Cafe Zoo

Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

I have been thinking about what motivates me to care about the pursuit of activism, regarding the treatment of zoos, when I am currently in a reasonably secure position in life.

I am past the point in my life where my libido has very much of a grip on my judgment, and at this point in my life, I am virtually an ace of hearts. Hormone replacement therapy has reduced it to background noise. I do not have any inconvenient photographs or videos of me, floating around out there in the cloud. I am really in a pretty good position, even under current conditions.

Well, as strange as it might sound, I don't think that "being a zoophile" is a very good reason for me to want to know somebody. It feels too much like being herded into a ghetto. One of the precursors of the Holocaust was that, in Italy, it became a popular practice to segregate Jewish people into ghettos in order to sever their connections with the rest of society. For lack of any direct exposure to Jewish people, it was thereby easy for the gentile population to be coaxed into believing just about anything about them. On the other hand, being a zoophile that, like me, wants to avoid that kind of a situation is a very good reason for me to want to know somebody. These are my activist pals.

We zoophiles that promote activism are in a complicated position.

The hard part is not really to defend zoophiles in the presence of non-zoophiles: once you have gotten most non-zoophiles past their initial shock reactions, the ones that are just naturally decent tend to make easy allies. They just have to get to know us as people. It would be a lie to say that most people hate zoophiles. Most people hate what they THINK zoophiles are, but when they get to know Sigma, they just think that Sigma is...a little eccentric, funny in an unconscious and oblivious sort of way, a little bit too straightforward for her own good, romantic, ludicrously long-winded, and sometimes a little prickly. Not all of them particularly like me, but it's unusual for them to actively hate me, even after they know that I am a zoophile. To be honest, I tend to like most "normies" better than I like the kinds of zoophiles that only get online to look at pornography.

No, the hard part is defending you normies to our fellow zoophiles. Think of it from their point-of-view: being part of a widely misunderstood minority group is really a terrifying situation to be in. Maybe you never meant to be monsters, but to many of us, that is what you are. Trying to penetrate that distrust, so more of them might be willing to get to know a few of you, is a large part of what we activists do, and that is also the hardest part of what we do.

My motivation is that I want to try to help reverse the process of estrangement was started when the first severe anti-zoo laws came into force. I see this estrangement as inherently dangerous. Segregation is not healthy for a society. Distrust is not healthy for a society.

If you are ever a part of a minority group that has become estranged from society, for any reason, I have a word of advice that comes from rich experience. Your hardest audience is not society at large. They are easy, once you have enough of your fellows ready to talk openly and honestly. Your hardest audience is your fellows. This lesson will apply to you, someday, if you live long enough. The only constant in this crazy world is change. It is not a matter of if, but it is a matter of when.

And I have a few words about dumb laws: the only thing the law is good for is getting rich people to pay their taxes, and it's unreliable even for that.


Thank you again,
Sigma

Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

Sometimes, I misjudge people at first. I forget that people are complex, and their views are often nuanced.

Resistance against activism, in the zooey community, is not new. You would not think it, to hear from those holdouts that still think that we can live forever in a silicon bubble: many of them tell me, "We tried activism before," but their own resistance, against reaching out, has also been tried, tried, and done to death.

The Internet is not a magic pillow-fort. It is a public place. If you are going to overestimate your cyber-security, then just cut off your machine right now instead of trading porn using networks that are visible to anybody that really wants to access them. People can see you, and if you are going to put bizarre-looking pornography where people can see it, then you owe them an explanation. Furthermore, you had better be ready to stand up for yourself effectively because people can be amazingly cruel over matters of sexuality. If you are not willing to stand up for yourself to have a right for it to be there, then don't put it there.

The name for standing up for yourself in an intelligent, organized, and artistically beautiful way is activism. That is my personal definition, anyhow. When I use the word "activism," I am using the word in a way that implies forethought, a better than casual understanding of human psychology, and the application of no small amount of talent.

Sometimes, I can be hasty to judge people. I have been getting to know one person that has actually been attempting to share his concerns about how activism is being done. He considers the current run of activists to have permissive attitudes about certain controversial subjects that do not sit well with all zoos, particularly ones that have lifelong experience with animals. It is very hard to get permissive attitudes to fly well when one is talking about living things, particularly living things that somebody loves very much. To his credit, his concerns are based on more than a generation of experience and a three-year apprenticeship program. His concerns do not come from a place of ignorance.

