as intersex conditions. We know, for example, there is such a thing as AIS where an embryo with a Y-chromosome does not respond (or poorly responds) to male hormones and is born with female genitalia. While we do not know the basis of gender identity, it is plausible it is determined by some structure in the brain, and plausible a child could be born with a “female” brain and male reproductive organs, or vice versa.
There’s no comparison to, say, humans and wolves. There are no “interspecies” conditions. Not only was the last common ancestor of humans and wolves many tens of millions of years ago, but it was nothing like a wolf. There is no plausible mechanism whereby a human child could have a “wolf” structure in the brain that determines “wolf identity”.
Blanche, that person is… wow. Just wow. It’s one thing to choose a path you yourself feel drawn to but to declare others to be certain (and usually lesser) things? Awful.
Patrick: While I know that it’s nothing compared to what amputees go through, it doesn’t change the fact that I feel these things. Imagination gone wild, fine, don’t care. They’re still there and I still can’t make them entirely go away.
I don’t know about that. Don’t underestimate the flexibility of our brain wiring. I wouldn’t be too surprised if it turns out that some part of the brain can be repurposed to represent a non-existing body part, given sufficient training.
My general opinion.
I was thinking of saying it differently, but I think that I hit most of it over there.
Seriously people. There is a lot of really shallow thought up above.
Phantom limbs are when people feel a limb that they used to have. Otherkin are describing that they do not feel like they are actually human. They are not the same stop pretending they are. Mental phenomena are very specific. With the weirdness that exists this is not too far fetched. What about extra phantom limb syndrome? (search for “Phantom arm and leg after pontine hemorrhage.”) Are they being insulting to anyone?
How about the people with clinical lycanthropy? It’s really a thing.
Many of the people in here have no idea of just how diverse our experience of the world is and should stop typing.
I’m an otherkin sloth……
@ Brony:
Having read over the thread in the Lounge, I must disagree. Mental phenomena are very specific yes, but you’re using that as cover for a whole spread of behaviors. Here, you find it harmless:
Because some people use that internal sense of self to impose on others. Like, hello, anti-choicers? racists? nationalists? Not imputing that behavior to anyone here, but .. you do immediately go on to say:
Could you please think about that a bit? If you recognize your own behaviors, why forgive comparable behaviors elsewhere?
You also bring up clinical lycanthropy… outside of sites that propagate magical thinking, it’s fairly well described as delusional and disturbances of identity. You seem to think that’s wrong, but … I’m kind of at a loss to express how much I disagree with your position. Porphyria is a thing. Lycanthropy is not, thanks.
No. That’s bullshit. A “human being” is very specific, and has nothing to do with how one expresses as a a human being. Particularly if one is expressing as a dragon, or a lion, or an oyster. In the Lounge (relevant because you linked it), you say:
And you quote this as… support?
Hallucinatory experiences may be very human. Having them is not necessarily healthy. Like great, we consider all sorts of behaviors “normal” and “otherwise healthy” that really, really aren’t. This link does not support your claim.
This kind of thinking is woo. It’s right up there with acupuncture, spirit-talking, homeopathy, and (quite literally) reincarnation. It’s magical thinking, and it’s absolutely ridiculous. Belief does not equal fact, no matter what neurochemical biases are at play.
Morgan, over in the Lounge, makes this very cogent point, though not in support of my position:
It has become very clear that one of the amazing things the human brain can do is convince a person they’re not human, but an animal (sometimes reincarnated, at that!). That’s truly amazing, but it shouldn’t be celebrated. It should be recognized as a cognitive flaw that we’re all susceptible to, and in extreme cases, should be treated appropriately.
@ Rowan:
Imagination gone wild basically describes so many things that people do wrong. Not to mention not caring if they’re wrong. That’s something humans do, for the record.
And for the record, there’s a lot of things my imagination does that I can’t make go away. Heck, they even produce physiological reactions (anxiety and depression can do that!). But that’s very, very human. Many humans suffer from this — as I say, I certainly do! So when you say, in the Lounge:
I’m simply baffled. The way you feel is so very, very human! Humans think weirdly, after all. I think that’s what disturbs me the most, is that you and Brony are treating this as somehow different from other mental afflictions, because dragons/unicorns/ponies. I mean, seriously?
