#otherkin discourse

[mechanical-sunchild]

"Otherkin identities come behind race stuff" do you hear yourself? You sound just like the "you can't kin outside of your race" people if someone is a wendigo then they're a fucking wendigo you're not even native so stfu

I'm sorry to tell you that no, being otherkin doesn't mean you can do whatever you want regardless of things like racism, cultural appropriation and respecting the wishes of closed cultures. Which is what I actally said, but yeah I guess that's 'race stuff'.

Your comparison is also very ignorant.

The 'you can't kin outside of your race' drama by and large started because of the large number of anime-sourced fictotypes and the general backlash against 'weeaboos' whether they were doing anything 'wrong' or not. By and large this issue was created and perpetuated by non-Japanese people trying to be morally good.

It was stupid not because 'it's not a choice to be otherkin!' but because fictional anime characters who are technically Japanese aren't real people and it's not harming any real Japanese people to identify as/be a fictional character who is technically Japanese.

You might want to exercise some kind of delicateness around the racial aspects of your fictotypes sure, but in general fictional is fictional and anime characters don't hold any special meaning or significance to Japanese culture other than artistically. I mean maybe some Japanese people were upset about it, but most of the people I saw were white and had created the problem in the name of Japanese people.

Meanwhile, real people in this world of various races who belong to various closed or otherwise marginalised and oppressed cultures have spoken out about how their folkloric, religious/spiritual and otherwise deeply rooted cultural figures are not 'cryptids' or similar. That they're sick of mainly white people changing the lore around these things and then using them in whatever way they see fit.

This includes for some who are aware of it, otherkin who use the names of these creatures and entities directly instead of just accepting that your otherkin identities aren't as important as the rights of these groups to tell you that it's closed off to you, you cannot use that name. Use some other name. Make your own creature name. Or, accept that you're part of the cultural appropriation of these creatures and practices and not morally pure, I guess.

It's not just the job of natives of the culture to defend it, by the way, what's the point of white privilege if I'm just sitting on my ass about stuff I know is wrong? I didn't invent this issue, I shut up and listened about it.

I'm not even saying that these people aren't what they say they are, especially if you believe otherkinism is purely involuntary, just that there's elements here which don't apply to other actual cryptids like mothman or bigfoot or something and our comfort as otherkin comes below not being racist and culturally appropriative even if like only two people are uncomfortable for racial reasons you should just not use that word.

[infinitedraconity]

This post just got a burst of notes, what happened?

An Otherkin's Guide to Interacting with the Media

Step 1: Don't.

[mewos-laptop]

Physical therians are valid,

Chosen therians are valid,

Mentally ill therians are valid,

Delusional therians are valid,

Traumatized therians are valid,

And all of you need to SHUT THE FUCK UP about them before I start making blocklists of your pathetic asses.

[nyctohyloph0bia]

Honestly y'all need to chill with the "nonhumaness needs to be involuntary!"

The only reason you're saying that is due to wanting to present 'valid' enough for outsiders. It's not a choice so they won't bully you, like they do furries or other people.

And I hear you cry "but KFF!". KFF aren't nonhuman, they just relate. If someone comes over to me and says "I choose to be nonhuman today, I am nonhuman no matter what other ppl tell me. I genuinely identify as nonhuman." That isn't KFF, that's a nonhuman.

Truly, I'll just go "woah...that's so based". Because truly, what are our differences? We both genuinely identify as nonhuman....and yeah that's about it.

You might say, "they don't experience shifts!" There's nonhumans that don't experience shifts. And there's humans that experience shifts, we call it the "shifter's disease". Basically when a full human researches or is around nonhumans and begins feeling phantoms or feeling nonhuman, despite not being nonhuman. So it isn't exclusive to us.

"They don't have noemata!" There's nonhumans that don't have noemata.

"They don't suffer species dysphoria." Theres nonhumans that don't experience species dysphoria. Also cool transmed rethoric.

"They weren't born with it!" There's nonhumans that become nonhuman later on in life.

"They didn't wish their whole life to be a different species!" And? I can imagine there's some nonhumans that didn't even realize they wanted to be/were a different species.

"It's disrespectful to nonhumans that suffer due to their identity!" Another cool transmed rethoric. It's only disrespectful to you because you're up your own ass and believe that anyone who didn't suffer like you did, that didn't have it as hard as you isn't as valid as yourself. But what you don't realize is by having that belief you are excluding such a large portion of your community.

There's involuntary nonhumans who don't suffer from their identity at all and they're still part of our community.

The line between voluntary and involuntary can get blurry very quickly and hard to describe. But truly, you are no one to say who can use a label that rightfully describes their experiences.

Get real and truly think about why you're so upset at someone having a good faith identity.

