Cafe Zoo

Dear zoos, friends of zoos, and interested others,

I want to say this again: I am very much an advocate of mixed social venues.

When people have been socially rejected over a detail about them that is a small but also vital aspect of who they are, the trauma of rejection can lead to them having an exaggerated sense of importance surrounding that aspect of their identity. They might cluster together in communities and friend groups that consist only of other people like themselves, and having learned that people with the same identity are less likely to shun and therefore hurt them, they can fall into a self-defeating habit of likewise shunning anyone that is not like themselves, even if what they have in common is only a small part of themselves.

However, what if some zoos are also interested in airplanes or automobiles? What if there are some zoos that really care more about travel in exotic places than they do about their unique sexuality? The truth is that if you take into account all of the details of those people's identities, the fact that they are zoos is really a small part of what makes them who they are.

Therefore, I think that the best way to start meeting non-zoos that can accept you is to ask your fellow zoos what else they like to do or talk about, and find out if any of them are openly zooey anywhere that is focused on unrelated subjects that you are also interested in.

If you would read this and ask me why you should bother getting to know non-zoos when you have a perfectly adequate zooey community as your safe place, let me ask you this: don't you get tired of being afraid of the majority of the human race? Don't you get tired of having to keep a vital part of your life a secret from your non-zoo friends? Doesn't it eventually get exhausting to have to be on your guard when talking to people that you call friends? It does for me.

If you do eventually want to be able to just relax and be your whole self, then I would start joining other zoos that have similar interests and trying to join them at their other hang-outs. If you like video games, great. If you like travel, great. If you like camping, great. If you like working on cars, great. If you like off-road adventures, great. If you can earn their trust well enough to get invited to their other hang-outs, then that is a step out of the closet.

Having another person in the same place that is also a zoo could help make that person feel braver about their own identity. Just because you are there, even if you don't come out yourself, that person might be able to go from being out to only a few of their other friends to being able to post pictures of their dog and say something like, "My girlfriend decided to join me on this adventure," and feel comfortable saying that to people that don't have the same sexual inclinations. Just the fact that you were there could make that person braver, even if you were not ready, yourself.

I guess that the concept that I am thinking about is related to the "buddy system." You shouldn't feel like you are only allowed to be open about your sexuality in places where zoo sexuality is the only subject, but on the other hand, it can feel awkward to talk about this aspect of your identity elsewhere if nobody there really understands or supports this part of who you are. Just having a friend there that has had similar experiences can make it that much easier to feel like you have a friend with you that understands this part of yourself.

To gain acceptance in society, we're going to have to start by busting open the gates of the concentration camp. You are not infected with a contagious disease that warrants keeping you under quarantine, but you are a healthy and active person that really has diverse interests. Furthermore, you don't have to look upon non-zoos with so much distrust that you would think they might hurt you or reject you because you showed them a picture of your girlfriend sitting next to you while you were on one of your adventures.

The love that you have for your non-human companions is a beautiful thing that you should be willing to share, in the more innocent sorts of ways, in other parts of your life. Maybe only other zoos would want to go into depth in talking about your sexuality, but love is something that you ought to feel comfortable shouting from the roof-tops, even if some people think it's funny because it's so different.

My suggestion is to try the buddy system. Even if you never feel comfortable talking about the fact that you have a furry girlfriend, yourself, you could make another zoo feel brave enough to be slightly more open with their non-zoo friends, just by being there.

The zooey community is great, but being able to talk to your fellow zoos is only your first step out of the closet. Meeting with your fellow zoos is the start of your journey, not its conclusion.


Thank you,
Sigma

Dear zoos, friends, and interested others,

One of the perils of writing a regular blog is that, on occasion, someone that you have shared some correspondence with will assume that you are secretly addressing them, and they will not believe you when you tell them that they had not even crossed your mind. To one such person, yes, I am thinking about a conversation that we had, and I am going to talk about my thoughts on that here.

That person seemed to find it strange that I am publishing a blog on a zoo-themed website, yet I mostly want to carry on about philosophy and society. The reason why I do so is very simple: being a zoo does not cause me to stop being other things or caring about other things. The fact is that telling someone that I am a zoo really tells someone very little about me. There are many things that I care about.

It is not a matter of putting aside the fact that I am a zoo, but it is the opposite. It is putting the fact that I am a zoo on the list of many good and neutral and troubling things there are to know about me. It is making the fact that I am a zoo a part of a whole person. It is accepting the fact that I am a zoo as a part of a complex life.

That person also seemed to misunderstand why I am trying to say that I am informed by my experiences as someone that is both neurodivergent and transgender. I am not trying to say that those experiences are the same as being a zoo, and I am not trying to say that any of them are harder to live with than being a zoo. However, what those things all have in common is that all of them are things about me that I need to accept. All of those aspects of me are aspects of me that narrow my options. No matter how much pretty rhetoric we all try to tell each other about how we try to treat everybody as equals, having anything about you that makes you different, ironically even a gift, closes doors for you, and that is scary for someone that has never confronted it.

Yes, even being musically talented puts distance between you and someone that is not capable of creating music. Having natural talent as an artist would put distance between you and someone like me, who works very hard and practices long hours to learn how to create a simple pencil sketch and even then is never really as good as someone who is a natural artist. In spite of all of the doors it opens for you to have a natural talent or gift, it also closes doors to have that natural talent or gift and to be known to have it. Many gifted people want to believe that anyone could be as good at their skill as they, themselves, with enough practice because the idea that they are beautiful freaks is terrifying to them. Even they have to go through a process of self-acceptance, even though that sounds weird to someone that has never experienced the kind of othering that is endured by gifted people. Even good differences make you different, and being different always closes you off to the part of our society that takes comfort in the idea that all success and virtue is won based on obedience to custom, law, scripture, and basic teaching.

While you might have many differences about you, the general process of self-acceptance always works the same, and in the long-run, you only really have to learn how to do it once. It's always hard to apply for most people no matter how many times they do it, but once you know how to do it, you are halfway there. The more times you have to go through it, the more clear it is that the basics are really always the same.

One of those basics is that, no matter how dramatically your thing makes you different from society, you might still be absolutely typical in every other respect. It can only hurt you if you drown yourself in the significance of one characteristic. Even people that have excellent memories should beware of assuming that they are good at other things unless they can prove it. Even people that are gifted at music should avoid selling themselves as great public speakers until they have proved that they are not one of those people that stutter if they don't have music to sing to. If you are gay, you don't really have to apply for a position as a hair-dresser. Being a zoo does not mean that you have to live on a farm in a shabby prefabricated home and have sex with pigs, but maybe you want to have a career in accounting, sleep in a high-rise condo, and keep your pony at a professionally managed stable that has access to really good trails for hack-riding. The most liberating experience you will ever have is to be liberated from what society expects that your differences mean about you.

Self-acceptance is really all about liberation, and being liberated at all is something that separates you from people that would prefer to live a lie. Once you are free, you can never be the same kind of person that would prefer to be an actor in somebody else's pageant, keeping any individual differences about themselves secret and hiding their real selves from the world. Once you have proved that you would throw off the yoke of shame, then everyone will know that shame cannot be used to control how you live or how you think. There will always be a fraction of society that finds this fact, in itself, to be mortally terrifying. To them, if you are not a sheep or a shepherd, then you are a wolf. You have taken away the power that shame could have over you, and once you have taken that power away, then you will always be terrifying to people that fear anything that is not either their servant or the servant of their masters. To them, anything that is not afraid of either themselves or their masters is destined to hurt them.

If you accept yourself on any basis, then you ultimately must close some doors even while you open others. You have to make tough decisions. I only really had to learn this lesson once. It might never be easy to actually apply it, but I will never have to learn that lesson again. No matter how hard it is to turn away from opportunities that would require me to lie to myself about who I am, I can never again believe it is worth it to live a lie. Once seen, it cannot be unseen.


Thank you,
Sigma

Dear zoos, friends, and interested others,

Do you have any friends that are so-so or even a little snide over the fact that you are a zoo?

I do. I still consider them to be friends. We are friends because we have similar values, at heart. They agree with me on the minimums of human decency. I have even trusted some of them well enough that I am glad for them to hang out with some of my friends that are zoos.

They understand the point that the fact that I am a zoo does not negate their own obligation to behave like decent human beings, and if someone can figure out that much information about the world, then I am willing to have them in my life.

