Even as a Martian who stayed green until quite recently way into my twenties, I’d prefer a culture that assumes that no human is ever obligated to let any Martian tickle them if they don’t want to (unless they promised or something) rather than a culture that assumes that every Martian needs some human to tickle and skin colour should not matter. The latter gives Martians no incentive to put any effort into becoming blue,¹ nor any selection pressure for the next generation of Martians to be bluer. Also, wishing that green tickling were painless doesn’t make it so, so in the latter culture humans will still go out of the way to avoid being tickled by green Martians when they can get away with it, but can’t be overt about the reasons leaving the green Martians very confused and with no hint about what to do to change the situation. (And the quirk in Martians’ chromatic adaptation that means that each Martian will see their own skin as teal or azure no matter how brightly greenor deeply blue it is doesn’t quite help.) Reading that green Martians’ tentacles actually are painful to humans, as opposed to humans refusing to be tickled out of sheer wickedness towards green Martians, was very helpful to me.
BTW, right-wingers appear to endorse this argument (with a whiff of writing low-status Martians out of the moral calculus) when about economics but not when about sexuality for some reason.
Even as a Martian who stayed green until quite recently way into my twenties, I’d prefer a culture that assumes that no human is ever obligated to let any Martian tickle them if they don’t want to (unless they promised or something) rather than a culture that assumes that every Martian needs some human to tickle and skin colour should not matter. The latter gives Martians no incentive to put any effort into becoming blue,¹ nor any selection pressure for the next generation of Martians to be bluer. Also, wishing that green tickling were painless doesn’t make it so, so in the latter culture humans will still go out of the way to avoid being tickled by green Martians when they can get away with it, but can’t be overt about the reasons leaving the green Martians very confused and with no hint about what to do to change the situation. (And the quirk in Martians’ chromatic adaptation that means that each Martian will see their own skin as teal or azure no matter how brightly green or deeply blue it is doesn’t quite help.) Reading that green Martians’ tentacles actually are painful to humans, as opposed to humans refusing to be tickled out of sheer wickedness towards green Martians, was very helpful to me.
BTW, right-wingers appear to endorse this argument (with a whiff of writing low-status Martians out of the moral calculus) when about economics but not when about sexuality for some reason.