Occasionally I see people claim that otherkin are “making the trans movement look bad”. They argue that otherkin gives people a reason to take trans people less seriously: because some otherkin say they have “species dysphoria” or identify as animals, that makes gender dysphoria less credible by extension.
First of all, think that claim through. Are you suggesting that there are a whole ton of people who would have loved to support trans rights, except that they discovered that some people on the Internet identify as animals? How is that even connected? It seems to me that if someone is turned off from trans rights because otherkin exist, they probably weren’t that invested in trans rights in the first place– they were just looking for an excuse. If your support for a marginalized group is contingent on no one on the Internet being ridiculous, you don’t actually support them.
And, trust me, the “if someone identified as Napoleon you wouldn’t think they should be allowed to rule France! Trans people are just delusional!” argument has been spewed by a lot of dickheads who have never heard of otherkin. Transphobes gonna transphobe, otherkin or not.
More importantly, it has long been my belief that the vast majority of not being a dick to marginalized people comes down to not being a dick, period. Don’t touch black women’s hair without permission, because you shouldn’t touch people without permission. Don’t act like it’s a tremendous act of self-sacrifice to be friends with intellectually or developmentally disabled people, because you shouldn’t act like it’s a tremendous act of self-sacrifice to be friends with your friends. Don’t use baby talk with a wheelchair user, because you shouldn’t use baby talk with a person over the age of three. It is bad that people don’t realize that these obviously douchebaggy acts are obviously douchebaggy when directed at a marginalized person, but that doesn’t make “don’t be a douchebag” any less of a useful rule.
As an advocate for the rights of trans people and neurodivergent people, I think the world would be a better place if we all collectively adopted this rule: if someone is being kinda weird, but they are not causing direct, measurable harm to anyone else, leave them alone and move on with your life.
Imagine if instead of harassing trans women on the street, people said, “well, that outfit’s rather odd, but it’s really none of my business.” Imagine if instead of discriminating against trans people in housing or the workplace, people said, “well, I can’t imagine why a man would want to be a woman, but she does good work and pays her rent on time and that’s what matters.” Imagine if no one ever wrote a long screed explaining why you are secretly a girl pretending to be a boy because of your traumatic past, your internalized homophobia, or your deep-seated desire to be Special.
Furthermore, I think we should all adopt the rule: if someone is describing an experience that is really fucking weird, your default assumption should be that they aren’t making it up.
Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re describing their experiences accurately, or their explanation of why they feel the way they do is worth a pound of dog shit, or that no one ever makes anything up. But start from the assumption that– however distorted– the person is doing their best to describe something that is actually happening in their lives, and that if you’re going to keep interacting with them, you should listen.
I mean, shit, if people responded to gender dysphoria with “I don’t get it, huh, brains are weird” rather than “I don’t get it, you must be faking and I am going to come up with all kinds of elaborate reasons to explain why”, transphobia would basically be solved.
Consider the costs and benefits of these rules. If otherkin is not a real thing and you leave them alone, then you weren’t a dick to someone who’s going to feel really silly in a couple of years. If otherkin is not a real thing and you listen, then you didn’t make them become defensive or feel like they couldn’t question their identity without being attacked, and maybe you helped them come to the realization that it isn’t real. If otherkin is a real thing and you don’t follow my rules, then you took someone going through a tremendously painful experience and made it worse for no reason.
Nice job breaking it, hero.
We’re not going to win by saying “transness is real, therefore you shouldn’t be cruel to us”. It’s all too easy for people to say transness isn’t real, or that certain kinds of trans people don’t count, and even if we win that we’ll have to fight the whole “don’t be cruel” battle again next time there’s something people don’t think is real. We have to stake out a firm position on “it is wrong to be cruel to people, whether their weird thing is fake or not.”
Thing of Things 
What is the deal with people not extending gender dysphoria to a generalized category of experience? Does nobody else find it weird that we are like “Oh, yes, obviously things that we put in category GENDER are real reasons to dislike your body and want to change it, but things that we don’t (build, skin texture/color, limb number…) are obviously just things you have to accept about yourself whether you like it or not.
For the record, Ozy is obviously not one of these odd people who can’t extend nouns beyond their typical adjectives; see their posts on body dysmorphic disorder etc. Whatever. Brains are weird, I don’t get it.