We are united against people that engage in recreational bullying or who otherwise do hurtful or harmful things as a means of entertainment, whether they are torturing animals to death or bullying teenagers into killing themselves on the shallow pretext that they have fallen in love with Lassie. We are united against recreational cruelty of any kind whatsoever.

For me to be willing to have you as a friend, I do not need you to like the fact that I and some of my friends are sexually attracted to animals. I honestly do not give a shit what you think about that, either way. That is your own business. My father does not like the fact that I am queer and an atheist, yet I care more about that doofus than I care about most people that I know. I can stand up to him, and I can stand up to you.

Just because I have to be able to stand up to some of my friends does not mean that I regret having them as friends.

Sometimes, friends walk away when I stand up to them, or on occasion, one of them comes back and provokes me into words of anger so that they can say to themselves, "There, see? That person was really a terrible person, all along." I have had enough people hurt me for no reason whatsoever than to make me react like a person that has been hurt, so they can tell themselves how ugly I look when I am hurt. Yes, I look ugly when I am hurt. Do you punch a badly scarred and traumatized dog for being ugly and traumatized, though? Yet I have had plenty of people hurt me, and when I reacted like a hurt person, they told themselves how smart they were to have hurt me. They patted themselves on the back over how clever they were to realize that I deserved to be hurt. They have therefore built up the walls between myself and themselves, and they tell themselves what a good job they have done to have built up those walls.

Are you still going to be there for me, as a friend, after the day when I need to stand up to you? Will you still be there after the day when I need to set a boundary with you and tell you that I need to be firm about that boundary?

I do not need the people in my life to agree with the fact that I am sexually attracted to animals. I need the people in my life to respect my boundaries. One of those boundaries is that if my beliefs were the laws of a country, then I would that country's despot, and I have my finger on the red button if I need to defend it. Nobody gets to fuck with my freedom of conscience.

Whether someone can respect my personal boundaries or not is more important to me than whether or not the fact that I would enjoy having sexual relations with a non-human animal is a fact that agrees with their digestion.

Yes, I do have friends that do not find it to their liking that I would enjoy having sexual relations with a non-human animal, and the reason why they are friends is that, when I tell them that they are not allowed to abuse or harass either myself or my friends, they understand the point that I have drawn a line and that I have a right to defend that as my boundary. I do not ask them to like the details of our sexuality, but I ask them to respect me and to respect my friends, not as zoos but as human beings.

The word "zoo," where it does not refer to a type of park where wild animals are kept for the entertainment and edification of its visitors, translates directly to "person that is zooey." If you have not internalized that "Person that is zooey" is synonymous with "zoo," then say "person that is zooey" instead until the meaning of that has gotten burnt permanently and irreversibly into your synapses. You are a person. The fact that you are zooey is one of the hundreds of thousands of details about your life, and it is only significant because it happens to be a controversial detail. It is nevertheless ultimately a detail about a person, not the whole of what that person is. It is a drop in the ocean of who you are and what you stand for. It is a particle of dust in a nebula. Get this understanding tattooed onto your brain before you start using the word "zoo" as a shorthand for the same meaning.

If someone can understand that you are a person, first and foremost, then those are the people you need to have in your life, regardless of whether or not the details of your sexuality agree with their digestion, and that applies still to other zoos: if the fact that someone has sex with animals is enough to make you devoted and loyal to that person, then you are a pillock, but you should ask that person to honor the wholeness of who you are.

Oh, yes, I have met other zoos that will not treat me as a person that is zooey. I will even tell you what some of them do. Some of them try to tell me that I am "not even really a zoo" because the fact that I disagree with them on some of the details of how they look at the world means that I must be some "outsider." They see themselves as gatekeepers as if they could possibly have any authority whatsoever over my genetics or the microstructures of my brain that make me different from others. I have never met most of them in person, but they still think they have a right to control me and to groom me and to make sure that I think as they do. To those people, the word "zoo" does not mean "person that is zooey," but it means "other that is zooey."

An "other" is someone that is not to be treated as a person, but instead, an other is to be treated as a thing. "Others" are divided into many different classes, too! There are "others" that are native Americans, for example! Did you know that "others" that are native American like to wear feathered head-dresses while dancing half-naked around campfires? If you want to make it clear to them that they are "others," rather than people that are native American, you can call them "Indians." If you really want to make a fine point of them being others, you can abbreviate it to "injuns," just to make it extra-clear to them that they are something different from a person.

The most important thing you need to know about an "other" is that, based on six syllables or less, you can know everything there is to know about them. You don't have to pause and examine them, once you know that they are a type of other. There is no need to pause and gather empirical evidence for any judgment that you make about them. Based on six syllables or less, you have learned an entire encyclopedia of information about them. You merely have to refer to the theories you have about that particular species of other, and you can say to yourself that you have comprehensive knowledge of everything that is in their souls. Once you have a theoretical knowledge about a particular type of other, then there is no need to stop and look more closely at them or to try to understand them as individuals. You only need to understand the theory of what they are once, and you have all of the knowledge that you will ever need!

In a world that is filled with others, rather than people, you do not need to stop and waste your valuable time gathering empirical evidence. What poppycock! After all, why pause to examine something that you already understand comprehensively and fully? You are an important person, and your time is valuable. You do not have time to invest in examining every pockmark and blemish of something when you can understand the gist of what they are by referring to an established theory of what they are.

Best of all, you can transform all of these inconvenient and troublesome people in your life into others by simply developing a theory about what type of other they are and then pretending that that theory gives you all of the insight you need about the next other of that type that you meet. As a person that cares deeply about their valuable time, you surely must appreciate what a valuable tool this process is. When you use this wonderful tool, we call it "othering."

Fuck people that engage in othering.

Self-othering is still othering, and if you think that othering is wrong for others to do to you, then it is wrong to do it to yourself. As long as you are saying "zoo" as a synonym for "other that is zooey" rather than as a synonym for "person that is zooey," I prefer if you do not use the word "zoo" at all. Repeat the phrase "person that is zooey" for a while until you understand that the first thing you are in the world is a person.

Here is a valuable exercise that any zoo can perform. Repeat the phrase "I am a person that is zooey" one hundred times. Pick a few minutes of your day, and do exactly that. Say it over and over. Keep count on paper with tally-marks if it helps you to do so. Stress "person" the first couple of times, but vary the stresses.

"I am a PERSON that is zooey. I am a PERSON that is zooey. I am a PERSON that is zooey. I AM a person that is zooey. I am a person that is ZOOEY. I am a person THAT is zooey. I am a person that IS zooey. I AM a PERSon THAT is ZOOey. I am A perSON that IS zooEY." You are a person. You have a right to be treated as a person, and that is the most important boundary that you can ever have.

If you can affirm that you are a person enough times in your mind, then you will have the power to stand up to people that don't like the fact that you are zooey. By standing up to them, I don't mean driving them away because driving people away is based on fear. Driving people away is ultimately a form of running away. Standing up to someone means not just repelling them when they trespass upon your boundaries but also inviting them to coexist with you as long as they can honor those boundaries.

I don't see myself as having a right to force another person to like the fact that I am a zoo. That would be crossing over their boundaries. I don't have a right to tell another person what they like or don't like. However, that person is capable of disliking something about me and also respecting my personal boundaries. I believe in them. I believe they can. I believe in them as people. They are people like me.

Being a person comes with responsibilities, and one of those responsibilities is respecting the boundaries of others. One of the rules that people have to live by is that they do not really have a right to tell others what they are allowed to like or not to like or believe or not believe. That is one of the rules of being a person, and it is part of the price you pay for being a person.

I can tolerate someone disliking the fact that I am a zoo, but I do not have to tolerate being othered. I will stand up against being othered, and the people that are still there after I have stood up for myself, as a person, are the ones that matter in my life, regardless of what they like or dislike about me or what they believe or do not believe. The only thing I need people to believe is that I have a right to stand up for my personhood because, as long as they believe that much, I think they deserve a chance.


Thank you,
Sigma

Dear zoos, friends, and interested others,

If you might actually want to actually read the book that I am about to discuss here, then I suggest skipping this blog entry and reading the book first and then revisiting this blog entry. I won't gush with spoilers right away, but I will mark when a serious spoiler is coming up.