TL;DR: Perception isn’t reality, and shouldn’t be treated as such.
Perception isn’t reality, no… but perception is a real thing that really happens in real brains. And maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss people’s self-reported perceptions. But what do I know?
*sobs over otherwise useless neuro and psych degrees
Heh, this is why I joke about being an average house-cat “cleverly disguised as a human”.
I figure it’s fine, so long as it isn’t unduly interfering in one’s daily life.
The only thing I’d say here is that if your arguments sound like echoes of conservative denial of gender identity, you may be doing something wrong. Reread the following assuming they’re talking about something you personally don’t consider ridiculous.
“I can “identify as” Shakespeare if I want to, but I’m not a bit more Shakespeare for having so “identified” than I was before.”
26 “Perception isn’t reality, and shouldn’t be treated as such.”
If they’re doing no harm and feel better about themselves, who are you to deny them that? Other than someone who thinks their own concerns are more real and more important…
Oh gosh, I’ve been naughty again; time for discussion of my naughtiness in the Lounge. Give my love to all the tigers and cheetahs, and my condolences to all the caterpillars and lice left out in the cold.
I don’t think I agree with this. There are a number of animals (such as chimps, dolphins, and elephants) with sufficiently well developed cognitive functions that I think they should be considered “people” from an ethical perspective. And a number of legal jurisdictions are starting to agree with this view – several species of cetaceans and great apes have been declared to have the legal status of “non-human persons” in various different places. It’s an evolving area of ethical philosophy and jurisprudence. Sure, you can argue that only humans can be people, but I really don’t think you can simply flatly assert it as a tautology.
There are in fact reasonable grounds for including some nonhumans as persons:
.
“These considerations are not, I think, ones confined to cranks or extremists.” — Midgley.
.
“The scientific research on dolphin intelligence suggests that dolphins are “nonhuman persons.” (Like humans, dolphins appear to be self-conscious, unique individuals [with distinctive personalities, memories and a sense of self] who are vulnerable to a wide range of physical and emotional pain and harm, and who have the power to reflect upon and choose their actions.)” — White
.
“Yet Kant’s view of personhood cannot distinguish all and only humans as morally considerable. Personhood is not, in fact, coextensive with humanity when understood as a general description of the group to which human beings belong.” — Gruen
.
“John Locke defines a person as ‘a thinking intelligent being that has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places: . . . . I propose to use ‘person’, in the sense of a rational and selfconscious being, to capture those elements of the popular sense of ‘human being’ that are not covered by ‘member of the species Homo sapiens’. — Practical Ethics, Singer – link is to a review that adds “Singer says that some nonhuman animals are persons-theya re rational and self-conscious beings, aware of themselves as entities with a past and a future.”
.
Of course others disagree (e.g. Hymers) but the notion itself is not a priori nonsensical.
.
Neil
Dunc – but calling some species “non-human persons” for certain purposes isn’t the same as calling them people tout court.
I once knew four elephants very well. I spent all day with them five days a week, and we were close. They were elephants, not people. They were great elephants; they would have been lousy people.
chirez @ 29 – I’m not denying anyone anything. My blog doesn’t have the force of law, you know.
Lots of humans are lousy people.
chirez:
If one could deny them their very identity merely by being dismissive about its genuineness, then that identity would be a very fragile one indeed.
I doubt non-affectations are that delicate, so your moral concern seems exaggerated to me.
Dunc @ 36 – that’s a different sense of the word, aka don’t be tiresome. I think you know what I meant.
I’ve always assumed this otherkin movement was a cultural appropriations/bastardization of indigenous spiritualism which assigns people to animal clans (ie. bear, turtle, eagle, wolf, etc.). Is that not the case?
Because those who ascribe to this traditional spiritualism do feel that they have a bond or that they carry the essence of their clan animal in their being (or soul, for lack of a better word).
Of course, even animalistic spiritualism sticks to animals that exist (ie. no dragon clans).
Was going to comment, but Silent Bob said it first, and better, and with facts.
The other thing that occurs to me is that if people feel tremendous kinship with other people who feel the same way, then great. And if those people feel that most other people don’t understand them, then that’s sad, maybe even tragic.
