I’ve been having some good conversation [over on Pillowfort] about relating to androids and AI as a pluran and how that can be a really literal identification with a hypothetical/sometimes actual experience, rather than a broad metaphorical identification with androids/AI as “the Other” like many other marginalized groups might resonate with?

Not to say one is better/more/whatever than the other, but just that it’s a unique set of experiences plurans have in being dehumanized that looks a lot like android dehumanization, for lack of a word that doesn’t imply a desire to be “humanized” so much as “treated like a real person with rights and feelings?” :V

Anyway, thought I might link it with some highlights:

“I think it's specifically the dehumanization while being pressured or built into being ever more "human-like", the being told you exist to serve others or for a specific purpose, the dismissal of feelings that they have, etc. Like it's the actual experiences of both real and fictional androids (see: Data from TNG) that I relate to rather than the abstract metaphor of android-as-other?” 

“I think what might draw me toward androids specifically (though I have fondness for all AI) is that I don't feel so at odds with The Body as I do at odds with ... idk, expectations people have of me/us because of the body we inhabit? I feel like being inside a body, especially a humanoid one in a human world, is kind of part of the deal for me as someone who used to be incorporeal/had an illusory body for G?d knows how many millions of years?”

“And we're all expected to see humanity (or "the real integrated self?" :B) as the thing to assimilate into, to "fix" or "complete" us. Androids are never fully realized in the eyes of humans until we become "real" humans.”

[Folks are super encouraged to engage in the comments on the original post!]