What Measure Is a Non-Human?/Meta

Catgirls and other Cute Monster Girl Half Human Hybrids. Sometimes treated the same as humans, sometimes treated differently, sometimes they are a form of normal humans (such as Loveless or Fenspace), and so on.
Avatar partly averts this but also provides a meta example (or Truth in Television). As for humans in the movie, they are depicted as considerably lesser bastards to aliens than they were in District 9 and regard them more like primitive and hostile people, but people nevertheless: they at least try to resolve the conflict with diplomacy and trade and even when they resort to violence they still care to keep the casualties among aliens low. On the other hand, the prevalence of "should've dropped nuke/rock/napalm on them" attitude in the reviews and on forums, depictions of Jack/Ney'tiri relations with heavy zoophiliac overtones and notes like "It's like trying to negotiate with cockroaches" suggest a view of the Na'vi as sub-human. Of course, this could simply be a desire for a Take That, Scrappy! moment after what they see as a movie's worth of Creator's Pet + Can't Argue with Elves.
Make My Monster Grow and One-Winged Angel are often invoked to get around this in children's shows. In addition, said creatures may be fairly articulate before the change but lose all vocal coherence after.