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At least the “popularized” view of otherkin is either Mary-Sue-ish stuff like “a pretty/agreeable/badass animal” or “an awesome mythical creature” or “a specific person who is in some way kind of awesome”.
I’m not saying this has any actual connection to actual trans-other-than-gender experiences, just that it’s what is percieved.
Also, it may seem apparent that somebody could have, say, hormonal wierdness that gives them gender dysphoria, but it would seem odd for some of this other stuff to be embedded in the human mind — at least, it would seem to be more socially constructed than gender-trans-ness.
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Some otherkin say they’re fictional characters (“fictionkin”). Pretty sure there’s no hormone that gives people the body map of Pikachu.
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It’s worth remembering that their are plenty of idealistic social stereotypes of gender, as well, however. Noir Femme Fatales–ala “Chicago”, come to mind. Nuns. Nurses and French Maids. On the opposite side, ‘Hunks’ and ‘Cowboys’. ‘Rugged Firemen’. Wealthy, handsome young ‘Doctors’.
Who would really ‘want’ to be plain-jane, ‘just a guy’, or ‘just a girl’, if they could be an action star?
The notion with species variants, is not so different. Kin learn about idealized aspects of a being they like, through art, folklore, movies and animation–books and comics, and more.
Humanity is full of stereotypes, and humans have extended plenty of stereotypes to their surroundings. Nothing is sacred.
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That’s actually less sympathetic to otherkin than I meant to be. Stories can have a strong influence on people — it’s how stuff gets socially constructed, just as much as princes and princesses in fairy tales establish gender.
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Yeah, I’m just going to point to Jazz Jennings, to start, and tell you to start thinking a little more openly. Girl wants to be a damn mermaid. And I seriously doubt she’s the only AMaB individual to pursue that sort of desire, after watching her channel a fair bit.
To be fair, Pokemon draws from Daoist concepts of empowerment, and the notion in Eastern myths, that animals can have spiritual power, or be godlike. So Pokemon has its fair share of ‘mermaids’, too, so to speak.
Think about the whole Christian ‘Pokemon is the Devil’ craze, of the nineties, and ask yourself why that ‘actually’ started. One reason was the concept that in Pokemon, human and animal spirits, can be interchangeable, and even share similar ‘burial rites’. And not in a maudlin Goldfish-down-the-toilet kind of way–Dead Pokemon are ‘enshrined’, like humans.
Real Eastern mythology, to parallel, has no problem with telling stories of human reincarnation into animal lives, or of animals with a spiritually powerful nature, who reincarnate as humans. And human impersonating-creatures like the Fox are the gold standard of the occult, in China and Japan–even going so far as to assume the shape of a woman, and propose having an intimate connection to one of your ancestors. (Take a guess what other animal is heavily represented in the Pokemon roster, by the way. Foxes. And Ghosts. And Dragons.)
Sure, ‘it’s a kid’s game’. That’s what sells the mythological and religious premises wrapped up in the game, for folks to grow up with. You have to look a little deeper than that commercial delivery-apparatus, I think, to really reach the understanding of ‘why’ Pokemon are desirable for some individuals to compare themselves to.
That is, if you want to understand it–As opposed to having a stand-up comedy routine at others’ expense–which seems to be most peoples’ first apish impulse.
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I think you’ve made a great point here. Whether trans is real or not is not the point. Personally of course I think it is. But it doesn’t matter what I think. And since it doesn’t matter what I think then it also doesn’t matter what someone else thinks about the wierdness of anyone else. If you’re going to be a dickhead by calling them out on the to you weirdness then that is just a reflection of your being a dickhead in other ways. And that is far mor wrong than anybody else’s wierdness when it doesn’t concern you in the first place. You’re also saying you don’t have any weirdness and we all know being human that certainly is not a strong probability. I have seen transfolk or at least cross dressing folks or goth kids or whatever many times in my life. Of course its different. Is for me? Obviously not otherwise id do it too. But its cool for them so ive always just acknowledged it as different but their thing. I just went on with my life. So pwrhaps this is the message to reinforce and not argue the reality or not. That point is not winning as we’re ve seeing. It just causing more hurt and argument.
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Yeah, good point. I often think, we should be *more* accepting than necessary, so when something blindsides us, we have ideally not been being a complete arse about it.
OTOH, I don’t know where the balance is between “fighting the battles that can be won” and “not throwing under a bus everyone who isn’t most socially accepaible” 😦
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Of course trans is real, in the sense that people really have the feelings they describe. And of course it is wrong to be cruel to people.
