Debate > Discourse

Answering questions, putting in my two cents' worth, and fact checking. It's not that I'm fooled by the trolls, it's that I answer them as if they were serious even if it's obvious they're not. Header quote from "The Public Speaking Project" Ch. 3 by Alyssa G. Millner and Rachel D. Price. | Rani | They/it | Dragonkin | Ace/gray-aro | Pagan witch

[imactuallyrightforonce]

why I'm anti-therian/otherkin

I genuinely think a lot of the people involved are struggling with identity, loneliness, escapism, or unresolved mental health issues, and instead of being encouraged to work through those problems, they’re being told to sink deeper into fantasy. When someone starts believing they’re spiritually or mentally a wolf, angel, or fictional character, I don’t think that’s something that should automatically be validated without question. I think people deserve support, grounding, and honest conversations about reality.

One of the biggest issues I see is how online communities reinforce these beliefs instead of challenging them. If somebody says they feel disconnected from being human, the response shouldn’t instantly be “you’re actually non-human.” That can push vulnerable people further away from reality and deeper into unhealthy coping mechanisms. A lot of younger people especially are still figuring themselves out, and spending years convincing yourself you’re secretly an animal or fictional being can seriously affect your self-image and emotional development.

I also think a lot of this comes from escapism. The world is stressful, people feel isolated, and fantasy identities can feel comforting because they offer a sense of uniqueness, belonging, and control. But escapism becomes dangerous when it stops being just imagination and starts replacing reality. There’s nothing wrong with liking animals, roleplaying, relating to characters, or feeling different from others. The problem starts when those feelings are treated as literal truths rather than emotional experiences that should be explored in a healthier way.

What worries me most is that encouraging every unusual identity claim without skepticism can prevent people from getting actual help. If someone is deeply distressed, disconnected from themselves, or obsessively identifying as something non-human, they deserve compassion and support from real people, not internet validation. Therapy, self-reflection, social connection, and building confidence in yourself as a human being are healthier long-term solutions than disappearing further into fantasy identities. I just think normalizing these beliefs can end up hurting vulnerable people more than helping them.

and before you mention religion no i do not worship sky daddy i am an atheist.

[a-dragons-explanations]

My biggest question for you is: why?

If somebody says they feel disconnected from being human, the response shouldn’t instantly be “you’re actually non-human.” That can push vulnerable people further away from reality and deeper into unhealthy coping mechanisms. A lot of younger people especially are still figuring themselves out, and spending years convincing yourself you’re secretly an animal or fictional being can seriously affect your self-image and emotional development.

You say this with a lot of confidence; do you have any actual evidence this is the case? Why do you think being nonhuman inherently "fantasy" and an "unhealthy coping mechanism"? Why do you think that being nonhuman/fictionkin affects "emotional development"? I could take some pretty educated guesses and respond to those, but I'd rather hear your explanations from you.

I also think a lot of this comes from escapism. The world is stressful, people feel isolated, and fantasy identities can feel comforting because they offer a sense of uniqueness, belonging, and control.

A) What makes nonhumanity any more of a "fantasy identity" than any other?

B) Yes, otherkin and fictionkin often do feel isolated from the people around them - because they are having a vastly different life experience than the average person. For many, finding the alterhuman community is a breath of relief, of "Oh, there's words for what I've been experiencing my whole life" - and I don't mean the isolation feeling, I mean things like instincts that don't match the human template, phantom limbs, a self-image not matching up, etc. (This is true even for many who don't feel particularly isolated from their peers, myself included.) There's a reason that the otherkin community offers a sense of belonging, though I would disagree that it inherently offers any sense of "uniqueness" or control.

What worries me most is that encouraging every unusual identity claim without skepticism can prevent people from getting actual help. If someone is deeply distressed, disconnected from themselves, or obsessively identifying as something non-human, they deserve compassion and support from real people, not internet validation. Therapy, self-reflection, social connection, and building confidence in yourself as a human being are healthier long-term solutions than disappearing further into fantasy identities.

I think you're making a bit of a false equivalence here - you're assuming that every nonhuman, or at least the majority of nonhumans, are "deeply distressed, disconnected from themselves, or obsessively identifying as non-human" (emphasis mine). That's... frankly, not really true in my experience - to use myself as an example again, I stand as a counterpoint to all of that; there's no distress or disconnection associated with my nonhumanity, and I think calling me "obsessive" about it is just plain inaccurate. Furthermore, for many, it's denying their nonhumanity that causes them to feel distress and dissociation. Trying to repress your nonhumanity is, generally speaking, Bad For You; we've seen this over and over again in this community. If species dysphoria is an issue, much like gender dysphoria, the answer is not trying to repress it - it's finding ways to express your species (or gender) that provides relief from the dysphoria.

Overall, you seem to be making a few false assumptions, though correct me if I'm misunderstanding you on any of them -

Nonhumanity is absurd to you, and therefore isn't a "real" identity

Following (1), "fantasy identities" are an indication of inherent distress and disorder

When nonhumans experience distress, dissociation, dysphoria, depression, etc., the problem is that they are nonhuman and that should be treated like a mental illness (as opposed to the possibility that, again much like being transgender, the problem is that society does not accept them and the answer is acceptance and self-expression - that being nonhuman is not inherently distressing, it's the inability to express it that creates distress)

I do agree with you that if someone is experiencing significant distress and dissociation, they deserve help and should probably get professional advice if it's available to them - and you may find it interesting that many nonhumans already do. I have personally known many nonhumans who are or have been in therapy for various issues - and their nonhumanity is rarely treated as an inherent problem, in my experience, even when treating species dysphoria and similarly related issues.

[xxvapejuicekittyxx]

Transspecies isn't a thing. You cannot "transition" to another species. You are mocking transgender people.

You're nonhuman? Great, call yourself therian/otherkin/alterhuman/nonhuman/inhuman/JUST SAY YOUR SPECIES

You CANNOT transition to be an animal! TransIDs are all stupid and dumb and fake bullshit.

[a-dragons-explanations]

To be clear upfront, I'm not a big defender of transID stuff (there's a lot of problems with the vast majority of it and the culture it encourages, imo, but let's not get into that) - but transspecies as a term predates all that by a lot, and I do want to question some of your logic here, because I genuinely don't understand where you're coming from and I'd like to.

