https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherkin
I just wanna hear some opinions on it. Im part of the subculture and i want to know what you guys think of it. My mom says "its not harming anyone so its ok" while my brother says "these people are too weird"
Being 'otherkin' myself, I have met very strange people who claim to be otherkin, as well as a fair amount of rather 'normal' people in the subculture.
The one thing I don't think people grasp is this: It is a spiritual belief, based on past lives. We do not think we are physically a wolf, dragon, tiger, ect. nor do otherkin believe they have the ability to transform into such.
Other than that something I personally expirence a lot is that you always have people (Atheists, in particular) who don't believe in past lives and reincarnation. Some will force it upon you "Rubbish is still rubbish, No matter how hard you believe!", which is downright rude, but they never see it that way.
As someone outside the subculture of otherkin, I'm somewhat cautious of it.
While I agree with the prospect of idealization and kinship with another non-human entity, being, sphere, I've encountered many problematic otherkin.
Namely, those who make a farce of the general concept (believing they truly are that thing they idealize or claim kinship with, or claiming they can change into such a being), or those making it easier to discredit the concepts of gender identity and even sexual orientation. Someone that simply just wants to be, for example, a wolf. Or outright ridiculousness.
I'm delighted at the concept as someone who is a animist and deals with totemism from a non-indigenous perspective. We should be able to claim kin-ship with other entities. But at the same time, I'm very leery of those who might take the general concept and run with it too far.
We all have animals we like, dislike, connect to and help us out and so on so forth and also animals that can be personified and applied to how we act and how our personalities may be like.
This is all fine but the only thing I don't like about otherkin(but i doubt they are even otherkin, they're probably people who confuse animals and human-conceived concepts of genders)is when people start to literally think they are an animal and the fact that they are a human somehow is invalidated and ignored, to an extreme point. Dressup and forming wolf packs for fun aside, some otherkin have gone as far as applying an ANIMAL to their GENDER.
Which in itself makes absolutely no sense and actually hurts the rest of the transgender community; in example, completely dehumanizing people who just want to get rid of gender dysphoria and live out their lives as the gender they identify as that makes them most comfortable on how they perceive theirselves.
I once met an otherkin who thought their gender to be a bunny, so they used pronouns based off of bunny. Which are neither real words let alone real pronouns, and would make absolutely no sense in any other language because somehow with English you can botch it up to be what ever you want.
Of course these people probably aren't otherkin; despite that they may call themselves "otherkin"-- and they are probably fluffies who want to hurt existing communities and mistake animals with a human gender, while keeping in mind that humans may be the only living thing with a concept of gender ( not the biological sex )
Rant aside, otherkin is fine... my spirit guide has helped me find out my power animal through a dream which is an Aligator. My totem animal is an Owl, and my spirit animal may be a dragonfly... or I'm confusing the two again, but these have the most impact in my life.
I totally agree with you. Soul is energy and it may choose to incarnate in different shapes over time. However it is bound to keep that shape for as long as it lives and changing it,atleast in this one plane is physically impossible. And man,not all atheist don't believe in incarnation. I am an atheist myself. It means that I don't feel like belonging to a specific dogma,not that I don't have my own particular belief when it comes to the world around us,the existance of others and so on.