But it doesn’t follow that a person is automatically a woman in reality, just because they want to be, or feel like, or want to be called, a woman, or a man in reality, just because they want to be, or feel like, or want to be called, a man. And I think this is the real point of the people who talk about otherkin: those are human beings in reality, whether they think they are, or want to be, or feel like it, or not. There is no good reason why “being a man” or “being a woman” cannot be a fact about the world in very much the same sense, one that does not depend on what you want or think or feel.
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What exactly does “a woman in reality” or “a man in reality” mean, anyway?
Every time I’ve seen this discussed in specifics, it turns into a bait-and-switch.
It always starts with chromosomes or with what the doctor thought the newborn’s genitals looked like. But then it turns out they also mean all this other stuff — secondary sex characteristics, interests, clothing, personality — all the “what men are” and “what women are” crap.
And you end up realizing that people who are obsessed with whether someone is “really a man” or “really a woman” are actually demanding that “men” be the way they expect “men” to be and “women” be the way they expect “women” to be, with no mixing of the categories.
Can you say “cisnormativity”? See, I knew you could!
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“Man” and “woman” are vague words, like all words. And so there will be edge cases, and you cannot give a formal definition in any case. But you can reject false definitions, such as “woman just means any object more than 2 feet tall”. And “woman just means any person who wishes to be described by the word ‘woman'” is such a false definition.
As for the rest, I don’t care whether anyone lives up to anyone else’s expectations, as long as they are doing their best to do good.
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@ entirelyuseless
Of course that’s a false definition, since it would include all cis men who are just trying to make a point.
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@ entirelyuseless
Just to clarify your position, consider a person with XY chromosomes who did hormone replacement therapy and sex reassignment surgery. Would such a person qualify to be a “woman”, in your eyes?
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Otherkin shaming was the reason I left /r/TumblrInAction after being a regular contributor for years. Being mean to people who have shitty, destructive ideologies, or who are being mean themselves, is one thing; being mean to (mostly) teenagers just trying to figure out who they are is entirely another.
There are times when it’s not only acceptable but necessary to be a dick. It’s never acceptable or necessary to be a bully.
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Imagine if instead of discriminating against trans people in housing or the workplace, people said, “well, I can’t imagine why a man would want to be a woman, but he does good work and pays his rent on time and that’s what matters.”
Because the thought policing is what’s a bridge too far for many people.
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You are my favourite SJ person ever.
I have nothing of value to contribute to this post, though.
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I think this post gets it’s punch by intentionally avoiding issues that would otherwise disrupt it.
It phrases the aims of trans activism in terms of individually utilized material rights and freedom from harassment and violence. But if those are the only issues under discussion, no one cares about otherkin. There’s no constituency out there saying “something something otherkin, therefore trans women should be physically assaulted and denied housing.”
There’s been discussion on this blog about questions like whether its a moral obligation to genuinely believe, deep down, that trans individuals really and truly are the gender with which they identify- or whether the only moral question is how you treat them. That’s just one example, but it illustrates an issue which doesn’t fit into the framework you’ve offered.
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I never said that leaving trans people alone would 100% solve transphobia. However, it would be a hella improvement on the status quo. And since trans people have been hurt by people who refuse to just leave us alone, we should support the general rule of “leave harmless weird people alone”.
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How much do you really think this alone gets you? I mean, it might quell the vociferous arguments started by anti-trans people, but I’m not sure it gets things like ‘respect trans pronouns’ and other things in the domain of ‘socially treat trans women like women’, which means you’ll get those arguments anyway when people are challenged to do those things.
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Usually trans rights advocacy asks for more than for people to just not be a dick to trans people, at least in the sense that I parse, “don’t be a dick.” For example, I generally see trans people arguing that its important that they be recognized as having their stated gender. Now, I have no problem with this–it seems totally reasonable to me. But I’m not sure it falls within the bounds of just not being a dick. I’d say it goes beyond mere tolerance and asks for a measure of acceptance. I’m in favor of this, because I think people deserve that measure of acceptance for their gender identities.
However, I’m a lot less sure that otherkin deserve that measure of acceptance, or can plausibly be granted it. That doesn’t justify being a dick to them, but it is, I think, best handled as a spiritual or religious belief. I mean, our general model of religious tolerance is that of course other people believe all sorts of stuff that we don’t believe, because it’s nuts, but we basically just let them alone (and don’t discriminate in housing, employment, et c.) because it does us no harm. We’re generally not asked to behave as if their religious beliefs are actually true in order to not be called a dick.
