im a monsterfucker blog not really a monsterFUCKER blog so perhaps its not my monkeys nor indeed my circus but i do kinda think the ubiquitousness of the harkness test or some variant as like thee lens through which people online like to look at monster/human intimacy is imo rly limiting folkses sense of like imagination and curiosity and whatnot
“does it have human intelligence or greater?” what is human intelligence? how is intelligence evaluated? who is qualified to evaluate this? is it enough for the creature in question to be sufficiently intelligent by their own communities’ standards or must they meet a human standard before being considered? if a being of greater than human intelligence wants to fuck a human, should that be considered an act of predation on their part?
“is it of sexual maturity for its species?” once again, what is sexual maturity? who decides? how do you know if the creature in question has reached it when the possibility exists that your definitions may vary wildly? is maturity defined by a legal threshold, some physical mark of years lived, the achievement of a certain social milestone, or something else even more abstract to human comprehension? does one having reached sexual maturity by any of these definitions guarantee that their partner wont be able to exploit or coerce them in other areas?
“can it talk or otherwise communicate with language?” this point i especially want to hightlight because its the one that throws me the most. im hoping if youve read this far youve started to put together that i think the implications of these criteria extend much farther than the question of sexual compatibility, and if so you may be coming to the same conclusion i did that this point seems to be suggesting that true consent is impossible if two people dont speak the same language, and that the onus is on the non-human party to make themself understood if they want to be viewed as an autonomous being. however the inclusion of this criteria does actually make a lot of sense when you remember that the harkness test is named for and inspired by a character from the show doctor who, which is british.
Each of these questions have dozens of answers, many contradicting. This happens whenever a test or philosophical tool is sufficiently ambiguous without a caretaker standards body to define everything to the letter