liminalbeast:

oneladydracor:

nomadic-shayejou:

liminalbeast:

nomadic-shayejou:

Yeah, and I understand that, and I didn’t say otherkin are NOT opressed, I said not as badly as gays. My cousin had the living crap beaten out of him on the street because he was gay, and last time I checked,…

Yup, I agree with Sonne.

I don’t think I need to edit my post to add “of course it’s possible to be a therian AND to have a mental illness or other condition”. I’m diagnosticated with an anxiety disorder, myself so yes, I know what is a panic attack and I know irrational emotional responses, what it’s like.

Yes it’s possible for animal-people to be animal-people and have anger-management issues, or other emotional issues that make it difficult for them to keep a more or less acceptable behaviour. But this isn’t the fact of therianthropy itself. Therianthropy isn’t a mental illness.

Someone’s therianthropy/shifting acting dysfunctional does not mean that shifting is by essence that way for all of us. For most people it’s not (even though it does not always suit society’s norms well; but people still manage to not get carried away with violence). So people should stop taking their animal identity as an excuse as though violence and lack of control was an integral part of being a therian. It’s not.

And I think deep down there is something speciest about the “instincts-animal-savage VS reason-human-civilized” dichotomy. I think the community needs to grow past their misconceptions about what being an animal means.

Reblogged because liminalbeast pretty much stated my feelings on the matter spot-on.

scarlip:

swanblood:

Okay, people want science? Let’s do science. Let’s collect data on what otherkin/therians have experienced because of being otherkin/therian.

Please reblog this everywhere you can, and post links also on places that are not Tumblr (therian/otherkin forums, etc.) If you have a nonhuman identity, please take this survey whether or not you have been abused or injured for being nonhuman. Even if your answer to every question is “no”. That will help the percentages to be more accurate.

This survey may be triggering. A more detailed trigger warning is at the top of the survey.

All answers are anonymous.

The problem is, the closet. Ask a trans person who’s never told a soul what abuse they’ve faced for being trans, then ask one who can’t walk down the street without being read as trans- you’ll get vastly different answers. The survey needs to include bits about telling people and if that correlates to anything.

I don’t know if that’s necessarily the case. I’m out about my otherkin identity in pretty public places (I blog about it, I’ve run workshops and done presentations, I’ve talked about it outside of my close friend circle, etc) and have never experienced any form of abuse, discrimination, persecution, or bullying for my identity.

(via scarlip-deactivated20120428)

This is an absolutely fascinating study.

theprettyboyangel:

let me say this right away: i am otherkin. i identify as non-human. so i get all of this.

but i personally feel REALLY weird about terms such as “speciesism”

i have been oppressed and discriminated against for years, because i am psychologically and physically disabled (depression, ADHD,…

My pet peeve: persecution complexes in groups who aren’t actually being persecuted.

Yes, I’ve heard all the arguments about how persecuted otherkin reeeeally are, and it still sounds only scarcely more valid as all the arguments I heard growing up about how conservative evangelical Christians are being “persecuted” in the USA.

Which might be why it’s a pet peeve, that exposure growing up in a Southern Baptist household, and so I have very little patience for persecution complexes from people who aren’t really being persecuted. Particularly when contrasted against the very real victimization and persecution of the GLBT community (especially the “T” in GLBT). I’ll own that I’m predisposed to prickliness and sensitivity on the subject, and so maybe I’m not seeing how victimized otherkin really are.

But… seriously. I’ve identified as otherkin for 10 years and I’ve been pretty open about it. I’ve given presentations on the subject, I’ve written about it in public venues, I’ve talked about it openly (even though I’ve been careful about how/when; but that’s how I am about anything personal or spiritual). I have never gotten flak for my identity. I’ve never felt attacked, oppressed, or mistreated due to being otherkin.

(Maybe it’s because I don’t count strangers on the internet being snarky about otherkin in general as “oppression”.)

What is it about modern Westerners (especially Americans) and our desire to play the victim? Even the most privileged, powerful demographics (see: evangelical conservative Christians in the USA) try to put themselves in the position of “victim” and “martyr”. Why? Why would you want to be a victim? I don’t get it.

livelaughawesome:

I’ve updated this since I posted it last.

And it’s way different now.

Don’t know what something means? Ask.

You’re not included adequately? Let me know.

Did I get something wrong? Tell me.

Definitions to everything: Here

Really rather nifty.

togetherforjacksoncountykids:

“It’s Okay to be Neither,” By Melissa Bollow Tempel

Alie arrived at our 1st-grade classroom wearing a sweatshirt with a hood. I asked her to take off her hood, and she refused. I thought she was just being difficult and ignored it. After breakfast we got in line for art, and I noticed that she still had not removed her hood. When we arrived at the art room, I said: “Allie, I’m not playing. It’s time for art. The rule is no hoods or hats in school.”

She looked up with tears in her eyes and I realized there was something wrong. Her classmates went into the art room and we moved to the art storage area so her classmates wouldn’t hear our conversation. I softened my tone and asked her if she’d like to tell me what was wrong.

“My ponytail,” she cried.

