Anti-Mammalian racism and it's implications

[martianmister]

Is it just me, or almost all non-mammalian characters in OotS world is somehow racist against mammalians?

Both The Oracle and Gannji shown to have extreme reptile-supremacist and anti-mammalian views; Blackwing is mild compared to them, but still shown to have some racist views (it's mostly played for laughs). Malack and ABD is insulting other mammals with pseudo-derogatory terms like "warm blooded" and "monkey". It's strange compared to mammalians, who (as I remember) never show overtly racist and derogatory terms against reptile and other non-mammalian sentient beings. These facts begets some unfortunate implications: Reptilia is (genetically) inclined to be evil, racist and irrationally fearful of mammals. Even though there is exceptions like Kilkil, racism is one of overt characteristics of reptile characters...

EDIT: Please no "it's specialism, not racism" jokes.

[Ridureyu]

Stupid hairless apes.

[ti'esar]

Take it away, Nihhus.

[Quartz]

The humans and lizardfolk in Tarquin's army seemed to get on just fine.

[Bulldog Psion]

Yes, now that you mention it, the reptiles do tend to express continual disdain and hostility to mammals. Blackwing is definitely in on the act from the bird/dinosaur angle. On the other hand, mammals seem to be mostly racist against other mammals, as for example humans being racist against goblins, and goblins being racist against humans.

[Benthesquid]

In strip 44 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0044.html), we meet our first longish running non-mammal character, Yikyik. Despite being a foulmouthed and antisocial individual, Yikyik makes no mammal cracks.

[skim172]

On the other hand, the humans, dwarves, elves, and goblins apparently rule everything and far outnumber the cold-blooded species, so I think standard fantasy settings rules would say you kind of assume that the anti-reptile sentiment is there, just not expressed. And spending strips explicating "Hey, the mammals hate reptiles" would feel a little redundant and pointlessly tangential to the plot. While imagining about what reptiles might hypothetically find objectionable about humans if lizards had the power of speech sounds like it'd be fun to write. :smalltongue:

Same reason why in sci-fi, the authors rarely explicitly say the robots hate the humans because the humans treat them like garbage - that's implied when you see robots eating our garbage and farting out diamonds for us rich, lazy, decadent humans to wear, even though we already have so many diamonds and the robots have taste buds. Why did we give them taste buds? Because screw them, we're humans, we don't give a crap, amirite eff yeah hey why is my computer launching nuclear missiles.

[King of Nowhere]

{{scrubbed}}

[NihhusHuotAliro]

Take it away, Nihhus.

Let's see how un-upset you mammals are when they CUT OFF THE HEADS OF YOUR BABIES AND SELL THEM AT MARKET. When they drain your swamps to make rice fields. When a popular television show is dedicated to a group of people committing widespread slaughter of your kind. When the mammals steal 99.999521458 per-cent of all spotlight in stories, when they have squeazled you out of your proper place ruling the world.

When NOBODY GIVES A CRUMB about the invasion of Reptilia, when your kind are skinned to make shoes and suitcases, when the people ALWAYS KILL THE BIGGEST ONES OF YOUR SPECIES even though size is determined by health in many species so THEY ARE DOING A PROTRACTED GENOCIDE by removing the best from the gene pool.

Also, when in every disney movie ever you are nothing but the mindless ravening crocodiles (even in Rescuers DOwn Under, a film celebrating all nature, does this); when science textbooks flat-out call you repulsive and when Linnaeus himself says that you are despised by God.

I'll tell you

Let me eat your babies, decapitate them, sell the heads at market. LEt me flood your cities into swamps; and let me take corpses and flay them so I can make nice boots. Let me find isolated communities and exterminate them.

And then maybe I'll think you'll understand, mammalian scum.

Also, get a haircut!

[skim172]

When I lived in Korea, I sensed a lot of resentment from the Koreans toward the Japanese. The Japanese had done some pretty terrible things to the Koreans during the various wars throughout the history of the two countries, and the anger the Koreans felt was quite well justified. The thing is, most Japanese I meet are surprised to hear how much resentment there is. It’s kind of like Americans are sometimes surprised to hear how much dislike there is for them in Mexico.

When you’re the bigger country, the one who historically won conflicts and wars, you often don’t much notice the people you’ve stepped on along the way. While the smaller country may create a rivalry with you, you may not even realize that you have a rival. the general populace doesn’t even think about Idris [the smaller country in the book]—except as that poor group of people up in the highlands who sell them wool and do jobs they, the Hallandren, don’t want to do.


the same could well be applied to mammals against everyone else

Wow, that's an incredibly oversimplification and very belittling. And ... not really correct.