I am still very much a fantasy fan, and after reading The Assassin's Apprentice, by Robin Hobb, I am pretty sure that there are subtle zooey undertones in the storyline. In the story, she described a rare but forbidden power, call "the Wit," that involves a psychic bond with animals, but strangely, the other characters in the story describe it as a perversion. They are disgusted by the power to the point where those found to have it are generally killed expediently, or at best, they are abused and warned that they will become like animals, themselves. Granted, the power really can cause a sort of psychosis where the user forgets how to be human, but the words that the people in the story use to condemn it are still like Altoids, curiously strong. The most tolerant person in the story, not himself possessed of the Wit, abuses the hero and says, "You will not come pervert my animals" and then bans him from entering his stables again.

The hero is so confused by the injustice of how he is spoken to that he really believes that his caregiver would slaughter his dog as a means of punishing him. Spoiler alert: his caregiver really did no such thing, but for years, this discolored their relationship and laid a taint of fear over the relationship. The hero's belief that his caregiver would murder a dog as a means of punishing him for a perceived sin did not succeed at destroying their relationship entirely, but the hero also believed his caregiver to be a harsh man and capable of an incredible degree of brutality.

However, the hero's reaction to his caregiver's judgment is really similar to how zoos tend to react to the hostility of society toward us. There was a reason why Fitz believed that Burrich would kill his dog as a means of punishment. The bond that occurred, between Fitz and Burrich, was accidental, instinctive, somewhat involuntary, and based on nothing more than natural affection for the animal. Burrich nevertheless had the perception that Fitz had created this bond in order to experiment with a forbidden and disgusting type of witchcraft, so Burrich regarded Fitz's motives as based on a desire for special knowledge or power or privilege. Therefore, Burrich abused Fitz in the manner that he would have abused anyone that would do something perverted and nasty in order to obtain a special privilege.

When people judge us, especially unjustly, they really make themselves come across as more evil and harmful than they actually are. This has actually been studied scientifically. When someone behaves judgmentally toward us, especially if their judgment is based on ignorance and really contrary to justice, we tend to see them as less completely human, and we tend to see them as unbelievably cruel and capable of doing almost supernaturally evil things. The fact that their anger toward us is not rooted in what we perceive as truth tends to damage our ability to think they would pause before hurting a helpless animal.

It's nevertheless an illusion. Take the story of Burrich and Fitz, where it turned out that Burrich would never really hurt an animal just in order to punish Fitz for a perceived sin. This is an important story for zoos to understand, and I will explain why.

When the majority of people rant and rage at you based on their ignorant beliefs about you, it is easy to believe that they are capable of any type of evil whatsoever, but this is an illusion. Most of them are genuinely reacting to their ignorant beliefs about you. While some people just get a thrill out of bullying on any pretext whatsoever, there is a subtle difference between someone that engages in recreational bullying and someone that is reacting to their prejudicial beliefs. The one that is reacting to a prejudicial belief, most of the time, really does have tender beliefs toward animals, and they falsely perceive you as someone that would hurt an animal. If you believed that another person would intentionally hurt an animal for any reason whatsoever, then you would be screaming at them hatefully, too.

Remember, just because YOU know that you are not deliberately doing anything hurtful does not mean that everybody else is able to look into your private thoughts and understand your motives, and just because YOU know what your sexuality looks like in real life does not mean that everybody else knows how it looks. There is a need to practice something called "theory of mind," here: theory of mind means that you must acknowledge that not everybody has the same information as you, and you should expect them to act based on the information that they are given by their experience.

Think of it this way: non-zooey straight men have among them a really sick subculture that is based on entitlement and domination, and people that get sucked into this subculture tend to believe that they have to prove themselves by physically dominating a member of the female sex. If a member of the female sex resists them, then they believe that that resistance is something they should overcome by domination. Not all non-zooey straight men are members of this subculture, but those that are involved in it are profoundly toxic. They are literally deliberately evil, and they are not really sorry. They don't want love. They want to hurt someone, and they want to gain something by hurting someone. To them, a woman's pleasure is a side-effect of them pleasing themselves, and it's not always a welcome side-effect. A woman that enjoys sex is not even deemed to attractive precisely because they cannot hurt her or take anything from her by mating with her.

That subculture is something we refer to as "toxic masculinity." This term gets thrown around a lot, but toxic masculinity is really based on the misguided idea that being masculine, itself, is an ideal to seek after, and being anything besides masculine is something shameful to be avoided. Unfortunately, the male sex actually is more likely than the female sex to have certain shortcomings. One of the effects of testosterone is that testosterone can blunt a person's empathy, and one of the reasons why women and children cry is that, by crying, they release a powerful pheromone, which is so potent that humans still react to it without the help of a vomeronasal organ that humans no longer have, that literally reduces plasma testosterone when we smell it. Weeping is literally a natural defense against an otherwise violently abusive male sexual partner or father. This is one of the shortcomings of the male sex, and like it or lump it, it's not going away.

However, testosterone also tends to enhance parts of our brains that are needed for understanding rule-based moral reasoning, and while I have not found any brain research that supports this view, the ethical theorist Carol Gilligan nevertheless had the view that Lawrence Kohlberg's theories were giving an unjust advantage to men in assessments regarding their capacity for moral reasoning. Based on Carol Gilligan's observations, Kohlberg's theories were condemning women as immoral or morally immature, and the reason why was that Kohlberg's theories were asking women to put aside personal relationships in the name of applying a more impersonal and systematic system of justice. Carol Gilligan decided to take the approach of embracing women's capacity for forming strong personal relationships and showing a high degree of loyalty and care toward people that are personally connected with them. She embraced the fact that a woman would sacrifice just about anything in order to help her own child, even to the point of doing something otherwise seriously immoral, and instead of saying that this constituted a shortcoming of the female sex, Gilligan had the idea of saying that maybe this constitutes a uniquely feminine morality.

Nevertheless, I would contend that Carol Gilligan is only half-right. I believe in giving credit where credit is due. The male sex, even by Carol Gilligan's reasoning, is genuinely better at rule-based moral reasoning, but unfortunately, toxic masculinity never discusses this aspect of masculinity. Unlike now-antidiluvian ideas like the "code of chivalry," toxic masculinity seems to deliberately ignore the redeeming qualities of the male sex while also attempting to elevate the most serious flaws of the male sex to an undeserved status of virtue. Nevertheless, men are genuinely better at understanding concepts like rights, rules, and even fairness, and even though this is only one dimension of moral reasoning, it is an important dimension of moral reasoning.

The point is that the subculture surrounding toxic masculinity tends to ignore everything that is good about the male sex and raise everything that is terrible about the male sex to an undeserved status of virtue, and the followers of this subculture are particularly cruel and heartless in their behavior. When called out on their bad behavior, they declare that they are just being persecuted for exercising their divine right to celebrate their masculinity, even though they are only really celebrating the shortcomings of the male sex. This subculture keeps getting larger, and rape-apologists are just getting more vehement in their declaration that they really have a right to hurt members of the female sex.

When someone discovers that you are a zoo, their initial reaction is probably going to be that your behavior is just an unusually perverted and evil extension of toxic masculinity. Practice some theory of mind, and try to understand that those people are also fighting against a seriously toxic subculture that literally wants to reduce women to chattel and to legitimize hurting women for fun. By the time they get to you, they are already pissed off, and they have heard one bullshit justification after another for seriously evil behavior. They are frustrated. They are angry. They are frustrated and angry for reasons that you just might agree with. When they get to you, it might really be a very bad time to ask them to be open-minded about a sexual relationship in which one of the partners in that relationship is genuinely as powerless as an animal that, by the standards of mainstream human society, is under the domination of humans. It's not that those people are really evil and judgmental and cruel, but they are just very frustrated with a seriously toxic subculture that wants to make it cool to hurt people.

If you do not pay attention to this context, then it is easy to take the fact that they scream hatefully at you as evidence that they are so aggressive and unreasoning that they would do something seriously evil in order to hurt you or that they might even hurt your animal as a means of punishing you. I can also guarantee that, at least 9 times out of 10, this is not really true. It can only hurt you to assume that ignorance is the same thing as true evil, even though ignorance can sometimes be seriously harmful in its consequences.

