#Disability hierarchy

[ira-407]

What is Aspie Supremacy, Actually?

A lot of people know what aspie supremacy is, but don’t seem to actually know what it means. For one, its origins can be traced back to Mel Baggs. It’s possible someone else used the term before sie did, but the framework for it that people are most familiar with originated with hir. Mel also coined autistic supremacy before that. They’re not necessarily one in the same, but I don’t think it’s bad to use them interchangeably, especially since one is often accompanied by the other anyway. It's a similar idea to the disability hierarchy and "My Mind is Fine" doctrine that preceded it, and is directly related to these things.

Autistic Supremacy is an autistic person acting like or outright stating they’re superior to non-autistic people. This often comes in the form of what was called “NT-bashing” in the usenet days. I personally don’t see it as different enough from Aspie Supremacy for the distinction to really matter, but it was something Mel came up with before Aspie Supremacy and is linked to it. Someone is an autistic supremacist when they make a space that is only for autistic people and they don’t even allow cousins in. Autistic spaces are important, but I think what makes a space autistic space vs. not one is who is in the majority, and moreover, who is in control. So I don’t care so much if it’s all autistic or not. I feel like that mindset does more damage than it helps. “By and for autistic people” doesn’t need to mean “autistics only, sorry”. It’s part of what made the Facebook group Just Us Autistics so bad. Anyway.

Aspie Supremacy is autistic people acting superior to other autistic people. This was much more blatant when Mel devised the term but is absolutely still a thing. It runs a lot deeper than I think most people are willing to admit-or, to be more specific, the people who are perpetrating it. As much as I’ve mentioned Mel already, I don’t think the definition of Aspie Supremacy is beholden to Mel and Mel alone, and I don’t think sie would think so either. Based on what I’ve observed, I think the examples I’m about to give are very much things Mel would have agreed qualify as Aspie Supremacy regardless. Aspie Supremacy isn’t simply when someone declares themself an aspie or when a person clings onto the Asperger’s diagnosis despite its extinction. Sure, that counts as it, and many people who do that also do other things, but that’s just the most apparent form of Aspie Supremacy. There are more covert examples that I argue are more insidious, and are done by people who would be very quick to denounce Asperger’s, but only because the person it’s named after was a nazi and for no other reason. 

Examples of Aspie Supremacy:

 Failing to mention anything related to disability in your advocacy-ergo, talking about autism as its own thing or solely as a cultural identity

Moreover, failing to contextualize autism within the scope of the broader disability community and rights movement. MAYBE saying something about ADHD but that’s it.

Doubly so if you ignore the I/DD-led Self-Advocacy Movement

Not centering people with I/DD in your advocacy at all

If you do mention people with I/DD, it’s brief and basically an afterthought. Perhaps as a statistic or vague example of something.

Separating autism as its own thing from the rest of the neurodivergent umbrella

Saying you “stand with nonspeakers” and do nothing to actually engage with them beyond sharing their stuff on social media

Saying you “stand with nonspeakers” only to say very stigmatizing things about them

When being called out for this, you don’t listen and perhaps try to argue that you’re actually right. Bonus points if the person you’re arguing with has I/DD and/or is nonspeaking.

Tokenize nonspeakers and silo them into their own special subclass of the autistic population

Use “Medium/High Support Needs” as a stand-in for “low functioning”

Assert that you are nothing like people you deem to have higher support needs

Using your autism as an excuse for racism and calling people ableist for rightfully criticizing your behavior because “[the racism] is one of my autism symptoms”

Wanting more autism subtypes to be officially recognized like AuDHD or PDA

On that note, using PDA as an excuse for shitty behavior, ESPECIALLY if you consider it a “pervasive drive for autonomy”

Trying to rebrand PDA as a “pervasive drive for autonomy”

Your advocacy being highly academic and intellectual-sounding with no effort in making it sound more accessible

On that note, not engaging in the actual community that is outside of academia's ivory tower, unless it's for academic research

Being against the idea of autism or ADHD being considered a disorder

Caring significantly about the distinction between “disorder” and “disability”

Forcing people to exclusively use identity-first language and not even considering person-first language’s origins