{{scrubbed}}

My point being - history is rarely that simple. And groups on the victorious side of history often attempt to paint their critics as "haterz" who can't deal with all their success - hell, Nietzsche and Ayn Rand built entire philosophical schools of thought on the idea. And that tends to last - until that group is defeated and a new one triumphs and then suddenly it's, "Well they're the jerks."

It's almost never the case that one group are just absolutely faultless angels.


Tying that back to the topic, if the mammals rule and control everything and their population outnumbers the reptiles by that much, then it's likely that there is some sort of major disadvantage at play for the reptiles that prevents them from succeeding. Perhaps it's something biological (maybe the need to bask in the sun all the time gets in the way of world conquest), but quite possibly, there is some form of oppressive discrimination at play, so whether or not it's explicitly stated, there's a good chance that dislike of or unfairness towards the reptiles exists.

Because I'm pretty sure the Zainichi feel like the Japanese do "notice" them.

And it just occurs to me - in SoD, Redcloak makes a pretty disparaging statement about the lizardfolk and their sun-basking. So, yeah.

[Domino Quartz]

Um...perhaps we should steer clear of discussing real-world politics and so on? Those kinds of discussions tend to get threads locked.

[coineineagh]

On topic, I believe there was a reptilian prostitute in Sandsedge who had breast implants done to attract customers. Without success, but I sensed no discriminating value judgements from either side on the issue of species/clades. If I weren't lazy, I'd look up the exact wording.

{{scrubbed}}[/COLOR]
That's a very insightful perspective. I never saw it that way before. Living in China, I've often wondered about the fairly rigid world views (http://space.echinacities.com/239770/blog/detail/818) people hold here, including hatred for the Japanese. I suspect that since individuality isn't very strong in many Asian cultures, that they have a hard time separating self-esteem from national identity.

Um...perhaps we should steer clear of discussing real-world politics and so on? Those kinds of discussions tend to get threads locked.
Oh yeah. I should probably copy this insightful text into a wordpad file if I ever want to view it again.

[Boogastreehouse]

I think it looks nice with a little space

Um, I sort of think of threads like this as "Giant bait." If you want to lure the Giant into making an appearance, you can always start talking about topics like this, and hope he shows up to put in his two cents.

I also think of it as similar to trying to call C'thulhu. If the summoning works, he's probably not going to be happy about it.


I think it looks nice with a little space

[Zmeoaice]

In strip 44 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0044.html), we meet our first longish running non-mammal character, Yikyik. Despite being a foulmouthed and antisocial individual, Yikyik makes no mammal cracks.

What about "blech Haflings". Well he isn't badmouthing all mammals, but he's definitely racist against one.

[King of Nowhere]

of course it's an oversimplification. I doubt anyone could ever sum up in ten lines a complex historical situation without oversimplifying it.
And certainly winning wars don't make everyone morally superior, although the opposite also stands, and just because a people got ruthlessly persecuted it don't mean that they wouldn't have done the same if they ha been the ones with greater power.
Anyway, it certainly wasn't my intention to bring the discussion about korea. the point is, people who win wars tend to get hated. and they generally won't understand why, since a) from their point of view they were in the right (everyone is on the right from his point of view), and/or b) to them the conflict was minor, a few troops that subdued a small enemy, something that's barely mentioned in hystory books and in a few years no one remembers anymore.

[Rakoa]

I also think of it as similar to trying to call C'thulhu. If the summoning works, he's probably not going to be happy about it.

Can I quote this in my signature? :smallbiggrin:

[martianmister]

On topic, I believe there was a reptilian prostitute in Sandsedge who had breast implants done to attract customers. Without success, but I sensed no discriminating value judgements from either side on the issue of species/clades. If I weren't lazy, I'd look up the exact wording.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0676.html

[Ceaon]

The Oracle (...) Gannji (...) Blackwing (...) Malack (...) ABD (...) These facts begets some unfortunate implications: Reptilia is (genetically) inclined to be evil, racist and irrationally fearful of mammals.

Wait, what?
Just because you saw five OotS characters belonging to a certain group act "racist" doesn't automatically mean most or even many members of that group in OotS are racist - and it also doesn't mean that that group is genetically inclined to be so. You might want to read up on the problem of induction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction).