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Mainstream religious tolerance goes a little further than that. People are required (legally) to make accommodations for religious practices, even at nonzero actual cost.
For instance, if you employ an Orthodox Jew, you’re forbidden from requiring them to come in to work on Friday night — even if that requires juggling other employees’ schedules a bit to accommodate. If you employ a practicing Muslim who prays five times a day, you have to accommodate their prayer breaks.
“Don’t discriminate in housing, employment, etc.” is not purely a negative right. You are legally required to go to some inconvenience and cost in order that your employee has the right to practice their religion.
You are not expected to behave as if their beliefs are true — you don’t have to join their prayer! — but you are expected to behave as if those beliefs are not (e.g.) just an attempt to weasel out of doing more work, or to assert domination over you, or some other bad-faith thing.
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This is not legal advice. You don’t know me. Taking legal action based on a blog comment would be deeply irresponsible.
That’s not accurate. You’re required to make reasonable accommodations. If accommodation would cause undue hardship, which is “more then de minimus” cost or burden. The exact line is unclear, and a lot of employers over comply to avoid lawsuits or negative publicity. But your obligation to actual take action or spend money because of your employees beliefs is minimal.
The ADA rules are a more burdensome, for what it’s worth.
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I should have added- state and local law may impose additional burdens of which I am not aware.
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You are not expected to behave as if their beliefs are true — you don’t have to join their prayer! — but you are expected to behave as if those beliefs are not (e.g.) just an attempt to weasel out of doing more work, or to assert domination over you, or some other bad-faith thing.
That’s a good point. I’d be happy to treat an otherkin’s, um, otherkinness that way, for that matter. Still, it my perception is that it’s a step short of what trans rights activists generally advocate for. Maybe the real problem here is that, as much as we might have a much better, more just world if people wholeheartedly embraced the principle of not being a dick, it’s still something of an 80/20 thing when it comes to matters of how we’re bound to respect people’s rights.
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Personally I think we should just start by being more civil to each other. Ignore the things that don’t affect you and let it be. That would go a long way by itself. Secondly if we weren’t so freaking rigid in thinking that this is absolute men stuff and that is absolute women stuff and youre a nutcase if you cross over into anything beyond those lines then perhaps the first idea of civility would be more easily achieved. For example. I like my toes painted. i don’t cross dress and am straight. Yes painting ones toes is considered the province of women. I guess that makes me otherkin. But i see it as a tiny outlet for my artistic expression. It makes me happy to see a dab of cool color on my body like i suppose many who do tattoos also feel. But tattoos are just more socially accepted. I have no idea really why but they are. But my nail color engenders judgment on my sexuality in a way that tattoos dont.
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And what exactly does “be recognized as having their stated gender” demand beyond “don’t be a dick”?
Does calling someone by their chosen name go beyond “don’t be a dick”? Or using their preferred (and not invented) pronouns? Does referring to someone as a “man” when in your opinion he is “really a woman” exceed the bounds of not being a dick? Does not shouting “hey, that chick’s really a dude” go beyond what one can reasonably expect of a decent person?
Or are we getting into the dreaded “man in a dress is going to go into the ladies’ room and molest all the ladies” scare story?
Nobody’s demanding that you change your beloved beliefs aboud What Men Are and What Women Are. If you want to go on believing that a trans woman is “really a man” (or vice versa), go right ahead. (Believe me, those beliefs are hardly news to us.) All we ask is that you not keep shouting those beliefs us and not use them as an excuse to act in ways that invalidate us and make our lives more difficult. (Or to support laws that make our existence untenable.)
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@AMM:
And what exactly does “be recognized as having their stated gender” demand beyond “don’t be a dick”?
First, I think the demands that trans rights advocates make are completely justified.
Second, I do think asking people to pretend that “beloved beliefs” (to use your phrasing) aren’t true does go beyond just saying, “don’t be a dick”. That’s not a problem for trans rights, because “don’t be a dick” does not lay out a detailed program for how we should treat people who are different from us.
I think it is a problem for Ozy’s argument about otherkin, though.
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To be clear, my otherkin argument =/= “we should treat otherkin as wolves”. It does = “we should ignore otherkin and e.g. not create blogs mocking them”.