Talking about the social model of disability in the misunderstood concept of “people are only disabled by societal barriers”, denying the existence of disability that comes from personal impairments at all

Supporting the removal of autism and maybe ADHD from the DSM but only those because they’re “identities” 

Thinking that autistic people are direct descendants of neanderthals 

Armchair diagnosing people with mental illnesses just because they don’t do things you like

Denying the legitimacy of someone because they use FC, RPM, or a similar method to form words

Saying things like "that's not autism or intellectual disability it's apraxia" or some other form of that statement

There are definitely more but these are all of the examples I could readily think of. All of which I have observed from other people. So as you can see, these are things that are actually quite common in autistic spaces. Really, most of these are signs of being a generally indecent person. It’s pretty damning how many people I know do this, and to be clear, they aren’t people I like. At this point, I have zero tolerance for Aspie Supremacy. It’s one thing to still be in the learning process and having a commitment to doing as good by certain people as possible, but it’s another thing to do the stuff I listed above *and be proud of it*. As for one particular example, I will say there’s nuance to saying you’re not like another person and some truth to it. Where I take issue is when you do this with another autistic person in a way where you’re saying you don’t even have the same disability as them, especially if you’re saying they don’t deserve the same rights and basic respect as you do. That autistic person who doesn’t speak and has an intellectual disability is likely more like you than you think, and to deny those similarities is wrong and exclusionary. 

TL;DR Aspie Supremacy sucks. It’s something people need to check within themselves. It’s also a lot more prevalent than one may think, and denouncing the specific labels of aspie and Asperger’s does not recuse oneself from it. 

[librarycards]

one of the wildest things about tumblr anti-intellectualism is the framing of disabled/Mad people as a monolith (false) with no collective investment or participation in critical disability / Mad studies (uhh. false) and whose non-“peer-reviewed” forms of knowledge production are and have always been somehow irrelevant to scholarly discourse and are therefore only relevant for cheap shots at academic critical disability and Mad studies (false, both extremely false and extremely embarrassing)

[timidsketch]

I hope all of the exclusionists in the disabled community are seeing how republicans are weaponizing the word "able-bodied" just like how these bigoted disability exclusionists do. Huh, it's almost as if disability exclusionists are hypocritical as fuck and helping republicans harm fellow disabled people and poor people with their sanist rhetoric 🤔 And yet will these disability exclusionists give a shit when their vilification of "able-bodied" people helps republicans get millions upon millions of people thrown off their healthcare? No, because why would disability exclusionists give a fuck about anybody except themselves? They've shown time and time again that unless you're a carbon copy of themselves, they will never give a shit about you, your own disabilities, and your oppression. Fuck exclusionism, and especially fuck disability exclusionists

[jellbell]

everyone who says they should've kept the original plot idea of misty being obsessed with jackie and not coach... they don't get it...

[unproduciblesmackdown]

"the things that this story turns away from is more interesting than what it's actually trying to do" just like in billions

[ursie]

If any Butch needs a platonic Disabled Femme Joyfriend I am available 💃💅 xe/xem pls

[raven]

tumblr decided to put me in the disability algorithm so im seeing the worst takes straight on my own phone screen

[softness-and-shattering]

Is the article agreeing, disagreeing, or neither? There's too many layers here, "as a trans man at this woman's only event". That's not male privilege it's transmasc erasure. Idk what's going on here.

[dontbelasagnax]

I find as fandom has assimilated towards a capitalist mindset of consumption, there has been a larger focus on fanart and fanfiction- both in spaces that view creatives as "content creators" and spaces where creatives are seen as writers and authors but lauded similarly to celebrities or deities for gracing the common people with their creations.

This has produced a side effect wherein fanart and, primarily, fanfiction are seen as the Best Forms Of Transformative Works... which means that any other type of transformative work is thrown by the wayside.

There should be no hierarchy of fanworks - every single work is a labor of love (or spite... I see y'all throwing middle fingers to canon 😉) and should be recognized as such. Fandom is a community. It's not a transactional relationship. Everyone contributes and interacts out of shared passions and interests.

If you make podfics, gifs, photo edits, fanvids, fan binding, metas, fiber arts, jewelry, fanmixes, translate fics to another language, run/contribute to a fan wikia or compile lore and resources in other ways: I see, appreciate, and cherish all the hard, love fueled work you put into your creations.