Take the story of Burrich and Fitz as a lesson: just because someone hurts you out of ignorance does not mean that they are people that would glorify causing pain, and most likely, the opposite is really true of what they believe, deep down. Most likely, they just care deeply about animals, and the idea that you might hurt an animal genuinely pisses them off in ways that you could probably relate to, not in spite of the fact that you are a zoo but for the same reasons why you are a zoo.

In fact, I have found that many people that are hostile toward zoos when I first meet them turn out to be a little zooey, themselves, when I have gotten to know them. I recently talked with a therian that was hostile toward zoos, but as it turned out, his identity as a therian was an attempt to sublimate his very strong physical attraction toward animals because he was so terrified of hurting an animal.

I am friends with another man that was seriously hostile toward zoos just last year, but after our initial conversations, I sensed that his views were based on genuine care toward animals. He did not come across as a man that really took any joy in screaming hatefully at people, but it seemed to be another source of misery for him. After he met me halfway on a few issues, I decided to extend enough trust toward him to start introducing him to some of my friends that are a mixture of zoos and therians and furries, and he has never been disrespectful toward them at all. I think that he at least recognizes what we actually are, even though he might never really be comfortable with our sexuality.

If you were to engage the majority of people that reject you not as people that are deliberately hurtful but instead as people that love animals and falsely see you as a threat to animals, then nine times out of ten, you can chip through their ignorance by trying to relate to them based on your real views toward animals. As a zoo, you probably understand details about animals like the fact that you can get a horse's eyes to light up with little sparkles just by talking to that horse like they have a soul. I can talk to someone that is not comfortable with me being a zoo about this kind of lore, and we end up relating to each other, based on the fact that we have a mutual love for animals.

The character Fitz is nevertheless very much an antihero. I like antiheroes in literature, but it is rare for an author to use the concept of an antihero as well as Robin Hobb. Robin Hobb understands that an antihero is not really a person that is naturally contemptible but instead a person that has limited means that is overwhelmed with a variety of pressures and challenges that make conventional heroism unrealistic. Her types of antiheroes do things that would sound less than heroic if you just described their actions without any context, such as assassination, but when you understand their personal context, you recognize that they are really being as heroic as a natural human being could possibly be under the circumstances. You cannot really understand the actions of her antiheroes without reading carefully and understanding the context of their actions.

A story that is based on a true antihero (or what I think is a true antihero) teaches you how to evaluate people not based on only what they do but also based on how they behave in a certain context. A traditional hero's moral decisions are based on what you say you would do based on your position of privilege and comfort. An antihero forces you to understand that a person that is genuinely heroic, at heart, can only very rarely deal with the real world based on how they might otherwise think from a position of privilege and comfort. An antihero teaches you that many people are born with natural flaws, and what makes them heroic is surviving and succeeding in spite of those flaws or even by turning those flaws into strengths.

From my point-of-view, an antihero is similar to an "everyman" type of character, but the antihero, unlike the everyman, is also born with individual differences that are awkward at best and put into seriously frustrating moral dilemmas that would vex a sage. The antihero is still genuinely heroic, but that heroism is only self-evidence when you look at their circumstances and recognize that you genuinely could not have done it any better. Their heroism is based on the fact that they are confronted with moral dilemmas that would break your heart, but they rise to the challenge, anyway. They keep going when you would have given up under the same conditions, even if only because you had come to hate yourself. The kind of courage that keeps you from giving up on yourself is very important, and it can save your life. It is something you really should learn. Antiheroes are flawed, and their flaws make them more genuinely heroic. Antiheroes teach us the values we need for being flawed people in a complicated world and surrounded by other flawed people and having flawed people in our lives that nevertheless deserve for us to be able to do what is "least wrong" when it counts, knowing they might punish us for it anyway while singing about how heroic and gallant they were to have punished us. Antiheroes take a beating and keep on ticking. They make mistakes, and they muddle through, anyway, even if they are tearful and confused and sad. Antiheroes are the only kind of heroes that can teach us how to be imperfect people in an imperfect and often unjust world.

Traditional heroes could never teach us how to survive being anything except a perfect, bulletproof person that has never been confronted with a truly painful moral dilemma. Traditional heroes could only teach us how to love a perfectly just society, but they could never teach us how to forgive a society that has betrayed us in a serious and contemptible way. Traditional heroes teach us values that could only work in a world where the only kind of evil was the evil that was caused by people with cruel and terrible intentions, and if those are the only values we have, then we are helpless when we are confronted with the evil that is done by good people.

You need antiheroes because the antihero's enemies are not just the bad guys, but their enemies are also the good guys that cannot realistically be expected to understand the context of their actions. You need to know how to see the humanity and the goodness in people that have hurt you or even behaved in a manner that is craven and selfish. You need to learn to see that someone that hurts you based on nothing more than the shallowest squeamishness nevertheless has to live with being who THEY are just as you have to live with being who YOU are, and they have to live in a special Hell where every other person they meet is torturing them by doing things that make them want to vomit. You need an antihero because nobody else can teach you how to give a shit about a world that treats you like shit.

If you only had the values of a hero, then the world is so filled with villainy that you would think you were justified in destroying it in a fit of Messianic rage. You would commit the sin of the Christian, which was to reduce the world to squalor and filth and illiteracy in order to punish it for not being capable of an impossible standard of purity that would not have even made us happier if we could have met it. The world does not need traditional heroes. Traditional heroes are the villains of an imperfect and fucked-up world.

Everyone is flawed. If you cannot love someone that is flawed, then you will never love anybody at all. You might think you have fallen in love, sometimes, but the person you think you love will always vanish into mist when you find out that that person is just as frail and imperfect as any other human being, and you will wake up one morning and find yourself feeling very alone. The only people you have to choose from are fucked-up people that have to make difficult decisions based on incomplete information. You can pick any of them, and if you can muddle your way through the painful process of growing accustomed to a person that is just as capable as you of being an utter prick or a fucking twat once in a while, then you just might deserve to be loved. People that are not dysfunctional are not an option for you, even though you might know a few people that have deluded themselves into thinking otherwise, and you have a choice of different kinds of dysfunctional people. Pick one. A good antihero can teach you how.

Burrich did not redeem himself in some perfect ending by learning to accept Fitz, but he taught Fitz that someone is not really an utter scoundrel just because he is ignorant and hurts people because of his ignorance. He might not have created a perfect harmony, but he succeeded at making Fitz a more humane person. He also remained an important ally for Fitz where it counted. Burrich never really accepted Fitz for what he was, but he was a good man that also helped Fitz in ways that were important. The ending of the trilogy would have been seriously grim, rather than bittersweet, without Burrich. Also, Burrich nevertheless understood that Fitz would always tell the truth and keep his promises, and Burrich never wavered in that faith.

Burrich might have pushed Fitz away, but he was also willing to protect Fitz and Nighteyes against people that would have hurt them. He was an imperfect ally, but he was still an ally. That alliance did not lead to a happy ending, but it led to a bittersweet ending where the alternative would have been unbearably grim.

Robin Hobb's stories are a terrible choice of literature for someone that needs a happy ending, but for those of us that have had to learn how to get up and dance just because we are still alive and intact enough to do so, her stories are fantastically rewarding.

While Robin Hobb, herself, might or might not support zoos, I think that she can at least be a Burrich, rather than a Galen, as long as she understands how much many of us can relate to the bond between Fitz and Nighteyes and to the complicated relationship between Fitz and Burrich, having had similarly complicated relationships between ourselves and our own family members and friends. I understand that, even though Fitz and Burrich had their differences, they were nevertheless on the same side. Robin, I may never be sure if you realized it, but you told our story--or at least that of many thousands of us--better than most of us could have told it, ourselves. Wittingly or unwittingly, you have given a voice to something that, for many of us, has been a part of our real experience.

Good people can have differences between them, and those differences cannot always be truly reconciled. They are nevertheless on the same side, and if they destroy each other just because they cannot be perfectly in accord, then the false heroes that have come to destroy the world--to punish it for not fitting perfectly into a stilted and phony ideal--are going to finally succeed at plunging us all back into the Dark Ages. Saving the world is more important than agreeing on everything, and when all of us that truly have good intentions have figured that much out, then we might actually make some headway.


Thank you,
Sigma

Dear zoos, friends, and interested others,

Today, I am going to talk about the idea of consent.

In ethics, the concept of consent is really muddled and unclear, and it is often misrepresented.