However, it is impossible to avoid a prevalence of permissive attitudes among the sorts of people that tend to most readily object to infringements upon their liberty. We that tend to object the most readily and the most strenuously against tyranny cannot help but to be people that have permissive thinking, in general.

If you have something better to say, though, then please join us, and say it.

The conversation is going to be had. We cannot stop zoos from having a presence on the Internet. Evidence that we exist will always be there. People can see us. We cannot avoid dealing with people. Pretending that we can avoid dealing with non-zoos is like the thinking of children in a magic pillow-fort. We are adults. An adult must stand up and take responsibility. Sometimes, a part of your responsibility is to find an effective way to stand up to a distrustful and superstitious society that does not understand you.

Some kind of conversation needs to be had. I am hopeful that many conversations will be had and that those conversations will eventually lead to us being understood.


Thank you,
Sigma

Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

The foundation of all freedoms is the freedom of speech. The fact that LGBTQIAA rights are going backwards in Russia and Hungary is related to the fact that those countries actually do allow legislation restricting people's freedom of speech.

However, freedom of speech is more complicated than just not passing any legislation. If toxic image boards can incite rampage shooters to murder people for worshiping the wrong version of the same god, then where is the freedom of speech of those worshipers? If someone can incite violence against LGBTQIAA that want to express their pride, where is the freedom of speech of LGBTQIAA?

A part of freedom of speech is recognizing the limited power of a minority group to be heard over a mob that is raging about how evil and harmful they are. We zoos do not really have any freedom of speech if, anywhere we try to speak out, we cannot be heard over a finger-pointing mob that is declaring us to be monstrously evil. If you are one person attempting to defend yourself against a half-dozen people that, on top of that, are using toxic rhetoric to inflate their apparent numbers, then where is your freedom of speech? Not being able to get a word in edgewise for everyone slagging you is not freedom of speech. The idea that this constitutes freedom of speech is bullshit.

Transgender people in the zooey community can have the same problem as zoos do everywhere else. They are a minority group within another minority group that, lately, is highly stressed-out, themselves, and has problems of their own. Transgener people trying to get a word in edgewise, in the zooey community, are not just speaking against the wind, but they are speaking against a massive emotional tornado.

Freedom of speech cannot come from above. We pretend that we can legislate freedom of speech into existence or simply abstain from legislating it out of existence, but we can't. Freedom of speech comes from the attitudes of a group of people. It comes from people's general recognition that an underrepresented minority group should have time to talk that is commensurate with that of any other group of people.

If you are a leader in any society of people, then you have a bigger voice than anybody else. If you run a popular podcast, you have a bigger voice than anybody else. You are, at once, a part of the people and a public figurehead. Much as you might not have titular power, you have more power than anybody else. If people listen to you, then you have more power than anybody else, title or no title.

As a zoo, you should believe in freedom of speech, but heed my words: a hateful mob shouting accusations against a minority group and saying that they deserve to be shot is not freedom of speech: it is a pogrom. Even without physical violence, it is a pogrom. It is the people using their disproportionate power, of sheer numbers, to intimidate a minority group that is powerless because they are a minority group. It is the people abusing their greater voice in order to take away the voices of others. If you are a zoo, then you should be more sensitive to this than others, not less.

It is true that freedom of speech is the foundation of all freedoms. That freedom has to come from you. It has to come from your own recognition that one underrepresented group does not have as big of a voice as you. It has to come from your own recognition that someone that is more shy than you needs some amount of encouragement and support and patience in order to get them to speak out.

Recently, I took part in a series of two podcast episodes, and the most exciting moments for me was when, in the second of those, one of my cohosts that tends to have a softer voice than I suddenly became loquacious and started producing well-organized, original ideas. I felt it was a victory for the podcast. I almost cried because, while I like to talk, it gives me a deep feeling of anxiety if someone else is not being heard when they might have something to say.

However, I think that we actually do need rules that protect people's right to be heard on topics that pertain to them. A very wise friend of mine said something like, "You cannot have a conversation about us without us present." The reason why I think there actually should be a rule and custom enforcing that idea is that, without the representation of the group that is being discussed, we are not just a pack of wolves and a sheep discussing what to have for dinner, but we are just a pack of wolves discussing dinner, and the sheep is likely to be on the menu.

Freedom is not the absence of rules, but freedom is the presence of rules that help to protect our individual freedoms. That is easier said than done. It can't be done with a single stroke of a pen or a wave of our hands. It has to be an attitude that is ingrained in a society. It has to be built into our customs, and it must be a guiding light for our social etiquette. For it to work, everybody at all levels needs to revere the idea.