Not to say that fanfic and digital art are over-appreciated (Since I do see that many people are allergic to pressing reblog. It's a community. We're supposed to share and communicate. Lurkers are valid but for the most part, interaction with like-minded people is what fandom is intended for.) but the pedestal they are placed on needs to be lowered. Your favorite artists and authors are real people with real lives. They piss and shit just like you. They work in retail and healthcare and are unemployed due to disability. There is nothing extraordinary about them and they are wonderful human beings all the same. No one is better than anyone else. We're all equals here on this playground.

That said, I think we need to uplift the underappreciated fanworks and creators and give them more attention so they are on equal footing with fanfic writers and fanartists. Reblog the gifsets and tell the creator you're in love with how they colored the gifs, keyboard smash in the tags when reblogging a plush doll someone crocheted of your blorbo, try listening to a podfic on your commute home instead of an audiobook and remember to leave a comment when you get home.

As a final note, I want to give a warm hug to anyone who has sat refreshing tumblr or ao3 hoping that maybe someone will tell them they did a good job. To anyone who has considered quitting their fandom endeavors because their posts or works never get as much attention and love as the rest of the artworks or fics in the fandom tags, your creations are worth making and sharing. Numbers do not equate to quality, nor can they convey how loved your creations are by a given person. Only you can bring your unique sparkle to fandom and your presence is absolutely welcome no matter how big or small, grandiose or inconsequential, important or worthless you think it is.

[transmutationisms]

I love your takes, but I feel super, super lost with what you were trying to say about the natalism one. I feel like you're saying that there is no contradiction on wanting more babies, a higher population number and punishing mothers, but can you elaborate on that a bit more, because it does seems contradictory. I'm not disagreeing with you, I just want to understand it better.

alright there's a perennial debate (on here but also in a wider cultural sense) that goes on where people start noticing that some of the ways in which we socially and economically de/value children, parenthood, and specifically motherhood are internally contradictory. how can it be that there is immense social and economic pressure to heterosexually partner and reproduce, and yet most public and social infrastructure is also profoundly hostile to children and their guardians? why is it that this person couldn't find a doctor to perform a voluntary hysterectomy because their bodily preferences were subordinated to the medical valorisation of their fertility, and yet this other person was forcibly sterilised or coerced into using contraception because the prospect of them reproducing is framed as socially destabilising and degenerative? how are 'family values' touted by politicians who openly and explicitly also hate real existing families? do they want people to have more children or fewer? is it more counterculture and rebellious to have children or to not have children? to have sex or to not have sex? to partner off? to be polyam or monogamous?

the answer broadly speaking is that the oppositions people see here are only surface-level. the bourgeois state's interest is in biopower, and this produces competing demands: for some people to partner off and reproduce, and for others to be exterminated. the valorisation of the white middle-class nuclear family is the same as the devalorisation of its negations: racialised people, disabled people, family arrangements other than nuclear and heterosexual, etc. you can't understand the demand that people reproduce if you don't understand it is necessarily also accompanied by the demand that other people don't. these aren't actually contradictory once you understand that what the bourgeois state wants has nothing to do with your individual behaviours and everything to do with how many 'desirable' bodies it has at its disposal. that economic consideration is what creates both the natalist policy meant to encourage [some people's] reproduction, and the exterminatory policy meant to suppress and eradicate [other people's] reproduction.

usually this kind of conversation very quickly devolves into a privilege framework argument, where people are trying to find some kind of social hierarchy that is hegemonically applied top-down and that rewards, universally, certain behaviour choices over others. again, the "people who marry and reproduce are privileged and socially rewarded over me #childfree" versus "actually some people still have to fight tooth and nail to even get medical support / approval to have children, let alone actually get access to the kind of economic and social support necessary to raise them" debate. it's smoke and mirrors because there is no universal privileging of the choice to have children or not have children. what there is, is a privileging of certain people on the basis of the economic assessment of them as biological assets, and the inverse (and mutually constitutive) devaluations of everyone else. really over-discussed examples here but to give them anyway: this is why, for example, french natalist policy and the USA's constant efforts to strip back welfare-net policies in order to harm (primarily) black families are both arising from the same basic impulses of two imperialist nation-states. obviously there are different histories and contextual factors that have resulted in france and the US trying to skin the same cat in different ways. but what they share is an underlying interest in trying to shore up their population in both size and 'fitness', understood here in its full racialised and eugenic meaning.

