Cw Dehumanization - Tumblr Posts
Content warning for talk of dehumanization, violence, and oppression:
Initially, I felt like I should mostly just stick to the sidelines at first since everyone else was putting things into words so well regarding the romanticization of the pet trope and how it’s disturbing seeing the real issue of dehumanization taken to a horrific extreme and then treated as cute, but a couple days ago I saw an anon’s ask here and it finally pushed me to post about the trope and issues around it.
First off, I wanna start by analyzing this romanticized version of the trope. To me, it seems like it comes from a perspective distanced from dehumanization, and they romanticize the concept and portray the issue as something easily resolved through a fun adventure, similarly to how someone distanced from war might write a novel about a heroic soldier fighting evil. It is an extreme simplification of a much larger, more sinister and complex issue that cannot be solved through one fun adventure.
For people with more experience around dehumanization, from POC to LGBT+ people in hostile environments, they’re more aware of how words fail against someone who dehumanizes you. They react as if you’re a dog barking or whining at them, not a person trying to ask for something beneath the bare minimum of respect.
A situation like these pet stories introduce, where an entire group is systematically treated as property, is a situation which cannot be resolved through kind words and communication. It is upheld through malevolence and indoctrination, and the only solution is to destroy the groups and people supporting these systems.
The average hero in a pet story shouldn’t be a human who buys a tiny and then personally recognizes “oh this is a person”, that’s someone who funded an insanely evil system and had a moral change from apathetically malevolent to showing others the barest amount of respect: not treating them as property or subhuman. The average hero would inevitably become a murderer due to their environment: they would need to kill those who support the selling and owning of people, from “pet” store owners to officials who encourage this act. Simply liberating the people kept as pets leaves those who sold them alive to capture and sell more, likely in a different place.
On top of that, the idea that one person free of oppression can come in, sympathize with the oppressed, and almost single-handedly resolve the issue feels way too much like a g/t version of the white savior trope. Realistically, the hero is just as (if not more) likely to be a tiny who sets traps and kills the humans who participate and perpetuate this horror.
“Making your voice heard” isn’t enough to “solve dehumanization”, especially not on a level as severe as that. You’d “solve” it through the destruction of all groups supporting this dehumanization, and at the very best this means the deaths of a few business owners and politicians who benefit from it, and at worst means flat-out war to obliterate those profiting off treating people as property.
Again, I feel that the romanticization of this trope comes from people who aren’t aware of the mental harm dehumanization causes, they likely aren’t considering it that way and are interpreting it the same way people have tiny characters be afraid of being captured by a giant: some distant fear or threat which can easily be subverted.
I don’t intend to blame people for lacking experience, I just want to ask them to listen to people who actually do have experience with the issue, and both respect those with experience and recognize the world of extreme evil this trope tolerates when romanticized. POC especially have brought up how disconcerting it is seeing the dehumanization they’ve experienced brought to a horrifying extreme and painted as acceptable, and a character’s fears and trauma from experiencing it either pushed aside or portrayed as cute.
In the end, what we need to do as a community is listen and respect. POC have made it clear multiple times that this is a trope they see as disturbing when romanticized, and the fact the community has failed to listen and respect this is extremely upsetting. We have to think critically about the content we produce, and the way it affects people, and the messages it sends, the work we post doesn’t just exist in a void.