Namely,

One: What does ability to transition have to do with it? Is a transgender person who can't transition medically for whatever reason - or doesn't want to - not really transgender? If the counter to that is that social transition alone "counts," then how much social transition does one have to go through for it to count? Because you absolutely can socially transition your species to some extent - maybe not as thoroughly as you can your gender, but it is entirely possible to change your expression to express your species, ask people around you to refer to you as your species, etc. etc.

And two: If you believe that people can legitimately, seriously identify as nonhuman - which you seem to, though correct me if I'm wrong - then I really don't understand why you state that calling it transspecies would be "mocking transgender people." If it's a serious, legitimate identity, how is it "mocking" anything? I genuinely just don't understand where you're coming from on this one.

[xxvapejuicekittyxx]

Yeah so Trans equals gender, and being a therian isn't a gender, so.... Not trans.

[a-dragons-explanations]

That's... with all due respect, objectively not true, though? The prefix trans- gets tacked onto -gender to clarify a type of gender experience - cis- and trans- are from the Latin "this side of" and "the other side of", respectively. (Which arguably has some unfortunately binary implications, but no language is perfect.) They're also prefixes that get used in chemistry a lot. They weren't invented specifically for the transgender community.

You also haven't answered either of my questions, or if that was meant to be an answer to one of them I'm not understanding how, because it seems like a non sequitur.

[a-dragons-explanations]

@xxvapejuicekittyxx I'm being forced to switch back to reblogs due to length, sorry. To preserve the replies chain up to this point:

Breaking this down a bit:

Okay if I say the earth is round how do you expect me to prove it. I can't. You just have to know it's true. Same w gravity.

…No? There absolutely are ways to objectively prove those things? People objectively proved the earth being round using shadow lengths and careful timing all the way back in Ancient Greece; since then, people have circumnavigated the globe, we've seen it from space, etc. Flat-earthers aren't wrong because we all "just know" they're wrong, they're wrong because there's objective proof they're wrong.

This is also a little beside the point, though, because these are physical, observable things where internal identities and experiences are not; the methods of determining truth for subjective things are a little different - determining the truth about whether it's okay to use the word transspecies or not is, at least in my opinion, more about logical consistency and determining harm or lack thereof than anything else. After all, if a position is self-contradictory, how can it be true? (Which doesn't necessarily mean that a position that isn't self-contradictory is true - it might still directly contradict personal reports of experiences, observable facts, etc. - but it's a good starting point.)

Also some shit is just obvious, like how you cannot transition to a different race.

Ignoring the goalpost shift of species to race (I'll get there in a second), I refer you back to one of my first questions you still haven't answered ("What does transitioning have to do with it?", see first reblog for the full explanation of the question).

If you're accepting transspecies it sounds like you're accepting all transIDs and they just. Don't sit right with me.

All I can really say is that that's not what I'm saying. I said first thing that I don't generally agree with transIDs, and also that I'd rather not derail this discussion to discuss All That if possible; it's a much more complicated discussion. There's a lot of reasons the vast majority of transID terms have problems associated with them that don't apply to transspecies, and also, again, the fact is that transspecies as a term predates the transID thing by a long time.

Don't sit right with me. There's a difference between being a wolf and saying "yeah I'm trans species and I can physically shift into my theriotype nyehehehe" and shit.

That's… not what transspecies typically means, though? Like, there's a legitimate discussion to be had about physical nonhumanity, p-shifters, and the history there, but that's not the discussion we're having. I'm not sure I've actually ever seen someone use the term transspecies this way, though I'm sure it's happened. Regardless, it's a different discussion entirely from "is it okay to use the word transspecies".

And in a day and age where someone who's both trans and a therian will see "transspecies" and think of transid… Maybe your term isn't yours anymore.

Maybe, but that's kind of up to the individual to decide, I think, and overwhelmingly the opinions of transspecies individuals have been along the lines of "fuck off, this word is ours and I'm not abandoning it just because some yahoos decided to misuse it". I don't think it's fair to say a community must abandon a word because some other group came along and misappropriated it, especially as an outsider to that community.

Like how I can't use "plural" because endos use it, and I don't want to associate with people to pretend to have a disorder. Endos and transIDs and radqueers are the same kind of people; choosing to be ignorant. No matter how much you want it to be true, the loch Ness monster isn't real. "Oh but we don't know the oceans!" Yeah but we know Nessie can't be real! Same thing with being a system or therian or things like that. We already know. You cannot be multiple without being a system, which comes from trauma.

This is also a bit of a derail, but I actually rather strenuously disagree with you lumping endogenic systems in with radqueers, and for that matter claiming that they're "pretending to have a disorder" (most endogenic systems don't claim to have a CDD at all) - or insisting that the only way to be a disordered system is through trauma. Trauma is not a diagnostic criterion for any CDD; it's the most common reason that people form CDDs, but if someone has all the symptoms of, say, DID but clearly has no childhood trauma, they're not magically exempt form being diagnosed with DID.

Beyond that, though, the simple fact is - what exactly are you looking for to disprove someone's report of their own experience? If someone experiences plurality and can report that that did not stem from trauma (whether because they have none or because their plurality predates their traumatic experiences - both cases I've personally met), your only options are to either accept that they are plural for some other reason we don't understand or to insist they're either wrong or lying about their own experiences (whether because they're not ~really~ experiencing plurality or because they supposedly did have traumatic experiences they just ~don't remember~ (a conveniently unfalsifiable claim)). I don't personally find it helpful to fakeclaim people because their experiences don't line up with a theory that even many psychological professionals don't agree is the end-all be-all, or because they haven't been "studied" sufficiently (a practice which is essentially just interviewing people about their experiences in a codified format anyway).

But again, this isn't the discussion we set out to have, so - a post of other links on this topic in lieu of any further discussion. (Definitely worth a read when you have the time!)

You cannot be transspecies because you cannot transition into a species.

Again, as above, I direct you back to one of the very first two questions I asked: what does transition have to do with it?

(And, again, if you don't want to discuss all this you're welcome not to - but it seems you've become interested in it again, based on your response, so I figured I'd give you a decent reply. And I appreciate the compliment - it's because I try to be knowledgeable that I support these things.)