For example, many people that are opposed to giving hormone-replacement drugs to teenagers argue that this is wrong because minors cannot give "informed consent" to having their bodies altered, but you could use the same argument to deny a blood-transfusion to a child that has suffered from traumatic blood-loss, and while you might scoff this comparison, former Jehovah's Witnesses or people that have had Jehovah's Witnesses in their family would understand that the comparison is not as far-fetched as you might think.

Also, it is often falsely asserted that a lack of "informed consent" is the reason why adult-child sexuality is so harmful to children's development. This is false. The real explanation is that human children have uniquely complex and delicate central nervous systems, and premature sexualization tends to lead to cognitive deficits and to serious panic disorder later in life. Adult survivors often engage in several self-injury behaviors, including extreme skin-picking behavior. This has nothing to do with whether or not young people can consent.

The real reason why we talk about consent, in discussions about ethics, is that it is really dehumanizing to fail in asking for people's opinion about what happens to them. It is demeaning in a harmful way, and people that have been treated with such a lack of concern for their thoughts and feelings tend to suffer from shame, low self-esteem, and other serious emotional problems. However, even this argument for talking about consent is really based on the consequences of not looking for people's consent before engaging in a behavior that affects their experience or which intrudes upon their personal space bubble.

The idea of consent is unfortunately easily weaponized for harmful purposes, though. For example, let's take the situation of a zoo and that person's dog, horse, or other non-human animal. Since most people are familiar with the behavior of dogs, then let us say, for argument, that this person is a canine zoo and therefore attracted only to dogs.

It would be false to claim that dogs are an entire species of rapists. I grew up around free-roaming dogs, and I have been a witness to their courtship behaviors since I was literally an infant. Male dogs that have been gently raised are actually reticent about mounting a female dog, and while they will make attempts to mount, they usually shy away if the female whirls herself around and snarls for the intrusion upon her personal space bubble. This does not really preclude them from having sexual relations, but female dogs are really very insistent about foreplay. They will assert their right to foreplay, and they will want to engage in extensive play-fighting, chase games, and role-reversal first before allowing a male dog to mount. In some cases, a male dog will actually pose in such a manner as to try to persuade the female to mount him instead, which is the male dog's way of expressing to the female what he wants her to do and why it would make him feel glad if she did. Dogs are really a lot like humans, in their sexuality: they demand to be treated with respect.

Therefore, I am going to return to the situation of the human zoo, let's assume that person is male, and let's assume that he owns a female dog. It would be false to assert that that person's sexual behavior inherently constitutes rape. From the standpoint of a female dog, it is actually desirable for her human to court her in the manner of her own species, and as long as her human partner lives up to his own end of the deal, it is deeply unlikely that the female dog will be dissatisfied with the outcome. In other words, it is fully possible for a zoo to show due respect to their animal. This does not mean that they always do, but if that person's dog appears to be emotionally healthy and does not show any symptoms of stress, then I have no reason whatsoever to not give that person the benefit of the doubt. Ultimately, what is important is that both the zoo and the zoo's dog are emotionally healthy.

To conflate zoosexuality with nonconsensual sex really constitutes a deeply unethical weaponization of ethical ideas. Using the idea of "consent" as an excuse to disrupt that person's life and thereby cause distress and a possible untimely death for that person's dog is really harmful, and it does nothing to benefit either man or beast. To weaponize ethical ideas in this way is wrong. It constitutes taking an idea that was intended to help make the world a little bit less unkind and using it as an excuse to hurt people and their animals. It constitutes a vicious misappropriation of what would otherwise be a helpful idea.

Since I am transgender, I am going to continue talking about how the idea of consent has been weaponized in a way that is injurious to transgender people and their families. Conservatives have been weaponizing the idea of "informed consent" as an excuse for intentionally destroying the lives of transgender youth. Conservatives are really motivated based on personal disgust toward transgender people and toward any non-majority sexuality. They hate transgender people, and from their point of view, if a transgender kid cannot be bullied into living as their assigned sex at birth, then they really deserve to live with the awkwardness and inconvenience of transitioning as an adult. From the standpoint of conservatives, being transgender means that you are such a terrible person that you deserve to have to live with a body that does not match up with your gender identity, so they can easily identify you and make you a target for abuse. Conservatives are not good people, and they are not really trying to help transgender kids at all. What they are trying to do is gaslight and abuse those kids into being something besides transgender, and if that doesn't work, then they think that those kids really deserve to live miserable lives as adults. The idea of "informed consent" is being weaponized as a means of causing pain and misery for young people that just want to live something resembling normal lives for their gender identity.

In the states of Alabama and Texas, this has been taken so far that, in Alabama, they tried to create a law that would make it a felony for doctors or therapists to provide any kind of gender-affirming care whatsoever, and in Texas, the government has instructed to initiate "abuse" investigations against the parents of transgender kids, which could result in breaking up those young people's families in a destructive and painful way. The politicians that created those laws are not really trying to help those kids, but they are hateful white men that want to find ways to punish and destroy the lives of anybody that does not want to live in accordance with their narrow-minded concept of "normalcy."

Just because you dress up hate in progressive-sounding language does not really mean that you are morally righteous. If the message that you are preaching is based on using a poorly understood ethical idea in order to cause pain and grief to people that would otherwise never intentionally harm anybody, then you are really the villain, no matter how many syllogisms you can create in order to try to paint yourself in any other light.

Again, the idea of consent, in discussions about sexuality, was intended to encourage us to show respect toward our romantic partners. "Consent," when we are talking about sex, is really just a short-hand for "Don't be a disrespectful, entitled, presumptuous ass." Your romantic partners might have grown up with the idea that they deserve to have a large personal space bubble, and if you are not sure what is going to work for them, then it is really your fault if you assume and make an ass of yourself. There is a good reason why we talk about consent, in sexual situations between human partners, but the reason for these conversations is to try to make our lives better or at least marginally less horrible. We're just trying to treat each other better.

The idea of consent was not intended to be used as a weapon for hurting people or for destroying people's lives. If all that the idea of "consent" means to you is that you have a right to destroy a person's life for having a sexual orientation that you find to be disagreeable, then fuck you. If your whole reason for talking about the idea of consent is to give yourself a pretext for hurting people, then you are not the good guy.

A bully with a moral pretext is nothing in the world but a bully with a moral pretext. If you don't have the guts to stand up to such people, then that is shameful.

Zoos have a set of ideas that are really similar to the idea of consent. We call them the Zeta Principles. It's really just a shorthand for the same kind of thinking that leads to normies talking about consent. As an abstract idea, it is really hard to put into words, even though there are some people that think of the ZPs as a list of rules, but the general idea behind it is really based on the same thing as consent. The idea is to try to treat our non-human sexual partners with respect. Even though we might make lists of rules to try to describe it, it's not a list of rules, but it is something more primal. Most of us are not just zoos, but we are animal-lovers in general, and we cannot tolerate seeing an animal treated with disrespect, whether by zoos or non-zoos.

Come hang out in my Feral - SFW group for a while, and you would not really be able to tell the difference between the zooey and non-zooey animal-lovers in the group. I have intentionally labored to try to create a mixed group because I never really wanted an "animal sex chat." I am just a person that likes animals, and the fact that I am also a zoo is not something I like to talk about often, except that I have to in the name of zooey activism. I just happen to be an animal-lover, and I like to be surrounded by people that understand those feelings. I don't really care if someone is a zoo, but I do care if someone that knows that I am a zoo is capable of treating me with dignity and respect. The fact that I am a zoo does not come up often, but when it does, that does not give someone the right to shower me with abuse or to spam my group with hateful hysterics. The only thing you need to fit into Feral - SFW is to love animals and to know how to show respect for people's individual differences. If you can manage that, then you will fit right in.

Consent is a useful idea, but it can only remain useful if we keep it close to its purpose. Its purpose was to help instruct us on how to treat each other more respectfully. If you would use the idea of consent as nothing more than a pretext for treating people with a lack of respect, then you have simply missed the point. I hope that a time will come when conversations about consent have come back to their original purpose, which was to help us better coexist with each other.


Thank you,
Sigma

Dear zoos, friends, and interested others,

I have talked before about the concept of a parallel polis, but I have never really put a strong focus on the subject. I originally heard about this through one of my friends in the Illuminati, who mentioned that this idea came from the Czech political thinker Vaclav Benda, and you can find out more about this man's ideas from his book by the name Parallel Polis.