[timidsketch]

I don't want to hear radicalized shit from a 19 year old.

Stop with the dualism and Us vs. Them rhetoric you use to encourage exclusionism and oppression hierarchies. Stop with turning "abled" into a derogatory term. Stop pretending equality means "Now it's my turn to harm people." Stop trying to define disability as one specific experience when disability experiences are as diverse as the people who live them.

All your shitty post does is cause more separation, more pain, more exclusionism, and more hatred. How about you put effort into actually making a better world instead of continuing to divide and radicalize people on social justice Tumblr

Disability is raw, disability is painful, and no matter how much ableds say they understand that they just dont.

[tanadrin]

Can you explain in what what you think eugenics doesn't work? Does this basically boil down to skepticism about the accuracy of GWAS studies? My understanding is that academic consensus is "G probably exists, disentangling direct genetic inheritance vs genetic cultural inheritance is complicated but possible, we can identify a number of alleles which we're reasonably confident are directly causally involved in having a higher G factor"

when it comes to intelligence, its heritability, and its variation at the population level, my understanding of the science is:

highly adaptive traits don't, in fact, vary much at the genetic level between populations of a species because they are strongly selected for. in an environment where a trait is being strongly selected for, a population that failed to express that trait strongly will be rapidly outcompeted.

intelligence is probably the quintessential such trait for humans. we have sacrificed a great deal of other kinds of specialization in favor of our big brains. we spend an enormous amount of calories supporting those brains. tool use, the ability to plan for the future, the ability to navigate complex social situations and hierarchies in order to secure status, the ability to model the minds of others for the purposes of cooperation and deception means that we should expect intelligence to be strongly selected for for as long as our lineage has been social and tool-using, which is at least the last three million years or so.

so, at least as a matter of a priori assumptions, we should expect human populations not to vary greatly in their genetic predisposition to intelligence. it may nonetheless, but we'd need pretty strong evidence. i think i read this argument on PZ Myers' blog a million years ago, so credit where that's due.

complicating the picture is that we just don't have good evidence for how IQ does vary across populations, even before we get into the question of "how much of this variation is genetic and how much of it is not." the cross-national data on which a lot of IQ arguments have been based is really bad. and that would be assuming IQ tests are in fact good at capturing a notion of IQ that is independent of cultural context, which historically they're pretty bad at

this screed by nassim nicholas taleb (not a diss; AFAICT the guy only writes in screeds) makes a number of arguments, but one argument I find persuasive is that IQ is really only predictive of achievement in the sense that it does usefully discriminate between people with obvious intellectual disabilities and those without--but you do not actually need an IQ test for that sort of thing, any more than you need to use a height chart to figure out who is missing both their legs. in that sense, sure, IQ is predictive of a lot of things. but once you remove this group, the much-vaunted correlations between IQ and stuff like wealth just straight-up vanishes

heritability studies are a useful tool, but a tool which must be wielded carefully; they were developed for studying traits which were relatively easy to isolate in very specific populations, like a crop under study at an agricultural research site, and are more precarious when applied to, e.g., human populations

my understanding based on jonathan kaplan articles like this one is that twin studies are not actually that good at distinguishing heritable factors from environmental ones--they have serious limitations compared to heritability studies where you actually can rigorously control for environmental effects, like you can with plants or livestock.

as this post also points out, heritability studies also only examine heritability within groups, and are not really suited to examining large-scale population differences, *especially* in the realm of intelligence where there is a huge raft of confounding factors, and a lack of a really robust measurement tool.

