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2:10am April 26, 2012

➸ a large, fruit-eating bat.: darziel: megachiropteran: uuughh maybe i am being a huge jerk but...

darziel:

megachiropteran:

uuughh maybe i am being a huge jerk but seriously identifying as otherkin does not make you an expert on the animal(s) you identify as/with and the staggering amount of misinformation & downright dangerous advice i’m seeing is bad bad bad bad.

i can’t even…

I’ve written about the exact same phenomenon in stuff I haven’t posted yet. And yes there is often a sense that if your identity is an animal then you know all kinds of things about that animal that may not add up. Yes, lots of people do it, but being Otherkin can make people think they know more than the average person, similar to people who think they have a way with animals.

And the thing I was writing was mostly a defense of Otherkin and other people who are what I call “hateable” – not always technically oppressed, but still widely considered totally acceptable targets to treat like shit, except for flimsy excuses that allow people to think they’re hating them for a good reason. (Which usually boil down to “Some Otherkin do ______” and then generalizing that to all of them.) So nobody decide I wrote this because I hate them.

But there are things that are encouraged in segments of their community that I don’t like, including the idea of believing all your ideas of an animal, even if completely wrong, come from a deep understanding of that animal. And other things that I won’t get into, but are big reasons I have no interest in joining the community. Too many bad memories there.

But my not being part of that community is not for lack of shared experience. I just can’t take the drama and the glamour and all the other crap some segments of it bring. But when I see people act like they have a license to shit all over them, I easily see myself in the place of the ones being shit on.

But shitting on them isn’t what megachiropteran was doing any more than I’m doing it. Talking about trends among some people in a community is different than hating on a whole community. I’ve seen both done right here on tumblr and this is not hate.

All communities have some norms and trends that can be harmful to someone. And as someone who… I don’t even have a word for the way my brain handles my identity around cats, it doesn’t translate. I am leery of calling myself terms from a community I left. But as whatever that is, it’s absolutely crucial for me to always remember that cats know things about being cats that I never will. And seeing tons of wolfkin running around thinking wolves howl at the moon… it makes me realize even more the need for caution around those things. It’s different from the way most people are mistaken about it, because most people who are mistaken about it aren’t claiming an “insider” level of authority on the matter. That changes all sorts of things, both inside and outside the person claiming that authority. ETA: There are other people who claim that authority, but when your identity is this animal, it gives you an extra little shove in the direction of thinking you instinctively understand things about them, that you actually picked up from human cultures.

(lashes tail a few times, one ear slightly back, and walks off)