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It's Molluscs and Monsters for a reason
Feb. 13th, 2021 02:52 pm...Today a nonbinary transmasc person I deeply respect wrote a very long twitter thread about the harmful aspects of a joke. The joke was about the shapeless bag take on "gender neutral" clothing vs. the flamboyant way some nonbinary people actually dress, as represented by a burlap sack vs. Gonzo the muppet. The problem with the joke was that it implied every nonbinary person fell into the Gonzo the Muppet category, which contributes to the idea that "nonbinary" is a third gender rather than a collection of diverse identities outside the gender binary. It was a good point, and one I hadn't considered thoroughly enough.
But they closed by saying that identifying with nonhuman characters because you feel like there isn't enough room for you in the depictions of humanity you see is dehumanizing and harmful, and people need to stop doing it.
And.
...I'm not gonna lie, that genuinely hurts.
Obviously it's a problem when the only nonbinary or interpretable-as-nonbinary characters you see are inhuman. I don't think that even needs further explanation. But sometimes it is all you fucking get. It's the shelter no one will take from you because they'd never guess you would crawl into it, and other people like you found that same shelter and left their marks in it. The world of the inhuman is a world of broken boundaries, of feeling out of place and acknowledging, even embracing that instead of finding resolution in "fixing" the things that separated you from the norm. It's a place where confusion and anger and hurt are allowed to resolve themselves in ways that clash with traditional narratives. Monsters are allowed to be strange, to revel in their strangeness. Monsters are allowed to be Other. Monsters are allowed to be. And when they aren't, when the monster is destroyed for daring to be Incorrect, that too can have a bitter sort of catharsis to it, a recognition that sometimes being the outsider gets you hurt or killed just for existing and you couldn't have avoided it by being better or more normal.
Try telling a fucking nine year old in an abusive household that they need to demand better instead of identifying with monsters and robots and aliens for reasons they don't even understand yet.
This was the home I made for myself, and it's a part of me now, and I'm not going to throw it away just because I do in fact deserve better.
The world fucking sucks and it wants me dead and I will be a fucking monster if I want to be.
But they closed by saying that identifying with nonhuman characters because you feel like there isn't enough room for you in the depictions of humanity you see is dehumanizing and harmful, and people need to stop doing it.
And.
...I'm not gonna lie, that genuinely hurts.
Obviously it's a problem when the only nonbinary or interpretable-as-nonbinary characters you see are inhuman. I don't think that even needs further explanation. But sometimes it is all you fucking get. It's the shelter no one will take from you because they'd never guess you would crawl into it, and other people like you found that same shelter and left their marks in it. The world of the inhuman is a world of broken boundaries, of feeling out of place and acknowledging, even embracing that instead of finding resolution in "fixing" the things that separated you from the norm. It's a place where confusion and anger and hurt are allowed to resolve themselves in ways that clash with traditional narratives. Monsters are allowed to be strange, to revel in their strangeness. Monsters are allowed to be Other. Monsters are allowed to be. And when they aren't, when the monster is destroyed for daring to be Incorrect, that too can have a bitter sort of catharsis to it, a recognition that sometimes being the outsider gets you hurt or killed just for existing and you couldn't have avoided it by being better or more normal.
Try telling a fucking nine year old in an abusive household that they need to demand better instead of identifying with monsters and robots and aliens for reasons they don't even understand yet.
This was the home I made for myself, and it's a part of me now, and I'm not going to throw it away just because I do in fact deserve better.
The world fucking sucks and it wants me dead and I will be a fucking monster if I want to be.
Me agreeing with you at length and ramblingly. >_>
Date: Feb. 14th, 2021 01:36 am (UTC)I mean. I'm not non-binary. But I wrote a non-binary AI in Queen of Roses, and my non-binary offspring imprinted on it. (That's the AI's preferred general pronoun.) And... it's pretty complex? I mean, there are people who are binary out there who are furries or even Otherkin, and I don't think that non-binary folks cannot possibly also be on some axis there, especially if it's redefining "normal." As you say.
Obviously, people shouldn't impose, or go "yes, we have made our non-human the non-binary character and all the humans are m/f, and this is representation!"... Systemically... (So I don't call Sapient Loren non-binary rep! Because I wrote the book like probably 30 years ago now, honestly, and would probably have at least stuck some more side-characters in who weren't m/f if I'd even known that was an option...)
But even just from being on the fringes of the furry community, I think trying to make people "be human only" is nooooooot a great idea. If I can have my non-humans and their non-human traumas and non-human coping mechanisms, then everyone should get to have them if they want!
(As a creator, I should be alert to having only binary humans and only aliens with non-binary members. But. That's different.)