What about people who dress up as eagles and football stars, face streaked with paint, screaming solidarity at mass frenzied events? What about socialites in child-sized clothes and breasts overflowing and face heavily pancaked with makeup? What about suburban dads who wear the same clothes as everyone else in their suburb, day in, day out. What about people with tattoos? What about people with ear piercings? What about women who talk in babytalk? What about people who get veneers on their teeth? All of this is identity fluidity and pageantry. What counts as perversion on one hand and normality on the other will vary widely from culture to culture across millenia of time. If you go back in time, earliest religions, you'll find a LOT of people channeling gods, animals, weather, what have you, they'd literally paint themselves in blood and dress in the hides of gutted animals, to take on oneself the animal spirit, anthropomorphize it. Were they wrong, stupid, do they deserve to be mocked? They saw themselves as being part of the natural world, and they were. Life is art, life is religion, life is sex, life is theater. What's important to one is not to the other, and the inverse. Anytime someone makes fun of or rags on someone for being different, I want to say: if everyone were as perfect as you, the world would be an awfully boring place. Skritch.
I try not to judge. It's not always easyWhat counts as perversion on one hand and normality on the other will vary widely from culture to culture across millenia of time.
This is very true. What is and is not socially acceptable ebbs and flows. One need only read the old testament to see how much the times have changed. Chronicles 3:1-9, 14:3, King David had six wives and numerous concubines.
-Hmm..
You do not get my point. Every single instance you named was temporary, surface-deep - to support or emulate something for a given time. The sports fans, the (what I assume you meant were to be) sex workers (I'll give the suburban dads point, but it's a whole other issue of social casting - I am almost certain that, given the opportunity, they would wear something else UNLESS they truly do love these clothing for their comfort and looks and not because everyone wears them), the people who alter their bodies via tattoos and ear piercings, the shamans. All of them change for specific events - once the sports league/work is over, they remove these items. And in any case, it does not override what they are - sports fan do not claim to be buffalo when dressed in their colors. Sex workers do not start thinking they are foxes when prompted to wear it for a fetish or any other reason. Suburban dads don't believe they are perfect - they simply try to emulate what the PEOPLE around then are. People don't pretend they're boats when getting an anchor tattoo, or a warrior when they draw a pierced heart. They don't go tribal when getting their ears pierced. And the shamans of old? They didn't believe that they BECAME gods/animals. They imitated it, or dressed in symbolism of them, to try and connect to them - but once the ritual was over, they were people again. Or they may have other issues at hand - such as the baby-talking women which, I believe, may have had a traumatic experience, the people who get teeth veneers which most often have damaged teeth or an unhealthy obsession with appearance. And these people still need help. And these people, day-in day-out, truly and deeply believe they are not human. And they don't even do it well - they don't even acknowledge that without human achievements (and without them using their human features), they could express it. They have had bad experiences, or read about things that they didn't want to accept - and in the process label all humans as horrible creatures (which is a common theme - a LOT, if not all of these people demonize what they aren't - in their own terms, cis-people, whether it be cis-species (which basically means we know and accept that we are human) to cis-gendered (where our physical sex aligns with our gender). Whether it is because of bullying or reading news, they have grown a disillusionment to fight the inherent paradox/cognitive dissonance: "I read that humans have killed, raped and done horrible things. I do not want to kill, rape or do horrible things. Therefore I cannot be human." And these people even go and completely disregard the inherent traits of the animal they associate with - such as wolves being efficient killers, otters and dolphins being rapists. And that does not even go into the non-real-kins, like dragon-kins and lamia-kin and 'insert-creature-that-they-created'-kin.
As for 'making fun' - I am not making fun. I do believe that these people, at best, need psychological help, and at worst mentally ill to the point of being impossible to heal. And I am not saying I am perfect, either - it's human nature to have flaws. But unless THEY admit to being human, that humans can have flaws, and that not all of the humans are horrible horrible beings, I cannot classify them as mentally healthy. I am deeply sorry if you feel offended by my opinions - but there is absolutely nothing personal about it. And it is just that, opinions - I do not state any of this as fact, and it is entirely possible for me to be wrong. But from my experience and knowledge, the above is what I understand.