fedora-dragon:

bearxuniverse:

sapphicholdo:

irritatedandroid:

sapphicholdo:

aestherians:

sapphicholdo:

With pride coming up it’s a great time to remember that being “Otherkin” doesn’t make you LGBTQ+ and their “struggles” are not comparable to that of actual LGBTQ+ individuals.

Otherkinity is not related to being LGBT+ and we’ve been actively working to eradicate that idea. But the fact of the matter is that a disproportionate amount of otherkin are “actual LGBTQ+ individuals” themselves, so — while I’m sure this wasn’t your intention with this post
— please don’t try to exclude us from queer communities and pride month on the basis of us being otherkin.

I also couldn’t help but notice your tags and I hope you don’t mind if I address them.

“#reminder that otherkin was invented on this hellsite and cant feasibly cope with the real world“
Otherkinity wasn’t invented on tumblr. The concept has existed worldwide as long as humans have been creative thinkers. Even the modern otherkin community has roots in new age groups from the 1970s and the word ‘otherkin’ was coined in a mailing list in 1990.
Source: The Otherkin Timeline by Orion Scribner

“#homophobia“
Again, I’m sure this wasn’t your intention, and I know ‘internalized homophobia’ can be a thing, but. I know more or less two straight people in the entire community. It’s not very nice to accuse a couple of thousand LGBT+ people of being homophobes.
Also, I’m not sure how someone referring to themselves as nonhuman equates to homophobia but that might just be me…

“#factkin“
Factkin was a concept invented by anti-kin trolls who wanted to stir up drama and didn’t care if it made us look even worse than we already do in the eye of the media.
Source: Eyewitness testimony from House of Chimeras

Hi! I take no issue with LGBTQ+ people in LGBTQ+ spaces [I’m cautious with the use of the Q-Slur because it is a reclaimed slur and some members of our community are affected by the previous derogatory use of the word]. I have no intention to exclude LGBTQ+ people from our community on the basis of kin, but wish people wouldn’t liken kin to being LGBTQ+.

Kin isn’t a gender identity for which people are persecuted for and legally executed for in parts of the world. Nor is it a sexual orientation, for which your friends/family might alienate or ostracise you for. Your local parish or place of worship is unlikely to expel you for being otherkin. I take the view that by feigning oppression – which one might suffer for being LGBTQ+ – is homophobic. It ignores actual struggles of people who are still mistreated under the law and draws attention away from serious LGBTQ+ issues.

But more than that kinnity in itself isn’t inherently LGBTQ+ it doesn’t fit the description of a non-heterosexual and non-cissexual individual. This was the point of my post. I don’t want to see non-LGBTQ+ folks jumping on the Pride bandwagon because they think it’s an aesthetic to be “oppressed” or it’s edgy to have a label not used in mainstream culture. Also the term “transtrender” comes to mind but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms.

I’ll freely admit I had no clue that Otherkinnity had been around for longer than mainstream use of the internet and presumed it was a term coined on forums of some description. However, I make a distinction between otherkin and – for example – the Pagan or Native American/Cherokee belief in spirit animals.

Or even the Chinese zodiac for that matter.

As I’m not part of the Otherkin community I wasn’t aware that the term was drafted up by trolls. Apologies.

I’m glad to see this turning into discussion! And, now that you’ve clarified, I agree on a lot here. Otherkinity is not meant to be a gender, and really isn’t meant to have any link to gender/sexuality. People who have forced that link tend to either be tumblrkin (the otherkin equivalent to transtrenders, heh) or trolls, unfortunately. The sane otherkin I know including myself have been trying to clarify for a long while that there is no link between otherkinity and being LGBT. Nor is it anything someone is oppressed over. The whole “kin oppression” and “kinphobia” bs tends to be the work of trolls as well.

It’s unfortunate, admittedly, considering the community’s history. People who take their otherkinity (or, what they have altered the definition of otherkinity to fit themselves and what they think it is) and use that to worm their way into gender/sexuality discussion are quite their little problem, they don’t speak for all of us. I’ve got a few who come to mind.

And yeah, it’s been around for a good few decades, separate as well from beliefs such as spirit animals. It’s just been a phenomena of people who believe themselves to be in some non-physical way non-human, be that spiritually, psychologically, or another theory.

And don’t worry about apologizing for that! There’s people in the community who didn’t know that either, heh.

Anyways, always open to questions and talks. Cheers!