[paleodeer]

I don't want to engage in discourse, but I've seen so many posts here lately talking about "Tik Tok Therians" and worries about them migrating to Tumblr.

I'm just imagining what it's like for them. Imagine coming to Tumblr for the first time and discovering all this hate and infighting. Your main way of seeing content of others like you has been taken away from you, so you turn to Tumblr, only to find hundreds of posts making assumptions and generalizations about you. Imagine coming from Tik Tok and the first post you see on here is someone calling you annoying.

Are we really as accepting as we claim to be? Now is the time to prove it.

Yes, I would absolutely be bullied off the face of Tik Tok if I ever ended up there, but that doesn't mean I will treat them the same if they ended up here. If you're scared of Tumblr turning as toxic and hostile as Tik Tok, maybe the answer is to simply avoid being toxic and hostile.

Also, a bit of a tangent, but sometimes the best way to go about things is just agreeing to disagree with those around you. I can't even count how many times I've changed my mind about something because I saw someone with a different opinion and had a civil discussion, or did proper research about something I was misinformed on because I befriended someone new. Of course we are all entitled to opinions, and we can't always see eye to eye, but that's life.

Personally, my blog will welcome these "Tik Tok Therians" with open arms. They will see that I'm weird, but most importantly they will also see that I am one of them, I am kind, and willing to educate without hate.

[lizardywizard]

This! Radical acceptance and blind faith are not the same.

Radical acceptance, in my understanding, is about questioning your kneejeek impulse to pick someone apart just because you're personally uncomfortable. You don't have to like everyone in the community, and you're even allowed to think a microlabsl is silly or weird.

But you also have to question your own "ick" response and the part of you that tells you that your first emotional reaction to something is correct, and when you find something that makes you feel that way, go and do research as to whether it actually is this terrible thing you've been afraid of. That's the "radical" part: you have to be willing to change when you get new knowledge. That's hard.

And then, even if you decide you're personally uncomfortable with something, don't be a gatekeeper about it. That's the "acceptance" part. If you genuinely have evidence that someone's doing direct harm (e.g. animal abuse), don't be a lone keyboard warrior - gather the community about it. Actual animal abusers get kicked out pretty fast here.

Otherwise, unfollow/block/mute if you have to. It's up to you to decide where you draw the line of real harm, but if making people justify their cane use is on the same side to you as preventing actual physical harm, despite other disabled people saying that normalisation of aids in society would help them, you're not very radical or accepting, and you're not going to get far in anything labelled "punk". Because gatekeeping does harm to your community too.

Question things, be willing to accept you're wrong, don't be a dick. If you value your personal, inner kneejeek reaction-as-scepticism over "letting people do thing", you're still welcome in the otherkin community, but you're not a punk, yeah?

Signed, someone who uses a cane because I have shitty hips sometimes, and also finds it species euphoric.

I’m heavily pro-endo so that statement was meant literally (polytherian does not experience any form of plurality but calls themselves a system purely based on having multiple theriotypes).

Even if we were just talking about self expression. As a disabled person, does being radically accepting mean I have to accept nonhumans who are not disabled (who have said they are not disabled) using medical equipment to express their nonhumanity (i.e. someone using a cane solely for the purpose of showing they should not be bipedal). Because, it’s their right to express that way but it doesn’t sit right with me that I’m watching someone use medical equipment as an accessory. It’s not harmful but it’s also not something I can agree with.

I guess my point is. Where do you draw the line with radical acceptance? If we believe everyone about everything, if we accept every form of expression, at what point can we recognize what is harmful and not? If a couple people are hurt by it, is that harmful or just a personal opinion?

By no means is any of this meant as an attack. I’m really just trying to figure out where the radically accepting folks come from (as I once thought myself to be RA but found it brought on much toxicity and drama to spaces that weren’t that way before). As I said. I love Beastpunk for all its other qualities… just not the radically accepting (basically blind faith in my opinion) part…

Look, as someone who walks with a cane and wishes it was as well-loved and accepted an accessory as glasses currently are, so I'd get less shit about using one and accessibility for canes would be more baseline, I think you seriously need to reconsider why you can't agree with that. And why, even though you openly admit it isn't harmful, it's still being used as an example in this scenario.

Let's open the doors on this-- we're talking about a concept where we are trusting people to know themselves better than we know them, and where we are accepting the aspects about people that they cannot change, and where we are accepting people's non-harmful forms of self-expression. Where does any of that suddenly scoop your ability to think critically and deeply about information being presented to you out of your skull? I'm hunting through my essay and, you know, I simply just can't find the part where we yoink out your common sense or ability to question others.