[xxvapejuicekittyxx]

I wish I was smart enough to explain it all to you. It's just always going to get confused.

[a-dragons-explanations]

I admittedly say this as someone who discovered a bit of a passion for philosophy at one point, but - I would encourage you to take a stab at it even if you feel like you're not going to do a good job. Examining your own worldview and dissecting your own logic - and that of others - is a skill, and it's one that can be learned through practice!

You start by sitting down and asking and answering questions as best you can, and often by always wheedling for another why - why do you believe [x]? Because [y]. Well, why do you believe [y]? Etc. etc. Eventually you'll reach a core tenet of your own worldview - "bodily autonomy is a fundamental human right," or "people should generally be believed about their own personal experiences," or "morality should be determined based on harm done; if there's no harm done, then it can't be immoral" (to pull a few of mine for examples). And now you understand yourself and how you view the world better, and you can start to see how that core tenet applies to other things you believe - and to question whether you actually want to believe that core tenet, or if you want to shift your worldview to something else. (Because sometimes you do this and you realize you've got some deep internalized shit going on, and that's okay. We've all been there.)

In this case, I'd encourage you to just start small - just scroll back up to my first reblog and answer the two questions I asked there. They're questions designed to get you thinking about this stuff. Even if you think you're not going to do a good job explaining, or if you're not sure how to explain right away and have to sit and chew on it for a while, just give it your best shot - you'll have a better chance of figuring it out and explaining it if you try than if you don't. As one of my favorite teachers once told me, you miss every shot you don't take - meaning, if you don't even try to do something, then you're guaranteed not to succeed. Even if you don't want to answer them to me (which, fair!), just sit down and write down some kind of answer for yourself. And then reread those answers and ask yourself, a) is this internally consistent, or is there a self-contradiction? and b) if applicable, why do I believe this? And see where you get from there. You might learn something about yourself!

I encourage you to give it a try, whether here on this post or privately with yourself. It's a muscle you can exercise and a skill you can learn - and it can genuinely be a lot of fun! - but only if you don't scare yourself out of trying.

[xxvapejuicekittyxx]

This I agree with. I've also suffered a lot of skill regression over the years which includes my writing/thinking ability.

I am going to choose not to continue this discussion for now; you're the only one who's been kind to me in all this and I thank you for it, but I am tired, and do not have the answers to your questions.

[a-dragons-explanations]

That's fair; like I said, I'm not trying to force a discussion, it just seemed you'd gotten interested again, so I figured I'd give a decent answer. I hope the rest of your day treats you well and that I've at least given you some things to think about in the future when you get some energy back; like I said before, when and if you ever want to circle back to this, I'm more than happy to chat anytime.

[xxvapejuicekittyxx]

Transspecies isn't a thing. You cannot "transition" to another species. You are mocking transgender people.

You're nonhuman? Great, call yourself therian/otherkin/alterhuman/nonhuman/inhuman/JUST SAY YOUR SPECIES

You CANNOT transition to be an animal! TransIDs are all stupid and dumb and fake bullshit.

[a-dragons-explanations]

To be clear upfront, I'm not a big defender of transID stuff (there's a lot of problems with the vast majority of it and the culture it encourages, imo, but let's not get into that) - but transspecies as a term predates all that by a lot, and I do want to question some of your logic here, because I genuinely don't understand where you're coming from and I'd like to.

Namely,

One: What does ability to transition have to do with it? Is a transgender person who can't transition medically for whatever reason - or doesn't want to - not really transgender? If the counter to that is that social transition alone "counts," then how much social transition does one have to go through for it to count? Because you absolutely can socially transition your species to some extent - maybe not as thoroughly as you can your gender, but it is entirely possible to change your expression to express your species, ask people around you to refer to you as your species, etc. etc.

And two: If you believe that people can legitimately, seriously identify as nonhuman - which you seem to, though correct me if I'm wrong - then I really don't understand why you state that calling it transspecies would be "mocking transgender people." If it's a serious, legitimate identity, how is it "mocking" anything? I genuinely just don't understand where you're coming from on this one.

[xxvapejuicekittyxx]

Yeah so Trans equals gender, and being a therian isn't a gender, so.... Not trans.

[a-dragons-explanations]

That's... with all due respect, objectively not true, though? The prefix trans- gets tacked onto -gender to clarify a type of gender experience - cis- and trans- are from the Latin "this side of" and "the other side of", respectively. (Which arguably has some unfortunately binary implications, but no language is perfect.) They're also prefixes that get used in chemistry a lot. They weren't invented specifically for the transgender community.

You also haven't answered either of my questions, or if that was meant to be an answer to one of them I'm not understanding how, because it seems like a non sequitur.

[a-dragons-explanations]

@xxvapejuicekittyxx I'm being forced to switch back to reblogs due to length, sorry. To preserve the replies chain up to this point:

Breaking this down a bit:

Okay if I say the earth is round how do you expect me to prove it. I can't. You just have to know it's true. Same w gravity.

…No? There absolutely are ways to objectively prove those things? People objectively proved the earth being round using shadow lengths and careful timing all the way back in Ancient Greece; since then, people have circumnavigated the globe, we've seen it from space, etc. Flat-earthers aren't wrong because we all "just know" they're wrong, they're wrong because there's objective proof they're wrong.

This is also a little beside the point, though, because these are physical, observable things where internal identities and experiences are not; the methods of determining truth for subjective things are a little different - determining the truth about whether it's okay to use the word transspecies or not is, at least in my opinion, more about logical consistency and determining harm or lack thereof than anything else. After all, if a position is self-contradictory, how can it be true? (Which doesn't necessarily mean that a position that isn't self-contradictory is true - it might still directly contradict personal reports of experiences, observable facts, etc. - but it's a good starting point.)

Also some shit is just obvious, like how you cannot transition to a different race.

Ignoring the goalpost shift of species to race (I'll get there in a second), I refer you back to one of my first questions you still haven't answered ("What does transitioning have to do with it?", see first reblog for the full explanation of the question).

If you're accepting transspecies it sounds like you're accepting all transIDs and they just. Don't sit right with me.

