In the world of Warhammer, emotions like empathy is for the weak.
There is no confirmed biological or aetherical difference between the playable races and other tribes that would be cause for categorizing them as an other.
The bolded part is the point. Obviously Sahagin are fish and Ananta and reptiles, but that wasn't the point.
Right. "I think, I feel, therefore I am."
Many of them speak the common tongues. They are capable of ambition, of kindness and cruelty, of love and hate, happiness and sadness, animosity and forgiveness. That makes them no more deserving of a derogatory designation like "Beastmen" than the Hrothgar, Lupin, or Kojin, all of whom are no less bestial than say... the Amal'jaa, but who have been largely accepted in Eorzea's spoken communities by now.
You forgot the 3rd emotion of legend, the one that leaves naught but destruction in its wake. I speak of course...OF HERESY!
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Flippantly, I would suspect the primary difference between "humanity" and "beast races" is which ones are likely to be possessed by an Ascian.
Because I would dare an Ascian to take the form of a Namazu.
My point is that they don't look like people, that is what made it so easy to categorize them as an "other."
The beast tribes of Eorzea look like, well, tribes of beasts. It seems incredibly unlikely that the term would have caught on and spread like it did were that not the case.
In fact, you can see this reflected on the other side of the world with the Au ra steppe tribes that were mentioned in the comment I was replying to, and that caused you in turn to bring up the Hrothgar and Lupin.
The Hrothgar and Lupin, and Namazu for that matter, were all well integrated into the local civilizations, and the Au ra steppe tribes are not. In fact the steppe tribes act far more savagely than some of Eorzean beast tribes, but oh would you look at that, when your local "beasts" behave themselves and the local savages are pretty, then neither the beast tribe term, nor any functional equivalent, arises.
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The sad truth is that the manipulative potato people have tricked all the pretty but gullible Eorzeans into bullying all the ugly ones for their own lewd benefit, and maybe so they could open some new mines or something as well, but that was almost certainly secondary. :(
Slapping the Beastman label on any of Eorzea's indigenous tribes, let alone the Steppe Au Ra is, was in effect the same as British settlers calling the Natives of America "Savages." Nothing more than a thinly veiled publicity ploy to make the Amal'jaa an other so they could excuse expansionist aggression and tax the trade routes for protection.
Their biology matters for very little on a world like Hydaelyn. If it can think, if it can speak, and process emotions then it is a spoken. "Humanity" and "Beastmen" false labels that by rights should not exist but do anyway because lalafell are assholes.