But if those people ‘other’ themselves and draw up impenetrable walls between them and the rest of humanity, then that’s … horribly familiar human behaviour.
Ophelia, I think the point is that we really don’t know what you mean. People defined tautologically as only applying to humans is both silly, we already have a word that means exactly and only that, human, and wrong. If Dwarves, Elves, (sentient) Dragons, Vulcans, Wookies, or Sullustans existed, they would be people. That is pretty obvious. We consider people to be a class based on their ethical worth or participation in society, not their genetic makeup. If Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was right, Dolphins would be people.
Your elephants made good elephants and bad people because they are not people, but if they were as smart as you, they would make fine people. The idea of non-human persons isn’t even controversial to anyone but you, even if they don’t currently exist (or at least we don’t have contact with any aliens that might exist and be persons).
@ John Morales- Because it’s not just you being dismissive. It’s nearly everyone, everywhere. And it’s usually not mere dismissiveness. Saying “I don’t believe you” is different from “that’s stupid/crazy.” It’s something not talked about because we’re either mocked, and/or treated like we’re *actually* insane. And that latter is something many of are probably secretly afraid of. Especially those of us who didn’t “awaken” (I have always hated that word) after discovering the concept, but instead had a chance to go “holy shit, there are more people who feel this way???” That moment there of the whispering hope of “Maybe I’m not crazy if there are other people too…” is a very powerful experience. When I brought what I was feeling up with my mother in highschool, she thought I had MPD and was getting ready to get me evaluated. I convinced her not to, because this isn’t the same thing at all.
@Sambarge- Not quite. Most otherkin believe it’s straight reincarnation, not a totem. They figure that since there’s so many worlds out there and so many possible species, that their ‘soul’ happened to reincarnate here.
@PatrickG- Yes, thank you, I fucking know those are human things because I am human, but it doesn’t change how my brain interprets those human things which results in ‘not human’. I know I’m actually human and yet that doesn’t change how I feel.
But of course, per so many, that’s not how I actually feel. I’m totally making it up/hallucinating/need medical help because other people don’t understand how I can feel this way. Therefore I’m wrong and a liar or insane. Sure, I’ve only consciously been aware of feeling this way since I was a small child. Sure, it only made me near suicidal for several years from conflicting experiences (see, totally insane, right, let the dismissing begin anew). Sure it’s not something I can just stop feeling (see, totally making it up now, moar dismiss!).
What doesn’t help is that there ARE people who are making it up/deluding themselves to feel special. The community had a high turn over rate. For every 100 new members in a forum, perhaps 10 would be there in a year because the playing pretend became less fun over time. Of those ten, perhaps one would still be there in 3 years. I knew people who had felt this way for 40 years. So I’d say the number with ‘brain quirk’ are in the vast minority. But we *are* there.
Kaelik @ 41
Ok (although I think the claim about dragons is nonsensical, and I don’t know what Sallustans are), but they don’t, so…
Kaelik @ 41 – also – who is the “we” in your “we really don’t know what you mean”? Is this a faction, a party, an organized team? Organized to disagree with a single short blog post?
@PatrickG 26
You need to go back and read my comment again, and consider your views in light of larger issues that have applied to other communities over here.
I did not say it was harmful or harmless, you are inserting that. Given how shitty our society is when it comes to issues of mental diversity I make the assumption of harmlessness unless there is evidence of harm. All human behaviors that I have seen have harmful and harmless contexts. Your burden of proof.
I don’t see you explicitly saying they are mentally ill, but the manner of your observations are a lot like what I hear out of people that are justifying their mockery of people that deviate from the norm. If you want to start talking harm and mental phenomena you have some work to do. I’m not saying that you are intending to connected this stuff to mental illness but given the nature of the discussion the worry is rational. I have to point out that for something to be defined as mental illness it has to be perceived as harmful to the person experiencing it and/or harmful to others. So analogously if you want to act like something that people are saying they can’t help is harmful you have some work to do.
Seriously? A group of people describe their experience and you go to imposition by anti-choicers, racists and nationalists? Yeah, I want to see you defend that. So how are otherkin imposing on others in similar manner? All I see is mere existence so far. You brought it up so you must think it’s a significant problem if you think that anti-choicers, racists and nationalists is the best comparison.