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I’m perfectly fine with not mocking otherkin, and generally treating them with the same sort of benign neglect I treat people with religious beliefs I don’t share. I just think that’s different (and less) than what justice requires society to provide trans people with.
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About the second paragraph: It isn’t obvious to me why the people who don’t actually support trans people would necessarily stay that way. It would seem to me like some of them could in fact be won over if they were gradually exposed to the weirdness? I find it plausible that people will be put off by things they perceive as extremely weird, but will be more accepting of less weird things, and gradually open up to more. Ozy seems to think this isn’t true, and they know much more about the history of SJ movements than me, maybe they can explain why this wouldn’t work?
(Yeah, even if this would work, it might still turn out that we don’t want to throw vulnerable people under the bus to avoid scaring off potential allies. But I want to see this discussed, and not just assume.)
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I mean, sure, there are people who start out transphobic and become more trans-accepting, but I am not certain that there is anyone who wound up becoming transphobic because otherkin exist. (Or I guess there might be– the world is a pretty big place– but not a significant enough number that it causes actual harm to trans people in any way.)
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Wound up transphobic?
No, but it seems to me that people routinely start transphobic. It’s only in the last five years or so that I’ve noticed, given my own idiosyncratic social networks and interactions with media, enough pushback against transphobia to even recognize that transphobia was a thing. I discovered I was pretty transphobic myself in a casual way[1], and realized that similarly transphobic views were pretty pervasive.
I think, given an overall transphobic society, that it sounds possible that something like that argument over otherkin might dissuade someone from being less transphobic than they otherwise would be. Whether it is actually the case is a contingent fact.
(None of this justifies being a dick to otherkin.)
[1] I am open to the possibility that I still am, though I would prefer not to be.
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It would be nice if the world were as black and white as you make it out to be here, but it’s not. Some cis people are made very uncomfortable if the have to share a restroom with trans people. This is real measurable harm. It takes time, effort, and discomfort to learn and use non-traditional pronouns. This is real measurable harm. Of course, not doing these things also causes harm, so we have to find some sort of balance. It is at the very least prima facie reasonable that one of the factors that goes into negotiating this balance is whether a person’s weirdness is by choice or due to factors beyond zer control.
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How do you know when someone’s weirdness is by choice? FWIW, it seems to me cis people who get bent out of shape about trans people using the same bathrooms as them probably never made a choice to get bent out of shape about it. I can think of a several decent utilitarian-ish arguments for overriding their objections, but none of them depend on them making some initial choice to feel the way they feel.
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There are people who are made very unconfortable if they have to share any room with anyone. This is generally seen as a personal problem they have to solve (possibly with external help).
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Steelman of the opposing view:
Suppose I’m wearing a green shirt and insist that it’s blue, and get mad when you contradict me. It’s likely that I’d be making a power play by making you “admit” something that isn’t true. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t believe that my shirt is blue, but that I’ve acquired my belief in an identitarian rather than truth-tracking way, (or it could be belief as attire) and therefore it feels like you’re offensively practicing customs of the enemy tribe when you don’t conform. People who do this shouldn’t be accommodated for the same reason that offense shouldn’t be accommodated (it encourages being offended) and because power plays based on denying the truth are particularly objectionable.
One could try to apply the same argument to transsexuality, and while it holds up well for what’s commonly labeled as “special snowflake” identities (e.g. squidgender), many trans people voluntarily undergro costly procedures to give themselves the appearance they want, which makes it significantly more likely to be real. How many otherkin want to achieve a wolf-typical hormone balance? To walk on all fours, grow fur, and not use human speech?
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I agree that we don’t want to let truth claims be determined by politics, but I think your cure is worse than the disease.
If we use costly sacrifices to distinguish “real identity” vs “power-play identity”, we’re now providing an incentive for people to make their lives suck more, and creating a situation where e.g. any improvement in medical transition tech would proportionately delegitimize all claims to transness.
Pointless sacrifice is pointless.
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Maybe the fact that it was costly at some point in history would be sufficient.
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I think the best refutation of this is that you’re presuming that gender identity is something as simple, clear and readily determinable as the difference between a green shirt and a blue shirt, when it really isn’t. The definitions involved seem a good deal more up for grabs than that, to the extent that it’s really not clear at all that you’re asking someone to “admit” something that’s untrue in the same way.
