Sevenfold Silence

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.