Opinions on "Glitch Feminism" and the branding of "-kin"
The opinions within this article are of my own and from my own experiences and views on things. They do not reflect this site or anyone else besides me.
Article by Zrcalo: Donovan/Draco
So I just learned today what has been named as "glitch feminism" by a publication called "the daily dot".
Smash all the extraneous words they use to define it, together and it all boils down to "people on the internet identifying as anything they want, because the internet isnt real."
This is perfectly reasonable and valid. It's the internet. People can be whatever they want to be.
The issue I saw was it being combined in with "trans" and the LGBT community. On the surface sure, it can look like "oh trans people can be whatever they want to be, like people on the internet. Like otherkin, and all the other, otherkin. they must be part of the LGBT community!" This is .. frankly.. extremely naive, misguided, and .. pretty insulting. Plain talk....LGB is sexual orientation. T is gender identity. Otherkin, Therian, fictionkin, multiplicity, etc. are not sexual orientations or gender identity.
They are an entirely different set of identity completely.
People can choose their identity in many ways, and in other ways.. they dont get to choose at all. In a myriad of ways, there's a grey area that mixes together with personality to form what an individual is. You may discover that what you once thought wasnt a choice, was indeed a choice.. and vice versa. This is going on a tangent, but its a good basis for what I'll be extrapolating on.
The freedom of the internet has allowed people to express themselves in ways they never thought was possible.
We have the ability to VR as 3D animal girls, furries, or insane cthulu monsters. We have the technology to make ourselves whatever we want in a digital environment. The freedom to do this has nothing to do with activism, feminism, or any kind of validation. You are how you define yourself to be, and nobody can take that away from you. Seeking the validation of others is letting other people decide how to define you. The constant push of peer pressure with regards to any kind of personal identity is how people get thrown into boxes and possibly trapped there.
The vastness of the internet, and the communities that reside in it, are formed through a decades long organic process that can not be compared to anything else outside of it. When all things are boiled down.. yeah, we're just a bunch of weirdo's on the internet, and that's what makes things wonderful. That's what makes us /ourselves/. Each human is unique and cannot be compared to one another. We are our own universes, and we've harnessed the power of the internet to share our universe with the world.
The limitations of identification, title-giving, and essentially "species identification" by others (especially outside forces), has given rise to the problem of gatekeeping we have today in the community. It has lessened since the tumblrpocalypse, but it's still there in a lot of places. Specifically branding how certain "kin" are strictly defined, restricts an individual's ability to express themselves to the largest extent of their ability. Expression is the cornerstone of all kin communities. Each person has a different viewpoint and a different opinion about everything. We're just little eyes in the universe who see what we know and learn what we see. our knowledge outside of what we know is nonexistent.
Now for some spicy opinions.. if you could call it that.
Trying to define an internet phenomenon of human expression through the guise of historical human oppression of minority groups is grossly misleading. The otherkin community is not a community where an identity is based on an action. It is based on an existence. You exist as something else. What that something else is, is up to you. Whether you accept or reject it.. or.. just dont care. Or just be a normie who looks at the internet going "this isnt sportsball. where am I?".
fighting the oppression olympics by attaching to the LGBT community is both invalidating to otherkin, and invalidating to the LGBT community. LGBT is fighting for acceptance. Otherkin is vying for understanding. There's a lot of mental illness attached to the kin community. Some things being almost exclusively mental illness, such as traumagenic multiplicity, and other things not so much. Things such as copinglinks, or other comfort driven kin related stuff, seeks the understanding of overall society. particularly the mental health field.
there's no "fighting for rights", there's no fighting. There's vying for understanding. There's quiet conversations and extrapolations. There's explaining the inner workings of the mind, and there's a lot of opening yourself up to being hurt. Those are the things that should be focused on with relation to the outside world. None of this weird internet feminism shit, or this weird tacking onto LGBT. These are separate things that are equally valid in their own separate and unique ways.
Maybe instead of fighting for existence and begging for validity from people who dont understand... we should just exist. We should be ourselves and share our experiences with others, and explain.
-Zrcalo: Donovan/Draco
your local internet weirdo.
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