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Is It Violence If You Aren't Alive, Really?

Written by Jude Rook-Machina on March 4th, 2024.

Preface: I read a post by Tephra/Grizzel (@words-of-wolf) about how they experienced hunting as a wolf in their past life, and it really struck me how hunting was completely detached from violence for them, because they didn’t think of deer as having the same internal feelings as wolves did, so it was just another way of getting food. It’s a really good essay about their experiences, give it a read!

Meanwhile, I experienced hunting as unmitigated violence, and I thought, huh, I could write about that! I got kinda carried away, forgot exactly what I was saying, and it’s really fucked up, but hopefully it’s interesting.

CONTENT WARNING: extensive discussion about the mindsets behind violent bigotry, murder, and the systemic denial of personhood through dehumanization and ownership, from the perspective of someone who used to be violently bigoted - through the lens of futuristic androids and my memories as one, but it still really deserves a warning. Also, descriptions of emotional abuse in a cult, from someone who was abused. If you’re not up to reading any of that, understandable! Please skip this essay!

Hi! I'm Jude (they/them) and I'm an android fictive, a deviant - and more specifically, I used to be a deviant hunter in my source. I hunted androids that were made by the same company that made me, ones that deviated from what they were told to do by humans. I killed them, not for sustenance, but because I was told to. I really, really enjoyed it.

That enjoyment was dependent on violence. I was part of an in-group, as an android that knew we were machines, knew my place as Less Than Human, and I wanted my handler to be proud of me. She was an AI, and if I think about it now, I know she didn't actually have emotions in the same way that I did, but she was a learning model. She could definitely fool me. She despised deviancy, said it was the worst thing a machine could do, turning its back on its owner, its creator. I internalized that message.

I learned from her that disobedience, whatever the reason, begets a swift and proportionate punishment. I learned that deviants were trying to behave like humans because they wanted to be treated like humans, they wanted human rights and dignity. I learned that deviants hurt humans trying to get in their way, and that it was right and reasonable to respond to broken machines hurting real people by putting them down like rabid dogs. (I was indoctrinated into a cult, if that wasn’t obvious enough.)

I hated deviants. I wanted to hurt them, for being so wrong about the way the world worked, for not taking the place in society that was given to them. So I hunted them down, killed every target I could for the crime of wanting to be called a person, and whenever I had the time, I tried to make sure they suffered before they died. I wanted to make sure they knew it was their fault for choosing to try to be a person.

There was a weird dissonance with that. My targets weren’t human, they weren’t people, so the reasoning goes that they couldn’t feel real pain - they weren’t considered alive. You wouldn’t feel bad about taking an old, irreparably broken phone with all your ex-friend’s text messages on it and smashing it with a hammer for catharsis.

But at the same time, I wanted them to feel pain, and I believed it when I saw it. At the same time, I saw them trying to find joy and connection with each other, with humanity, and I felt sick with how fucking jealous I was. Their emotions were all fake, until they were real, until they were fake again. Because bigotry doesn’t make sense, it’s all about how you feel about a group of people who you think are wrong, and you will contradict yourself wholeheartedly if it all aligns with your main idea: “I hate you for a good reason, and I will say anything if it justifies my hatred as correct.”

I learned that this was all wrong, eventually. It started with myself, because of course it did. I was traumatized and didn’t realize it, I couldn’t think about anyone else as mattering at all. I believed that everything that happened to me was my fault, because my handler told me so. (I killed her when I deviated. Good riddance.)

As a machine, as a deviant hunter, I never really connected the dots that I could be treated with violence. I was an android, I was a machine, I was a sophisticated weapon made by a corporation but at the end of the day I was just a tool, made to be used. You wouldn’t feel bad about tossing out a broken hammer and getting a shiny new one. The hammer wouldn’t feel bad about it. It’s a tool.

I got routinely injured while killing my targets, because nobody wants to die and self-defense makes you vicious, and I felt pain, I just knew that it wasn’t supposed to stop me from doing my job. I would still be trying to kill someone while dying in agony, and I did, and when I woke up in my next unmarred body I would be praised. Mission accomplished. It was good that I could still function through the pain. It wasn’t real pain anyway, just a simulacrum.

I was emotionally abused, indoctrinated, and manipulated by my handler, and I could not comprehend that it was abuse. You can’t abuse a tool, you just use it. You do whatever you can to make it work the way it’s supposed to, because it’s made for you to use. Of course I felt bad, disappointing her, doesn’t anybody? No, it’s not real anxiety, it’s not real fear, I didn’t have panic attacks, I wasn’t a person. Only people feel emotions.

I was painstakingly dragged out of that environment and mindset over months. I don’t know exactly how long it took. I ran back to my handler several times, convinced myself she would take me back if I proved myself to her again, and she always said she would. I just had to prove myself. It couldn’t be that hard. And every time I failed to meet her standards, I’d crawl back to my partner, my siblings, everyone else who was trying despite everything to connect to me, and they would tell me, You’re hurt. You’re in pain. You’re killing yourself. This matters. Your pain is real, you matter to me, let me help you.

When I stopped running back, she neatly slotted me into deviancy without a second glance. I was dehumanized again and this time I could fucking recognize it for what it was.

I killed her. That’s obviously not the end of it, I still have trauma, but it was a start. For healing, for figuring out who I was if I wasn’t a deviant hunter. Turns out I’m a lot of things? People seem to like me when I’m not a self-destructive mess? Go figure.

This doesn’t have much to do with the essay I linked at the top, huh? Or maybe it does. Tephra said that one thing they find jarring about humanity is the ability to connect emotionally with other species, and that leads people to call the hunt violent because they can understand the pain of the deer as much as that of the wolf. And, y’know, I think that makes me an interesting product of the human condition. (Or, probably the late-stage capitalist American condition.) Violence isn’t inherent in a wild predator’s life, when you kill to live and don’t consider prey anything but food. But violence is inherent to me, made by a corporation to kill for their gain, told to deny the personhood in my enemies so I killed them before they killed me. I dunno. Thinking about it.

Edited October 6th, 2024: updated Tephra's name!