A few years back I had a blog @cleansingfacialwipes and it was meant to be a joke at the expense of the otherkin/ plantkin community. It was insensitive and offensive, and I feel like I need to apologize for it because those actions and words don’t reflect my views now. I’m sorry for making a joke out of and over-exaggerating an identity that many people hold close to their hearts. It was an extremely shitty thing to do.
It wasn’t that shitty of a thing to do. Otherkins are jokes. They actually were started to mock the trans community(which is fucked up) and were meant to say “if u wanna be a boy and you’re a girl, I can be a dog lol.” so the people who jumped on board with it are either full of shit or just so caught up in what’s “real” on this godforsaken site that they believe they’re supposed to be fuckin seahorses and shit. Either way, it’s not shitty to make fun of them for that.
It may have started as a joke, but it’s not to a lot of people anymore. And I don’t believe it’s right to discredit those who are coming to terms with themselves and their identity. I’m not educated on the otherkin community and their impact on the transgender community, but it’s just hypocritical to to preach love and acceptance and not extend that to others of whatever identity.
Not to hijack, but I’m hijacking anyway.
OP, the otherkin community is not a transphobic one and definitely wasn’t made just for transphobia. So if Yab could not scapegoat us, that’d be great.
The spiritual beliefs found in our community go back thousands of years, and are found in most, if not all, cultures. However, our documents of the modern otherkin community go back to two groups of Tolkein elves – the Queen Elf’s Daughters and the Silver Elves, which were started in mailing lists and offline groups (as the internet largely didn’t exist yet) in the early ‘70s.
The internet helped make things more widespread, and the term ‘otherkind’ was actually coined in 1990 by a very tired person who got sick of typing orc/hobbit/dragon/unicorn kin over and over. It literally means ‘not humankind, not elfkind’, because elves are like that.
The D got dropped somewhere in there, so now a lot of people think that the ‘kin’ suffix is meant to be ‘kinship’ – it isn’t. It’s the -kind suffix, like mankind and elvenkind, which were the original inspiration.
Otherkin isn’t a joke, as any community member who isn’t 13 or wishkin could tell you. We get a lot of trolls and antis because we’re weird. There’s a reason most of the community exists online in highly-vetted and difficult to enter private forums. Because people like Yab up there think we’re jokes and like to ruin everything nice we have, because they’re not much more than classroom bullies and just as pathetic.
It’s shitty to make fun of anyone for things that aren’t actively wrong. Otherkin is neither harmful nor helpful – in the same way that hair colour is neither harmful or helpful. It’s a part of your identity, nothing more.
Thank you for adding this!!
@shadowfae it’s not wrong to make fun of anything. I’ll leave that alone though bc people who say it’s wrong cry about everything. My main thing is that it doesn’t make any fuckin sense. educate me on what “other kin” actually is and I may change my mind. But as far as I know, it’s just people who like animals, feel an attachment they consider empathy and relation to that animal, and decide that’s what they truly are inside. It sounds like horse shit. I don’t care if anyone feels that way. It’s not hurting anyone but themselves. More power to em. It’s just the same shit as any other “minority.” I’ll make fun of it indiscriminately. Not bc I have any hatred for it. Just bc I have no real sense of humor so I’m left to resort to making fun. And otherkin are up there with bronies on easy target nibbas
Sooooo, let me get this straight, @yaboiniqk. You’re going to make fun of a community you admit you know nothing about because you think it’s funny, and then complain when I tell you off.
I don’t mean it’s ‘wrong’ as in trying to explain to a child that things are wrong. I mean that it’s rude, distasteful, and shows how little empathy you have for people when you make fun of them for something that really has nothing to do with you. You are one voice among a few hundred all spewing the same nonsense and refusing to listen or even do your basic research. All you’re doing is looking stupid, if you ask me.
It doesn’t make sense to you because you haven’t bothered to look past the few antis and trolls you’ve seen. If you actually want to be educated, sure, I can do that. But it sounds like you just want a cheap laugh at the expense of others, and don’t seem very happy when you’re getting shown the door.
So, to ask completely seriously and sincerely: do you actually want to know what otherkin is and how it happened as we know it, or do you just want a cheap laugh at our expense and don’t care to listen? Because I’ve educated a lot of people, and if you aren’t willing to listen and learn, I really don’t feel like going to the effort, which is reasonable enough. I won’t pass much judgement either way and your response is up to you, but if you do want to learn, best to let me know and I’ll explain, then answer any questions you might have.
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