Sevenfold Silence

I don't 'get' a lot of the hatred and belittling of humans in the otherkin community.

First, I find a lot of the words thrown around to describe vanilla, white-bread, non-otherkin humans to be anywhere between ridiculous to useless to offensive. Muggles--really? You're a Harry Potter character now? Mundanes--are they really that boring? Even the pagans and the wild mystic dreamers? Hoomans--yeah, because you're just mispronouncing a word to refer to a group, one they use for themselves, no less. You're just playing with words. How could that possibly be construed as offensive?

In its worst forms, it honestly pisses me off--pointing out genuine differences isn't awful, but racism, no matter in what direction, no matter who against, is stupid. Why won't the word "non-otherkin" suffice? Why are we so interested in inventing a new and very literally racist slur?

Whether or not you like it, you are, at least--gasp--at the very least primarily biologically human. (You may have dragon blood, but you are almost certainly still a matter of the human race for any practical purposes.) Non-otherkin may be frustrating, they may be short-sighted, but they can also be patently amazing. They make beautiful art and perform amazing acts of lovingkindness. (The great human artists and thinkers may have been startouched and wild, but they're also just that--HUMAN artists and thinkers.)

Are we really so pessimistic that we throw out the baby with the bathwater? Are we so desperate to get in touch with our 'kin sides that we abandon our human sides? (Superficially, that is. The people saying these things still seem to have electricity, computers, and internet connections, so apparently humans don't suck that much.)

Do we hate ourselves so much that we cannot look in the mirror and admit that while we're strangers in a strange land, while we may be different, we still have some part of us--even if it's a superficial biological part, or a societal part--that's human?

I've been giving some thought as to why otherkin merit quite so much scorn from non-'kin. This isn't to say "wah we're so persecuted"--quite the opposite; we usually, thankfully, pass right below people's radar. But we earn a level of ridicule that seems disproportionate, at least to me. We don't, generally, go out trolling (sorry, trolls) or waving what we are and do in people's faces. We're generally a passive, inoffensive bunch--though there are, of course, exceptions.

So what gets people so riled about otherkin? The answer's complicated, I think--which is why I'm splitting this post into chunks--but here's one possibility for now:

1) It looks genuinely crazy, without more information. If somebody looks at a clear blue sky and calls it orange, four possibilities might cross your mind:

- they're lying,
- they're joking,
- their sight is somehow impaired, or
- they're insane.

Likewise if a human refers to hirself as a wolf, for instance. To an outside observer's eyes, this is obviously false and against logic. Is hie lying (say, for attention?) Making a joke? Confused? Flat-out insane?

There's another possibility here, of course. Namely, the sky might be orange for certain values of orange. Or the hypothetical therian might be (and probably is) a wolf in a different way than someone might initially think. Maybe hie's a reincarnated wolf. Maybe hie feels like a wolf. Maybe hie has wolf as a totem. Maybe hie identifies with the archetype of wolf. And on, and on. But that might not register on the speaker immediately; their mind might not immediately travel to the non-literal. When the wolf therian in question says "I'm a wolf" the hearer's mind thinks the speaker's a four-legged canid that travels in packs--which is silly (you might disagree, though). When I say "I have wings" the hearer thinks I literally mean I have real, physical wings coming out of my back. Anyone who's seen a picture knows I don't.

Again, there are people in the otherkin community who make claims to real, physical, overt manifestations of the other--like a vampire, for instance, who claims hie can't go out in the sun or hir skin will burn. This isn't intended to ridicule or dismiss those claims. Instead I'm pointing out that when people hear "I'm a vampire" that's what they think, whether or not that's what the speaker means--and that's a more incredible claim, particularly to an outsider, than, say, psychic vampirism.

I've seen a lot of people change their tune fast on otherkin when the notion's further explained. Saying things like "I'm [x] for certain values of [x]" soothes reactions, I think, and makes what initially appears to be crazy something far more credible.

Alternately, E-Prime and its abolition of the to be verb might help. Rather than "I'm a fairy", maybe "I identify with fairies", or "sometimes I feel like a fairy", or "I feel like a reincarnated fairy"... Generally I'm not that big of a fan of E-Prime--I don't think it's as good as defusing situations as people claim--but it might be worth a shot.

The long and short of it is, I seem to work in a "fey" curent. This doesn't mean that magically I work often with fae--in fact, quite the opposite. I love them too much to work with them in any productive way. In the presence of the fae I'm overwhelmed by love, adoration, yearning, and even a strange sort of jealousy.

No, instead I'm using "current" to describe my own energetic flavor, rather than what I seek out and work within. A lot of otherkin try very hard to justify how they feel, with things like allergies, pointed ears, affinities to animals, anecdotes about children, and the like. I don't really have any scorn toward people like that (except for those who are obviously doing it for attention and validation--they get irritating, honestly, and inhibit intelligent conversation. Elitist of me, maybe, but there you go). But it's not anything I'm really interested in doing myself. Nor am I really interested in how "I always knew..." --I always knew I was strange, different, not like others, but I also always took it for granted that I was kidding myself, and deep down inside I was a perfectly normal human being. Because in a lot of important ways I am. Take me to a doctor and they'll pronounce me a perfectly normal human being, and I know this and accept this. I'm not interested in denying my humanity--I just "know", on a deep, intuitive level, that I'm something fey.

There is, though, one thing that smacks of symptoms about me, in my eyes, and that's my phantom wings. They're large, and feathered--to the point where I've wondered briefly if I'm something more angelic, since "traditionally" fairies, elves, and other things I class as "fey" haven't got feathered wings. But I'm virtually certain--at least, at this point--that my energy "smells" fey. I've considered, for completeness, the possibility of being something angelic, but the underlying important factor of my personal, fey energy has overruled that every time.

But other than that, a fey what? (I use "fey" as an adjective, not as a race of creatures--it's just how I am.) Answer is--I don't know yet. Insufficient data. I've got evidence for fae, evidence for sidhe, evidence for elf, even evidence for peri, and those strange winged bird-women that show up along the Silk Road.

In other words, I don't know. I'm not going to know, I think, anytime soon, and while I keep an eye out I'm not digging at it and forcing it out--I've got a life to live, honestly, and while I'd like to indulge in constant psychic exercises I can't. But I'm not going to jump to any conclusions that I might regret later.