(if we are worried about intelligence at the population level, it seems to me there are interventions we know are going to be effective and do not rely on deeply dubious scientific speculation, e.g., around nutrition and healthcare and serious wealth inequality and ofc education; and if what people actually want is to raise the average intelligence of the population rather than justify discrimination against minorities, then they might focus on those much more empirically grounded interventions. even if population differences in IQ are real and significant and point to big differences in intelligence, we know those things are worth a fair few IQ points. but most people who are or historically have been the biggest advocates for eugenics are, in my estimation, mostly interested in justifying discrimination.)

i think the claims/application of eugenics extend well beyond just intelligence, ftr. eugenics as an ideology is complex and historically pretty interesting, and many eugenicists have made much broader claims than just "population-level differences in intelligence exist due to genetic factors, and we should try to influence them with policy," but that is a useful point for them to fall back onto when pressed on those other claims. but i don't think even that claim is at all well-supported.

[hyperlexichypatia]

Discourse is like "People take this 'ableism' thing way too far, they'll say it's ableist to [thing that is definitely ableist, but not for the reason the people they're rebutting think it is]."

Most things are ableist, because we live in a structurally ableist world. Most of our core assumptions about value and hierarchy and correct behavior are ableist, because we live in an ableist society. So yes, "People on the internet go around calling everything 'ableist'" because everything is, in fact, ableist! Because systemic ableism is the water we fish all swim in!

But anti-ableist discourse often begins and ends with "It's ableist to say that people should do that because some people are disabled and can't do that." This kind of objection kind of... only touches the surface of systemic ableism. And it gives the impression of objecting to a valid generality with some kind of special pleading, which is just... beside the point. Any discussion of ableism centered on "There should be An Exception for Legitimately Disabled People" is just... an insufficient framework for addressing systemic ableism.

So you end up with someone saying "I said that people should eat their vegetables, and somebody called me ableist, because some disabled people can't eat vegetables! Isn't that ridiculous? Obviously I'm not talking about people who legitimately can't! I'm talking about people who are too lazy to try! These 'anti-ableism' people take things ridiculously too far!" And. Like. "Some disabled people can't eat vegetables" only touches the surface of why saying "People should eat their vegetables" is ableist in the first place.

Why is eating certain foods being framed as an obligation that someone needs a "legitimate excuse" to opt out of? What underlying beliefs about health, diet, nutrition, and morality are built into your premises about what people "should" eat? Why does the spectre of the person who "Doesn't take care of their health because they're lazy" bother you? What function does judgment of this real or hypothetical person serve? Do someone else's food choices affect anyone else? Even if you can come up with a way that someone else's food choices can theoretically affect other people, is that the real reason why you're judging them? Or are you reacting to a lifetime of cultural messages around health moralizing and judgment of "laziness" and "excuses" all of which are rooted in systemic ableism and then retroactively justifying it with an ad-hoc claim about "Well uh... uh... the environmental impact of food production!"? Cool, but is that the real reason you've constructed this image of a Lazy, Unhealthy Person With Bad Health Habits to get angry at?

"People on the internet" say that "everything is ableist" because everything is in fact ableist!

[justaz]

Thinking about Percy’s relationship with the Underworld children in comparison to his relationships with the sky children and how it all relates to the hierarchy and experiences Percy has been through.

Yap fest incoming

Now, first of all, Percy is the victim of bullying at home and in school. His bully at home is Gabe and then he has all these bullies at school that pick on him and the other “weird kids” and Percy takes some of the other “weird kids” under his wing and protects them - like Grover and Tyson. Grover because of his crutches and disability and Tyson because of his mental delay and disability.

Percy takes those who can’t protect themselves as well as Percy can protect himself and he protects them from their bullies. Because no one protected him at home - no one was really there to see the abuse, granted, especially because Percy never made it known to his mom that we can tell from the canon material but even if Sally knew of the arguments Gabe and Percy got into, she never left him because she knew he needed Gabe’s scent to keep him safe, but from his pov that might be his mom failing to step in and protect him.

And so he’s not comfortable at home and prefers to be with his mom alone at Montauk. But my point is he doesn’t feel like he belongs at home with Gabe. Then he makes either one or no friends at his schools and then is bullied and blamed for everything before getting kicked out. He never has a place to call his own, to feel as if he belongs. He knows what it is to be judges and to be discarded and deemed unworthy.