Indeed, I think it’s the porosity and vagueness of gender boundaries that makes fights over them so intense, and those fights are hardly limited to trans issues.
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I think the otherkin fights are mostly a side show. I don’t think otherkin, in the sense of people with a genuine self identification as animals, exist in any appreciable amount.
But the response to your argument seems straight forward- you’re taking the fact that some trans people transition as evidence that their internal self identification that motivated the transition is more real than that of otherkin, who pretty much never (or literally never) transition.
But transitioning to a wolf or whatnot isn’t an option. You might as well call out an otherkin bird for not learning to fly.
Honestly, imagine someone saying: “I identify as a cat and believe that I AM a cat in a sort of Catholic theology “essence” type sense. I wish I could transform my body to that of a cat, because I believe that would feel right and proper for me. But that isn’t physically possible. I’ve considered altering my body to be more cat-like, but I don’t think that would be close enough to make me feel better. So I’m not going to do it. Instead, I hang out in an online community where people speak of me as a cat and treat me as a cat. It hurts a little when people IRL assume I’m a human, but I guess that’s life.”
I wouldn’t GET that person, but they would read to me as a rational person.
For what it’s worth, that’s effectively the life story of someone I’ve met. Except the person I met identifies as female, but thinks that their body is incapable of transitioning to a female form with which they’d be comfortable. I haven’t asked for details because we don’t have that personal of a relationship, but I gather that the problem issue is a dysphoria feeling that their body ought to be about a foot shorter with petite rather than hulking proportions.
I’m not willing to view their internal self identification or their sense of dysphoria as less valid because they’ve soberly come to terms with the reality that they cannot transition in the way they’d like.
Though if we all lived in a Takeshi Kovacs novel I think they’d body swap in a heartbeat.
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I’m typical-mind-ing here a lot and I haven’t looked into this phenomena much, but it seems a little bit similar to the totems in some tribes. A person from a tribe is some kind of an animal, and is still human, and has human father and mother who are also this kind of animal. I’m not sure it’s impossible to hold two different identities at the same time, and actually I’d believe that the “animal” identity is a lesser part, it just doesn’t get a proportional attention. One can talk about a spiritual unity, or about a Fourier species series, where their “animal” gets the second maximum after “average human”, it doesn’t matter. Of course, a lot of these people would probably be more uncomfortable if they’re treated as just their kind of animal, because then their “human” part isn’t getting the attention it needs.
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Or, or it’s possible that the reason is the irrational (that is, without an obvious reason) sympathy for an animal and perceived similarity with it gets it into “my tribe”, and when there are a lot of animals of a certain kind in my tribe, I’m from an animal tribe of this kind.
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Vamair: Speaking as someone who was around the therian community for a long time, that’s a fair approximation of one of the most widely-held views. A key point is that most therians come to therianthropy by noticing that the experiences and feelings of therians match their own, rather than based on pre-formed belief, and the explanation for these feelings and experiences are typically secondary and later-developing. I would say that, at least during the time I was active in the therian community (98-06), the majority of therians had either vaguely totemic beliefs or reincarnationist beliefs (e.g. an animal soul which still bore some sort of ‘leftover’ of the prior body’s mindset), with vaguely align with your description of the 2nd Fourier peak (Bravo!).
That said, because of the experiential emphasis and secondary belief construction, the range of beliefs about the cause was exceptionally broad, from bad-movie-crazy to atheistic therians (whose hypotheses typically including a mix of neurodivergence, personality differences, and pareidolia). A common line in FAQs was the old “Ask 10 X’s, get 11 answers” for this reason. Many, including myself, also changed position over time (or at least the introspective members of the community).
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“I identify as a cat and believe that I AM a cat in a sort of Catholic theology “essence” type sense. I wish I could transform my body to that of a cat, because I believe that would feel right and proper for me. But that isn’t physically possible. I’ve considered altering my body to be more cat-like, but I don’t think that would be close enough to make me feel better. So I’m not going to do it. Instead, I hang out in an online community where people speak of me as a cat and treat me as a cat. It hurts a little when people IRL assume I’m a human, but I guess that’s life.”
Replace cat with reptile and you have me. Exactly. Took the words out of my mouth.
So much so that it hurts, because you’ve perfectly described me while seeming to believe that I don’t exist. I hope that my and Mokele’s comments will make you reconsider that belief.
