eeveelutionsforequality:

Exactly!

When I worked at the LGBT+ youth group, there was also a straight guy who volunteered with me – he was there early every day the group was on, he stayed late, he’d talk to people in private if they had a problem they didn’t want the group to know about, he’d offer help and support, he’d help link people with other services, he never once had a single complaint against him, like, I really can’t express how much everybody in the group adored this guy. You think he didn’t make gay jokes? We all made gay jokes, even him. People jokingly listed celebrities that they’d sleep with who were of a gender/sex that they weren’t typically attracted to, as did he. He wasn’t sat there worrying that he was going to offend us, because he was our friend, he knew us, he knew we respected him and he respected us in return.

Being an “ally” isn’t about following a rule book of things you are and aren’t allowed to say – it’s about treating people as equals, respecting people, helping people, and just being a good person. Like you said, be decent, compassionate and understanding.

Honestly though, I don’t really think of them as “allies” because… like, idk… it just sounds divisive. It makes it sound like we’re a faction fighting a war and they’re a faction that defected from the enemy and sided with us, but they’re not really our people. It’s weird cause they are our people, they’re people we live our day to day lives with, they’re not some separate group that we’ve signed a treaty with and who we can impose rules upon, they’re our parents, our siblings, our friends, our children, our families, our teachers…

There’s this trend of trying to make allies out to be the real homophobes based on really obscure and harmless stuff, and attacking them more fervently than people attack actual homophobes. Maybe it’s cause the allies will actually get hurt by that, will actually listen to it, so it’s more of a power trip than attacking someone who gives zero shits; or maybe it’s because allies are the only straight people that these people even come across on a regular basis because of the communities online and irl that they frequent, I don’t know. But either way, it’s like they’re stomping on a smoldering leaf while there’s a block of flats aflame behind them.

~ Vape

I have been, for around the last year or so, observing and bemoaning the politics of divisiveness that has sprung up the last ~5 years.

And there is a part of me that wants to call them all out but if i’ve learned anything is that it is social suicide. If you dare to suggest that dividing folks up further and further in the name of pride in your own identity or culture, should be considered harmful, then you are declared “problematic”, a supporter of the oppressors and of the status quo.

But what these same people don’t realise, is by declaring them an ‘enemy of your culture that can only see victory in eliminating the other’, then we are consigned to a constant cycle of war. By definition there will always be a ‘minority’ and a ‘majority’. If one of the definitions of victory is the defeat of this enemy, then you have to define defeat here. And if that means “killing them” then in the end you’re just creating a new minority to be oppressed. You may believe they “deserve it” but really noone deserves it.

People should be focused on changing minds and hearts, and screaming down and attempting to silence those who disagree will never get anyone ‘there’. It only effectively guarantees an escalation of hostilities on all sides until real class war breaks out and people are killing eachother in the streets. People might think this to be an extreme projection of events, but think about it, people are already moving towards it. Both sides, escalate their hostilities endlessly and eventually, full war is going to be the last step left.

The only way that we can know true equality and true peace as a *world*, is for both sides in these political conflicts to desire to end the cycle of oppression and violence. There can’t be a continuing loop of the oppressor becoming the oppressed and vice versa, forever, or this is what we will have, forever.

confused-mujina:

The dude was not fired for having an opinion, or having the wrong opinion.

The dude was fired for presenting an opinion in Google’s name.

If my employee writes out something, anything at all, and sticks MY letterhead on it and circulates it without running that shit through PR, i’d be fucking pissed. If my employee sticks my letterhead on some polarizing issue that PR wouldn’t touch with a ninety foot dildo, and causes some measurable loss to my company, THAT DUDE IS FIRED. The opinion itself, is irrelevant in this case.

Jeff can say on Jeff’s own god damned blog that he thinks babies are delicious. I don’t give a shit! The moment Jeff presents an opinion and implies that it’s my opinion, FUCK JEFF.

And fuck all ya’ll who are picking this event up as some kinda event relevant to your political opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I love all your opinions. Part of the reason I follow blogs with such diverse and often opposing viewpoints.

But show some critical thinking skills for fucks sake.

Critical thinking is no longer fashionable, Citizen. Gender and appropriation politics rule this day. And the bigger the target, the more urgent it is to make a public spectacle of it.

It might be totally wrong to represent your own opinion as that of a major company, and totally correct to terminate that person for doing so, but neither of these fits the narrative.

tl;dr: groupthink doubleplus ungood

jeshire-katt:

hallowedbone:

shadowfae:

muse-members-for-real-justice:

Ain’t no problem homie.

Otherkin uses the concept from Totemism because of how similar they are when it comes to spiritual beliefs.

From what I understand, the Native Americans believe that their spirits is guided by a non-human being and they have a kin relationship with that spirit. The spirits can vary from any animal like a fox, wolf, rabbit, etc. This being is often called a totem.