And then he arrives at camp full of other kids like him. And while he’s unclaimed, he feels as if he finally finds a place he belongs and begins to make more friends. Then he’s claimed and shoved into a cabin all alone and avoided by all of camp besides Luke, Annabeth, Grover, and Chiron (from what I can remember and even then I’m pretty sure I recall a line about Annabeth barely tolerating his existence because she would always look at him as if he were stupid before ignoring him entirely or something along those lines correct me if I’m wrong).

So he finally finds a place he belongs only that no he really hasn’t because no one wants to touch him with a ten foot pole after being claimed. And then he completes a quest and is welcomed back with open arms - finding his place again. Only for next summer to roll around and Tyson is claimed as his brother as he is once again cast aside by camp for having a monster for a brother.

Then Thalia to comes back and take his place and is then respected and revered after a few months, taken under Chiron’s wing and trained personally by him and looked to for guidance by Annabeth and Grover and just completely respected and idolized despite the fact that she never even made it to camp and never completed a quest - she was just a child of Zeus.

So his place is toppled once more and he has to find where he belongs again. But then Thalia joins the Hunters and he settles back in to his position as sort of “leader” within camp. And he rides that position into war, working his ass off to prove time and time again that he can be trusted and respected like Thalia was.

NOW bringing in the children of the Underworld. Percy and Bianca clashed a bit in the beginning because of the Hunter thing but got over that pretty quick and Percy was somewhat protective of her in the sense that he cared deeply about what she was going through, and promising Nico to look out for her. See: the conversation on the porch of that one shop in New Mexico, Percy’s reluctance to let her go forward with his plan, the multiple lines of Percy blaming himself/saying it should’ve been him instead.

Percy and Nico have an admittedly rocky relationship with the whole Bianca thing and then Nico’s repressed gay crush on him, but they truly did care about each other and I’m sick of the animosity people insist is between them lol. Percy was always protective of Nico (though you only see that after the quest when Annabeth is back safe and sound and his mental state has recovered lmfao) and he took on the prophecy to protect him, everything Percy did was to protect Nico from the traumas of the godly world as best he could. Trying to get Nico to run from the skeletons, searching in the woods for him for hours, claiming the prophecy as his own and hid his identity from the Olympians and Chiron to keep him safe. And thats just in The Titan’s Curse.

Percy and Hazel have the most wholesome relationship out of the three, I will say. Percy is immediately protective of Hazel when he sees Octavian blackmailing and threatening her for her vote for praetor and he grips Riptide in preparation for a fight, reassuring her she wasn’t like Phineas, their conversation in Alaska where they both reassure each other :(( aww I love them sm okay okay let me move on.

Anyways, Percy always takes the Underworld kids under his wing just like he did Grover and Tyson, protecting them and looking out for them as best he can from those who would harm them whether it be bullies like Nancy or Mark or Octavian to prophecies and death. In comparison to his relationships with Thalia and Jason where they clash horribly before finding middle ground and becoming friends eventually.

And then the hierarchy between the big three kids where children of Hades/Pluto were always avoided like the plague and feared and seen as a bad omen and can work their asses off and fight endlessly for camp but will still only be seen as children of H/P by most. While children of Poseidon/Neptune make people wary but dont bring respect. I think theres also a hint of fear because of how powerful and temperamental P/N is and how that could transfer over along with P/N being known as the “father of monsters”. And Percy has to work his ass off to prove himself time and time again before being trusted and looked up to the way Percy is. And then theres children of Zeus/Jupiter who are completely and immediately revered and respected whether or not they’ve done anything of note simply because of who their father is.

Anyways all this yapping to say that Percy definitely sees himself in the Underworld kids and takes them under his wing to protect them as best he can while simultaneously arguing and fighting with children of Z/J because he sees his bullies in them simply from the hierarchy and power imbalance between the cousins (“power imbalance” being used loosely here). This is also no Thalia or Jason hate btw,, just character study I guess. I love Thalia and Jason is. There. I guess. (Kidding. He’s a cool character and concept but def not my fav lol)

[qweerhet]

really gets my goat when people weaponize gender politics against disabled people. every time someone blames a disabled man (or person read as a man) for lashing out violently against their female caretaker and refers to it as "male violence" i lose 200 years off my life.

