He pekapeka (a bat) has won New Zealand’s Bird of the Year.
Here’s how it played out on Twitter.
News headline: A bat has won bird of the year!
User 1 OMG what is wrong with people, they don’t know the difference between a mammal and a bird? This is why science is doomed.
User 2 The Bird of the Year competition is actually really exclusionary to animals that fly.
User 1…because they’re not birds.
User 2 Identity is performative. Bats fly. Fuck off with your essentialist definitions of what makes a bird. Bats are birds, they fly, get the fuck over it. You’re probably a massive racist too.
User 1 Um, some birds don’t fly, especially in Aotearoa. And they’re vulnerable too. So the Kiwi isn’t a bird?
User 2 Fuck off with your ableism. Any animal can be a bird, if they fly, and also if they don’t fly. I hate you MERA’s, you should all be subject to corrective rape and also dismemberment.
User 1 MERA?
User 2 Mammal Exclusionary Radical Aviarists. Don’t pretend like you don’t know with your, ‘But I’m just asking questions’ bullshit’. You MERA’s should all be rounded up and murdered and then chucked in a pit because you are literal Nazis. You know the categories of mammal and bird are just fucking oppressive essentialist made-up social categories, right? Like, they’re based on observed physical characteristics right? Like, who does the observing and naming? The categories are all bullshit.
User 1 How can someone be mammal exclusionary if mammal isn’t a category because it’s no different to say, bird, which is also not a category?
User 2 this is why you should be dismembered etc..,
The Mutton Flap 