All I can really say is that that's not what I'm saying. I said first thing that I don't generally agree with transIDs, and also that I'd rather not derail this discussion to discuss All That if possible; it's a much more complicated discussion. There's a lot of reasons the vast majority of transID terms have problems associated with them that don't apply to transspecies, and also, again, the fact is that transspecies as a term predates the transID thing by a long time.

Don't sit right with me. There's a difference between being a wolf and saying "yeah I'm trans species and I can physically shift into my theriotype nyehehehe" and shit.

That's… not what transspecies typically means, though? Like, there's a legitimate discussion to be had about physical nonhumanity, p-shifters, and the history there, but that's not the discussion we're having. I'm not sure I've actually ever seen someone use the term transspecies this way, though I'm sure it's happened. Regardless, it's a different discussion entirely from "is it okay to use the word transspecies".

And in a day and age where someone who's both trans and a therian will see "transspecies" and think of transid… Maybe your term isn't yours anymore.

Maybe, but that's kind of up to the individual to decide, I think, and overwhelmingly the opinions of transspecies individuals have been along the lines of "fuck off, this word is ours and I'm not abandoning it just because some yahoos decided to misuse it". I don't think it's fair to say a community must abandon a word because some other group came along and misappropriated it, especially as an outsider to that community.

Like how I can't use "plural" because endos use it, and I don't want to associate with people to pretend to have a disorder. Endos and transIDs and radqueers are the same kind of people; choosing to be ignorant. No matter how much you want it to be true, the loch Ness monster isn't real. "Oh but we don't know the oceans!" Yeah but we know Nessie can't be real! Same thing with being a system or therian or things like that. We already know. You cannot be multiple without being a system, which comes from trauma.

This is also a bit of a derail, but I actually rather strenuously disagree with you lumping endogenic systems in with radqueers, and for that matter claiming that they're "pretending to have a disorder" (most endogenic systems don't claim to have a CDD at all) - or insisting that the only way to be a disordered system is through trauma. Trauma is not a diagnostic criterion for any CDD; it's the most common reason that people form CDDs, but if someone has all the symptoms of, say, DID but clearly has no childhood trauma, they're not magically exempt form being diagnosed with DID.

Beyond that, though, the simple fact is - what exactly are you looking for to disprove someone's report of their own experience? If someone experiences plurality and can report that that did not stem from trauma (whether because they have none or because their plurality predates their traumatic experiences - both cases I've personally met), your only options are to either accept that they are plural for some other reason we don't understand or to insist they're either wrong or lying about their own experiences (whether because they're not ~really~ experiencing plurality or because they supposedly did have traumatic experiences they just ~don't remember~ (a conveniently unfalsifiable claim)). I don't personally find it helpful to fakeclaim people because their experiences don't line up with a theory that even many psychological professionals don't agree is the end-all be-all, or because they haven't been "studied" sufficiently (a practice which is essentially just interviewing people about their experiences in a codified format anyway).

But again, this isn't the discussion we set out to have, so - a post of other links on this topic in lieu of any further discussion. (Definitely worth a read when you have the time!)

You cannot be transspecies because you cannot transition into a species.

Again, as above, I direct you back to one of the very first two questions I asked: what does transition have to do with it?

(And, again, if you don't want to discuss all this you're welcome not to - but it seems you've become interested in it again, based on your response, so I figured I'd give you a decent reply. And I appreciate the compliment - it's because I try to be knowledgeable that I support these things.)

[xxvapejuicekittyxx]

I wish I was smart enough to explain it all to you. It's just always going to get confused.

[a-dragons-explanations]

I admittedly say this as someone who discovered a bit of a passion for philosophy at one point, but - I would encourage you to take a stab at it even if you feel like you're not going to do a good job. Examining your own worldview and dissecting your own logic - and that of others - is a skill, and it's one that can be learned through practice!

You start by sitting down and asking and answering questions as best you can, and often by always wheedling for another why - why do you believe [x]? Because [y]. Well, why do you believe [y]? Etc. etc. Eventually you'll reach a core tenet of your own worldview - "bodily autonomy is a fundamental human right," or "people should generally be believed about their own personal experiences," or "morality should be determined based on harm done; if there's no harm done, then it can't be immoral" (to pull a few of mine for examples). And now you understand yourself and how you view the world better, and you can start to see how that core tenet applies to other things you believe - and to question whether you actually want to believe that core tenet, or if you want to shift your worldview to something else. (Because sometimes you do this and you realize you've got some deep internalized shit going on, and that's okay. We've all been there.)

In this case, I'd encourage you to just start small - just scroll back up to my first reblog and answer the two questions I asked there. They're questions designed to get you thinking about this stuff. Even if you think you're not going to do a good job explaining, or if you're not sure how to explain right away and have to sit and chew on it for a while, just give it your best shot - you'll have a better chance of figuring it out and explaining it if you try than if you don't. As one of my favorite teachers once told me, you miss every shot you don't take - meaning, if you don't even try to do something, then you're guaranteed not to succeed. Even if you don't want to answer them to me (which, fair!), just sit down and write down some kind of answer for yourself. And then reread those answers and ask yourself, a) is this internally consistent, or is there a self-contradiction? and b) if applicable, why do I believe this? And see where you get from there. You might learn something about yourself!

I encourage you to give it a try, whether here on this post or privately with yourself. It's a muscle you can exercise and a skill you can learn - and it can genuinely be a lot of fun! - but only if you don't scare yourself out of trying.

[xxvapejuicekittyxx]

Transspecies isn't a thing. You cannot "transition" to another species. You are mocking transgender people.

You're nonhuman? Great, call yourself therian/otherkin/alterhuman/nonhuman/inhuman/JUST SAY YOUR SPECIES

You CANNOT transition to be an animal! TransIDs are all stupid and dumb and fake bullshit.

[a-dragons-explanations]

To be clear upfront, I'm not a big defender of transID stuff (there's a lot of problems with the vast majority of it and the culture it encourages, imo, but let's not get into that) - but transspecies as a term predates all that by a lot, and I do want to question some of your logic here, because I genuinely don't understand where you're coming from and I'd like to.

