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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crimson Longinus" data-source="post: 8368912" data-attributes="member: 7025508">Yes. That is trivially true. It just is that in any given actual situation we need to get into specifics.I am really not trying to argue for any specific positions (though I obviously have opinions) or build some gotcha, I simply try to unpack what biological essentialism actually means in context of fantasy species.To put it simply: it is racist to say that ethnic group A of humans is essentially different than ethnic group B (And I still think it remains true even if we get into qualifiers such as 'most' or 'usually'.)* So what does this mean for building fantasy species? Is it problematic to say that elves are essentially different to dwarves, or that humans are essentially different than aarakocra? Because if it is, I literally do not understand how these fantasy species could be depicted at all. And perhaps they shouldn't; that certainly is a perfectly possible conclusion. Ultimately I feel the discussion seems to elide the question of what is the purpose of having these fantasy species in the first place; why we have them, what are we trying to tell with them?(*I'd really like not to use any real world racist language here as an example, hopefully people imagine what I mean.)</blockquote>