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otherkin discourse
Chat, am I old and out of touch? There was a struggle session in a chat I monitor about otherkins after one came in and said they have it worse than 'other trans people do'. I personally think this is probably bait by some reactionary, but lets assume they're earnest. They're not doing hrt, anything with gender, etc. they're basically just saying their presentation (re: wearing furry stuff / doing cosplay) makes them a 'new gender'. Am I wrong in thinking otherkins are just furries and cosplayers that take it way too seriously? Like if they want to do that stuff, sure whatever, but I don't like the conflation with trans issues.
I consider otherkin to be not a trans thing. People often hate on xenogenders (re: being 'new discourse'), I obviously consider xenogenders trans, most seem genderfluid and have a 'switch' due to an outside interaction.
spoiler
This seems like a pretty gross thing to say.
Yeah that bit makes me assume they were a reactionary
I mean, it could be a kid who doesn't have a lot of perspective/is very focused on themselves or something.
It definitely is a favorite reactionary bait though. I'm going to be very interested to see the responses you get.
I guess if someone TRULY wanted to be an animal they could make the argument that itβs a worse experience because there is less they can do with presentation and biologically
I suppose
I guess, but its not like there's any medical literature to support them "transitioning" to an animal and if it actually helps them or not. I think its just lumped in with depersonalization and body dysmorphia
Apparently the university of Amsterdam did a 6 year srudy on the subculture
whats it say?
I would say that you should make a rule stating that while you may request emotional support in the group, please refrain from ranking/comparing your situation with others.
That's already a thing which really points to them trying to push buttons
Well you should warn and ban if it happens again, right?
I'm not in charge of this chat, its ran by some lib, I just help with resources
Ohh ok
I don't wanna wade into that but I do remember reading some paper ages ago about the incidence of being trans among the furry community (also bronies lol). Probably unsurprisingly, it's quite high compared to the non-furry population. The author thought that perhaps being trans is considered such a bad condition that it's easier to conceive of oneself as an animal rather than as a gender other than the one you were assigned, and that eggs were trying to sublimate their gender dysphoria as a "animal dysphoria" as a way to deal with it.
Anyway, I also knew a guy who thought he was an elf and wrote to his high school crush that she was also a secret elf and that he was prom-posing to her. I worked with him years later, he said he saw a satyr on the way to work. Caught up with him a couple years after that, he went on a long Christian missionary trip. Fascinating guy.
I have no issues with otherkin. I ain't asking people to rank their wounds or their traumas, no point in ranking or comparing. Someone with a lot of money or parental support, like Kim Petras say, has a different trans experience than say an unhoused black trans woman - even if they have a fuckload in common in the trans experience. But I know which one I would pick for myself the same anyway
I actually wanted to mention something similar to this angle but I forgot, like its some sort of trauma response. Generally it seems better to confront them / nudge them towards the idea that they need to do something about the gender dysphoria then, no? Assuming they have symptoms of course
But fundamentally I still think this assumes otherkin/furry stuff is not gender related, but can be a thing to sort of cover yourself with
I dunno, like people think furries are weird, but do they like, lose jobs, family, and stuff over it? I'm not super glued into furry discourse, just not my thing, so its an honest question
Uh they might if they started doing anything about it at work, or speaking about it ever? I guess most furries tend not to ever talk about it. To me it just feels like "on all levels except physical I am a wolf" is a further reach than going on /lgbt/ or something? The framing equivocating being a furry and being trans is probably wrong fwiw.
I'm not superglued either so I'm mostly just talking shit
Most of them are LGBT, so some probably already experienced those problems even without being furries. Like, idk if I know any allocishet furries. Also, many keep quiet about that kind of thing at work. I think some also keep the furry stuff secret from family but presumably are out about being gay.
Yeah I get that but its not a furry thing at that point specifically
I also don't tell my family I post on hexbear? Its like having a hobby right
I used to believe I fit into groups more stigmatized than furries partly as a way of denying my gender issues. Wasn't an intentional thing, but the weird intersection of certain coping mechanism I had developed and being ace but not knowing it led to an awful explanation for both issues. I don't think the level of stigma matters that much when you learn coping mechanism before you seriously consider things like identity.