Our freedom of speech is the foundation of all freedoms, but freedom is not the absence of rules. We actually do need rules, including rules that protect us from big decisions being made about our lives in conversations we did not even know were being had. If a conversation is being had about anybody, then their voice ought to be held as the most authoritative, not the least.


Thank you,
Sigma

Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

I guess it must be weird that I have spent at least some of this blog talking about fantasy novels that I have been reading, but I have a good reason why.

Fantasy tells more truth than non-fiction.

Digest that statement. Even if you don't believe it, try to think about why somebody might believe it.

Some real experiences are so outside of normal experiences that, to most people, they might as well exist in worlds full of cantrips, unicorns, dragons, and gnomes. If you sprinkle those experiences into a world full of battle-ax-wielding dwarfs, white-haired wizards, and magic rings, they just blend in: they might be weird experiences, but those experiences are not weird with other fantastical things going on in the background.

However, what if you have had one of those real experiences? It doesn't seem anymore fantastical, then, than if somebody in the book were drinking a cup of tea. It might be unusual to see it put into writing, at first. Nevertheless, somebody that has had that experience knows that at least that part isn't really fantasy.

Those kinds of truths are important to me, regardless of where I get them.

To me, there could not be a more serious genre.


Thank you,
Sigma

Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

A close friend of mine has come out to his mom and dad, recently. I am very proud that I know him.


Thank you,
Sigma

Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

For fuck sake, I am just a bookworm and a philosophy nerd. My dream, when I was a kid, was to have a cheap loft apartment full of books, and a specific occupation wasn't part of that dream: it could have been anything quiet and lonely. The dream was just a wall lined with books.

Mostly, I got that. I am happily married, too, but I never really aspired to it. It's some background noise. It just kind of happened, and that is alright. My husband is an okay guy. He deserves to have found love in the same way that almost everybody does. It's not my husband's fault that I am bookish and distracted...or that fur against my skin does more for me.

I didn't ask to be a zoo.

I didn't ask for some sociopaths to turn a distorted interpretation of consent theory into a political weapon, so they could use it to smite anybody that disgusted them.

The Russian government also uses a distorted version of consent theory as a weapon. According to them, the justification behind forcibly silencing gay people is that children do not "consent" to being exposed to homoeroticism, so according to them, anybody that is openly gay is violating children's "consent." Therefore, gay people that get discovered anywhere are, due to the fanning of the flames by their government, often hunted down and murdered. This is just as easily accepted, in Russia, as the way that zoophiles are treated, in the west.

There is no syllogism that justifies someone in behaving like a toxic sociopath toward people that are invisible and helpless. The pretense of such is the Occident's most grievous sin.

Therefore, westerners are not really more civilized than Russians. They are just more pompous. Regardless of their nationality, I have come to hate the entire Occident. The Chinese are imperfect, but I sincerely hope that they beat these useless bozos into space. I have plenty to criticize about them, also, but I am too busy adjusting my own nation's beeswax to spare the time for smoothing over someone else's beeswax at the risk of being misunderstood in the gesture.

However, there are people that believe that, because I point out how dismally the Occident has behaved toward two different sexual minority groups that I happen to be a member of, I am trying to be something significant. There are people that would say that I am desirous of taking on the cloak of a crusader of some sort. They imagine that I have spent my childhood dreaming of some sort of recognition as some sort of hero. People that do not know me imagine me to be something antithetical to what I actually am.

I am just a nerd that has a working knowledge of history. Being a nerd does not make me superbly exemplary because there are plenty of us to be found in any subdivision of the human race, but being a nerd has nevertheless borne me the consequence of being a little bit knowledgeable. I am not very well suited for acting upon it. I am just a nerd. However, I do happen to have a vague idea of what I am talking about because I am a nerd.

It is imperative that I get this understanding across to somebody that can act on it. Unfortunately, the Occidental world has a seemingly permanent defect, which is that they husband a concept of so-called "morality" that is based on finding pretexts for behaving as dismally cruel as possible toward members of the human race that have otherwise done nothing to offend them. They will take any syllogism that can lead to the conclusion, "therefore that person is immoral," and they will build up an entire system of logistics aimed at affecting a violent holocaust against anybody like that person. It is utterly evil. The people that husband this belief are a toxic subculture that we may never quite be rid of.

