Hello! To me, ‘identifying’ as otherkin is no different than a male ‘identifying’ as a woman. I should probably explain.
I think it makes the most sense to think of personal identity as a person’s self-conception in relation to their culture, family and upbringing, societal experiences, locale, body, etc. In other words, it’s your sense of self in relation to where you find yourself. This is why it makes sense for a man to speak of his identity as a man. Or for a black person to speak of having, or even sharing, a black identity. We don’t develop in a vacuum; we are each affected by outside social phenomena, and the nature of our social experiences depend on how others react to us and what they know about us. For most of the people who don’t know us, all they have to go on is how our bodies look, how we move through the world, and maybe a superficial interaction. So while we each have our own enduring traits, most of us are continually refining our self-conception based on the feedback we get from others. It’s an ongoing process of give-and-take.
The way the term ‘identity’ is used in the trans community and other circles completely ignores all of the above. When describing their dissatisfaction or distress about the circumstances in which they find themselves, their ‘identity’ stands for a different position they wish they were in. The claim then, is that this identity is who they actually are. I can understand why people cling to this way of thinking because most of us have felt the desire to escape our personal circumstances for whatever reason, but the problem is that identity doesn’t work that way. Before I transitioned and started passing, it made no sense for me to talk about ‘my identity as a woman’. Nobody perceived me as female, and so nobody treated me as anything but some weirdly ambiguous guy (which was not the same way I saw people treat more gender-typical men, but was still VERY different than the feedback I get now that people think I’m female). On top of that, I’m not female, and so I didn’t share that in common with women, either. I guess you could say that ‘my identity’ (the way I thought about myself) did change everything for me, in that my distress led me to take the steps of physical transition which changed my social circumstances in a profound way. But that’s not what trans people mean when they talk about identity. Most trans people these days seem to regard declared identity as the only thing necessary to change how others are to perceive and interact with them. As I’ve said a million times by now, I can identify as a pop star, but it doesn’t mean I can sell out arenas. Declaring an identity is meaningless unless it actually describes your regular experience. Otherwise, it’s just wishing.
Related Posts