Benda was the first to describe the concept of an underground culture. The underground culture that was studied by Benda was the intellectual and artistic subculture that survived in the Czech Republic under the domination of the totalitarian Soviet government, and we ought to study these leaders as an example because these are the same leaders whose efforts led to the famous Velvet Revolution. While the Velvet Revolution was truly an imperfect blessing in actual practice, the fact that it could happen at all, under the circumstances, is genuinely significant.

The pillars of a parallel polis, which distinguish the parallel polis from the regime that is superficially in power, are as follows:

* Constant monitoring and verification of civic rights and freedoms, which the state tends to restrict. Parallel Polis consists of people who actively advocate for (and protect) their rights.

* "Alternative" (underground) culture is independent, and consists of art which is developed without the permission—or support—of public authorities.

* Parallel education and science, representing the right to free education and the development of scientific research (residential seminars and educational societies and academies)

* A parallel information system as an expression of the right to the free dissemination of information (such as samizdat publishing and unofficial magazines and collections)

* Parallel economy: "Political power considers this area as a critical resource for arbitrary control of citizens and strictly regulates it at the same time". The economy of dissent was based on reciprocity and trust in the individual. It was the germ of a principle and the search for resources which are not dependent on the control of monetary tools.

* Creation of parallel political structures and the promotion of their development. The alternative political structures must be incubated in the Parallel Polis and develop into a form which can replace the ruling authoritarian regime.

* Parallel foreign policy must be an instrument of the parallel society for the international stabilization and grounding of the movement and the search for financial and mental resources.

If you are a zoo, then you may have come to notice that, the more the anti-zoo furries try to work to drive us away, the larger and more diverse our own underground community gets, and the larger and more diverse our underground community gets, the more frantically the anti-zoo furries try to run around trying to call out anyone they even slightly suspect of being zooey or sympathetic toward zoos.

There is some level of disagreement, among zoos, about whether or not we ought to have a more inclusive idea of what constitutes a "zoo fur." This has largely been an amicable disagreement, and I expect it to stay that way. However, there are some zoos that have the idea that nobody should identify as a zoo unless they are actively having sex with non-human animals, and others have been advocating for a more inclusive definition of what constitutes a zoo fur.

On the face of it, it seems to make sense that we would want to be clear on the point that zoos are people that are currently having regular sexual relations with non-human animals and really have no other outlet for their sexuality. The argument is that people that would voluntarily adopt that kind of stigma are really just looking for some way to make themselves come across as edgy, and this kind of excitement-seeking behavior is giving a bad name to people that are more authentically zooey. The argument seems to make sense if you take into account that people that really just want to engage in bullying against furries and other subcultures will use bestiality pornography as a form of graffiti, and actual zoos, who largely just want to be left alone, really end up taking the chaff from that. I really welcome corrections on this point because I really want to try to not misrepresent this perspective, and this is hard for me to do as somebody that tends to lean toward a different point-of-view. This perspective actually does bring up some important issues, and rather than really disagreeing with these arguments, I only see the balance of trade-offs differently.

From my perspective, the balance of trade-offs is on the side of embracing a more diverse zoo fur community, and this means embracing therians, zoos that are not actively having sexual relations with their non-human animals at this time, zoos that have had experiences during their youth but never repeated them as adults, zoos that have only engaged in non-penetrative zoophilic behavior, and open-minded furries. There are many reasons why those people would be seeking out a more inclusive community. The section of the furry community that is trying to push zoos out might just come across to them as politicized, materialistic, and toxic. They might find zoo-owned communities to be more wholesome and more kind. While there might be terrible reasons why people would go seeking out an underground subculture, there are also very good reasons why people would go seeking out an underground subculture, and I have the opinion that the balance is on the side of the good.

I tend to have a relatively negative outlook on people that seek out popular esteem and power. I tend to associate that type of behavior with narcissism. Fashionable society really tends to be toxic, and the only thing they really do is engage in bullying against anybody they regard as being somehow beneath themselves, less cool than themselves, less rich than themselves, or less pure than themselves. In the furry community, this could mean having your fursuit done in a particular style or having your character drawn by a particular artist that "personalizes" them using the "fill" feature on their design software. They do not really seem to do anything else. From my point-of-view, popufurs are toxic almost by definition. I do not think that it is possible to both be an authentic person and care too much about what society thinks of you. Popular esteem is like wealth: the more you overvalue it, the more you put yourself at risk of doing something you know is wrong in service to protecting it.

Now, this is not a denunciation of people that have money or popular esteem. People that have money are not inherently evil at all. I have one friend that owns two airplanes. However, the difference between him and someone that is "rich" in the negative sense is that this person does not seem to have the opinion that money makes him better than others. As far as I can tell, he seems to have the opinion that what makes him a better person is that if he does have money, he does something interesting, fun, and cool with it, but just having it does not make you the kind of person that would make good use of it. Wealthy people that are also good people actually happen to exist, but what makes them different is that they value character more than they value wealth itself. Another reasonably well-off friend of mine said to me once, "Money can't buy me happiness, but it can buy me a boat." The same applies to people that have popular esteem: just having it does not make you a better person than others, but what defines you is what you do with it once you have it or would do with it if you did have it. If you are willing to give up almost all of your popularity in return for even a teaspoon of authenticity, then you are not what I am talking about when I denounce people for being toxic popufurs.

Therefore, it might be true that the parallel polis can attract trouble-makers, but if you can get past that problem, the parallel polis also attracts people that are authentic, fun, genuinely cool, and incredibly kind. I think that a successful parallel polis needs to acknowledge the existence of both kinds of people and create a policy for how to maintain control over their spaces. There is really no simple answer to this. My friend, Mike, and several of his other acquaintances have been laboring and sweating over how we can maintain a sense of order without sacrificing the good things about the parallel polis. If they trusted you as an individual, then they would not just admit their mistakes to you, but you would hear more about their woes than you even wanted to know. Nevertheless, their labors are really worthwhile.

I agree with my friend, Mike, about the concept of focusing on getting really good at maintaining bare minimum standards for what we are willing to allow. It is hard to enforce any standard at all, and we are really better off focusing all of our strength on a short list of concerns that really genuinely need to be dealt with. The more parsimonious we choose to be in what outlets we choose for our energy, the better that energy will ultimately be spent. Spend your spoons in ways that ultimately help you make or find more spoons you can use in the future. Spend your spoons in ways that help you avoid having to spend more of them in the future. Attend to basic household chores every single day, and you will never have to clean your house because your house will already be clean enough to live in.

Anyhow, what I am hopeful for, in the future, is that we zoos and our allies can build up enough political power, in our own parallel polis, that we can produce a velvet revolution of our own. Let's create our own Charter 77. You might ask, "What is Charter 77?" and I will answer you, Charter 77 was a document that was circulated, by Czech dissidents against the Soviet government, that criticized the Soviet government for its failure to protect human rights, among other failures. The creation of Charter 77 was the Soviet government's persecution of the nonconformist group of music artists, Plastic People of the Universe, and the excessive violence, of the Soviet regime, against that group was a major source of inspiration behind the Velvet Revolution. Yes, their followers, in the underground community, were long-haired hippie intellectuals.

I think that we, in the zoo fur community, need to stick to one basic principle as the foundation for all secondary principles: you are not going to improve the world by hurting people. Even if you are a non-zoo furry and you do not really feel comfortable with zoosexuality, my question is this: regardless of that discomfort, does it make you even more uncomfortable if young zoos are being bullied to the point of taking their own lives? A strange and widely misunderstood sexuality might stretch your tolerance, but if extreme bullying does not break your tolerance, then you are not welcome in my spaces. If you can agree that there is never really a good reason for extreme bullying, then I am willing to give you a chance, even if we do not see eye-to-eye on everything right away. I do not even need you to agree that zoosexuality is an entirely acceptable sexuality, but the place where I absolutely need you to be in the same place as me is that you must never condone extreme bullying for any reason whatsoever.

A toxic misappropriation of the concept of consent has been used in order to falsely conflate zoos with violent rapists, and the people that have been engaging in anti-zoo bullying have been using that as the justification for their behavior. They wave that around like a little flag that is just the ultimate proof for how their hate is really justified. "Animals can't give informed consent," they say.