[theNater]

It's strange compared to mammalians, who (as I remember) never show overtly racist and derogatory terms against reptile and other non-mammalian sentient beings.
Daddy's pet iguana. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0811.html)

[Math_Mage]

Wait, what?
Just because you saw five OotS characters belonging to a certain group act "racist" doesn't automatically mean most or even many members of that group in OotS are racist - and it also doesn't mean that that group is genetically inclined to be so. You might want to read up on the problem of induction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction).
To be fair, in fantasy literature, one must often rely on the fleshed-out characters as representatives of their fantasy culture, since it does not exist apart from how it is represented in the story. If characters of a given group exhibit a common characteristic for no apparent reason other than group membership, readers will generalize that characteristic to the group. This is not strictly accurate from a logical perspective, but it's necessary from a reader's perspective.

However, I am skeptical that one can make such a generalization here. First, the grouping being applied is tenuous at best. Blackwing's 'racism' is largely pro-dinosaur sentiment. ABD's dislike of humans is unlikely to spring from the same source as Gannji's. Unless I'm just remembering wrong, it's not clear that the Oracle is actually racist, rather than simply rude to everyone other than colleagues and/or fellow worshipers of Tiamat. These are not characters of one race fulfilling one stereotype; they are characters of various races with distinct attitudes towards race. Second, even if one allowed such a grouping, the conclusion that Reptilia is therefore evil and/or irrational in its attitudes towards mammals does not follow. It presumes that mammals have done nothing to earn such enmity, which is at best a premature conclusion.

[Xzenu]

Interesting topic.


EDIT: Please no "it's specialism, not racism" jokes.

Yeah, lets talk about this issue in a serious manner. Not merely jokes.

Prejudice, bigotry and discrimination, based on a categorization of people is sometimes called categorism. Racism, sexism and homophobia are different focuses of categorism. In a fantasy setting, so is specicism.

Racism: Categorism based on a categorization of races within a species.
Specicism: Categorism based on a categorization of different species, in a setting where multiple sentient species exists.

Redcloak has previously argued that he is not a racist, merely a specicist. As if that would somehow be less bad. Indirectly, that IS his argument: That specicism is okay, unlike racism. We don't get to know for sure whether that's just redcloak, or an established social norm.

One think that speaks in favor of specicism being socially accepted is that Durkon was deeply specicist against intelligent trees. And also paranoid about regular trees secretly being intelligent.

As for reptiles, we can assume that they are "usually evil" in this setting, just like in generic D&D settings. In this particular setting, specicism against sentient mammals (mammallophobia?) does seem to be a common - although far from universal - trait among these evil reptiles.

I do think that mammal races being specicist against reptiles is rather common as well. Sure, Tarquin and Xykon happens to be not specicist. Tarquin is classist, but both of them are mostly "equal oppertunity evil".

However, Belkar seem to go beyond a mere "lets stab anything", going out of his way to humiliate reptilian races and robbing them of their dignity. His "running gag" storyline about kobolds may very well be seen as a series of specicist hatecrimes. More importantly, the rest of the party doesn't react. V even joins in, again without the rest of the party really reacting.

All in all, specicism in both directions do seem to be somewhat socially accepted in the OOTS-verse.

[Xzenu]

Unless I'm just remembering wrong, it's not clear that the Oracle is actually racist, rather than simply rude to everyone other than colleagues and/or fellow worshipers of Tiamat.

The oracle does express disgust at the thought of other species having sex. However, does this deserve to be classified as bigotry? I think not. Everyone should be entitled to their own preferences.

Lets compare with homophobia.

Refusing to see people of the same gender holding hands, throwing a temper tantrum if they do it in public when you are present: I do think this deserves to be classified as bigotry and discrimination.

Refusing to see people of the same gender having intercourse, throwing a temper tantrum if they do it in public when you are present: I do think this is rather reasonable! It does not deserve to be classified as bigotry or discrimination, as long as the social norm it's based on is that people (regardless of age, gender and orientation) shouldn't have intercourse in public just in case someone finds it upsetting.

[Xzenu]

In strip 44 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0044.html), we meet our first longish running non-mammal character, Yikyik. Despite being a foulmouthed and antisocial individual, Yikyik makes no mammal cracks.

Actually, Belkar and Yikyik both make outright statements of racism, although not specicism. Belkar clearly states that he hates kobolds, while yikyik makes it clear that he feels the same way about halflings. Sure they don't make any mention of reptiles or mammals in general, their hatred is probably limited to only one race. However, it should be noted that Yikyik is a reptile around mammals, and socially marginalized compared to them.

Malack may have room for taking some liberties against his mammal friends, but for Yikyik it would probably be suicide to express any mammalophobia where Nale or Z could hear it.

[Tass]

Yeah, lets talk about this issue in a serious manner. Not merely jokes.

Prejudice, bigotry and discrimination, based on a categorization of people is sometimes called categorism. Racism, sexism and homophobia are different focuses of categorism. In a fantasy setting, so is specicism.

Thank you.