This has to do with how a negative medical bias has led society to doing some really rude and insulting things. Some people have experience of other ways of being that society has mostly only portrayed from a medical perspective which is negative by its very nature (that paper on audio hallucinations is one of a very small number of papers that consider non-pathological phenomena like that). Because of that society misses the people who meet diagnostic criteria and do just fine with the associated characteristics that we call conditions and illnesses. Many people with Tourette’s Syndrome, ADHD, autism and more are happy to be what they are and are not hurting anyone else beyond giving other people funny feelings that they use for mockery and “jokes” at best. You are taking a very negative stance with respect to people who do not appear to be harming you in the slightest.
I don’t need to think about that if I’m not harming anyone and if other people and I have found ways of channeling the phenomena into something useful. Sometimes it’s unpleasant but I would not get rid of it because it’s emotional fuel for the things I like to think about. There is nothing to forgive.
If you want me to think about anything, the way you are treating people who already get a huge amount of crap everywhere else on the internet is not a good way to go about it (seriously, reduce the tone and remove the offensive imagery and the attitude here would fit in on 4chan or 8chan).
I said “clinical lycanthropy” which is delusional because the person or others is being harmed by the condition (presumably, that’s debatable given historical treatment of people like LGBT). I’m not assuming that every person who experiences this is feeling harmed or harming anyone, many otherkin would seem to fit non-clinical lycanthropy. The medical literature will tend to neglect those people by design.
I said “FEELS”, and clearly feeling as if you are not human despite reality is part of how humanity is expressed. There is more than one group here that says they feel something that they KNOW is not consistent with the reality they can put their hands on.
Damn right. Human creativity, symbolism and diversity in ability to interact with and manipulate the world as a group come from our ability to make connections that can only exist because minds exist. Like every other area of human psychology it needs moderation and context to be expressed without hurting the person or anyone else. My oppositional psychology has the potential for harming other people, but I can shape it into the instincts of a social gadfly. Not the most respected of social roles, but one I embrace regardless.
It supports my claim when my claim is that society has an individual obligation to confirm the existence of harm before mocking, joking about, speaking as if they are universally negative and other means of socially isolating people. You have the obligation to demonstrate harm.
.
There is no woo in describing how you feel regardless of reality if a person knows that their feelings and reality are not consistent. Did you see this part?
I probably should have worded that “…the harmful elements that are religious…”.
If they are making comments about how their wings and tails are knocking things over criticize away. That does not make the reality of what they feel go away. If I use my Tourette’s Syndrome to gain insights into deeper aspects of human nature like authoritarian behavior it’s your obligation to demonstrate the woo. If I use my ADHD to more easily escape from a conceptual context in order to detect hidden connections it is your obligation to demonstrate the woo. If I use my social emotion-related intrusive thoughts to essentially construct and fuel an internal social simulation that I use to think about social things it is your obligation to demonstrate the woo.
Otherwise you are acting as if a whole group of people are like a stereotype. We have an otherkin right in here that has said they know they are not an animal but that does not matter to how they feel. If you are going to be rude, you will get criticized.
Your word “convince” does not apply universally. Do not act like it does. MANY cultures around the world have actual respected and celebrated social roles for people whose minds do not function like the norm. You will lose this fight because we are not going anywhere and some of us are even psychologically advantaged when it comes to expressing criticism. I’m perfectly willing to use that in defense of other people like me and the only one that needs to celebrate that for it to mean anything is me.
Wanting people to refrain from socially isolating whole groups of people through assumed harm, mockery, and similar is not unreasonable. Criticism and mockery of specific manifestations of experience of reality that is not consistent with reality that harm people is fair game.
My favourite example has always been the dung beetle. Nobody ever feels like they are truly a dung beetle.
As for the trans vs. otherkin debate, I’ve always thought there is no problem being 100% trans accepting while being astounded over the existence of otherkin/furries. It’s been pointed out that biologically there’s no reason to doubt that being transgendered could a biological aspect to it (much like sexual orientation). We all have the capacity for male and female in our bodies and the brain isn’t a magical soul box, it’s just another fleshy part of our bodies. But jumping across species (and almost always the glam ones) and even into mythological creatures? It’s obviously an aspect of neurodiversity that people can convince themselves of these things
Er…
I got this part backwards in #45
That should say “(seriously, increase the tone and add offensive imagery and the attitude here would fit in on 4chan or 8chan).”