Well, according to Jehovah's Witnesses, children cannot give informed consent to blood-transfusions! Shame on all of you doctors that would force innocent children into sinful vampirism. They are not old enough to understand the repercussions of this mortal sin. It is one thing if you would allow adults to condemn themselves to burn in eternal Hellfire, but to condemn children to the same fate, at such a tender age, is just beyond the pale. Shame on you doctors for so disgustingly putting another human being's blood into an innocent child. We need to have the families that would allow this travesty to occur arrested for such a horrifying crime.

Wait, there is no need to bash on Jehovah's Witnesses, here, which are so widely disliked that I actually feel sorry for them, when we have an even better example of how the idea of "informed consent" has been misappropriated for the sake of persecuting a minority group.

The governments of Texas and Alabama have been trying to pass laws that would lead to the families and physicians of transgender kids getting treated as criminals. In the state of Texas, the government is trying to goad child welfare services into initiating investigations against the families of transgender kids, and the state of Alabama actually passed a law that would have their doctors treated as felony offenders. The argument for these laws is based on the idea that "children are too young to consent" to gender-affirming care, so they argue that the same children should therefore be forced, by violently punishing them, to conform to their assigned sex at birth until they are 18. Since children are too young to consent to going through the puberty that is appropriate for their actual gender identity, they see it as morally obvious that children should instead be forced to go through the puberty that is clearly not appropriate for their gender identity.

This reminds me of how, since non-human animals are too unintelligent to consent to having sex with a human, they should instead be forced to endure lifelong celibacy. If they cannot be taught how to be good, little celibate pets, then it is morally imperative that we should castrate them because, after all, good little furbabies shouldn't have such naughty ideas. Since society has decided that non-human animals are too stupid to consent to having a sex life, society has decided that they should instead be forced to take part in a sick chastity and castration fetish. Some people like to mix in some infantalism by referring even to aging adult animals as "furbabies." Since your non-human animals are too stupid to consent to having something that at least resembles a normal sexuality, it is absolutely imperative to force them to "unilaterally consent" to being the submissive partner in an abusive chastity fetish.

In the zooey community, we do not necessarily condemn all people that have had their animals neutered, but one word you are not allowed to use, in our spaces, is "furbaby" in reference to an adult non-human animal. It is revolting to talk in this way. It is sick. Your non-human animals are not playthings or living dolls, but they are people that happen to have a smaller neocortex than yours. They are people, all the same, and they deserve to be treated with a degree of dignity. At minimum, you should not call them "babies" when they are clearly adults and, in some cases, aging adults.

The point is that distorting the idea of consent does not really make a positive impression on zoos. The reason why it's not really a winning argument with us is some of us are also past victims of child sexual abuse, and we know first-hand that there is a difference between how an adult animal and a human child reacts to sexual interactions. Some of us refuse to have sexual relations with humans precisely because human adults are monsters from our darkest trauma-induced nightmares. I do not want to put myself at risk of accidentally creating a stereotype, but someone that would falsely conflate a non-human, sexually intact adult with a human, sexually underdeveloped juvenile is probably suffering from a severe paucity of first-hand experience with either.

Therefore, if you are a non-zoo, nobody is asking you to necessarily be comfortable with zoosexuality. Many of us zoos are actually very conscious of the morally problematic relations between humans and non-humans, and this is why we talk about subjects like "Zeta Principles" and other ideas about how we could try to be better people and treat our partners with more dignity. You are not wrong to ask questions, and many of us agree with the spirit behind those questions.

I am actually friends with a "non-contact" zoo that thinks about the more tame branch of the zooey community sort of like a needle-exchange program for heroin addicts: I don't think that I am ever going to get him to agree that it's really okay for humans to have carnal knowledge with a non-human animal. I respect the fact that he is not in a place where he wants to revisit that perspective. The reason why I am on speaking terms with him is that he understands that he is not going to improve the lives of our non-human animals by making their owners miserable or lonely. At heart, he is really a compassionate person, and it is really compassion that makes him want to ask the kinds of questions he asks. I am happy to share space with this person.

However, if you jump directly from the fact that human/non-human relationships are morally complicated, from square one, to falsely conflating zoos with violent rapists, then you are getting an immediate kick and ban from any community I would want to be a part of. It is not okay to dehumanize people in that way. Someone that resorts to dehumanizing language really does not belong anywhere. When you use that kind of language, you act just like a transphobe, and I know this first-hand because I am also a transgender woman.

When you choose to weaponize the concept of consent in a way that entitles you to the right to use another human being as a punching-bag, then let's turn that phrasing around: you are using another human being as a punching-bag, and you choose to use the concept of consent as a weapon you use to hurt people instead of as a shield. Where I am concerned, you fucked up from the minute that you picked up the sword instead of the shield and set out to hurt someone.

I have created a space where you don't even have to agree that zoosexuality should be accepted by society without reservation, but what I need you to agree on is the simple idea that being cruel and hurtful to people, including to zoos, is not really acceptable. That is where we need to see eye-to-eye. That really makes me a lot more open than most zoos to hearing different points-of-view. Not all zoos are that patient. We do not allow disruptive behavior in service to such a point-of-view, but we will not reject someone just for having difficult questions on their minds. We have been asking the same difficult questions, ourselves, and we are not as far from the fulcrum as most non-zoos tend to think. The difference is that we have seen zoopositivity in action, and we know it works, and that put us on the left-hand side of that fulcrum.

In order to move more people to the left-hand side of that fulcrum, we zoos have a responsibility to try to do more to affirm the rights of our non-human companions. I support the Double-Shield Initiative, regardless of the trials and tribulations of those that have led that initiative, and I am on the side of trying to find ways of meeting people halfway as long as their concerns are genuinely based on humanity and compassion.

I think that we can create a better parallel polis if the place where we choose to draw the line is based on sound moral principles rather than identity alone. We zoos have a right to be treated with humanity. We have a right to be given the benefit of the doubt. That is not just we, but everybody deserves to be treated like human beings. If we remove people from our spaces, then the only reason why I think we should do so is in order to protect the rights of others in our spaces.

The more expansive understanding of what makes someone a zoo fur, I think, will ultimately do more to benefit us than a more narrow understanding of what makes someone a zoo fur. As far as I am concerned, you are a zoo fur if you can treat people, be they human or non-human, like people. I keep what I ask out of others simple, but I also have every intention of putting the same amount of energy into fulfilling that basic requirement that I could have otherwise invested in being more narrow-minded.


Thank you,
Sigma

Dear zoos, friends, and interested others,

What can I say? I like making new friends.

I really just want community, but as one of my friends explained to me, I have a "high-authenticate" sort of temperament.

Zooey experiences are only the smallest and most incidental part of my existence, not really its focus, and this aspect of my life would have soon been forgotten and seldom revisited under normal circumstances. I do not have a very high libido, and I am really more interested in art, book clubs, and literature.

The fact that I identify with the zooey community is entirely based on the fact that I will not be less than authentic about who I am or what my experiences have been. I will not live a lie for any reason whatsoever.

I am not a member of the zooey community because I want bestiality pornography or in order to have sexual experiences with animals. I just want to talk to people that love horses, cats, and dogs as much as I do without having to tell them lies in order to continue having their peaceful acquaintance.

Otherwise, many non-zoos have a seriously exaggerated idea of how important sex is in my life.


Thank you,
Sigma

Dear zoos, friends, and interested others,

I want you to know what we have the power to do by just having a community.

Sometimes, I talk to somebody like a guy that has attempted to end his own life multiple times already, and that person has recently been subjected to serious shunning in the only community that he had, besides the all-too-remote friendship of his fellow zoos. I don't know a whole lot about this guy, but what little I have gleaned about him and his situation really touches my heart.

It's not always true, but sometimes, I come back to people that touch me that way a few month later, and while they might not have solved everything in their lives in that short of a time, they seem to have the beginnings of a sense of peace starting to grow in them.

We don't have to do anything special in order to make those kinds of triumphs happen, but we just have to be ourselves. In fact, I think that a large part of what stops us from being able to make another person's life better is that we are often afraid to be ourselves. Fear of being ourselves can often make us superficial and numb and seemingly heartless. By letting go of our fear of being ourselves, we thereby liberate ourselves to react and to feel with a sense of authenticity. What really gives us the power to heal other people is the sense of authenticity.