Namely,

One: What does ability to transition have to do with it? Is a transgender person who can't transition medically for whatever reason - or doesn't want to - not really transgender? If the counter to that is that social transition alone "counts," then how much social transition does one have to go through for it to count? Because you absolutely can socially transition your species to some extent - maybe not as thoroughly as you can your gender, but it is entirely possible to change your expression to express your species, ask people around you to refer to you as your species, etc. etc.

And two: If you believe that people can legitimately, seriously identify as nonhuman - which you seem to, though correct me if I'm wrong - then I really don't understand why you state that calling it transspecies would be "mocking transgender people." If it's a serious, legitimate identity, how is it "mocking" anything? I genuinely just don't understand where you're coming from on this one.

[xxvapejuicekittyxx]

Yeah so Trans equals gender, and being a therian isn't a gender, so.... Not trans.

[a-dragons-explanations]

That's... with all due respect, objectively not true, though? The prefix trans- gets tacked onto -gender to clarify a type of gender experience - cis- and trans- are from the Latin "this side of" and "the other side of", respectively. (Which arguably has some unfortunately binary implications, but no language is perfect.) They're also prefixes that get used in chemistry a lot. They weren't invented specifically for the transgender community.

You also haven't answered either of my questions, or if that was meant to be an answer to one of them I'm not understanding how, because it seems like a non sequitur.

[a-dragons-explanations]

@xxvapejuicekittyxx I'm being forced to switch back to reblogs due to length, sorry. To preserve the replies chain up to this point:

Breaking this down a bit:

Okay if I say the earth is round how do you expect me to prove it. I can't. You just have to know it's true. Same w gravity.

…No? There absolutely are ways to objectively prove those things? People objectively proved the earth being round using shadow lengths and careful timing all the way back in Ancient Greece; since then, people have circumnavigated the globe, we've seen it from space, etc. Flat-earthers aren't wrong because we all "just know" they're wrong, they're wrong because there's objective proof they're wrong.

This is also a little beside the point, though, because these are physical, observable things where internal identities and experiences are not; the methods of determining truth for subjective things are a little different - determining the truth about whether it's okay to use the word transspecies or not is, at least in my opinion, more about logical consistency and determining harm or lack thereof than anything else. After all, if a position is self-contradictory, how can it be true? (Which doesn't necessarily mean that a position that isn't self-contradictory is true - it might still directly contradict personal reports of experiences, observable facts, etc. - but it's a good starting point.)

Also some shit is just obvious, like how you cannot transition to a different race.

Ignoring the goalpost shift of species to race (I'll get there in a second), I refer you back to one of my first questions you still haven't answered ("What does transitioning have to do with it?", see first reblog for the full explanation of the question).

If you're accepting transspecies it sounds like you're accepting all transIDs and they just. Don't sit right with me.

All I can really say is that that's not what I'm saying. I said first thing that I don't generally agree with transIDs, and also that I'd rather not derail this discussion to discuss All That if possible; it's a much more complicated discussion. There's a lot of reasons the vast majority of transID terms have problems associated with them that don't apply to transspecies, and also, again, the fact is that transspecies as a term predates the transID thing by a long time.

Don't sit right with me. There's a difference between being a wolf and saying "yeah I'm trans species and I can physically shift into my theriotype nyehehehe" and shit.

That's… not what transspecies typically means, though? Like, there's a legitimate discussion to be had about physical nonhumanity, p-shifters, and the history there, but that's not the discussion we're having. I'm not sure I've actually ever seen someone use the term transspecies this way, though I'm sure it's happened. Regardless, it's a different discussion entirely from "is it okay to use the word transspecies".

And in a day and age where someone who's both trans and a therian will see "transspecies" and think of transid… Maybe your term isn't yours anymore.

Maybe, but that's kind of up to the individual to decide, I think, and overwhelmingly the opinions of transspecies individuals have been along the lines of "fuck off, this word is ours and I'm not abandoning it just because some yahoos decided to misuse it". I don't think it's fair to say a community must abandon a word because some other group came along and misappropriated it, especially as an outsider to that community.

Like how I can't use "plural" because endos use it, and I don't want to associate with people to pretend to have a disorder. Endos and transIDs and radqueers are the same kind of people; choosing to be ignorant. No matter how much you want it to be true, the loch Ness monster isn't real. "Oh but we don't know the oceans!" Yeah but we know Nessie can't be real! Same thing with being a system or therian or things like that. We already know. You cannot be multiple without being a system, which comes from trauma.

This is also a bit of a derail, but I actually rather strenuously disagree with you lumping endogenic systems in with radqueers, and for that matter claiming that they're "pretending to have a disorder" (most endogenic systems don't claim to have a CDD at all) - or insisting that the only way to be a disordered system is through trauma. Trauma is not a diagnostic criterion for any CDD; it's the most common reason that people form CDDs, but if someone has all the symptoms of, say, DID but clearly has no childhood trauma, they're not magically exempt form being diagnosed with DID.

Beyond that, though, the simple fact is - what exactly are you looking for to disprove someone's report of their own experience? If someone experiences plurality and can report that that did not stem from trauma (whether because they have none or because their plurality predates their traumatic experiences - both cases I've personally met), your only options are to either accept that they are plural for some other reason we don't understand or to insist they're either wrong or lying about their own experiences (whether because they're not ~really~ experiencing plurality or because they supposedly did have traumatic experiences they just ~don't remember~ (a conveniently unfalsifiable claim)). I don't personally find it helpful to fakeclaim people because their experiences don't line up with a theory that even many psychological professionals don't agree is the end-all be-all, or because they haven't been "studied" sufficiently (a practice which is essentially just interviewing people about their experiences in a codified format anyway).

But again, this isn't the discussion we set out to have, so - a post of other links on this topic in lieu of any further discussion. (Definitely worth a read when you have the time!)

You cannot be transspecies because you cannot transition into a species.

Again, as above, I direct you back to one of the very first two questions I asked: what does transition have to do with it?

(And, again, if you don't want to discuss all this you're welcome not to - but it seems you've become interested in it again, based on your response, so I figured I'd give you a decent reply. And I appreciate the compliment - it's because I try to be knowledgeable that I support these things.)

[xxvapejuicekittyxx]

Transspecies isn't a thing. You cannot "transition" to another species. You are mocking transgender people.