we live in a society where "caretaker" is a role that gives you absolute power over the disabled person in your care; quite frankly i think it's actively malicious to try to apply the concept of gendered violence in a way that posits the disabled person as the agent of violence and oppression in that situation. someone who has 100% control over you is, factually, in a position of absolute power over you; lashing out violently against people in absolute power over you is an inevitability.

i don't think there's a rhetorical way for me to get through to these people; they operate on the idea that maintaining the disabled as a powerless underclass is righteous and necessary, and that their powerlessness is inherent to their existence, not a socially constructed hierarchy. that's why they believe this is a robust feminist analysis of the power dynamics here--in this lens, the patriarchy is a socially constructed hierarchy that must be abolished (correct, tbc), but the caretaker-disabled relationship is just and inherent to the existence of disabled people, and thus cannot be a relevant axis of oppression.

but like. damn. really sucks to see feminism weaponized in such a directly dangerous, violent manner.

[cydork]

Alien Questionnaire - A Biological Perspective

A while ago, somebody linked me a very comprehensive worldbuilding questionnaire. For most aspects of a fictional society, it was great, but I noticed it assumed that anyone using it was making up a fictional human society, or at least a society of beings very similar to humans. As such, there was almost nothing in the biology department, which to me is one of the best parts! Thus, this questionnaire was born.

These questions are designed to help people worldbuild from a biological foundation. As such, the questionnaire only touches lightly on other aspects of a fictional society, and is more of a jumping off point. I wrote it with the aim of using it to develop aliens, but it should be suitable for any project with non-humanoid species, such as sapient terrestrial animals.

Have fun! I'd love to see your answers :)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

General Anatomy How many limbs do they have? Do they have limbs at all?

What are their primary manipulators? Where are they located? How does this affect their tool use, building ability, etc?

What kind of body covering do they have, e.g. hair, scales, feathers? How do they clean it? Do they shed this covering constantly, or all at once at certain times? 

Can they maintain a constant body temperature? If not, how do they deal with changing environmental temperatures? 

What kind of habitat do they live in? Both specific habitat, and broader such as on land vs in water.

What adaptations do they have for living in this habitat?

What kind of creature did they evolve from?

What are the similarities and differences to their closest living relatives? 

What resource(s) is the most necessary and urgent for them? E.g. for many animals, but not all, it’s water.

What are some common mutations? E.g. eye colours, ability to digest lactose in humans.

What injuries or illnesses are considered disabling? 

How is their healing ability? Can they regenerate? If they can, is that limited to certain body parts or a certain number of times?

Senses What senses do they have? E.g. sight, smell, electroreception, etc.

How good are those senses?

Which of their sense/s do they use the most in everyday life?

How might this choice of sense impact the way they interact with the world? 

Can they detect things that Earth creatures cannot? If yes, how and why?

Movement  How do they move? Do they walk, crawl, fly, etc? 

If they have multiple modes of movement, which is preferred, and why?

Which part/s of their body do they use to move?

What is their speed and endurance like? 

How agile are they? 

Do they rely mainly on their own bodies for travel, or do they use pack animals and machines? 

How often do they move around? Are they mainly sedentary, do they move a lot within a set area, do they migrate, etc?

Do they have different levels of mobility depending on age, sex, or other biological group? E.g. young barnacles are able to swim, while adults are anchored permanently to a surface. 

Reproduction and Lifecycle  How many sexes are there? 

Are there differences between the sexes (ignoring the reproductive system)? 

Are there different castes, such as in honeybees or naked mole rats? If so, what is the function of each caste? 

Are differences in sex or caste used to justify discrimination or hierarchy? How might these ideas differ in different populations? 

Do they have a concept of gender? If so, is gender affected by sex, caste, or some other factor?

How do they attract a mate? Do they release a chemical into the air, do an elaborate display, etc?

Does one individual try to actively woo another, or is courtship more mutual?

What do they find attractive in members of the same species?

What is the usual reproductive partnership? E.g. two individuals, one main reproducing individual with a harem, no set partner, etc. 

How long do they live?

How are young brought into the world? Live birth, eggs, spores, etc?

Is producing young a painful, dangerous process, or is it easy?

How much parental investment is there? Are there many young with little investment, or few young with a lot of investment (r vs K strategy)? Or is it somewhere in the middle? 