Beastpunk is against plenty of harmful ideaologies and communities-- like pshifting, for instance, for historical reasons as outlined in the essay. You can be beastpunk and have opinions about what constitutes harm and what doesn't. But, as I said before, you're conflating radical acceptance as spoken of here with tucking tail and showing off your throat and belly, so to speak. You are confusing radical acceptance within this framework with an inability to confront others and to dig in deep to question why you are uncomfortable with something to decide if it really truly causes harm or if it's just internalized shit you need to unpack (re: the cane thing). And look, I cannot give you that skill. And being beastpunk requires that skill.

I cannot in good faith recommend beastpunk to you when you have so blatantly misunderstood what it represents, and seem to have a total inability to grasp one of the underlying, core principles of it.

Other folks are also welcome to chime in.

[psychology-department]

i'm starting to feel less and less safe in this site as a fictionkin, so i just wanted to call out (factkin dni please):

INTERACT WITH THIS POST IF YOU'RE FICTIONKIN

INTERACT IF YOU RESPECT ALL KINTYPES REGARDLESS OF MEDIA

[literally-tomura]

I don't know where this idea that fictionkins can't have memories and that memories are a fictive only thing came from... I keep seeing it (especially on TikTok) and it's incredibly frustrating

Fictionkins definitely have memories. Calling us delusional is one ableist and two just rewashed anti fickin talk

[the-fallen-collective]

emails are not shown, everything is put in a way where you can provide reasoning (preferred but not required) and putting your tumblr user is optional

This is the one time where our dni does not apply because we would like responses from a lot of people

If you see this, it’d be greatly appreciated if you could take it and reblog it /nf

This is really just an experiment we’re doing ourselves to see other’s views and opinions (also out of boredom. Boredom creates curiosity)

(So sorry for the cross tagging but is it cross tagging if it applies?)

We do not agree with everything mentioned in the form. We actually disagree with a lot of it or have differing/complicated opinions from different alters

[orderofthe-pyramids]

THIS IS TO ALL THE DIVINEKIN WHO ENCOURAGE WORSHIP ON THEIR BLOGS

*inhale*

YOU’RE WEIRD AND ENCOURAGING PARASOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS THAT ARE HARMFUL TO BOTH PARTIES

[plural-on-paws]

help me WHAT

listen to me rant about therians on tiktok and animal packers!!

under cut bc there’s a few pics and don’t want to clutter up people’s feeds 😋

so i’ve said it before but tiktok therians are just 😟 they wouldn’t last two minutes on tumblr or twitter/x

psychosis?? mental illness??

the caption honestly just tops it off lmfao this person clearly has NO IDEA what they’re talking about.

as someone who’s been (unwilling) exposed to genuine zoo stuff… packers are not that. real zoophiles want to put their stuff in dogs not put a silicone shape (or even a damn stuffed sock) in their pants

and who the fuck even cares if someone has a little silicone thing in their pants? you’d only know if the person told you?

repeat this after me:

PACKERS. ARE. NOT. SEXUAL.

THEY. NEVER. HAVE.

THEY. NEVER. WILL.

it’s giving “oh so your ‘gender’ is this? well whats in your pants? because that’s what your ‘real gender’ is.”

it’s giving transphobes who want to have a peek in your pants. it’s giving transphobes who care entirely too much about whats in your pants.

as a trans man and a therian myself (who personally doesn’t wear a packer at all due to financial restrictions), it’s kind of just people trying to hide that they’re actually transphobic but what to hide it behind “but it’s an *animal* packer! gasp! that’s so clearly zoophilia (idek what that word means so im just throwing the word around so much it’ll lose its meaning soon)!”

anyway, oscar out

[otherkin-confessional]

being transgender doesn't inherently fetishize or harm any gender. being transspecies doesn't inherently fetishize or harm any animal. also, disliking transspecies but being okay with otherkin, nonhuman, and therian is absolutely hypocritical.

I think people need to understand that transracial and transable aren't bad because they have trans in the name. that's a very white able bodied neurotypical perspective actually. they're bad because they fetishize PoC and disabled people, water down cultures, appropriate cultures without knowing anything about them, and usually come from deeply rooted insecurity. as a disabled PoC who is transgender and transspecies, im not screaming and crying just because they have the prefix "trans," because that's not a prefix specific to transgender people.