Sometimes, I talk to zoos that ask me why I care more about the people in the zooey community when animals are supposedly what being a zoo is about. My answer to that is that our animals depend on our care so completely that we cannot expect to take good care of our animals if we cannot take good care of ourselves, so if we care about all animals, then we also have to care about each other. We zoos are the best thing that our animals have because we are motivated by love.

Well, in order to bring out that sense of authentic care for others in our community, it helps if we focus on the fact that our fellow zoos are the only people in the world that can intuitively understand what it is like to be in insanely in love with an animal. I don't mean to put down our friends that accept us and support us in spite of not really sharing the same feelings: those kinds of people matter to us, and they are good people in an important way. However, there is a unique power in a shared experience.

I think that the key to tapping into that shared experience, though, is to let go of the fear of just being ourselves. The first person we ever need to make peace with is ourselves. I think that it is very difficult if not impossible to make peace with others before we have made peace with ourselves, and in order to make peace with ourselves, we have to start with letting ourselves find ourselves. If we find ourselves, we can find each other.

I believe very strongly that authenticity is powerful.


Thank you,
Sigma

Dear zoos, friends, and diverse others,

I want to talk to people about the concept of affinity groups. The concept of an affinity group is one of the cornerstones of coalition politics, and a coalition is what occurs when several independent groups of people--who are in communication with each other and having conversations with each other—create a habit of coordinating with each other on occasions when their purposes are aligned.

For example, people that favor drug legalization and people that favor reproductive liberty might have different purposes, but both of those groups share the understanding that an authoritarian government, which bases its politics on fear and repression, is bad for both of them. They would be a part of a “socially liberal” coalition, even though their primary interests are really not the same.

You start coalitions by acknowledging that inter-group differences are a real thing but by also by having conversations between groups that can help those groups to find common ground with each other. Rather than either avoiding those inter-group differences or fighting over those inter-group differences, exercise a sense of pride in how those inter-group differences make your coalition diverse and representative of a larger movement. The spirit of coalition politics is that “motley is beautiful.”

For example, we zoos really do not agree with each other on very much. At our worst, we can look like the final scene of Reservoir Dogs, which is the classic image of a circular firing squad from American cinema. Our issues lie at an intersection between liberty, minority rights, and a passionate love for animals. Blessed Skilikitin, save us! When we run into these kinds of problems and our spaces turn into dumpster fires, it is overdue for us to learn about the coalition approach to politics.

The coalition approach to politics requires us to respect each other’s right to do our own thing most of the time, but whenever we do agree on something, we coordinate together. If dozens of different large groups can only agree with each other for one day a year, they can still make a huge difference if they cooperate on just that one day, even if they can only do it for one day. However, if they prove to each other that they can cooperate on one day, they can extend that to two days, three days, four days, five days, six days, and eventually a solid week. That week where we come together as Team Zoo can be Zoo Pride Week, and if every zoo in the world can commit to being there for each other for one week out of the entire year, then that can make a huge difference. It takes practice, but we can do it.

The other part of coalition politics, though, involves respecting each others’ liberty to do what makes sense to us. Other people in your coalition might be engaging in what looks to you like nonsense, but trust in the general principle that if all of you are moving in the same general direction, there will eventually be a sense of forward motion. You do not have to control every single affinity group, and you do not need other people to agree with you on every single detail.

You are not entitled for other people to agree with you on the details. If you are right, then doubly so, and I say “doubly so” there because entitlement is the one thing that is the most likely to stop you from achieving your goals. Nothing is more crippling and self-defeating than a sense of entitlement. When people become convinced that they are entitled to something, then they stop working to earn the thing that they think they are entitled to. On the other hand, if you realize that you are not entitled for people to agree with you, then you will work harder, and you will write more beautiful music and poetry, and you will create better artwork. In the end, you will earn it. Don’t just go into a coalition believing that you deserve to be heard, but go into a coalition with a sense of determination to contribute something positive to make sure that you genuinely deserve to be heard. Contribute something cool and beautiful and fun and genuinely beneficial for everybody. Thereby, you can liberate yourself from the deadly chains of entitlement.

The trick is to learn how to leave the gun and take the cannoli, which means that you should focus on getting the things done that you set out to do, no matter what happens along the way. If you are a family man and you were supposed to come back home with a cannoli, suppose that you had to assassinate some dude on the way, who happened to have just bought himself a cannoli to stuff into his face. Well, what does your wife want you to bring home, the gun or the cannoli? Can you follow simple instructions or not? The key to success is to commit yourself to bringing home the thing you were supposed to bring home because, to the people that really matter to you in your life, what defines you to them is the thing you bring home. Stay focused on what you set out to do.

That kind of radically pragmatic thinking is what makes it possible for people with multiple ideological and individual differences to work together on the same goal for long enough to get it done, and when the members of a diverse coalition can keep themselves focused on their general purpose and move in the same general direction, then motley is beautiful.

As a certain marble told us, “Push the rock.” Every affinity group might do something different to try to push the rock, but as long as all of them are focused on pushing the rock rather than bickering over the right way to push the rock, then that sucker is eventually going to move.

It starts with diverse affinity groups respecting each other’s right to do things in their own way, maintaining only the most parsimonious rules and parameters. We might clash, sometimes, but as long as those minimum rules and parameters are observed, it is imperative for us to keep our eyes on our goals and stay on-task.


Thank you,
Sigma

Dear zoos, friends, and interested others,

I have been enjoying my Zoo Pride Week experience, so far. At first, yes, we do have games, normal conversation, and some amount of sex talk, but later on in the night, many of us can become very emotional talking about non-human companions we have had in the past, our times together, and the hardships of grief. We wake up the next morning, though, and we feel closer and more relaxed, even those of us that came feeling more tense.

I hope that a time will come when non-zoos also celebrate Zoo Pride Week. They are really what ZPW is really about. It's not just about our resentment over the ignorance that some of them represent, but it's also about the kindness that others have shown us and our sense of hope that most people, in the long-run, will turn out to be more like them. There is a reason why the people that try to work against us are so horrible: the only way that they can really stop is is by getting us to believe that the rest of the human race is as terrible as they. For too long, many zoos have believed in that lie. It is not true. People can be wonderful.

As a non-exclusive zoo, one of my favorite phrases is that humans are just another animal. I never really believed in misanthropy, even during times in my life when I felt hurt. When I was a kid, a part of me wanted to study sociology because sociology is just about the study of one of the world's most amazing animals, humans. They are complex, and just like with horses, you can create tragic misunderstandings if you are ignorant about how to talk to them in their own language. It is a commonplace thing for a zoo to learn some trade where the only thing that people see of them is what they create, and they are an anonymous part of a complex company. They never learn about people, and to me, that is a shame. A human is really not more difficult than a horse, and in their own way, they are just as majestic.

If you want to know what will teach non-zoos how to understand you, then I suggest attending a zoo pride gathering, someday, either in-person or over the Internet, where a handful of zoos spend a few nights talking together over cocktails, telling stories, playing games, and laughing together. Spend a handful of nights a year just getting to know what kinds of people your fellow zoos are when they have had a couple of nights to let their guard down enough to talk about their relationships with the non-humans that they love with a sense of honesty. It is hard to understand zoos without getting to know our fellow zoos because many of us never really understand what we look like from the outside, looking in. What you see in those special moments when your friends look just as beautiful as your non-human companions is what non-zoos need to know about zoos. If you can get just one non-zoo to see that side of you and recognize that it is a real part of you, then you will see why I really have hope for humanity. It is easier to teach this to them if you have seen it from the outside.

These few moments of camaraderie really do matter. Again, it is as it should be if most of us only really have our non-humans on our minds for most of the year, but it is very good for us to spend a special week trying to see what our non-human lovers see in us. There is a reason why your non-human loves you. There is something in you that deserves to be loved. It is always easier to see from the outside.

As Zoo Pride Week evolves, I know that the way we celebrate Zoo Pride Week might change over time. A time might come when we are well enough understood, in some communities, that some of us can feel safe holding public festivals, at least in the most enlightened places in our society. I don't know what the future holds. What I have experienced, so far, gives me hope that something good will come of these celebrations.


Thank you as always,
Sigma