Article on The Gloss about otherkin, Transcats

[frameacloud]

Warning: the linked article contains profanity, hostility.

The Gloss, an online magazine for young adults, posted an opinion article about otherkin. The article focuses on a blogger on Tumblr.com called Transcats.


Source
Jamie Peck. “‘Honey, I think I’m a cat.’” 2013-01-22. The Gloss. http://www.thegloss.com/2013/01/22/culture/otherkin-community-transcats

Comments

[citrakayah.livejournal.com]

I, Citrakayah, hereby address the following to all members of the media:

If you're too damn lazy to do thirty minutes of reading to find a more general survey, shut the fuck up.

And you know what else? It doesn't really matter if transcat is a troll, an idiot, or just a teenager who's a bit daft. Why the fuck do you feel the necessity to go around pointing 'har har'? Do you get some sort of bizarre joy in inflicting mockery in people who are, really, not affecting you? Is this productive?

[crystal-waters.livejournal.com]

I'm probably the only one who thinks this, but the stuff Tumblr people say about Otherkin is often funny as hell. We all need to realize this is a crazy belief to mundanes. And, oh yeah, IT'S THE INTERNET. Society will never, ever, take Otherkin seriously, so we should deal with it graciously and move on with our lives.

[citrakayah.livejournal.com]

Of course they think we're 'crazy' (the fact that they never seem to notice the people giving 'non-crazy' psychological explanations, or pointing out that the origin is irrelevant as to the existence of the feelings). But to say that they're never take us seriously, and thus we should just give up, is a bit hasty.

[crystal-waters.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say give up on trying to make us 'appear sane', but at least we need to realize: this is going to be happening for a hella long time, so stop complaining about it, and let's move onto something more productive.

[citrakayah.livejournal.com]

Fair enough.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Once again the wider otherkin community owes the tumblrkin community our thanks for the delightful job they're doing representing us to new kin and the general public. /sarc

[citrakayah.livejournal.com]

You realize, of course, that so long as any significant number of people on Tumblr who are also otherkin act in such a way that people can point and go 'har har', places like Gawker and the Gloss will go 'har har' because they (unconsciously, I should hope) accentuated the negative.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Thing is, articles like this are largely a phenomenon that's taken off because of the tumblr otherkin community and how bad it actually is. A new one is coming out every few months now, and there's a clear difference in the articles about the otherkin community before tumblr and after tumblr. Take a look for yourself if you don't believe me: http://anotherwiki.dreamhart.org/wiki/Category:Media Most of them have links or are easily searchable with the information given on that page. It's not enough to just blame Gawker and the Gloss for accentuating the negative; that's always been the case with media. There is, objectively, far more negative in the tumblr otherkin community that *can* be accentuated.

[citrakayah.livejournal.com]

And I suppose you've done a study on this, then? Because that would be how you'd know whether there is, objectively, more negative on the Tumblr otherkin community. A study with randomized samples? Hell, you'll have to define 'negative' too. Is negative anything that mainstream culture finds ridiculous? Or is it anything that mainstream otherkin/therian subculture finds ridiculous?

The fact is, humans have a natural tendency to see and remember what fits with their preconceived notions. Your preconceived notion is that Tumblr is causing damage to the otherkin/therian communities, not just because of the fact that the moment anyone says anything that can be taken advantage of it's spread everywhere via reposts and that nothing is private, but because of the content itself. You may be right, but I have no particular reason to think you are. And given what I've seen of Tumblr, and what I've seen of the communities that I am a member of and work with, the difference is one of visibility of the negative, not quantity. It comes in different forms--on the Werelist we don't see people taking offense to the word 'batshit', but it is there.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

It doesn't require a study with randomized samples. It's a very simple, observable fact. From claims of oppression to significant numbers of therians/otherkin neither being able to function in day to day life nor, often, even wanting to, to the defense of pedophilia and the welcoming and acceptance of blatantly obvious trolls as if they were genuine, tumblr is observably worse than any otherkin or therian community prior.

If it were solely a matter of visibility, we would have seen articles like this emerge with public LJ and Facebook groups. We didn't. There's a reason it took tumblr to prompt articles like:
http://betabeat.com/2012/07/prince-koyangi-tumblr-troll-otherkin-transethnic-eric-draven-07052012/
http://gawker.com/5940947/from-otherkin-to-transethnicity-your-field-guide-to-the-weird-world-of-tumblr-identity-politics
http://totallydublin.ie/more/entry-level-otherkin/
http://www.thegloss.com/2013/01/22/culture/otherkin-community-transcats/

[citrakayah.livejournal.com]

And in other places we deal with people saying they can shapeshift, talk about tearing out eyeballs, suggest that Australia is organizing therian killsquads, et cetera. And, unlike Tumblr, LJ and Facebook groups do not have, to the best of my knowledge, an organized group of people dedicated to milking therians/otherkin for the maximum amount of mockery possible, even if it involves taking things out of context (for instance, if I went to Tumblr today and argued that, from a specific case of someone in authority exercising such authority to a therian/otherkin in such a way that it met the definition of oppression, speaking about a single case, how much do you want to bet that I would be immediately beset by idiots saying 'You aren't oppressed, har har' without any signs of actually paying the slightest attention to what I said?). There is also, as I already stated, the fact that things spread more easily on Tumblr.