The only way that you can stop them from starting a very well-coordinated program, aimed at the utter eradication of their current scapegoat, is to make as much haste as possible in pointing out to them the evil and morally intolerable consequences of their own broken system. If they are not stopped, then they will continue to implement their system of so-called "justice" until they have again fallen into the same rut that has driven them to one grotesquely wretched genocide, apartheid, and systematic persecution after another.

Oh, truly, there was a glorious period where those moralizing sociopaths were held as beyond reproach! One generation after another was never challenged by anybody, and we call that dismal period in history the Dark Ages. It took us centuries to dig our way out of that fiasco.

And we are not alone, either. The same kinds of scum are to blame for the idea that we need bold, brave knights in blue to save us from the despicable blacks that threaten our lovely and dainty white women. The same kinds of scum are to blame for getting people convinced that there is a fearsome horde of dangerous, square-jawed, leering, utterly wicked cross-dressing men lurking at the doorways of women's bathrooms, so they can push upon us the misguided, insane and evil belief that the only answer, to this imagined evil, is to make it utterly impossible for transgender women to piss.

One of Occidental society's defects is that we have a twisted subculture of psychopaths that are certain that they are the only force that stands between the moral purity of society and some imagined doomsday of moral wretchedness. These false knights are utterly oblivious to the fact that they are the most despicably evil individuals on the face of the Earth, and they have a time-honored system for deceiving Occidental society into the false impression that they are doing something that is morally necessary. They call their crimes against the helpless "necessary evils." They create vast textbooks of syllogisms that supposedly demonstrate how evil their current victims really are, obfuscating the reality that their conclusions fly in the face of everything that can be detected by one's most basic empirical senses.

Therefore, someone might criticize me by saying that I am less than ideal as the person to implement this knowledge, but to those few that will listen to me and give a shit, I implore you to listen:

We are a very small minority group that our society knows nothing about, and we are one of the current victims of a violent subculture, in Occidental society, that aims to eradicate supposed "immorality" from their society. What makes them dangerous is that they sometimes succeed at targeting people that are actually dangerous, and they make a point of parading those successes as their defense against any criticism for their behavior, but they do not really care about the fruits of those successes; they care only about creating a pretext for their aggression that someone can believe. They are a disease, in Occidental society. These Teutonic crusaders of false morality are the most hideous sin of our hemisphere of humanity.

The only plausible defense is to successfully signal to society that we are, once again, a group of people that, to all of one's empirical senses, cannot really be proved to be harmful but are, nevertheless, being given the same treatment that one would give to a dangerous rabid animal. It is morally imperative that we get the message through to as many people as possible.

But it cannot possibly be a once-and-done deal. By the same token, we might temporarily get society to understand that African-Americans are not inherently dangerous, but news programming will continue to plaster up the faces of dark-skinned men while calling upon their supposedly noble crusaders to capture and slay them. If the African-American community becomes too convinced that everything is well, then they will once again be confronted with legions of false crusaders that, while making a pretense of being a "necessary evil" for the preservation of "law and order," care about nothing whatsoever except mounting up on their respective Rocinantes to go and slay innocent peasant farmers that are surely planning some sort of devilry by plowing their fields in preparation to grow a crop to feed their starving families.

Moralizing sociopaths are an ongoing problem, in Occidental society. It is not a new problem. It is also a problem that is not about to go away anytime soon. We can temporarily discourage them, but even if we do, society will eventually grow complacent again, giving them still more opportunities to play the same tricks.

We MUST stand in solidarity with other groups that are affected by the scum. All hands on deck. Pull your weight. You KNOW that we are not the only people that have fallen prey to these moralizing sociopaths, but we must play our own part to discredit their lies and false pretexts for their wickedness. This has been a problem throughout the history of the Occident, and it will not stop being a problem.

I am sorry to inconvenience you. There are things that I would rather do, too. I would rather curl up in front of my wall of books, reading ancient texts by the glow of a dim orange light and imagining that that little loft is floating in a void surrounded by twinkling stars. My instincts are those of an intensely private personage. Dried ink on a page gives me a way to connect with other human beings without actually having to deal with their unspeakably irritating personalities. If anything, I kept my own head buried in the sand for longer than I ought to have because I am quite fankly a little bit selfish, but during the late 2010's, the results of too much selfishness, by too many zoos at one time, intruded upon my tranquility, which I had fought very hard to achieve, in an astoundingly irritating way. Attempting to transmit a few useful morsels of history, to my fellow zoos, is the finger that I am prepared to lift for them.