One of the draw backs of TS is that I can accidentally flip the logic or meaning of things unconsciously. It’s good for developing an awareness of places in human language where we flip such things as a matter of course though.
Ophelia, we are some of your commenters who have expressed disagreement with you, such as Aspect Sign, John Morales, Dunc, and me. Not sure why you would be so surprised to consider a loose grouping of people who agree on a single point on a comment thread as a “we.” I primarily write on message boards on the internet, and almost never does anyone object that I can’t use plural pronouns to represent other people who have expressed a position on an issue.
EDIT: Since I missed your first post somehow. So if you admit that non humans can be people, then your point that being non human would make them not people is wrong. That was pretty much my entire point, also the point of several other posters I read on this comment thread.
Kaelik, what do you mean “so surprised”? I didn’t express strong surprise (or any surprise, for that matter). I asked what you meant.
I still don’t see how the fact that several people disagree with me equates to your knowing that all of them [all of you] really don’t know what I mean.
I nowhere said you “can’t use plural pronouns.”
I guess we just differ on how much precision we want in such conversations.
No, I don’t “admit” that non humans can be people.
Ophelia, pretty clearly everyone who disagreed with your claim that only humans can be people don’t know what you mean when you say, “They were elephants, not people. They were great elephants; they would have been lousy people.” Because while we know why we wouldn’t consider them good people, you are using a very different definition of people. Perhaps you were criticizing the elephants ability to be people because everyone knows that people walk on two legs? Or have opposable thumbs? Or have noses shorter than a foot? Or they had too many chromosomes? What is it about personhood that is confined to humans? We don’t know what it is, because our definition of persons is not limited to humans, and is based on ethical and/or thought based metrics. But since you in principle objected to the idea of creatures who are not humans, but still persons, that clearly isn’t (wasn’t?) your metric.
But yes, let’s pretend your entirely unsubtle mocking of “[an o]rganized [team] to disagree with a single short blog post” was totally just your tremendous commitment to precision, because after all, people who say things like “that’s a different sense of the word, aka don’t be tiresome. I think you know what I meant.” specifically in reference to the disputed term in an argument, are all about precision and not at all about repeatedly using the disputed word without defining it or elucidating the reason for the magical human only limitation, and then just mocking people who disagree with them for some reason (childishness? an attempt to undermine (nonexistent) authority? distraction? who knows?).
Would you say that a human fetus is a person?
anon – no, of course not.
OK. But why not? It’s human. Human DNA. Human shape…
Kaelik @ 52 – no, you’re still speaking for people who aren’t you. You’re still claiming to know what’s inside the heads of people who aren’t you. That’s not useful.
It’s also kind of a bullying technique, if you think about it.
I should have done more to define what I mean by “person”.
Thank you, Mind Matter, for getting at that issue.
When I say “person”, I’m referring to an entity capable of thought and communication, which is also able to act as a single, unified agent, responsible for its actions.
Daniel Dennett wrote an essay on the “Conditions of Personhood” a few decades ago… I think I have notes on that somewhere around here…
Rowan @ #42
Ah, I see. Thanks.
You know what’s funny about this thread of comments? Given the subject matter on offer, all anyone wants to talk about is what constitutes a person and whether Ophelia was right to suggest that mythical/fictional characters and/or animals constitute people. Really? Okay then.
Anon, you are attributing an argument Ophelia is not making. She is saying, “All persons are humans” not “All humans are persons” and nothing about the first one requires you to believe the second.
Kaelik. You’re absolutely right. To say all persons are humans is not to say that all humans are persons.
I’m not trying to attribute arguments. I’m trying to think about what makes a human human, and what makes a person a person.
@ Brony:
Let me try again, since apparently I was unclear (not an unusual experience for me):
1) I consider magical thinking to be harmful in and of itself, whether it be sincerely believing in drinking the blood of Zombie Jesus or sincerely believing that one is not really human. So when you say:
We’re in agreement there, but that’s clearly not the case for people who sincerely believe they aren’t actually human, which is the group I’m addressing. Not just “feeling” non-human, to be very clear. If you don’t think that is woo, you might as well just stop reading this comment, because we don’t live in the same world.