What we see in many cases here even go beyond speciesism to cladism. As in "I hate all the different species of mammals, but reptiles are okay."

[Boogastreehouse]

I think it looks nice with a little space



I also think of it as similar to trying to call C'thulhu. If the summoning works, he's probably not going to be happy about it.


Can I quote this in my signature? :smallbiggrin:

Heh, sure, I guess, though I think you should include the part where it shows that I'm talking about Rich; it might not make sense out of context.


I think it looks nice with a little space

[Megsie]

The oracle does express disgust at the thought of other species having sex. However, does this deserve to be classified as bigotry? I think not. Everyone should be entitled to their own preferences.

Lets compare with homophobia.

Refusing to see people of the same gender holding hands, throwing a temper tantrum if they do it in public when you are present: I do think this deserves to be classified as bigotry and discrimination.

Refusing to see people of the same gender having intercourse, throwing a temper tantrum if they do it in public when you are present: I do think this is rather reasonable! It does not deserve to be classified as bigotry or discrimination, as long as the social norm it's based on is that people (regardless of age, gender and orientation) shouldn't have intercourse in public just in case someone finds it upsetting.

What the Oracle said (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0567.html) was, "You mammals are disgusting when you mate." Not that he didn't want to see it, but that it was disgusting in and of itself. Sure, one can argue he's entitled to his opinion, but that doesn't make that opinion not speciesist.

He also described OotS (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0331.html) as "pathetic lonely unclean annoying disgustingly-hairy mouth-breathing ape-people", which I'd say is pretty indicative of anti-mammal views.

[Xzenu]

Thank you.

What we see in many cases here even go beyond speciesism to cladism. As in "I hate all the different species of mammals, but reptiles are okay."

Hmm. In our world, humans are a species.

In fantasy settings, however... Surely humans, dwarves, halflings and elves are merely different races, not different species? I mean, they are capable of interbreeding with each other.

Then again, there might be some authors who actually allow a mammal and a reptile to create offspring together without magic being involved. But still, we shouldn't just assume that to be the norm. And if it is, the system of classifying species must be different in that world.

Anyway... I consider "humanoid mammals" in OOTS to be a species divided into different races, not a class divided into different species.

[Xzenu]

What the Oracle said (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0567.html) was, "You mammals are disgusting when you mate." Not that he didn't want to see it, but that it was disgusting in and of itself. Sure, one can argue he's entitled to his opinion, but that doesn't make that opinion not speciesist.

That part may or may not pass ass merely being rude and insensitive. However...


He also described OotS (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0331.html) as "pathetic lonely unclean annoying disgustingly-hairy mouth-breathing ape-people", which I'd say is pretty indicative of anti-mammal views.

...here he has very clearly passed the line into pure specicism.

[Rakoa]

Heh, sure, I guess, though I think you should include the part where it shows that I'm talking about Rich; it might not make sense out of context.


Agreed. See my signature for what I decided on.

[ReaderAt2046]

Let's see how un-upset you mammals are when they CUT OFF THE HEADS OF YOUR BABIES AND SELL THEM AT MARKET. When they drain your swamps to make rice fields. When a popular television show is dedicated to a group of people committing widespread slaughter of your kind. When the mammals steal 99.999521458 per-cent of all spotlight in stories, when they have squeazled you out of your proper place ruling the world.

When NOBODY GIVES A CRUMB about the invasion of Reptilia, when your kind are skinned to make shoes and suitcases, when the people ALWAYS KILL THE BIGGEST ONES OF YOUR SPECIES even though size is determined by health in many species so THEY ARE DOING A PROTRACTED GENOCIDE by removing the best from the gene pool.

Also, when in every disney movie ever you are nothing but the mindless ravening crocodiles (even in Rescuers DOwn Under, a film celebrating all nature, does this); when science textbooks flat-out call you repulsive and when Linnaeus himself says that you are despised by God.

I'll tell you

Let me eat your babies, decapitate them, sell the heads at market. LEt me flood your cities into swamps; and let me take corpses and flay them so I can make nice boots. Let me find isolated communities and exterminate them.

And then maybe I'll think you'll understand, mammalian scum.

Also, get a haircut!

What evidence do we have that any of that happens in OOTS? (The real world doesn't count because there are no sentient reptiles here and we do a lot of the same things to non-sentient mammals).

[martianmister]

What evidence do we have that any of that happens in OOTS? (The real world doesn't count because there are no sentient reptiles here and we do a lot of the same things to non-sentient mammals).

I think he's talking about real (!) world. :smalleek:

[The Giant]

This thread has a heaping pile of real world politics and plenty of off-topic discussion. Locked