Also, the "I can't really do anything with this but hide it" make it easier to not critically examine it. Gender... There's a lot more to potentially do. And doing stuff can be scary.
spoiler
I think the simple solution that sidesteps the entire are they trans debate is don't rank the difficulties of how bad people have it. even if someone personally thinks they have it worse, nothing good will ever come from saying that to other marginalized peopleWould the furry com have some answers?
i've been aware of otherkin for around a decade but wouldnt know where to start.
I mean there's a similarity regarding alienation with your body. The source is probably at least partially different. On the one hand, there are plenty of "cis" people who are OK being as such but ideally would trans it up. On the other hand, modern industrial society continues to be come increasingly estranged from the form of homo sapiens. For that latter hypothesis, ideally I'd like century old data on otherkin self-indentification, gender dysphoria, transgender self-identification, Kinsey reports for gender, and plurality rates... all of which I'm fairly certain do not exist.
Anyway, I get what they mean cause our technology sucks, but it's still insensitive, shouldn't be said, and is only going to put other people down.
otherkin, trans racial discourse
My thing is like, I feel like transness is supported biologically. You have a lot of different hormone receptors in your brain, a lot of chemical machinery going on in your DNA, a possibility of a wide range of intersex conditions... the full tapestry of transness simply makes sense (enby identities, non-med trans people, not cis people in general, all included of course!). Is there anything that could be said biologically for something like an otherkin? No... humans can't be part dog or whatever. You can empathize with dogs, you can feel like dogs are treated better than you so you maybe want to be one on some level?
I feel like this kinda taps on trans racial discourse a little too. Does increasing/decreasing your melanin medically actually make you feel better? Or is it they just empathize in an unhealthy way? Are they trying to improve their lot in some way? Have they internalized some sort of beauty standard?
Both are definitely something that needs to be studied at the least, to see if any sort of medical intervention helps or just harms. I know that a lot of surgeries and interventions relating to 'increasing whiteness' in Asia end up being highly regretted, at least.
discourse
What's the biological support for being agender? Is there biological support for humans being genderfluid, or demigender?In other news I really think framing otherkin/therian as being 1:1 with being trans is wrong, probably. Going purely on what I know, I don't think most otherkin or therian people want to "transition to dog" generally.
discourse
I feel like this is as supported as any other trans thing really. We know your brain can change over time, we know that hormone receptors can change over time, we know that people have mood and personality changes, we know that people seem to like certain balances of hormones in them, person to person. I feel that these identities are understudied, but I do truly believe there is a biological mechanism of some kind for them. I tend to give an example of a person coming in to our LGBT center mentioning they are xenogender with relation to sunny/cloudy days. They feel feminine on sunny days and masculine on cloudy ones (including dysphoria related to each). I suggested they try vitamin D pills to see if it alters their experience, and it did, it made them feel more feminine. I feel like there might be some nugget there to study.
more discourse
Right so, does being agender or genderfluid have something to do with hormone receptors? Is there a balance of hormones the same way humans needed a certain balance of the four humours, at which point you lose Gender?So the answer's "no" then, I guess. Uh that probably seems kind of dickish on my part... I just feel like this "biological root for trans gender!" thing is very akin to the "gay gene" discussion topic, in that it's goofy and not worth considering and we probably do not understand the brain well enough to even begin to poke at potential "causes" of queerness if they exist. I think it's a really scuffed lens to view it through instead of just not using "scientific grounding" to differentiate one identity from another...
Fwiw this xenogender example you give feels like something brainfunny, since vitamin D is also used for depression treatment among other things. But I do not know if one anecdote makes biological cause.
spoiler
I mean, the thing is there are twin studies and theres a significant correlation for gender identity for binary trans people. The issue of course is they haven't ever done twin studies on other identities.
I think any sort of thing like this isnt just one gene, just like eye color is not one gene.
