I want to talk about some of the people who are not otherkin and how they’ve tried to shape us, and how some of them have done such a good job at it.
This is not just anti otherkin who do this, because keep in mind to be anti is to work against a thing. Sometimes it is ordinary people with no real bone to pick. Sometimes it is people who want to be and pretend to be otherkin.
So often I try to talk to these people who do these things, and they are rarely interested in listening. The ones who do listen and then move on are not who this post is about, and if you are not otherkin but are the sort of person who is open to listening and learning, please know I am not talking about you.
I am talking about the rest and for ease I will just say ‘non-otherkin’.
Please also know that with the exception of anti otherkin I don’t think most people are doing this on purpose/ realize what they are saying.
For a lot of non-otherkin, always they want to be the ones who get to define us, and we don’t say often enough how self entitled and dismissive them doing so is.
I’m rather fed up with that.
They tell us what we are. They try to change the definitions we have made. They tell us we are attention seekers. They tell us we have disorders that we do not have. They tell us we are escapists. They tell us we are liars. They tell us we choose to have these identities and by extension that they know us better than we know ourselves.
They tell us what we want. They tell us we want attention. They tell us we want to be victimized. We tell them no we don’t want that, we want to be left alone, but they do not listen to us.
They tell us what we need. They tell us we need psychiatric help. They tell us we need to grow up. They tell us we need to stop roleplaying. They tell us we need to shut up.
They tell us what words we can use, and what we are allowed to talk about, and what we are allowed to feel. They try to be the ones to define what is possible, what is real, and what isn’t.
If we speak up, if we are fed up, if we are finished with being humiliated and dragged through the mud they try to turn our anger around like we are the ones making the problem.
We are the ones being humiliated and hurt by these people, but often I see they try to make it seem like we are over reacting. Sometimes they have the fucking gall to call us the bullies when we get angry at them for their actions.
They try to misdirect who holds responsibility for their actions and it uncomfortably reminds me of the times in life I have been gaslighted.
Sometimes people will say that all of them have a right to their opinion, and that we should listen to them as if we are in an echo chamber if we don’t listen. Yes, they have a right to their opinion, but they are outside of our experience and by no means of real importance in the discussions about our experiences.
I come from the ‘generation’ that lived on forums and on small message groups. For years we have spoken with one another without outside harassment or criticism born out of ignorance.
There are all these things that are pushed on us now about the kind of people we are, and all these things non-otherkin (in particular anti-otherkin) put forward because the behave like the authority, that never used to exist for us.
Without them we weren’t an echo chamber by any means. Most of you have probably heard from the older crowd that in the past we put emphasis on introspection and thoughtful interactions to a fault. On a big forum there was little an outsider could teach us because we’d already discussed everything imaginable to death. ‘Real’ otherkind, the people who know what otherkinity is and are not embracing willful ignorance are often some of the most thoughtful, open minded, well expressed people you could ever meet.
Non-otherkin have done such a good fucking job at defining us that sometimes I see people new to the otherkind communities believe what non-otherkin have told them and berate each other over. Things that we have done for years, that suddenly we are told is wrong. Being told we cannot talk about dysphoria came from non-otherkin first, but now I see it said in my own community. Being told we cannot talk about phantom limbs came from non-otherkin first.
The list goes on and on. A decade ago that list didn’t exist! We were able to have thoughtful conversations without the overbearing attention of outsiders trying to control how we interact and think.
The worst of these fucking people happily spread misinformation and lies, they degrade us without trouble, they tell us all these things we should do and should need, and they make compilations of writing taken from our personal blogs with the intent to humiliate rather than educate…
Then they tell us they are doing this to help us.
Those assholes are lying. Let them know you know it.
These people (anti otherkin) do not care about us but they try to cast doubt on our judgement. They get a kick out of pissing on others and they try to justify that doing so does not make them trash because we are still socially acceptable to abuse.
It’s not abuse if they just want to help us, right? They really don’t want to help. They just don’t want us to tell them to shut the fuck up, sit down, and swallow the reality that they are assholes going after innocent people. What they really don’t want is for non-otherkin to call them out.
And sometimes they hide behind having compassion for one sort of person. “Look, look!” they shriek, “I support these things, so I’m compassionate as fuck!”
You can have compassion for one thing and then none for another. If a person drags otherkind through the mud, shames them, humiliates them, insists they know us better than we know ourselves, but then they also support other things, don’t let them hide behind those other things!
Those other things do not change the reality that they’ve behaved like abusive assholes with zero self awareness and no desire to take responsibility.
Don’t let them convince you and gaslight you into thinking they are good people in all the facets of their life and you should shut up and listen because any negative reaction you have is an over reaction or a thin skin or feeding the trolls. There is only so much poison any person can be expected to take; it is finite. Don’t let others make you think that you fucking deserve to be humiliated and hurt.
And for the love of fucking god, please understand that just because you shared your writing on a public site, people aren’t entitled to use that to behave like abusive assholes and bullies and humiliate you with it. People who do this are assholes.
A compassionate person does not humiliate others on purpose.
A
compassionate
person does not spread misinformation willingly.
A
compassionate
person does not speak over the voices of a community they are not part of and that they do not understand.
A
compassionate
person listens. A
compassionate
person approaches things with kindness, patience, and respect.
That is what compassion looks like.
Otherkinity, this nonhuman experience, comes from our voices, in our hands, in our own way, and I say this all just so other people who might not have words for this frustration can have a voice.
Mostly this is about anti otherkin, but other non-otherkin can and have done the same things without the same vitriol towards it.
We are not the selfish and entitled people in this situation, when it is people outside the experience on nonhumanity coming in to try to teach us about ourselves.
Non-otherkin, and especially anti-otherkin, are not the ones who define us, but it would be nice if once in a while the non-otherkin who realized this slapped their shitty peers in the face.
