Melanie Challenger

“When we accept that humans are animals without resorting to claims of superiority, we can appreciate and value those of us that genetic inheritance or mutation have affected, from conjoined twins to people with Angelman syndrome. Disability or ageing are not seen as threatening aberrations from the essential existence of a human but as normal occurrences among organisms, which is not to say that we do nothing to ease associated suffering or to better their lives, but that we don’t see these individuals as diverging from a superior definition of being human. Nobody is expected to conform to some median of what an adult human might be or to be measured against the maximal state of human capacities. But this wasn’t the path taken by humanism. Instead, secular forms of salvation sought to pick a difference in nature and turn it into a justification. But if there is something in our biology that makes us the most or even the only important animal, how do we stop the use of biological traits as the basis of how we treat one another? It”
― Melanie Challenger, How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human

“In our layered experience of the world, it’s possible to believe we have left behind the blunt realities of being animal. Nothing could be further from the truth. Human life may be a blend of biology and dreams, but these dreams are still animal dreams.”
― Melanie Challenger, How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human