2) I am not claiming the non-existence of feelings or sincerely held beliefs, I am arguing against the subsequent claims (e.g. woo-pagan animal spirituality and reincarnation) that are based on those feelings. The fact that someone asserts something is essential to their identity may be a sincerely held belief, but doesn’t obligate me to take it seriously in the absence of compelling evidence or argument. The feeling that someone is not human does not make them non-human, and claiming such deserves no respect. One does not get to hand-wave away basic biological fact on the basis of sincerely held belief (well, unless you’re a Republican Supreme Court justice lying about birth control, but that’s a different topic entirely).
3) When you say:
I’ll address the TS/ADHD/autism reference in the next point.
The failure of medical science to properly categorize and (if appropriate) treat a specific phenomenon does not automatically mean I have to treat audio-visual hallucinations or similar phenomenon as just part of normal human variation (“No biggie!”). When I read accounts of people who, if I take them at their word, are actually experiencing AV episodes, and wave it off with “but it’s ok, because animals”, I’m appalled. That’s not a good response! When you say:
I’m genuinely shocked at how casually you treat this topic. Sure, this is probably true for certain definitions of “function”, “fine”, “reality”, and “interesting”, but I find this proposition extremely dubious, given our society’s predisposition to miss diagnosable conditions, poor access to evidence-based medicine, and a very attractive network of woo that leads people to homeopathy, psychics, and Dr. Oz. That is what I find so harmful — believing that a possible psychiatric condition can be explained away because of freakin’ mythical animals.
I want to reiterate that I am speaking of people who aren’t making the distinction between belief and reality. Does that mean every Otherkin is in this category? No — but then, most people who use crystal healing or acupuncture aren’t typically suffering from serious medical complaints either, and we all recognize the harm there.
4) Here is the passage that really leads me to believe that I failed to make my point clearly:
I’m not talking about people whose minds do not function like the norm — that would be rather silly, since I’m one of those people. I’m talking about people who turn to woo to explain/celebrate their atypical status. This is the difference between the true-believer Otherkin described above and people with TS/ADHD/autism, and comparing the two is ludicrous.
So yeah, the claim that someone is really non-human deserves the same respect from me as the claim that someone speaks to Jesus, regardless of normal/non-normal function, which is a completely different issue.
@ Rowan
I want to make two apologies:
a) I apologize for dismissing your recounted experience of actual pain, whatever it’s source or characteristics. That was seriously not cool.
b) I apologize for my lack of clarity that resulted in lumping you into the group you’d explicitly stated you were no longer a part of, namely what you describe in this comment:
Rowan @42,
I hear you.
FWIW, I’m less dismissive than it might appear from what I’ve written above, indeed I agree with Muse142 @27 above.
I have not read all of the comments yet, so I am sorry if this has been addressed, but I do have a quibble with your article. Obviously you can be a person without being a human. SCOTUS says so. Exxon is a person, afterall. Many people argue that the non-human great apes should be granted legal personhood. In fact, personhood seems to be an easily shiftable perspective.
John Morales
I have a strong positive belief that Cotard syndrome does not exist. Or that the people who have it do not exist.
Wait, does Ophelia Benson believe that that being human is an absolute requirement before we can call something a person? Like, even hypothetically with respect to alien life, or artificial intelligence? Or scientific consensus about certain non-human animals on this planet?
Oh it looks like she has sort of clarified her beliefs.
@Brian Pansky
Exactly! “Person” is country with shifting borders.
Having only recently discovered this blog, I know little of the owner. Based on that one statement about the nature of “person”, I am starting to wonder about her. I’m guessing she isn’t a member of PETA, isn’t an AI researcher, and isn’t CEO of a multinational corporation. This leads me to an interesting question: how much knowledge about the philosophical and political views of an individual can be gleaned by simply having them attempt to define “person” and a ethical, legal and philosophical term? For instance, could much of my political views be guessed by someone who knew only my answer to that question?
“as an ethical…” not “and a ethical”. Sorry. Dumb fingers.