“Can I see?” I asked.

She nodded and pulled down her hood. Allie’s braids had come undone overnight and there hadn’t been time to redo them in the morning, so they had to be put back in a ponytail. It was high up on the back of her head like those of many girls in our class, but I could see that to Allie it just felt wrong. With Allie’s permission, I took the elastic out and re-braided her hair so it could hang down.

“How’s that?” I asked.

She smiled. “Good,” she said and skipped off to join her friends in art.

‘Why Do You Look Like a Boy?’

Read More

Sums up a regular frustration of mine perfectly.

(via thegreenwolf)

swanblood:

(This is not a problem limited to otherkin. It’s a general problem with any group that is not respected or taken seriously. “Attacks and enemies make a group stronger” is true, but most of the reason you need a group to be strong is to fight and defend your group against other groups who don’t like you. If you didn’t have the enemies in the first place, then you would not need to be a strong group. So, I’m not sure I am comfortable with that logic. In a world without enemies, you would not wish to have enemies just to make you stronger: unless you thought that you would need to be strong to fight other enemies later, and then, that would not be a world without enemies.)

Oh! I think you might have misunderstood my intent. I’m not saying that trolls and their behavior is a good thing! Not at all. I’m just saying that it has an interesting side-effect (unintended by the trolls, amusingly) of binding the community they’re trolling more tightly together.

swanblood:

I think, it’s also important to note that it is not just individual people on Tumblr who are going through an “identity pride” stage. Particularly here in this community, where otherkin and the idea of social justice have caught up with each other, the whole idea of otherkin is going through an “identity pride” stage.

Because, this is the time in the community where we are becoming noticed, we are seeing a lot of hate and personal attacks just for being what we are and posting about it, and so, identity pride is one important way that the community as a community responds to those things. Because, if a community does not grow pride when these things happen, then, the alternative is to disappear.

These are signs of a community fighting back. It’s messy, because the fighting stage always is messy. There’s not a way to fight back against hate without getting messy, making a noise and a fuss. Often, people who don’t feel emotionally involved, don’t see reason for the noise and the fuss. But, this is how we make it so the future has a space for us to speak.

I would definitely agree that the community itself, in at least its Tumblr incarnation, is going through an identity pride stage. When I brought this up to some other people who’ve been in the community for ages, they pointed out that the community culture tends to follow those who are most influential within it - which are typically the people who’ve been there for longer, who are of course no longer in the identity pride stage.

Whereas Tumblr is a younger demographic overall, and isn’t populated by very many of the folks who have been around the forum and email list and LiveJournal portions of the community for ages. So there are different influences, a different majority of population - and that’s primarily people in the identity pride stage.

I would, however, argue that the identity pride stage was not originally a response to the hate and personal attacks and being noticed… I would say that otherkin got noticed because of the identity pride behaviors that I listed originally. And because you’re talking on a public, unfiltered space like Tumblr. Up until now, most otherkin discussion has been on members-only forums, personal websites, mailing lists, and mostly-locked journal-platform communities. Which is not to say you don’t get trolls there, but it’s much less public and much less easily found and read than the medium of Tumblr.

So in talking about being otherkin in a public, open venue, and engaging in a lot of the identity pride behaviors I mentioned earlier, you’re going to attract attention. Particularly because in the Tumblr medium, things can be reblogged quickly and easily, and so messages and concepts can spread like wildfire here. You can attract attention a lot more quickly without meaning to, and that will attract negative attention as well.

At which point the community fought back against the negative attention and responded to it. Crisis and adversity breed intimacy; when you have something to push back against, when there is a visible and negatively-behaving “out-group” / “other”, it’s a social bonding agent and a community bonding agent - it more sharply defines “in-group” versus “out-group”… and feeds the identity pride stage on both an individual level and a community level, because you have to bind together more tightly in order to support each other against the negativity.

(In other words, yes, trolls actually often make the community they’re trolling more cohesive and in some ways stronger. Having an adversary or opposition unites a people, and many governments have fabricated the idea of enemies where there aren’t any in order to get this exact effect.)

None of this is necessarily bad or good, negative or positive; it just is. It’s natural social development. I’m not making any sort of judgment calls, just observations.

alloradragon:

If someone calls you a human, don’t get uppity and offended. Biologically that’s what you are and nobody is psychic, they have no idea if you identify as nonhuman or not.

Stop attacking users who disagree with things posted in this tag, it’s not your place to do so. If you want to correct horribly disorganized assumptions or blatantly over-exaggerated ‘statements’ then do so, but don’t be dicks about it.

If referred to as human; Gently remind a user who refers to you as “human” to refer to you as something else - “being” or “nonhuman” or even “thing,” hell, I don’t know, and if they refuse then you can either be a huge whiner and block them or learn to live with it and realize not everyone has to or is going to cater to your needs.

I prefer the term “being” over “human,” but do I get my panties in a knot when someone uses a non-preferred term that still applies? No.

I’m normally a “sensitive-to-all” type of dragon but this shit peeves me, I’m very sorry you’re not addressed as you’d like to be but you’re not the only one.