To physically be human, you require a beating heart, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, etc. It's obvious that if someone sees a human, you don't confuse them with something like a dog; we see a human and we know what it is. That's the physicality of it. But when you ask someone what it philosophically means to be human, it's a whole different story. Being human is just not being what society sees as evil, twisted and wrong. We've created the image of an "un-humanly" person, who has urges to kill, to hurt. Someone who is un-humanly likes to cause destruction and pain; they feed on it, desire it. They're different from the stereotype we created as being normal. Our society considers someone "human" simply if they aren't not human.
In Sold by Patricia McCormick, people linked to one of the brothels in the city manage to change the view of the main character Lakshmi and other girls in order make themselves appear more human. After being tricked into being sold as a prostitute, Lakshmi was taken to a brothel called Happiness House where she became viewed simply as an object used for the men’s entertainment. They degraded her worthiness so they could feel better and more “human” about their actions. The girls at the brothel had been drugged, beaten and raped. They had no way of standing up for themselves. The men there diminished those girls’ well being simply to mask their wrongdoings and appear as though they are actually human.
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