It is just very hard to be literate in history and not eventually come to understand that it never quite stops being made. I do not know that because I am a special person. I know that because I am a nerd. Nerds do not make history. We just remind you of it. We are seldom appreciated for doing so. Most of history is unpleasant, so we that continue to speak on it are regarded with disdain.

Once in a lifetime, someone that actually can make history listens to us, and then they do.

The time to make history anew has come.


Your messenger from history,
Sigma

Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interesting others,

We are working on another episode of Zooier Than Thou, and hopefully, the recording will be done by week's end.


Thank you,
Sigma

Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

Happy Zoo Pride Week!

I had a chance to spend a week hanging out, off-and-on, with Toggle, co-creator of Zooier Than Thou, and the main things I found out are that I am not very good at trivia games, I have a long way to go before I have learned the piano portion to the song "Letter to Madeline," by Ian Noe, and campgrounds that offer amazingly reasonable weekly rates are probably managed with an annoying HOA mentality (not naming any names).

Not saying why, but "Girls and Boys," by Blur, is going to be stuck in my head for months.

Nice as a vacation away was, I am also glad to be getting back to work. I miss my coworkers, and I get the worst separation anxiety!!!


Stay cool in this heat,
Sigma

Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

At times, I tend to assume, inappropriately, that most people understand what I mean when I am talking about human/non-human love. The fact that I have been spoiled by a relatively gentle bourgeois family background, in spite of the usual tribulations and disappointments, followed by a history of relatively healthy romantic attachments, which I only deserve to attribute to luck. It is normal for me to assume that gentleness and attentiveness is how romance works, but if I look closely at that assumption, I can recognize that that is a flawed assumption in the rough, imperfect real world that we live in. For that, I occasionally owe an apology.

I need to clarify that I advocate the decriminalization of human/animal sexuality in the most narrowly defined situations, where it is clear that the animal is unharmed and where the attachment of the human partner is authentic and based on the typical feelings that a human would have toward a human romantic partner in the most idealized sitcom Brady Bunch version of reality. This is the only type of romance that I can really comprehend because this is the only kind of romance that I have any experience with.

I am also aware that people from imperfect backgrounds can do imperfect things. For even those kinds of people, I am a firm believer in the concept of restorative justice, where we make the world more just by teaching the people in it to behave more justly. Nevertheless, I could never really be happy with someone that would hurt a non-human romantic partner. I feel more strongly about that than I would feel about a human romantic partner. I think that many zoos also feel the same way.

I think that a part of what stymies many zoos from pursuing their own cause is that they are fearful of encouraging bad actors, but I disagree. The status quo encourages bad actors. Keeping zoo underground just creates a shroud of darkness around the subject, and just because you can't see it does not mean that it isn't happening. That which you cover up only festers and ultimately metastasizes. We need zoos to be unafraid to be openly zooey so that we can swiftly correct them if they are also behaving misguidedly toward their animals or taking risks with their own health that they really shouldn't. As long as zoo remains underground, people can't easily tell the difference between behavior that is misunderstood and behavior that is actually harmful.

We zoos should put an end to the cult of secrecy, not just for the sake of social acceptance but because we love animals and because we want to make the world safe for animals to live in. When we bury our own heads in the sand, we are burying our own honor.

In my experience, zoo has been just as sweet, gentle, and compassionate as my relationships with humans have been, and I see it as healthy and wonderful for both human and non-human partners. I believe that this is why I seldom hesitate to tell people that I am a zoo. I know that I really have nothing to be ashamed of, and if anything, the person that judges me without really knowing me should be ashamed.

Even without decriminalization, we zoos could break the cult of secrecy, and I think this is the only way we can really start to develop a culture that is really earnestly trying to be worthwhile as partners in the advancement of human society and morality. That has to be earned, but we can do it.


Thank you,
Sigma

Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

I have decided to start a group on a public meetup site by the name of "Zoo-Queer Entente." I expect it to take at least a couple of years to attract a sustainable following. There is tremendous competition for attention, and more people want to start groups than to join them. I am not a child, and I do not believe that you just open a group, set a meet-up date, and have a made-to-order group of like-minded individuals. Starting a meet-up group means many hours alone in coffee-shops, brasseries, breweries, and nightclubs, and building up a following, especially one that is in accord with one's ideals, is a feat of patience.

