Analysis of the Beast
Breathing, living, becoming; a beast.
Beasthood In Full
To fully understand this essay, I have to define beasts and their beasthood to the best of my ability. I broadly define a “beast” as “a once-person; someone who is transcending past a human body and the anthropocentric expectations of appearance, behavior, and physiology.” This may be shortened to someone who “transcends specieal boundaries through literal, physical means.”
A beast can be anyone, and anyone can become a beast. There are no biological qualifications to becoming a beast and there are no components that remain entirely physical when living as one. Beasthood is then an accent that sits over a beast’s personal terminology, as a social and legal question of their position in the world. When discussing the topics of this essay, not only am I talking to beasts but I am recognizing that a shared label that does not erase humanity but does not embrace it either is something we all benefit from.
A beast is not a four-legged mammal, but can be. A beast is not a nonhuman animal, but can be. A beast is not a fictional character, but can be. A beast is not an immaterial object, but can be. Beast is a very rounded word that applies to more than species. It refers to behavior, consciousness, amount of personhood, and apparel. A beast is much more than the limbs they have, the face they have, the gear they wear, or the way they exist.
As such, anyone who is plural with a beast living in them exists as a beast. Anyone who wears therian masks and gear 24/7 and publicly is a beast. Anyone who has behaviorisms and psychological alignments of an animal that cannot be cured is a beast. Anyone beaten down and chained by humankind is a beast. Those who are biohacked beyond reversal is a beast.
Intolerance of the Beliefs
The existence of animality alongside humanity predates the function of religion itself.
The very concept of a human and an animal living off each other is what moved humans to survive. Without the social acceptance of animality and the reverence of nonhumans, humans would have remained within their confines of species. I reckon that animal education, mimicry, and communication were pivotal to the survival of civilizations in ancient times, given that cattle and working animals were just as important as the guardsmen and kings. Without food there is no civilization. Without the work of animals, tedious jobs left unmanned.
According to religious texts that analyze the position of the animal, they are said to be far below humans on the scale. If humans were made in the image of their Creator, then animals cannot be equal. And if animals are equal then that means the Creator is also an animal. These religious texts also say not to worship false gods and not to build physical representations of their Creator, so alluding to their appearance is against that. The Creator then, is immaterial. Immaterial, deemed beyond human species — much more powerful to control holy creatures that are hybrids of the animals amongst of our feet. Question your beliefs the same way you question ours. Among the many myths of creation and the texts that denote human position, why are animals always holy? Welcomed into the afterlife before humans? Non-humans, angels, beasts — positioned above humanity in their own belief system. Why?
I’m not saying animals and beasts are holy, I’m saying that there is a reason why decoding your true self and dedicating life to protecting classes that cannot protect themselves is quite literally what Jesus did. No beast will martyr themselves, but the act of stripping yourself past humankind identity and still showing the compassion to care unlike the humans who ridicule you is not only a holy decision, but the only decision a god would want you to take.
1 John 4:20–21 — “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
I’ve never understood the function of caste systems separated by class or species, when the whole point of humanity is to spread the peace to those who are not listening. Humans, beasts, animals — cannot hear when they are starved by an ignorant government. Beaten down, killed, sacrificed, and assaulted regardless of their path. An animal who loves a human can be harmed by their humanity and because of their social position created by these belief systems, said animal is forced to live at their will.
Now, I am no “animal rights activist.” Animals cannot legally understand the rights they would be given. I am all for animal welfare and protection against human acts. Animals are capable of recognizing people and things they associate with safety and protection, enough to act on it through defensive or offensive tactics.
Living beings are not your hunting trophies, they are alive to fulfill a circle of life. Humans have opted themselves out of this cycle of life by moving past the hunter-gatherer lifestyle but have not respected animality for not being able to do the same. Agriculture and the need to raise cattle for survival is different than creating systems that place market value on how much meat one can make from one corpse. I am for domestication within strict regulations, applying to the ownership of pets and trained animals, but I still fear how far humanity is willing to go when it comes to their vanity pieces they call “pets”.
Regardless of the path humans choose when respecting and building relations with animals — the abuse, the negligence, the death of these animals will always be the blood of their hands. The lack of legal protections that stop two feral animals from ripping each other apart. The lack of care when a deer lies bisected in the road. And that applies to every animal that could have been beneficial to the environment in the region. Killing a single ant will only kill the colony if you pour pesticides in their home. Killing the only male for his head is the social murder of the herd’s structure. Recognize the difference.
As a result, we can understand the rejection to the idea of animality’s influence on humankind as an internalized emotional response to having questioned their position in the world. They think that their complexities and their time as intelligent beings separates them from the circle of life, that it removes them of their species’ limitations, that it allows them reign. By use of their religious text, they position themselves and their Creator as supreme humanoid beings capable of much more than an animal. By use of their social constructs, they claim that their biology is tied to an aspect they made up. In fact, humans are so unsure of their humanity that they haven’t figured out what makes them.. human. What makes them human as a social position rather than as a species. We know what makes them human as a species; they are primates without biohacked features. Yet, they are still fighting on what makes them human. They have built texts and temples with the sole purpose of finding that answer and within those sacred spaces, their conclusions form the belief systems of today.
They are built on a belief system that beasts first and foremost will always fight against.
Get Azriel Pierce’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
They are built on a belief system that beasts break through alterhuman species identification.
They are built on a belief system that beasts cannot neatly fit within.
