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Towards an Otherkin FAQ
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Jarandhel Dreamsinger
Arlington, VA

Site Admin
Tuesday, 25th May, 2010 - 11:03 am
Member Since: Friday, 20th June, 2008
Forum Posts: 540
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For my first content-oriented post in the new forums, I’m going to ask for some help from the other forum members. I’d like to write an Otherkin FAQ for the Newbie area, and I’d like for it to represent more than just my personal opinions on the subject. I fully realize that this is not going to be easy, as any room with five otherkin in it is going to have at least seven different opinions about anything relating to the subject of Otherkin and are likely to hold to them quite passionately.

I also know that there are some other FAQs already out there about Otherkin. I helped contribute to the Otherkin FAQ on kinhost.org in the past, and I know full well there are others. Some high quality, some not. But I think it’s good from time to time to start fresh, to consider how we would answer the same questions if they were posed today, and to see what new questions we might not have thought to ask before. And to try to make the best FAQ on the subject we possibly can. If nothing else, it can help clarify our own thoughts on the subject and maybe make us think about things in ways we haven’t before.

To get us started, I’m going to post a couple of questions that commonly appear on this sort of FAQ, followed by how I would answer each of them. But what I’m really interested in is this: how would you answer them? Would you ask the questions differently? And what other questions would you ask that I may not have thought of?

So, here goes:

1. What are otherkin?

This one is always the hardest to answer. Very few members of the otherkin community actually agree on a solid definition of otherkin. Any way you define it, you’ll either include people that don’t want to be included, include people that others don’t want included, exclude people that others think should be included, or exclude people that want to be included.

Personally, I’ve chosen to go for one of the broadest possible definitions by taking the word otherkin literally: kin/akin to that which is Other (than human). I’ve written a whole essay on the subject, so I’m not going to expound on that here. But my interpretation is largely a minority in the community. Most people lean towards a simpler definition that generally amounts to “anyone who is spiritually nonhuman (and generally a figure of myth)”, though exact wordings and interpretations vary on who that includes and who it excludes. A significant number of the community also subscribe to the still more controversial idea that they have at least a trace of nonhuman ancestry and are to some degree biologically and genetically other than human.

There’s also some historic debate about the degree to which the Otherkin Community overlaps with the Therian and Vampire communities. Historically the three communities have been largely separate with some points of overlap. Some people believe that both therians and vampires are types of otherkin. Many vampires and therians are offended by this notion. Like I said, it’s hard to find definitions that everyone agrees on. And that’s without even getting into the more disparate communities that have roughly similar concepts but use radically different terms and paradigms to explain their experiences, such as the Starseed or “Earth Angels” communities. These communities very rarely overlap in membership with the Otherkin community, but could arguably fall under most definitions of Otherkin.

2. Why do people think they’re otherkin?

A variety of reasons. In my case, mainly due to past-life memories that I identify with more strongly than I identify as human. In other cases, it’s often something described as “species dysphoria” where ones current body just feels wrong in a manner similar to gender dysphoria. Unfortunately, species reassignment surgery doesn’t actually exist. In still other cases it’s viewed as personal mythology and not taken fully literally. Everyone comes to the conclusion in different ways and brings their own paradigms to the table to explain it.

That’s about all I have time for right now, but it should at least be a place for us to get started…

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