But yeah, I’m not going to get anything like the transition I want any time soon, or any time that I can foresee. Give me a transhumanist future where I can pick any body I want, and I’d drop this human skin in a heartbeat, too.
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What lizardywizard just said, except with foxes, for myself.
Non-human identity isn’t just a hypothetical situation to be jokingly blown off, on Tumblr. If a person can fixate on feminine roles, and the appeal of a feminine form, there’s just as easily going to be someone who idealizes non-human body traits, and even a less-human lifestyle. The science of it is best left up to scientists. Put bluntly: “It is, it happens.”
It’s also worth remembering that an identity is built up over a lifetime, and not spontaneously. You don’t just wake up one morning and decide “As of today, I’m a cat”.
It’s more like… you start with ‘I don’t feel right, because something about this body, is failing me.’ Take, ADHD, or Autism, or Schizophrenia–some subtle ‘defect’ that puts you in conflict with human society. Easy to overlook by other humans, but critically failing ‘you’, in some fashion.
Then, you move onto something like ‘Humans treat me lousy for this defect, but don’t do anything to help, because they don’t believe it exists’.
Eventually, given the right stories and imagery, the notion of ‘non-human in a human body’, or ‘human becomes non-human’, or both, enter this sort of person’s thoughts. The person starts to think of themselves as ‘alien’ to the sort of people who aren’t ‘defective’. Gradually, they begin to build an identity of empowerment, around this ‘alternate life’, and to crave it very deeply–physically, even.
There’s plenty of reason to be tired of being a ‘plain-Jane human’. Some have ‘lost faith in what human society represents’, some may just dislike flat-faces and tedious shaving, and the issues can range anywhere from the spiritual to the pragmatic. I, personally, envy the sense faculties of predator species, and in time, grew fond of the whole ‘snout and whiskers’ aesthetic, of foxes.
To sum it up with a lousy Matrix quote–‘non-humans are not ‘born’, they’re grown’.
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If I were to try to extend the most charitable interpretation to people resentful of otherkin for using terms like “species dysphoria” and spinning it as similar to being trans then I’d probably point to the general principle that members of marginalized groups don’t like it when other groups attempt to parasitize off progress they’ve fought for.
I’m not sure if it counts as a godwin to point to godwins law itself but the simplest example might be that people who actually had family members murdered by the nazi’s can be justifiably resentful when people try to liken trivially unpleasant opponents who’ve never committed genocide to the nazi’s while comparing their own plight to that of the jews when their own group has never been systematically exterminated or suffered significant hardship.
People do it constantly since it’s easier to leech off the feelings that campaigns of the past engender than to run one yourself to give new terms power.
So for some minor examples: I’ve seen people convicted of drunk driving trying to leech off sympathy for rape victims by describing themselves and their situations using rape-associated language, they’re not “an idiot who drove drunk”, they’re “a survivor”, they’re not irresponsible drunks, they’re “victims of the alcohol industry”, and anyone who calls them on it is “victim blaming”.
And it isn’t free. Every time someone uses your groups terms to help their own group, particularly when that person is using the terms in a flaky way, every time someone distorts a term to wedge their own little ingroup within it’s boundaries it saps a little bit of the power that your own group fought long and hard to give it.
If too many people use the terms associated with the suffering of members of your ingroup lightly for their own ends then they lose their punch.
Perhaps otherkin do suffer significant oppression (any guesses on whether it’s to the same extent as trans individuals?) but I can see why many trans people might resent them leeching the rhetorical power that trans people fought and often died for to benefit their own group when trans people are still a long way from winning that social battle.
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The oppression of otherkin seems obviously severe. Have you ever tried to get a job while wearing cat ears or a tail?
Anyone with a deep desire to do “weird” things full time and in public is very badly oppressed by current society.
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Can we stop talking about species dysphoria in discussing the gender or sexuality continuum?Those who deny the continuum constantly bring this about what people feel like but it is a stupid analogy coming from equally stupid people. And we all know that. So there really is no point in continuing to give further credence to it. If you’re species dysphoric then that is altogether a weird idea.
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Is this really limited to outgroups? It seems that trying to abusely expend the boundaries of a given status of oppression for the purpose of sympathy/blame shifting is something even members of the oppressed ingroup can and do engage into.
