Sevenfold Silence

I just found out recently that apparently there are 'kin communities out there on the internet that are pretty much isolated--they don't really see themselves as having much of anything to do with otherkin in general. This throws me for a loop; I hadn't encountered communities like this before. (No, I'm not naming names or giving links. Plenty of them are very nice--they just think they're very different.)

I can see some of this with communities on the edge of the definition otherkin to start with, like vampires, and it makes sense there. They are on the edge, and to my knowledge there's always been some ambiguity about if they're otherkin or not, and the same's true with therians. Even elves had a substantial community online before other 'kin came around, so I've seen them reject the 'otherkin' label, too.

But if you identify that strongly with a clearly otherworldly current, and if your community is small, why reject the otherkin community as a whole? Why do you think there's no commonality of experience?

Maybe it's just the liberal in me, but I tend to find cross-cultural pollination a very good thing. Especially in a community that's already as small and isolated as otherkin, I don't really see the point in closing off further into sects within the movement.