Feathertail's Findings

Everything on this journal, which doesn't expressly belong to other people, is now CC-By-SA licensed. That includes the Skeptical Otherkin series, as well as the Otherkin FAQ.

Feel free to repost anywhere and remix however you like. Anyone who wants may add to or continue either of the things I just mentioned, or anything else on this journal. Just credit feathertail for the original, and use CC-By-SA for any derivative works.

Behind a cut, to keep from cluttering reading pages. No trigger warning this time.

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I'm sorry for getting derailed from the Otherkin topics. Don't worry, 'kin, your time will come. You'll be able to change physically soon. Then you can all have nervous breakdowns like I am. :P

I'm sorry for trivializing your dysphoria. I know I would've wanted to trade places with me even after all this, just to be what I longed for. It's just ... harder than I ever imagined it'd be. And I've spent a long time imagining it.

Thank you, to everyone who's supported me so far. I really appreciate it.

Partly inspired by a blog called "Ami Angelwings Super Cute Rants of DOOOM XD".

Trigger warning for discussion of rape, violence, transphobia, and slurs directed at transgender people. It's not graphic, it's just me coming to terms with stuff like "yes people are mean to transpeople."

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Finally, until I started thinking about it I had no idea how much I wanted people to refer to me using female pronouns. I still remember when someone first did on Gaia Online, and it was this really strange feeling, like having someone tell you you're loved and valuable when you've been struggling with self-esteem. That's how much it meant to me.

I can't believe that I'm going through this or talking about it so openly. Even here on Dreamwidth.

Expect a name change and journal / profile redesign when I have the energy for it.

From the Paizo blog:

Monsters have the potential to take on a number of roles in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. They can help a GM illuminate his or her campaign world. Monsters can serve as the impetus for adventure, calling the characters to quests with both words and actions. There is little doubt, though, that the chief job of monsters is to bring the hurt. Some of the best monsters are unflinching in their evil, and that’s the way we like them.

There's an argument to be made for games where you don't have to pull your punches. But Pathfinder's official setting is filled with people who are Always Chaotic Evil because they have muscles and green skin. And the Paizo folks revel in it. (And in quasi-mesoamerican skeleton monsters that shoot lazor beams from their eyes.)

Q. What's the difference between Paizo's worldbuilding and porn?

A. One's filled with unrealistic stereotypes and contrived situations, that disrespect other people and diminish your ability to empathize with them. The other is porn.

I'm not going in order here, because ... I'm not sure what to call her. My dragon side? My other half? A name that we need to come up with? She and I were having another long conversation today, and she feels like she has to write this part.

So here she is, on being a dragon. Or maybe something else, as we found out after writing it. Sans italics, since they make things harder to read.

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In retrospect, this seems almost less about otherkinness and more about surviving abuse. That wasn't what she set out to write, but I think she needed to work through it like I did.

I'm also wondering what a fox-phoenix gryphon would look like now.

I wrote an FAQ about otherkin awhile back, but haven't done a whole lot of talking about what being an otherkin is like for me. Or a multiple, or a transperson, or anything else like this. Not unless it's to illustrate a concept. And there are a ton of other things that I'm realizing I am, or have known for a long time, but I keep putting off facing them and working through these things on paper (so to speak).

I'm going to ramble about it a bit now, partly to help anyone who has questions and partly to work things out for myself. I don't speak for all foxes, dragons, multiples, trans* or otherkin, and if you disagree that I'm entitled to call myself one of those things I apologize in advance for the inconvenience. I'm trying to use the best words I know of to describe myself, and if you feel like a different word would work better then let me know.

( Being a multiple (or median) )

I'll talk about something else next time. Or we will. Either way. And we're open to suggestions.

Unfortunately, no, she does not have a name yet. Like I said, we're both just starting to come to terms with this. Thanks for your understanding.

It bothered me that the essay I wrote on cultural appropriation dealt mainly with how to deal with privileged concern trolls, and not with how actual native and oppressed people felt. Because I've mostly dealt with the former, but I didn't want to give people the impression that the latter did not matter.

I wrote a follow-up essay to try to address this, but it was long and rambling and (in my opinion) very insensitive. It also took it for granted that the people who would be reading it already knew what appropriation was. I have since pulled that essay down. This draft is my attempt to set things right.

( Reiteration of what appropriation is )

( How I personally feel otherkin should respond )

One last note about appropriation.

Whether you accept me as a "real" fox or not, all human legends about foxes appropriate us. And personally, looking back on a lot of kitsune stories I feel like I'm reading neurotypicals talk about us autistics; both sets of stories describe these mysterious, passionate fey people, who don't share human morality. And they're either monsters that need to be exorcised, or magical wish fairies / Rain Man savants, and God(dess)'s gift to families.

I personally think that it's time for us otherkin to write our own legends. Some humans may not understand them, but that won't be our fault and it never has been.




Edit. avia notes that I left out something very important:

It does really hurt, and it can injure you, when someone tells you you can't wear your grandmother's jewelry, or that you are being appropriative for having a strong attachment since childhood to an item that comes from another culture.

Please read and consider her whole comment. It expresses things better than I could.

I also want to see what kinds of stories we can come up with that tell things from our perspective. (And I want to remind my human readers that they're welcome to comment here too, even though I use "we" and "us" to mean otherkin.)

I was reading a Christian church's explanation of how to become a Christian, and the second part says that our sin "separates us from a perfect and holy God and breaks our fellowship with Him." This is usually the explanation for why going to Hell is the natural state of all unsaved people.

But Jesus hung out with the sinners. People looked down on him because of that. Is this really the same Jesus who so can't abide sin that he'll send little babies to Hell? Who our sins separate us from for eternity? I know there are explanations they use, I know what some of those explanations are, and I know that not every church believes things like this. It's gotten to the point where I hesitate to call churches and people that do "Christian," though, because their teachings and actions are so unlike Jesus Christ.

Jesus himself said that not everyone who calls him Lord will get into the Kingdom of Heaven, but "he that doeth the will of my father who is in Heaven." The parable of the Good Samaritan, where a person belonging to another church helps out a helpless man when members of Jesus' church pass him by, underscores that thought.

Nothing in Jesus' teachings suggests that you have to call yourself Christian, or go to church, or even have a personal relationship with him in order to be saved. If you actually read what he said, it's all about helping the poor, and whaling on hypocrites who think they're too good to help them. He models a personal relationship with his god, through examples like The Lord's Prayer, but any time he talks about Hell or salvation it's always in relation to how you treat other people. You have to go to Biblical figures other than Jesus to find any other ideas about how to get to Heaven, and even then it depends on interpretation.

Most of you probably already know this, but I wanted to write it down while the thought was occurring to me. I'm not Christian, and I'm not particularly concerned with whether or not the Christian god will accept me into his heaven. But I have a great deal of respect for whomever the actual Jesus was, and it has nothing to do with what spiritual powers he supposedly had. To me, he's a great role model as a trickster.

As sophie points out, "today" was the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Which I would've found out sooner if I'd checked my reading page more often the last few days.

I don't know how many transspecies people die to violence or suicide, but transgender people are going through it a lot. Pray that by the time otherkin get to the point where we can physically modify ourselves, or otherwise appear as ourselves in public, we won't face what many of them are facing now.