[examples should be obvious but also hot-button issues, so they are left as an exercice to the reader]
This is really just the general tendency to “exploit” opportunities to get better treatment from society, whether legitimately or not, and it doesn’t really make sense to frame it as an “true” ingroup vs “parasitic” outgroup problem.
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Rest assured that there is effort, and reason, to juxtapose the concepts of Otherkin, and Transgender, together.
Specifically, as a means to model a way, for those among Otherkin, who ‘do’ feel the need to have advocacy, to be able to ‘obtain’ it.
And, after all–how would one set of people in need, ‘not’ look over at another set, and try to make comparisons, to figure out how best to be heard?
Mind you, I don’t agree that both concepts are identical, but both play on notions of ‘human ideal stereotypes’. A non-conforming gender identity forms partially as a product of observing standards and cultural norms, and wishing to redefine how one relates in regard to those stereotypical vices and virtues.
For instance, some very basic ‘ideal’ gender stereotypes are that ‘women in relationships get to be waited on hand and foot’, while ‘men are allowed to excel in jobs and pursue careers more easily’. These are both perceivable opportunities–that may appeal to someone in a state of duress, regardless of other, more ‘physical’ factors for wishing oneself a different outward gender.
Likewise, humans have engineered stereotypes about the qualities of humans vs. animals. Humans have different sets of expectations, and are anticipated to be able to achieve different accomplishments from animals. You wouldn’t expect a man to fly on his own body’s strength and shape, or to be able to sprint on all fours, through winter snow.
Likewise, you wouldn’t anticipate a swan, or a stag, to need to think about morality, or social responsibility, beyond courtship and prey/predator relationships. Neither of those species would make particularly great artists, scientists, businessmen, or world leaders–but some humans are just ‘not’ particularly fond of, or adept at such roles, and their current niche in society may not allow them room to ‘live’, in absence of those talents.
In this sense, at very least, both notions have some surface draws, that stem from a common, human understanding of stereotypes regarding way of life. ‘Desire to live a more ideal life, in a perceivably more-ideal body’, is the common denominator between the two ideas of Transgender and Otherkin. And when that desire is repressed, over a long period, there is ’emotional distress’, in both cases.
At some point, people start looking at what they don’t have, and feeling like ‘that should be me’. Doesn’t matter if you’re rich, poor, man, woman, non-binary, trans, cis, white, or a racial minority–everyone has that moment where they wonder what it would be like outside their little ‘prison cell’ of a life, as something ‘on the outside’. Otherkin happen to be focusing on the fair folk, or dragons, or pookas, or Inari foxes, and so on–or just on regular, mundane animals (in the case of Therians).
I don’t particularly feel that there’s anything wrong with the desire to change one’s body and life in ‘any’ given way, so long as one can live with the responsibilities of the new role. I think the problem, as usual, is just the usual human one… lack of empathy to relate to other peoples’ problems.
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To be honest I’m not sure why the article has to shit on otherkin people either. While I don’t share their experiences, I do believe in personal narrative, and that each person knows best how to describe their own feelings. Calling one group (who hasn’t hurt anyone) ridiculous in defense of another seems kinda off.
To quote the article against itself: “I think we should all adopt the rule: if someone is describing an experience that is really fucking weird, your default assumption should be that they aren’t making it up.”
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Hey thank you for this. I’ve been struggling to explain this to people but this really puts it to words and provides a good strategy by which to approach things people may not understand from a place oof compassion.
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The issue at hand is the onflow into broader society. In regards Trans people and gender dysphoria, they are still identifying as human but wish to present within the existing society physically as the gender they feel like inside. The otherkin community (as far as I have seen) are calling for a change to that society (ignoring the objective reality to acknowledge an abstract subjective one). The 2 issues are worlds apart and Trans people have a reasonable and specific request to be accepted as they are so they can fulfill their end of the social contract. Otherkins request is to change the social contract itself to accomodate them (a minority of the population). Strangely I don’t hear of any otherkin in 3rd world or non western countries. Could this be because the more free a society is the more free time people have to consider the abstract and subjective? If so how would changing (and potentially damaging severely) the society that enabled that freedom help anyone?
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I am a therian, i don’t experience species dysphoria and i don’t identify as an animal. I only believe in a past life, I was not a human, also otherkin is for non – earthly animals, therians are earthly animals. I don’t identify as an animal because in this life, I am human, so I identify as a human. But, in a past life I was a different animal. This is just my belief, I am a spiritual therian.
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