Because of this they feel connected with this being, so eventually the persons spirit becomes their guide. In which many Natives and others identify with (which is why it’s often referred to as “spirit animal”)

This is where Otherkin comes in play.

Many people say that their kin with wolves, dragons and all that and claim that they’re not human, they’re Otherkin. That their spirit is *Insert animal/deity/person* and it’s who they identify and have a connection with. This is awfully similar to Totemism.

It doesn’t help when many try to use Native American beliefs as back up :/

I don’t have a problem with Totemism, that you have a spirit animal or anything similar. It’s a belief.

But when you’re running around saying that you were never human, acting as your supposed “kin” and start attacking others out of no where, it gets out of hand and taken to the extreme.

Hope this answered your question Anon!

I don’t think I have the necessary insight to argue this, so. @hallowedbone, @who-is-page, and @necrophagist– if any of you can explain why otherkinity =/= Native American spiritualism and all that jazz?

For one thing, there isn’t some collective one size fits all Native belief in spirit animals. iirc they’re a very specific set of practices belonging to certain tribes, and closely guarded. Saying “it’s a Native thing” is ignorant. Unless you are Native and part of a tribe that experiences spirit animals, you know fuck all about them. End of story. 

Tutelary animal guides exist outside of those groups, secondly. I’m Celtic Irish and Korean, and both sides of my family have animal guides. How much they resemble Native American tribe practices I cannot say, but they’re there. My family’s “totem”, to borrow the vernacular, is the Phoenix. In discussion with some of my siblings and a spiritual elder, I might also be in communication with the bearded vulture. Highly likely in fact, but I take my time with these things.

These are SEPARATE ENTITIES, not kintypes. I don’t have a dragon spirit guide, I am a dragon, guided by the Phoenix and evidently this vulture. They heavily impact my identity, but they are not ME. My soul is a dragon, is an Arrancar, is a hanyou – whatever. That’s not the same as being linked to outside entities, and this isn’t that hard to understand.

Don’t speak for or over indigenous people and our spiritualities. We didn’t ask. Otherkin aren’t a problem for us, and some of us fall under that label as is. 

 pinging @jeshire-katt , too.

Yea, a kintype isn’t a totem. A totem isn’t a species identity, and their significance varies between cultures because as @hallowedbone​ said, what people call “native culture” is actually the many of different cultures and nations that existed before Europeans colonized North America, and not all of them practiced totemism. We aren’t just one people and it helps when you try to stick up for us to look into who something is appropriated from and why it is significant and shouldn’t be appropriated. I would especially do this if you heard it’s wrong on tumblr.. or heard it’s ok in spiritualist groups that consist only of people without any strong native heritage, lol.

FWIW, that also includes when people bring up Native cultures and traditions in otherkin communities but honestly, I’ve hardly ever seen it there. Sometimes, once in a blue moon, but not very often, and it seems like it’s looked down on in most places and seen as an asshole thing to do, which… good. Anyways.

In Ojibwa culture as an example (who’s language the word is derived from, the word “ototeman” which meant “brother-sister kin”), totems defined a number of clans (”doodem”). People within these clans often had a shared ancestor, were thought to have traits representative of the animal that symbolized their clan, and it was also used for things like splitting up labor, as these clans often lived near/in habitats that suited their animal.

And in all other cultures I’ve researched about this specifically, none of them have actually mentioned someone in themselves believing they are literally their totem, whatever it meant in their specific culture. Usually it’s a guide, something to do with lineage, or was something to aspire to be like. If there were spiritual practices involving nonhuman identities, involuntary or not, I haven’t heard of them yet (but would be very interested of hearing about them!).

Otherkin, on the other hand, personally believe they are nonphysically nonhuman, whether it be by reincarnation (often across universes in the case of spiritual fictionkin and non-therian otherkin), by spiritual mixup, or without any spirituality at all (ie, a quirk of the brain that doesn’t require any pathologizing and doesn’t disrupt one’s life). A key factor is too that it’s involuntary, so whether or not someone tried to claim stuff they have no right too (which as I said, looks to be rare, and thank fuck for that), they’d still identify as the thing. Our communities started up in the 50′s with elves meeting up in pagan circles (including tolkien elves, so fictionkion have also been around as long as the rest of the community), and then other people who weren’t elves came too because there was finally other people to relate to and share experiences with.

Oh, and therians are people who identify as earthly animals, which is a subset of otherkin with it’s own communities that I haven’t personally been into because.. I’m not a therian. So I may very well be wrong about people using native beliefs to fluff themselves up as more-valid-then-thou, or whatever.

I am beginning to hate the words “I’m genuinely asking”.  It almost always means its going to be followed up by hater discourse.