You're nonhuman? Great, call yourself therian/otherkin/alterhuman/nonhuman/inhuman/JUST SAY YOUR SPECIES

You CANNOT transition to be an animal! TransIDs are all stupid and dumb and fake bullshit.

[a-dragons-explanations]

To be clear upfront, I'm not a big defender of transID stuff (there's a lot of problems with the vast majority of it and the culture it encourages, imo, but let's not get into that) - but transspecies as a term predates all that by a lot, and I do want to question some of your logic here, because I genuinely don't understand where you're coming from and I'd like to.

Namely,

One: What does ability to transition have to do with it? Is a transgender person who can't transition medically for whatever reason - or doesn't want to - not really transgender? If the counter to that is that social transition alone "counts," then how much social transition does one have to go through for it to count? Because you absolutely can socially transition your species to some extent - maybe not as thoroughly as you can your gender, but it is entirely possible to change your expression to express your species, ask people around you to refer to you as your species, etc. etc.

And two: If you believe that people can legitimately, seriously identify as nonhuman - which you seem to, though correct me if I'm wrong - then I really don't understand why you state that calling it transspecies would be "mocking transgender people." If it's a serious, legitimate identity, how is it "mocking" anything? I genuinely just don't understand where you're coming from on this one.

[xxvapejuicekittyxx]

Yeah so Trans equals gender, and being a therian isn't a gender, so.... Not trans.

[a-dragons-explanations]

That's... with all due respect, objectively not true, though? The prefix trans- gets tacked onto -gender to clarify a type of gender experience - cis- and trans- are from the Latin "this side of" and "the other side of", respectively. (Which arguably has some unfortunately binary implications, but no language is perfect.) They're also prefixes that get used in chemistry a lot. They weren't invented specifically for the transgender community.

You also haven't answered either of my questions, or if that was meant to be an answer to one of them I'm not understanding how, because it seems like a non sequitur.

[xxvapejuicekittyxx]

Transspecies isn't a thing. You cannot "transition" to another species. You are mocking transgender people.

You're nonhuman? Great, call yourself therian/otherkin/alterhuman/nonhuman/inhuman/JUST SAY YOUR SPECIES

You CANNOT transition to be an animal! TransIDs are all stupid and dumb and fake bullshit.

[a-dragons-explanations]

To be clear upfront, I'm not a big defender of transID stuff (there's a lot of problems with the vast majority of it and the culture it encourages, imo, but let's not get into that) - but transspecies as a term predates all that by a lot, and I do want to question some of your logic here, because I genuinely don't understand where you're coming from and I'd like to.

Namely,

One: What does ability to transition have to do with it? Is a transgender person who can't transition medically for whatever reason - or doesn't want to - not really transgender? If the counter to that is that social transition alone "counts," then how much social transition does one have to go through for it to count? Because you absolutely can socially transition your species to some extent - maybe not as thoroughly as you can your gender, but it is entirely possible to change your expression to express your species, ask people around you to refer to you as your species, etc. etc.

And two: If you believe that people can legitimately, seriously identify as nonhuman - which you seem to, though correct me if I'm wrong - then I really don't understand why you state that calling it transspecies would be "mocking transgender people." If it's a serious, legitimate identity, how is it "mocking" anything? I genuinely just don't understand where you're coming from on this one.

[astridfarts]

gng maybe im not woke bcs i was in the shower and i was having thoughts abt how in like 2022 i was getting mass backlash for saying that u lowk cant be athiest and a therian cause to be a therian you lowk have to believe in 2nd lives and that technically counts as a religious belief and everyone was bsing their way into proving that im wrong but wtv. Anyway, now that i think of it now i feel like therians are lowk like insane?? 😭😭 like no way you think you were an animal in a past life and aren’t somehow koo-koo in the head?? like something is definitely going on up there because i fear normal people do NAWT believe in stuff like dis 😭😭✌️✌️

[a-dragons-explanations]

Two halves of this one:

First, believing in past lives isn't a requirement to being a therian. Not all therians believe their theriotypes stem from past lives to begin with - there are many explanations for why one might be a therian, up to and including "I just am".

Second - well, actually, this second half requires multiple bits of unpacking.

Anyway, now that i think of it now i feel like therians are lowk like insane?? 😭😭 like no way you think you were an animal in a past life and aren’t somehow koo-koo in the head?? like something is definitely going on up there because i fear normal people do NAWT believe in stuff like dis 😭😭✌️✌️

One: What exactly is so strange about believing you were an animal in a past life? That's... one of the most common spiritual beliefs across the globe. Billions of people worldwide believe in that - it's a core part of Buddhism and Hinduism, the latter of which is the third largest religion in the world, not to mention many, many other religions. Why are you immediately connecting what amounts to "basic spiritual belief I find a little weird" to "lol you're like actually insane"? Do you also think, say, Christians believing in Heaven makes them "insane" and "not normal"? Why or why not, and if not, why is that different from believing in reincarnation? Do you think that your initial impulse, and your answers to those questions, might be fueled by some biases against non-Western (really, non-Christian, if we're honest here) religions that you've internalized?

Two: As gently as I can say this, I want you to sit back and unpack why you're talking about mental illness the way you are for a second. Let's say for the sake of argument that we agree that therianthropy is a symptom of or otherwise related to mental illness (in reality, for some people it is, for most it's not, but for the sake of argument let's just say it is). Do you honestly think it's acceptable to be this dismissive and hurtful about a genuine mental illness, or are you, if I may be blunt for a moment, just using the idea of it being "insane" as an excuse to be a bully? Do you think talking about mental illness this way is actually helpful, or is it just going to stigmatize it and hurt people suffering from it more?

You don't have to answer any of these questions to me (though you're more than welcome to if you're up for discussing them), but I do want you to at minimum sit and think about them and answer them to yourself. You're displaying a very knee-jerk "weird = mental illness = bad = worthy of mockery" chain of connections that I think it would be beneficial for you to think about and unpack, because if you're carrying this attitude in your daily life, you're probably driving a lot of people away from you with casual cruelty like this, possibly without even realizing you're doing it.

Food for thought; do with it what you will. More than happy to answer questions and discuss further if you'd like!