Nathan Tyree above:
There are years’ worth of B&W archives to be mined, if you cared to actually inform yourself before informing the public about your wonder.
As for your ventured guesses, you’re pretty safe considering the expected proportion of the populace which is either a member of PETA, or an AI researcher, or CEO of a multinational corporation. I guess you’re not one, too.
In any case, whether those people who qualify as one of the above imagine there are persons or people who are not human is an open question — PETA distinguishes between people and animals (look at its acronym!), AI researchers know AI entities don’t (yet?) exist, and corporations are “people” only in an abstract legal sense (i.e. a legal fiction).
—
Also, I guess you haven’t bothered to look up the etymology and senses of the various terms (e.g. ‘person’, ‘people’) under discussion, though it’s a trivially easy exercise on the internet.
You’re welcome.
If we’re google searching definitions (which I find much less interesting than actually thinking about a thing) then you might look at these:
A Person is an individual substance of rational nature
(in Max Scheler) The The concrete unity of acts. Individual person, and total person, with the former not occupying a preferential position
In Law a human being or a corporation recognized in law as having certain rights and obligations
In Philosophy a being characterized by consciousness, rationality, and a moral sense, and traditionally thought of as consisting of both a body and a mind or soul
A Linguistic category.
A genderless pronoun
In Christianity Christianity Any of the three separate individualities of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as distinguished from the essence of the Godhead that unites them. (the oldest of the definitions)
I managed to find my notes on Daniel Dennet’s essay, “Conditions of Personhood”. They were taken from pp.270-271 of his book Brainstorms.
.
I’m transcribing the six conditions below. I admit that I don’t understand it completely.
.
1. “persons are rational beings”
2. “persons are beings to which states of consciousness are attributed, or two which psychological or intentional predicates, are ascribed”
3. “whether something counts as a person depends in some way on an attitude taken toward it, a stance adopted with respect to it”
4. “the object toward which this personal stance is taken must be capable of reciprocating in some way”
5. “persons must be capable of verbal communication. This condition handily excuses nonhuman animals from personhood”
6. “persons are distinguishable from other entities by being conscious in some special way: there is a way in which we are conscious in which no other species is conscious. Sometimes this is identified as self-consciousness of one sort or another.”
.
He concludes by saying (among other things): “Human beings or other entities can only aspire to being approximations of the ideal, and there can be no way to set a ‘passing grade’ that is not arbitrary. Were the six conditions (strictly interpreted) considered sufficient they would not ensure that any actual entity was a person, for bother would ever fulfill them…” (p.285).
Nathan Tyree @72, note that in your first, second, third, fifth and seventh senses, the correct plural is ‘persons’ rather than ‘people’, and that the initial contention was about ‘people’.
But the point should be clear: to equivocate between senses may work lexically, but it doesn’t work semantically.
And it doesn’t work for the purposes of this conversation.
Nathan Tyree@68:
Strictly speaking, that’s exactly what I am (an AI researcher), and this comment confuses me. I suspect it is because you are assuming that AI research is the cumulative attempt to create nonhuman (read: machine) intelligences. Suffice it to say, it is not. We gave up on even trying to define “intelligence” in the field of AI, something like 40-50 years ago, parlor acts like the Turing Test notwithstanding. If we cannot even define “intelligence” with any kind of meaningful metric and are simply reduced to “I know it when I see it”, then I’m not certain how authoritative AI researchers ought to be considered on the subject of personhood, or why being such a researcher would be an indication that someone (say, Ophelia, or me) would have some kind of predisposed opinion on the topic.
I’ll go back to my stochastic machine-learning algorithms now. (Which are neither intelligent, nor persons.)
The initial contention may have been about “people” but the conversation quickly came round to broader ideas of personhood , which is a not non-controversial subject. A person is a human and a human is a person is too simplistic for any field (Philosophy generally, ethics, law, computer science, linguistics, etc) in which the concept may be of use. Still, though, none of that matters at all to me. Rather, what I was interested in (that moment has passed, by the way) was how one’s personal view of the nature of personhood reflected upon one’s overall worldview.
