The Line, The Mirror, The Shell

One of the most useful tools injustice has at its disposal is among the most simple. This tool is nothing more than a line, which one so inclined may place anywhere on the spectrum of being that they so choose. This line, simple as it may be, is a devastating weapon in the hands of the unjust, the cruel, the malignant. This line says, simply, that all things on one side of it are human and worth consideration. On the other side? Degenerates, Monsters, burdens, deviants, and trash to be discarded and disposed of, without worth or care given. The line, once drawn, can be readily shifted, placed anywhere those in power deem it useful. In this way, anyone who is enemy to those who draw the line may be placed on the side of the subhuman, worthy only of subjugation and extermination. The line is always set by the powerful; always wielded against the powerless. The line is also known as Dehumanization, the process by which worth is stripped from a person or a people by exclusion from the category of “Human.”

Let’s begin with an exercise.

Find a mirror and look at yourself.

What do you see?

Skin, eyes, teeth, hair. A nose, a mouth.

What does it mean to you?

Is it the self or the shell looking back at you?

Look again.

Think about the world, society as it is now, in your time and your place.

What side of the line are you on?

Many of us know that in both past and in present, that some core facet or facets of our being would fall on the side of the line those in power deem to be the 'Wrong Side.'

Race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, neurodivergence, faith, or ideology, some trait or traits of ours renders us less-than-human to the powers that be. The line is drawn and we are on the side of the degenerate, the dehumanized, the worthless.

Why must this be so?

On what authority is the line drawn?

The Human fiction is a collective internalization of the line, of the need to be on the right side, a separation of ourselves from the rest of the universe.

The core premise of the fiction goes as such:

"I am Human, therefore I am good and I am worthy. I am Human, occupying a special place above and apart from the natural world. I am Human, I am on the right side of the line, and I am therefore justified in my actions against the Other, who are on the wrong side of the line."

What has this fiction wrought for us? The horrors of colonialism, genocide, slavery, of racism, of ableism, sexism, sanism, queerphobia, and every other shade of atrocity justified by the perpetrators with the line. They were on the right side of the line, you see? Their victims were on the wrong side. The line also justifies the destruction of the ecology of our world, as the line says that those who are Human are not of nature, but above it. That exploitation of the land until every field lays poisoned and lifeless, until every sea, lake, and river chokes with plastic, until the sky weeps acid and the ancient machinery of the living world crumbles under the rot and rust; that these too are justifiable, and indeed desirable. 

The line, however devastating it is when wielded, is little more than a construct, deriving its authority from little more than its own tautological claim. As with all constructs, its manufactured nature may not inherently rob it of power, but it does present a path to do so. Anything made can be unmade, most especially ideas. In subverting the line's judgment, we reject its claim of authority and sap it of its power, displaying the hollow core to the withering light.

Back to the mirror.

Maybe, like most readers, you see the self reflected. Perhaps imperfect, no mirror is without flaw and always, always, one never quite looks like how they imagine themselves.

Maybe, though, you're like the authors, and you see the shell.

For some of us, those of us that see not the self but the shell, there's a split between what we are and what the shell says we are. Maybe there's multiple selves in the shell, a yearning to inhabit a different shape or shapes, a divergence from how we're told our minds ought to work, or one of innumerable other deviations that make the line between ourselves and our shells intrinsically clear. Something that makes us Other.

This, we argue, is a necessary subversion of the power of the line, a rejection of the anthropocentric concept of humanity equaling value, and a rejection of dehumanization as a way to strip someone or something of their worth.

We, the Alterhumans and Nonhumans, deny the line its power to call us Lesser, to dehumanize us because we reject the odious notion of humanity outright. Let them call us mad, call us monsters, and we will show them something to be truly afraid of. Let them try to deny us that which we have already rebuked. Let us howl defiant as the first children of the new world, hastening the demise of the hierarchies and orthodoxies of the old.

We have worth because we are, not because of the side of the line we find ourselves on. We are breathing stardust, hosts to vast and brilliant internal cosmologies, ties to great shimmering webs of connection and experience, the eyes and hands of the living universe.

Why limit ourselves to such a small and isolating notion as humanity?

Why sever ourselves as separate from the natural, from the divine machinery of the cosmos? 

Why uphold the line?

Look to the mirror one final time.

What do you really look like, beyond the flesh, blood, hair, and bone?

What are you?

What could you be?

Are you the living universe or the sterile construct?

These are the questions to ask, to challenge the power of the line with. If we, the great seething masses of being, allow ourselves to see the line for the hollow untruth that it is, it loses its power over us. In rejecting humanity, we offer a new vision of identity, an anarchy of being that subverts and defies all hierarchies and orthodoxies. 

We look into the mirror and we see the shell, not the self.

We look at the world and see ourselves within it, of it.

We look inwards and see our truest selves, strange and wonderful.

We invite you to join us.