I am hopeful of eventually having either the same number of LGBTQIAA as self-acknowledged zoos or more LGBTQIAA than self-acknowleged zoos. This is very important. The idea behind a mixed group is that no zoo really has to identify as zooey in order to join the group. A person could be joining because they are LGBTQIAA, even "A" as in "ally," and are merely curious.

Gay-straight alliances at schools work in about the same way. Nobody that joins a gay-straight alliance really has to acknowledge being gay, but they could be straight people that simply agree with the point-of-view that permitting harassment against LGBTQIAA tends to embolden the sorts of people that engage in that sort of harassment. Therefore, LGBTQIAA can join without really having to come out, formally.

It makes a substantial amount of sense for straight people to oppose anti-LGBTQIAA harassment. There are people, in society, that want to act as "social gatekeepers." The way it works is that those thugs will determine what group of people it is the easiest to turn people against, which used to be LGBTQIAA. They would engage in grotesque bullying against LGBTQIAA until they were afraid to speak up, and they would then double-down on the hate, thereby entrenching the point-of-view that LGBTQIAA are sinister, predatory, and dangerous individuals. Those thugs thereby create an illusion that it was somehow meaningful and important for them to engage in that kind of bullying, in the first place. The problem is that it is only a matter of time before they want to perform the same trick on someone else, and eventually, they turn against people with disabilities, people with weight problems, people that look weird because they come from an unusual mixture of ethnic backgrounds and are therefore subtly DIFFERENT. In the end, if you give those kinds of thugs one victory, that will never be enough for them because it will never be enough for them. Straight people that are not absolutely stupid understand this, and they understand that defending against bullies must start with defending the most targeted groups.

One of the largest challenges, for us zoos, is clearly communicating our intentions to the LGBTQIAA community, so there will not be any confusion. We are really in the same boat as themselves, which is that we are beleaguered by highly organized and extremely dangerous hate groups. This is not just about "making it okay to have sex with animals," but it is about making sure that people that harass our families and coworkers, invade our privacy, and otherwise commit serious crimes against us can be brought to justice for their crimes.

We need to communicate, to the LGBTIAA community, that a hate crime is a hate crime, and if we do not stand up to these thugs, then it will only be a matter of time before they try to pull the same trick on LGBTQIAA like they have in the past. It is imperative that we never let hate crimes take on the airs of moral legitimacy. These hate crimes are not wrong simply because they are being directed at zoophiles, but THESE HATE CRIMES ARE WRONG BECAUSE THEY ARE HATE CRIMES AT ALL. The LGBTQIAA community would be completely mad to allow hate crimes assume the airs of moral legitimacy.

Therefore, the purpose of the Entente is to produce a simple idea, which is that we must never allow serious hate crimes to assume airs of moral legitimacy. If we zoophiles fail to prove this point, then we would be failing not just ourselves, but in the long-run, we would be failing the LGBTQIAA community, too. When hate crimes assume airs of moral legitimacy, it endangers everybody.

We are going to prove the point that we zoos have a right to assemble peacefully and lawfully without any fear of harassment or violence or any other systematic persecution.

The people we are up against are people that do not know any trick besides violence and cruelty. It is all that they have in them. In situations where they can mislead people into believing that they are "righteous crusaders for moral purification," they have a semblance of importance: they thereby become popular and, for a while, are loved or even powerful. They never learn any other tricks, though, and letting them get away with it teaches them one critical life lesson: "This trick works."

I have had friends question my good judgment, but what they are not taking into account is that I am also a transgender woman. If zoophiles dropped the ball and thereby allowed hate crimes to assume the airs of moral legitimacy, then transgender people would be next. I believe that I am taking a trivial risk if I act now, but if people like me do nothing, then I am certain that I would be murdered before I had grown to be an old woman, not for being a zoo but for being any other kind of "undesirable." If I act now, though, then my risks are really trivial, and if I am successful at starting a movement, then I am fairly certain that I will grow to be an old woman without ever being the target of violence again. I act in the only way that I could reasonably act if I intend to be alive for another half a century.

The way that I intend the Entente concept to work is very simple. My prescription is simple camaraderie. If you can bring zoos and LGBTQIAA together, then the fact that zoos and LGBTQIAA are meeting together at all is the victory, and once that victory has been won, it should be celebrated with joy, games, laughter, and hugs.

The Entente has been born.


An artist in accord with herself,
Sigma

PS: Happy Juneteenth!