I feel like this is reductive, people have really well measured rates of satisfaction when at certain hormone levels, perhaps agender people simply have a different reaction to hormones altogether. I can say for myself that I know when my hormones are off with 100% certainty, I've been able to test it with my doctor. ( I had a phase where I really fucked with my hormones a lot to see how I responded and I would get blood tests each time )
more
My instinct is that any sort of twin study like that for nonbinary or agender people would have deeply unfunny results. Either it gets used to cisnormatively box people into "UR [brain shape/hormone balance/etc] IS JUST [assigned gender or binary opposite of said]" type shit, or it completely destroys the idea of biological correlation to gender. Unless there really is a clear unique biological causation for every funny gender outside the binary.Uh I don't think I disagree with that? 'More/right level of hormone you want = satisfaction' makes sense, but I do not see how this is evidence for biological support of any gender.
spoiler
At this point its more of an argument if you think hormones should be in the gender box or the sex box for making you feel better imo. I think it can be both, hormones can alter your perception of the world, your gender, other peoples view of your gender.
Oh yeah, its always nervewracking to have any study done on us cause we just wanna vibe and don't want to get shat on. You can describe it as a 'faith' or hypothesis thing I guess since I don't have hard evidence on paper, its more just I've noticed too many patterns after talking with thousands of disconnected trans people at this point that I feel like something must be going on. Pattern seeking ape brain? Perhaps
suffering
I don't subscribe to the gender unicorn model so I'm not sure how seperate the two are to me. It's like, I Changed My Sex This Past Year. I think the boxes are silly.Well there might be something to those patterns, but if you wanna start framing validity of identities through 'biological support' and sorting some things into the Biologically Supported box and the Not Biologically Supported box, we'd better start deciding what's biologically supported and how. Otherwise it just reminds me too much of essentialism, Idk. I don't really trust that sort of stuff because again it reminds me of "scientific" research into why people are gay. [The identity] is biological because it sprung from the human mind and is therefore biological in origin.
spoiler
I consider all trans / not cis / enby / etc. identities valid, I think theres just a physical reason for why people feel the way they do and why they resonate with certain labels. Have we dug into every identity and fully understood it? Will we ever? No, and probably not, given the number of identities?
And that is also sort of what I'm getting at. Of course the identity is always biological because it sprung from the human mind, but what is the mechanism? Its a question of neuroscience. Why are people different? How do we make them feel better? I feel like its a fundamental question for the field.
spoiler
I would like to ask a question
If you don't think there is a connection between gender and your biology (genes, hormones, funny brain things) what do you think makes a person want different hormones then what their body naturally makes? Or are you separating that from gender?I suppose I feel like everything that makes me... me is from some sort of physical process, I don't believe in a "soul" or anything and I don't see how society could make me want to take hrt. I don't know, what does that leave you with?
Q and A corner
Okay firstly society isn't really making people wanna take HRT, I think. Extremely rare are cases of anyone pressured into other sex hormones I think.But uh I dunno, what does make you want different hormones, BountifulEggnog? You don't like what testosterone does, right? Of course you also don't like being in the "male" gender role, which could be anything, maybe you just innately prefer being the other binary gender. Why? Who knows! I think people want different hormones because they like what those hormones do, what they make the body like. Or maybe because the hormone their body makes is something they goddamn hate. Just so happens those things line up with some genders!
You could certainly say that something happening in your brain makes you want estrogen, because I mean probably. It's probably at least as complicated as autism is neurologically, it's just how you are, innately. Idk, you have the desire to take estrogen and hate testosterone, hate being a man, simple as kinda.
I sorta assumes agender is often (but not necessarily always) a result of autism/asexuality intersecting with other gender stuff. Partly because that's my personal experience. But probably also because on reddit, a lot of people on the agender subreddit found their way through the aroace communities (because of things like AAA battery jokes). So... it was practically 100% ace & autistic people and that might not be reflective of the general population.
spoiler
Transness probably has more of a biological root compared to the therian phenomenon, but there are obviously sociological factors as well. It's like how some people think if we abolished sex as a social class then people wouldn't feel dysphoric. A lot would probably still want to change their body, but yeah it's fair to say they'd likely have less dysphoria at least. Eg, there's a difference between a face feminized be estrogen and one masculinized by testosterone, but then there's also cultural ideas of masculinity and femininity related to facial hair and makeup. I'd imagine in such a society you'd have people going on hormones but having a lot less anxiety about passing.
The issue is we don't fully understand the brain and we can't make societies in a jar. So all we're left with is attempts at reasoning.
If my brain allows me to i might be able to talk a little from my perspective on it. Im a cat. In my case it is along the lines of what TerminalEncounter described.
also sorry if that sounds like a grilling, i try to collect info to help trans peeps i find