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A request to change the docs etc for those of us who aren't human. (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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We were wondering if the docs etc here could be rewritten in such a way so as to not call all of us human since some of us are not.

Much like being transgender, being otherkin, alter{human/being} or transspecies can have a lot of dysphoria attached to it and we have had to at least explicitly tell one person on lemmy that we are not human even though it is in our profile.

We think that being more inclusive is always a good thing and will gladly work with those who can edit the docs etc in order to find more inclusive ways to say what needs to be said without misspeciesing any{one/many}.

Thanks for reading this and we hope this finds y'all well.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

To me, it seems like replacing almost all instances of this with "people" would be a harmless change. Is that something that would work? (Some, like "human emotion", could just become "emotion")

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

We were thinking people or sentients/sapients, yeah.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

As @[email protected] already mentioned, completely open to making changes here, but I'm curious to gather some more of your thoughts. People includes human in the definition, are there not some who would disagree with its use because of this? Sapient is a word derived from the Latin word for wisdom. Wisdom is most certainly a human concept, and I doubt many would consider non-human life "wise" and certainly some might withhold that designation from otherkin because of their beliefs. While sapient has been used in science fiction as a way to somewhat dehumanize the concept of intelligence, I'd argue that humans might not be all that great at determining what intelligence is. Over the last 100 years our concept of what life on Earth are intelligent has changed drastically. Sentient is perhaps the least problematic of these suggestions, however even it refers to the ability to experience feelings or sensations, which are both also ultimately human concepts - whether someone would consider the ability to detect magnetic fields as a feeling or sensation is much more debatable than the senses that humans have (sight, hearing, etc.).

I know some who identify as otherkin and plenty of folks who might be closer to that constellation of identities than I am, but I've never had a discussion around this particular topic - how to best refer to you and others like you when creating documents meant to apply to them. I think we want to do our best to accommodate your needs as well as the needs of those similar to you, but given the issues I've raised above I could see how accommodating you might not accommodate others and we could easily get trapped in an endless revision cycle. I don't know that you have an answer for me, but if you get a chance could you share your thoughts on the above? Is there a path forward in which we can still create a document which is clear enough that anyone who possesses the ability to read and understand English will understand our intentions? Or is there a cutoff point at which "enough" comprehension is acceptable because an attempt to widen the language will make comprehension more difficult?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

at least for this specific wording change: we can get around to this eventually, but it's on the backburner for now