🌌

[ungodlyangel2506]

i am completely against image gen ai, which is trained on countless artists works without their consent (also known as stealing) by companies who then make money off of this, which is then used by businesses trying to find a cheaper alternative to paying the very artists who were stolen from, used by people scamming those actaully trying to hire an artist, used for filling social media with slop for views, and more, however i dont like a lot of the anti-ai posting i see online

its all "this is HUMAN art" "made by HUMAN" "only HUMANS can make art" i recently seen someone who made some stamps and buttons for artists that dont use gen ai, and they were all focused on the artists being "HUMAN" and i just feel like weve lost the plot a little

the problem with image gen ai was never that art created by humans is inherently better just because its made by humans, in my mind, its that The Image Theft Machine is thieving images, and then screwing over the artists it theived from ! its not that the "special magical human soul is giving the art life" its that people are losing their jobs because it costs less to ask Sloop-AI 3.0 or whatever the fuck to give you a shitty approximation of what you wanted, rather than to hire an actual artist

and i just think this sucks so so bad, not only because as this image generation has improved ive seen people actually jump ship and say that ai art does look like it "has a soul"(??) now, but also because not all artists are humans !!!! this just very specifically bothers me, similar to those "we are all human" inclusivity tshirts and the likes

its not just human artists getting stolen from ! art made by wolves is getting stolen too ! art made by angels is getting stolen too ! art made by dragons is getting stolen too ! even art made by robots and ai is getting stolen ! image scrapers dont care about whos behind the art, it steals all of it regardless, and in my opinion art made by those of us who arent human is important also, and also deserves to be treated with respect.

tldr: to say that ai gen images are bad because they lack "human soul" is greatly missing the point, and also this is an otherkin blog so you can connect that dots on that /lh

[saccharine-fiction]

Wanted to add my two cents to the discussions about being more radical in label use and application vs keeping the definitions tighter and more niche.

I think for me, it boils down to this. Using labels broadly, for things they weren’t originally inclusive of, makes it more difficult to find others with a similar experience to yourself. I’m seeing this discussion mostly in therian/otherkin spaces currently, especially relating to voluntary identities. I wanted to give a fictionkin perspective on it since 2020-2021 was a very tough time in that community with KFF.

I don’t think KFF as a concept is bad. If someone wants to voluntarily take on an identity for fun, then by all means enjoy it! However. Since they still broadly used the term “fictionkin,” it made it a lot harder to track down spaces where I was actually welcome and fit in. I sort of closed myself off for those few years, keeping just to friend groups I already trusted. Whenever I tried to join a bigger space or discussion, I’d get hit with the “but you know you aren’t actually X right?” or “fictionkin don’t actually have memories because they’re just doing it for fun.” Yeah spiritual fictionfolk like myself still fit under most definitions of “kin,” but it felt like those using the terminology more broadly didn’t understand my experiences at ALL. That’s why terms like fictionfolk have grown in popularity - a direct reaction to the word “kin” being inclusive of for-fun and voluntary identities to the degree of misuse and removing the original community members.

I’m not here to be the vocabulary police or the therian police by any means. Voluntary or involuntary, do what you want with labels. I just wanted to share why some folks with involuntary identities are being reactionary toward this subject. There’s always going to be the fear of being unable to find folks like oneself when the general usage of community terminology grows broader. Sure, you can always clarify “involuntary identities” if you’re seeking that, and that should be okay. It’s not bad to want to find others who have been through the exact same as you. It’s not exclusionary to do so. Some of the struggles that come with an involuntary identity are different than the struggles with a voluntary identity. They both have their ups and downs and a lot of shared experiences, but they do have a set of differences too!

I’m sort of rambling at this point, but I think if the community at large is willing to open terms like therian/otherkin to include voluntary identification, then it should also be acceptable to specify that one is an involuntary/etc. therian or otherkin for the sake of finding more niche community spaces where they can relate to others more closely. And if you have a voluntary identity, it’s always good to assess why you feel the label therian/otherkin is more appropriate to describe your experience than another term. (Otherlink/copinglink spaces are very bare bones even today so I totally get that those aren’t people’s top pick. They’ve never been treated as equally valid, no matter how much people profess that, and I think there’s some serious personal reassessment that involuntarily identified folks need to be doing on that front too.)

[the-masked-bandits-system]

i’m so curious:

edit: not trying to equate these things! just trying to see the overlap and how folks describe their experiences

us, we’re currently unsure 😅

also looking for ways to explain to people why we might have certain items like ears/tail without being like, “hi i’m deeply traumatized” if they don’t know about our cdd

maybe this is too niche a question for this tumblr but i am curious to hear anyone’s experiences :) i’m adding a ton of tags i hope that’s not bothersome /gen

[cavaliercanine]

ive been thinking about this for a while and y'know. there isn't actually a big difference between someone asking you not to refer to them as human and someone asking you to use gender neutral language for them. ive seen fellow queer people (mostly on twitter) whine and scream and shit their pants over being asked to not call someone human, as if that is somehow different from a transphobe throwing a fit about being asked to use singular they for someone? how often does that even come up? do you seriously refer to others often enough with the word "human" that being asked not to is a major inconvenience? I don't know how to finish this post but you get the idea it's hypocritical and annoying