I did get the impression that my point had been initially misinterpreted and we actually agree on the separate natures of LGBTQ+ individuals and Otherkin. I only meant to illustrate that there is a distinct divide between the two communities – that they aren’t one and the same – even though there is overlap; I.E. people who are parts of both communities.

I’ve had an experience with an Otherkin/“angelkin” individual in real life who equated their kin-type to gender identity, and I think this single experience and poor analogy/definition made for my misinterpretation of your community.

And it seems transtrenders are an issue in both of our communities. What my post originally intended to satirise, as well as criticise (rather ineptly), is tumblr’s obsession with new and obscure labels and invented forms of oppression and how privileged individuals, masquerading as oppressed, is offensive.

See X, Y, & Z identifying as obscure mishmash of sexual orientations & genders which change with the weather, self dxing themselves with innumerable life altering conditions and turning out to be a cishet, middle class, able, white person, trying to score points in the oppression Olympics — as though being oppressed is somehow a trend?

(Sidenote: of course sexuality and gender is fluid for some, and individuals can question/experiment with labels for years – for those for whom this is the case? You are legitimate and valid! This is purely aimed at the people who mock you and imitate you with the intention of deceiving others)

I’ve known people who faked mental illnesses because it’s seems a “cool” or “interesting” thing to have. Imagine living such an easy life that your way of slaking boredom is faking a learning difficulty or mental illness? As someone who suffers with clinical depression and GAD, it repulses me to see someone make a mockery of the struggles which impede me daily – to turn it into a shallow aesthetic.

And oh boy! Does tumblr love aesthetics! [footnote: I hate this website]

Depression isn’t about having a B&W blog on tumblr or listening to brooding music, it’s about a decline in executive function, extreme fatigue, and chronic low mood or numbness. It’s an illness which is still the biggest killer of men between the ages of 18-45 [in the UK]

The same goes for gender, sexuality etc. With privileged individuals pretending to be oppressed, it distracts us as a society from the discourse we should be having around basic human rights for minorities, and prevents us distributing resources responsibly/helpfully – E.G. healthcare services or LGBTQ+ shelters.

It also glamourises serious struggles and leads to trivialisation of minority issues. See related: how ‘minimalism’ is a rich man’s glamorous imitation of austerity. Transtrenders or posers are harmful to the communities they try to mimic.

I can only speak for myself here when I say it seems there’s been a upsurge in cases of people pretending to be oppressed – for whatever reason it may be. It’s troubling.

Sorry for mistaking the trolls in your community for active and healthy members. I’d love for us all to come together to eradicate negativity and transtrenders from our safe spaces, and unite ourselves more closely going forwards.

When one of us suffers, we all suffer, such is the nature of a community. Thanks for an excellent explainer!

SOURCES:

‘Male suicide: it’s time to face the stark truth about a growing crisis’, The Independent by Chris Hemmings.

‘Minimalism: another boring product wealthy people can buy’, The Guardian by Chelsea Fagan.

I have no clue where this conflation of gender and species identities came from. They are each a different axis of identity. I only ever encountered that conflation on this hellsite. It doesn’t happen on the forums, Amino, or back in the day newsgroups , except to the extent that we post about being baffled by it.

Unfortunately, those people who create this conflation often do it with the intent to harm both otherkin AND LGBT individuals. It is a nice wedge to divide people with. It doesn’t matter that more than half of the otherkin community is also LGBT. Those folks who push this agenda of conflating the two want to do the most damage.

Then, those who aren’t part of the otherkin community see those posts and spread it because it has the “ring of truth”. No one who is a genuine part of the community, in my experience, has EVER tried to say being kin made them LGBT. Ever. In nearly 30 years of either actively or psssively being part of the community, have I seen it.

The only place I see it is here, on tumblr, a site which is largely avoided by most of the greater community. And always from trolls or the misinformed.

It’s frustrating to see the same rumors repeated as truth again and again.

I agree that a large amount of the conflation of gender identity and species identity also comes from outside the community, rather than within. I know that I’ve heard transphobes make the comparison plenty of times before (“if we start allowing people to ‘choose’ gender identity, they’ll start saying they’re dogs next”, see https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2016/9/19/extensions-of-remarks-section/article/e1288-1?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22otherkin%22%5D%7D&r=1), and species identity has been used in anti-LGBT discourse as a way to delegitimize the LGBT community.

Conflation of gender and species identity also come from trolls.  There has been some discussion in the actual otherkin community about the differences and similarities between being transgender and transspecies but noone who legitimately understands otherkin and have been here more than 6 years say they are the same, or believes the struggle is the same.   Most of that discourse was in actuality born on Tumblr.