How many offspring are produced at a time? Think about how attitudes towards children may differ between a species that produces one or two, and a species that produces dozens or even hundreds at a time.

How do they grow? Are they born looking like miniature adults, gradually growing bigger? Do they have specific phases of high growth, like puberty? Do they have a larval phase, metamorphosis? 

How self-sufficient are they as young? Can they move around and feed themselves as soon as they are born? Do they require parental care? 

What is the usual structure of childcare? Single or multiple parents/related individuals? Communally raised? 

Is sex purely for reproduction, or does it serve other purposes?

What kind of sexuality is considered the norm? This doesn’t just refer to same/other sex pairings, but the culture around sex in general.

Diet and Foodchain What is their diet? Are they carnivores, omnivores, frugivores, insectivores, etc?

Do they feed off an unusual source, for example rocks, metals, or (in appropriate settings) something like magic or souls?

What physical adaptations do they have for this diet? 

Is their diet very restricted, or can they have a wide range of foods?

How often do they eat? What is the culture around mealtimes, if any?

Are they prey for other organisms? For each other?

If they are, how do they deal with it? Do they fight back, have barriers, or do they accept it as a part of life?

If they are hunters themselves, what is their attitude to killing other organisms? Are they respectful? Prideful of their kill? Is it completely trivial? 

If they are hunters, how do they hunt? Are they solitary or packhunters? Are certain members of the group designated to hunt? 

Are the results of foraging or hunting shared, or is it everyone for themself?

Are they parasitic, parasitised, or in a symbiotic relationship with any other organisms? 

Body Rhythms How often do they sleep?

What time of the day are they most active? Are they nocturnal, diurnal, crepuscular? 

Do they generally sleep for one long period a day, multiple shorter periods throughout, or something in between? 

Do they sleep to cope with extreme temperatures or bad conditions, i.e. hibernate or aestivate?

Do they have any biological processes that disrupt their life e.g. moulting, reproductive cycles, etc?

If yes, how does their society accommodate for these processes? Does it accommodate them at all? 

Communication What is their main method of communication? Sound, visuals, scent, etc? Think about their main sense and how this would affect communication.

What is their body language like? What small moving parts might aid their body language?

If they have multiple methods of communication, are they all given equal weight, or is one considered higher than others? 

Society How sociable are they? 

If social, what is the usual social structure? 

Are there hierarchies? How strict or relaxed are the roles?

How are disputes usually settled? Is it more common to be violent or appease the other party? 

If not social, what is the reaction to being with other individuals? Do they become aggressive or stressed? Do they tolerate each other? 

What is the usual size of a community? Do they have communities at all? 

Do they have an in-group vs out-group mentality? If so, how strong is it? This generally relates to how scarce or plentiful resources were during their evolution, and how territorial their ancestors were.

What kind of bonds do they form? 

On the spectrum of individualistic to community-oriented, where do they fall?

Do they have a strong sense of personal identity? Think about how this might tie in with the previous question. 

What are the main things they derive identity from? Occupation, gender, family ties, etc?

Do they have names? If yes, how are these names formed? Are they given by another party or chosen by the individual?

Have they domesticated any creatures? If so, what do they use these creatures for?

Do they have any unusual relationships with other creatures on their planet (beyond predation, parasitism or mutualism)?

Do they produce art? What are their main forms of artistic expression? Think about how this will be linked to their main sense(s), communication method, and/or primary manipulators.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GLOSSARY Primary manipulator: Main body part used to manipulate objects, e.g. hands in humans, trunks in elephants, feet in parrots.

Sedentary: Inactive, staying in the same place.

Caste (reproductive): A group within a species with differences in body type and reproductive ability.

Symbiosis/Mutualism: Interactions where both parties benefit, e.g. cleaner fish getting a meal in exchange for picking irritating parasites off larger fish.

Aestivate: To become inactive during hot or dry periods, usually involving being sealed in mucus or soil e.g. lungfish, snails. 

Reproductive cycle: Regular hormone fluctuations that affect an animal’s fertility or attitude towards breeding. The cycles can range from months to years and can include things such as antler growth in male deer, heat cycles, and menstruation in humans.