I tend to think, a “person” is a conscious entity deserving of rights. This definition would lead me to favor strong protections for the welfare of non-human animals such as Apes, Dolphins, etc. One who believes that the neccessary and sufficient criteria for personhood is “being a human” should feel differently on the subject (unless they have some further set of beliefs that lead them to bestow rights on non-persons – but in that case I wonder what line they set for determining where rights are applicable. If Bacteria deserve rights, then do stones?).
I’m rambling. Sorry.
MrFancyPants
@76 Interesting point. I am no expert in the field. Most of my thinking on AI tends toward its discussion in philosophy (Searle, among others have guided my thinking). Honestly I have no clear idea of what AI programs are up to these days. I just know how the subject figures into thought experiments and explanations (mostly related to the problem of other minds).
Nathan Tyree @61:
You are not alone in wanting to quibble with Benson’s post. I have a few quibbles of my own re your comment, but I’ve edited them out since others have already quibbled (with more skill than I’m capable of).
Though I don’t think that it’s “obvious”, I do agree with you when you say:
.
.
I’ve also tried to say that something can be human without being a person (e.g., a human embryo or fetus).
.
A corporation (e.g., Exxon) is a great example of a non-human person which is real (unlike a Vulcan) and which isn’t likely to get lost in empirical debates about whether or not dolphins or chimps or elephants are capable of complex language, or if they are able to pass “the mirror test.”
.
Unfortunately, an affirmation of corporate personhood might be interpreted as an affirmation of various right-wing values/commitments which are controversial in their own right. Remember when Romney said that corporations were people? I found myself agreeing with his statement and agreeing with those who said that voting for Romney and the Republicans would be horrible.
.
I’d love to conduct a survey of people to analyze their political leanings vis-a-vis whether or not they accept the personhood of corporations/non-human animals/human fetuses…
.
As for the personhood of “otherkin”… I don’t see any significant political debates about that on the horizon…
Oh for god’s sake, people, give it a rest. That silly or jokey headline had nothing to do with philosophical or legal niceties, and neither did my comment on it.
Nathan Tyree:
That otherkin think they’re people and that people think otherkin are people too is not controversial; what is controversial is the claim by some otherkin that they are not human.
IMO, this stuff about personhood is incidental to the actual topic of the post.
I note you left out history, anthropology, sociology, psychology (etc!) where it is not too simplistic. Is the concept not of use in those?
(PS “Philosophy generally”? Heh.)
Kittens are people, and sapience is an irrelevance. Got you.
—
anon1152 @79, I refer you to Ophelia’s #75.
I did see/read #75 after I posted my last comment. It made me ask myself a question, which has since been answered in #80.
.
Thank you all for making an uninteresting/boring article interesting (to me at least).
.
And, sorry. (For the same reason).
Honestly.
NP, anon.
John Morales
@81
“(PS “Philosophy generally”? Heh.)” Yes. I felt no need to list the entirety of subsets of philosophical study that may deal in some way with ideas and concepts of personhood, personal identity, etc…
“I note you left out history, anthropology, sociology, psychology (etc!) where it is not too simplistic. Is the concept not of use in those?”
The ‘etc’ was meant to indicate the panoply of other fields that could be listed there (I saw no need to type them all out). I notice that you have omitted quite a number as well. And, for the record, the concept of personhood is as difficult and entangling in all of the fields you have mentioned as in any other. Ask a historian how the legalities of personhood have evolved in the last 200 years in the United States, for instance.
“That otherkin think they’re people and that people think otherkin are people too is not controversial”
Again, you are missing my point entirely. What I said was not non-controversial is personhood and what that entails. Sorry if that is too fine a point.
This has been almost fun.
Opehelia Benson
@88 As you Wish. I’m out and will leave with just this :
“A person’s a person not matter how small” ; )
@ 80 Ophelia Benson
Just to be clear, when you say people are you addressing corporations, dolphins and Mr Spock?
(kidding 😉 )
… Also, would this be a good time for a philosophical discussion on precisely what you mean by god.
(still kidding 😉 )
I’ll stop now.
lol
As a cat fanatic, I have sometimes adopted feline terms – getting my “fur” cut, I tore a “claw”, etc. I have been known to greet friends with “meow” and scratch on their doors when I arrive.
But – I have never caught a mouse and eaten it raw, guts, fur and all.
I do know my feline “persona” (a contradiction in terms if there ever was one!) is a joke.