A basic prerequisite of any human being doing harm to another living being of any sort is the process of othering, essentializing, and deindividualizing. This chain of mental maneuvers creates the perception of distance necessary to oppress, harm, or kill another being. The same techniques have been used against other humans and animals throughout history, and still are today. In Tender is the Flesh a zoonotic disease has supposedly rendered all animals inedible and dangerous to humans. Not being willing to give up eating meat, the population turns to human flesh. The story is told through the eyes of Marcos Tejo, who seems leery of the new reality, but goes through some disturbing moral shifts when he is gifted a “female head” of his own. The focus here is to explore how othering, essentializing, and deindividualizing have manifested in our history, in our present, and what lessons we can take from the fictional future of Tender is the Flesh .