[kawaiikaeya]

Is it weird that im otherkin and apart of a very fictive heavy system and I don’t believe in the whole fictionkin thing

[a-dragons-explanations]

What exactly do you mean by saying you "don't believe in" it? What makes fictionkinity any less believable than otherkinity or fictives? (Genuinely interested in discussing this if you are, not trying to be passive-aggressive or anything.)

[human-breaking-down-deactivated]

I miss when sharing your kins just meant that you found a character relatable or said you were "literally them" jokingly. Now people get angry if you do that because "thats not real kin".

Are we really that connected to our phones that we need to create our identity around fictional faces on our carrds, flags that are unnecessary (not xenogender and lgbt, im talking about other flags) just to share more and more with complete strangers, and also make systems to be less lonely?

Please. What are we doing. Why are we just doing this and encouraging each other without questioning anything?

Why share my name? My pronouns? My age? My sexuality? My gender? If Im trans or not? My EVERYTHING with the internet?

There is nothing wrong in being yourself, but I feel like the internet is too exposing. Its like i have a second life here with a full time job and i need to say everything and a bit more. The bit more being identities like alterhumanity and kin and now also disorders (why share our disorders online? I dont want to just tell that to random people!)

I feel like the internet is too much and so little people criticize it. Everyone just accepts without knowing if something is harmful or not because "its my belief" or "i suffer x thing so you cant criticize me".

[a-dragons-explanations]

You do have some valid concerns and valid points here that I agree with - the Internet has gotten so goddamn weird about sharing every facet of your identity, including ones it's frankly dangerous to share sometimes (age, triggers, disorders), and acting like you're somehow suspicious if you defend your online privacy at all. People have also gotten... really weird about the things they hinge their identity on sometimes, though I think it has less to do with phone addiction and more to do with lack of genuine, strong community bonds (especially IRL) making people feel like they have to latch onto labels harder and harder to feel like they're a part of something - which is a deep human need that we've got to fulfill somehow.

But... I think you may be pointing your frustration with this phenomenon in the wrong direction in this case. While I understand where you're coming from, the "that's literally who and what I am" meaning of "kin" was here first - that's its original meaning. The term otherkind, from which otherkin came within a matter of months, was coined in 1990 to refer to people who felt they were nonhuman; the community that coined the term goes back at least to the 1970s. The "it just means relatable" thing only started maybe a decade ago, and it's been pushed back against by actual nonhumans and fictionkin since Day One... well, frankly, largely because it leads to posts like this - where people try to tell us we're wrong for using our own words in their original definitions because we're "taking it too seriously". It's a little like if people started calling playing a D&D character of another gender "transing" because they misunderstood what it meant, and then got weird and freaked out when they met trans people who actually genuinely identify as a gender other than what they were assigned at birth and started shouting that they're "taking it too seriously" and "ruining transing", y'feel?

Moreover, I don't think it's really fair to blame the otherkin community - which is, let's be real, incredibly small and niche - for a much larger trend over the Internet, especially since we predate that trend's existence. (Though we've certainly been affected by it, don't get me wrong! Oh boy do I have thoughts on how the otherkin community has been affected by this phenomenon at the core of what you're complaining about. But that's for another conversation.) Otherkin are just trying to exist, my friend; if we tend to be a little desperate for community, it's for the same reasons queer people tend to be a little desperate for community - being the only nonhuman in your vicinity IRL is often an isolating experience. Which might make us more susceptible to this thing the Internet's currently got going on about in-group signaling and whatnot, but it doesn't put us at fault or mean the community as a whole is a product of that phenomenon. You're being a little unfair to us in your frustration, friend - though if your main exposure to the concept has been through the "kinning for fun" community (that "haha relatable" thing you mentioned as being what you'd previously understood to be the original/primary meaning), I can certainly understand why you'd come away with the impression you have.

[human-breaking-down-deactivated]

I can see your point, and Im sorry that your community's label got used the wrong way and gave me the wrong impression. I still dont agree with the belief, but I respect that you were respectful in explaining to me. I like your blog's message about debate.

My frustration with the fictionkin community is more about fiction not being reality and that they turn fiction into reality by claiming to be someone who doesnt exist and connecting to characters in an unhealthy way.

I wish we could just have a space to find characters relatable and "kin" them.

I also dont think that otherkin has anything to do with transgender discussion. Because transgender identity is based on something entirely different from kin, since gender is something real and a real feeling on a real concept (not fiction into reality), and being trans can be proven as something that is healthy.

[a-dragons-explanations]

The space you're looking for is fandom, I think :P The words you're looking for might perhaps be "mood," "vibe with," "relate to," or perhaps "faceclaim". (EDIT: I realized after hitting post this may have come off a little dismissive - it's not meant to be. I do feel the struggle of having a hard time finding a community you work well with. But, genuinely, relating to characters is (among other things) exactly what fandom is for.)

Genuine questions, because I would genuinely like to discuss this if you're open to it - what makes you think being fictionkin is inherently unhealthy? And what makes a gender a "real feeling" but a fictotype not (or in other words, how are you defining what's a "real feeling," when feelings are inherently something subjective that can only be measured by self-reporting from the person experiencing them)?

[human-breaking-down-deactivated]

Creators of fanart gets their work stolen to be used as faceclaims. Which makes me uncomfortable and I think is wrong.

Sourcecalls are dangerous and lean in parasocial territory.

Fictionkin is not the same thing as gender. Gender is wheter you identify as a boy, girl, genderfluid, nonbinary... Etc. Fictionkin is saying that you are a *fictional* character, someone who isnt real.

Its unhealthy because you blur the lines between fiction and reality. You distance yourself from your own self because you feel like you are actually Sans from Undertale. That to me, seems dangerous because you dont allow yourself to just be yourself, you are just being another person, and one that doesnt exist.

I would not like creating a character and having someone kin them. I have seen the creator of Phighting expressing discomfort with kins, but they were shushed up just because people shouted they were hateful.

Characters doesnt exist. They are just characters. I believe that its dangerous to blur the lines between reality and fiction because fiction should stay as that: fiction. It is dangerous to enable delusions, people can get hurt depending on what they believe in.