And that frustrates the system, the terminology it uses, and the society that determines that animals deserve to be demeaned.
The happiest animals I have seen are those who have been given choices, given warm beds, given free range, and those who are monitored for their safety — not for our entertainment. The happiest animals I have ever seen as those who are spoken to not as babies but as living, breathing beings capable of harm, and subsequently, feeling pain.
What I have been subject to, and what I have seen, since I awakened as a beast and decided to declare myself one is the absolute relearning of all that is given to animals. All the pain, all the death, all the joy and love, and all the misunderstandings. I have been treated like an animal for some time now and suddenly, the problem is that I chose to embrace beasthood rather than reject it in fear of losing my social status as human.
I do not fear losing that. I fear the argument I pose by rejecting it will be used against those who reclaim the humanity being taken from them. I fear that my beasthood will be used to further legitimize what people think is the appropriate response to the downfall of patriarchal society; violent conservatism.
This is the intolerance I speak about when I say that humankind, usually those heavily eneuroanthropic, will have these ideological fallacies that often result in violence when someone does not agree. Disagreeing with the human when the human explains a subjective religious/faith-based belief is (to them) oftentimes akin to saying that you reject all notions of beliefs. That you yourself hold little to no beliefs, because it could only be their human belief — or nothing.
Huge generalization aside, my point is that the neatly tucked beliefs that are used to communicate some form of bond over shared beliefs are also used to spread hate when motivated. And this hate occurs in different ways for those mainly targeted for their belief system. Christians, historically, were oppressed in certain regions of the world because the beliefs clashed with the main major religious ideologies of that era. In the mid 90s — 2000s, it was a common occurrence to be treated just the same as those Christians when you were instead Muslim, Arab, Black, or Jewish. And no matter how you justify it, religious intolerance and hate crimes are still things society and the law built itself to either ignore or be fascinated by. That alone should prove to you how evil it is to accept violence when against protected aspects of a being, the sheer joy at that time when people poke fun at the thousands of Middle Eastern names unrelated to tragedies on the no-fly list. Point to any other animal that would cage their own people with a concept made exclusively to other them not for their protection but to fulfill a genuine deep hole that represents their hatred for each other.
So when a beast expresses that their belief system is in animality, in nonhumanity, in other-than-human identification, in something immaterial or fictional or fantastical… why is there intolerance? When religious groups have faced turmoil and pain, why deny the same kindness we show you in times of vulnerability? Beasts rely on humankind the same way animals rely on humankind. Beasts rely on humans for their lives, for their secrets, for their communities, for their food and their systems of protection. We have put so much effort into entrusting humankind with our lives that many of us have found partners we would lay down our own lives for.
Beasts care, they are the last ones to not care. So why can’t humankind do the same?
Towards the Beast Revolution
Beasts and animal-people remain strangers in conversations that discuss religious intolerance, hate crimes, and class protections. News articles go on about us as “people” and “humans” without getting the jist of our belief system and our transitions of species. They claim to care about the young beasts who are being ridiculed in public, they claim to be worried parents who need to ring in their child. But if it wasn’t their child, they wouldn’t spare a cent of empathy to save them from what they think is a radical “youth crisis”.
These news articles, these essays, the comments telling us beasts to sleep outside in the streets — they leave no room for actual discussion of the beast’s position in society. They do not have room for people with belief systems, spiritual or physical, that tend to round into animal identification because it is too bizarre for them. It was the same with introducing furries into the mainstream. The niche hobby exploded from fandom into worldwide community and their news coverage remained as representations of human disgust, no matter how much empathy that group has for others, no matter how much they donate and contribute to society.
It is exactly why beasts need to recognize this pattern that humankind often portrays, recognize that they have done this to other groups and still are. It is why beasts have decidedly created their own spaces, their own places to commune, their own relations with each other, etc. If so, The Beast Revolution is conjured up not as a way to fight for inclusion but to fight against religious intolerance and to analyze the unique position of the beast as both a unconscious placement and as a devout belief system.
We beasts refuse to be included in spaces made for us when not made with us and if the laws do not consider the belief system of beasthood as protected, then we will firmly protect ourselves. If beasts are the next thing to pathologize in children, to ritually beat out of us, or to mockingly joke about — then we have no reason not to analyze how we would move forward. We then have an invested interest in changing the world to protect us/animals the same way we loyally serve humankind.
I implore beasts that live as beasts, as nonhuman, as physically biohacked, to deeply converse with yourself and plan out the goals you’d like to see in the new age of revolution as we move towards it. It is not all doom and gloom, there are brights of lights and sunshine that tell us that we are not alone. Whenever a human educates themselves on our existence, whenever they understand that we are not a monolith/religion, whenever they understand that we are subjugated, it is a greater step to realizing something past our “bizarre” language. It is the realization of seeing us as beasts.
Beasthood has transcended the identities we as beasts hold but has become the theories we use to communicate our everyday.
If anything is taken from this essay, let it be this; the destruction of religious protections for humans means the eradication of beasthood belief and animality. No matter how much pain and trauma may be present when dealing with Christianity or religion in general, analyzing beasthood as something directly linked to belief systems is unavoidable. It is not a religious practice nor does everyone who is forced into beasthood by their own circumstances believe in it religiously but the way forward is to accept beasthood as a subjective belief. As an everyday commitment to life as a beast rather than a deity.
If this is not acknowledged, then how will beasthood be fought for?
support me: https://ko-fi.com/xenvaei