Its uncomfortable to share my love for a character and some random person claim that I am their fan, it feels like someone is invading my fictional worlds and comfort characters, it feels unsafe to make sourcecalls, it feels dehumanizing to deny your own humanity as if being human is a bad and pathetic thing (i have seen posts were people claimed that "anti kins" are just jealous that they are humans and "nothing special"). I feel like this is chronically online behaviour, it is not healthy, its a delusion.

It might feel good, but it doesnt mean that it is good.

[a-dragons-explanations]

I can see where you're coming from here - you do have a lot of legitimate concerns; a lot of these things are real problems. It sounds like you've maybe had some pretty bad experiences with the community, and I'm sorry for that; that's really unfortunate. But most of these are problems of behavior and etiquette, not problems that are inherent to the identity existing - and the remainder are I think based on some understandable but ultimately false assumptions. To go point-by-point (this is going to be a long one, sorry, but I don't want to brush over parts of your argument) -

Creators of fanart gets their work stolen to be used as faceclaims. Which makes me uncomfortable and I think is wrong. [...] I would not like creating a character and having someone kin them. I have seen the creator of Phighting expressing discomfort with kins, but they were shushed up just because people shouted they were hateful. [...] Its uncomfortable to share my love for a character and some random person claim that I am their fan, it feels like someone is invading my fictional worlds and comfort characters

Pulling all these ones together because they're ultimately all the same argument - it's absolutely fair to be uncomfortable with these things, but you're conflating identity with how people handle identity here. These are all choices people make that most fictionkin agree are bad choices - the general rule in the fictionkin community is actually to separate fandom and fictionkinity completely and not interact with fandom openly, definitely not with source creators, because it usually just leads to conflict. It's extremely unpopular with most fictionkin to do that. Spend long enough in fictionkin communities and you'll hear a common refrain that separating the two and remembering that the canon "you" isn't literally you and is a fictional representation of you (at most - often it's just someone who looks vaguely similar), and that people aren't doing anything wrong by treating your source like fiction.

Unfortunately, it's the small minority that ignore that rule and blur the line between fandom and identity that non-fictionkin usually hear about, for obvious reasons - so from an outside perspective, it often looks like that's just How Fictionkin Are when that's not generally true. Most fictionkin don't pull this shit and there's whole guides floating around in the community on why you shouldn't do that. This is an etiquette problem, not a problem inherent to the identity existing.

Sourcecalls are dangerous and lean in parasocial territory.

Yep, I honestly half agree with you on this - source calls absolutely can be handled in a stupid and sometimes outright dangerous way, and people acting like if you knew each other in a past life/in-source you should automatically have the same relationship in the now is fallacious and setting yourself up for manipulation (or to do the manipulating). Most of the time I do honestly think it's better to Simply Not Do That for safety reasons.

But... again, spend enough time in the fictionkin community and you'll see plenty of people putting out PSAs about that very potential problem. And it's entirely possible to do source calls in a healthy way - it's the same as putting out a "hey anyone who likes xyz fandom/activity/etc come chat with me, I want to make some friends" notice; as long as you don't expect that to automatically garner a close relationship, and are willing to let it go if the two of you don't actually mesh well, you're probably fine. Again, this is a behavior/etiquette problem, not a problem inherent to the identity existing.

Fictionkin is not the same thing as gender. Gender is wheter you identify as a boy, girl, genderfluid, nonbinary… Etc. Fictionkin is saying that you are a fictional character, someone who isnt real.

This is the one that's really just a philosophical question: Again, what makes one feeling real and the other not? Yes, the character is fictional - but the experiences are not. Why is one set of subjective, internal experiences "real" and another not? What makes dysphoria caused by, for example, inability to read a fictional language that feels like it should be instinctive, or lack of cat ears and tail, "not real," but nearly identical dysphoria caused by genitals or secondary sex characteristics "real"? Why does someone's experience happening to line up with a fictional story make it less real, especially if the experience predates exposure to the story in question (a well-known phenomenon in the fictionkin community) and thus can't possibly have been caused by it?

Its unhealthy because you blur the lines between fiction and reality. You distance yourself from your own self because you feel like you are actually Sans from Undertale. That to me, seems dangerous because you dont allow yourself to just be yourself, you are just being another person, and one that doesnt exist.

This is the one that I think is based on a false assumption - you're assuming that to be fictionkin means you can't also be "just you." That's not true. We were all someone before we awakened, and we don't just stop being that someone after awakening. It's true that there can be some sense of pressure to "fit the mold" for some people, usually because of insecurities about the identity not being "real enough" - but again, a common refrain in the fictionkin community is reminding the newly awakened that it's extremely normal to not have every aspect of yourself line up with your fictotype. Someone who's pressuring themself to be exactly like their fictotype or limiting themself based on it is approaching it in an unhealthy way, I agree - but that's not the vast majority of fictionkin. For most fictionkin, it's a matter of embracing, expressing, and naming what is already a part of you, not of changing yourself to be something or someone else. As I mentioned in the point above this one, a fictionkin individual's experiences predating exposure to their source media is very common. Embracing one's fictotype is "being yourself" - that's the whole point.

It is dangerous to enable delusions, people can get hurt depending on what they believe in. [...] I feel like this is chronically online behaviour, it is not healthy, its a delusion.

First, I want to put out a link to an old post by someone with schizophrenia about why the whole "don't encourage their delusions" thing is generally kind of a sketchy argument to be having in the first place, because they articulated it well and I always feel it’s something I should link when the discussion inevitably comes up.

Second, I do want to point out that fictionkinity factually does not fit the criteria for a delusion. A delusion is an unshakeable belief in something despite evidence against it - which inherently disqualifies something that can't be empirically proven true or false, ie, things like religion and fictionkinity. I get where you're coming from here, but you're assigning a level of pathology to this that doesn't fit. (I'm also not a big fan of then turning around and calling it "chronically online behavior," if I'm honest - acting like those two things are the same strikes me as a little dismissive and ableist toward people who do experience delusions.)

it feels dehumanizing to deny your own humanity as if being human is a bad and pathetic thing (i have seen posts were people claimed that "anti kins" are just jealous that they are humans and "nothing special").

And lastly, again, this is something that's a behavior/etiquette problem, not a problem inherent to the identity. I fully agree that that's shitty behavior, though dehumanizing isn't necessarily the word I'd use. Misanthropy is the fucking bane of my existence in this community, especially as someone who's both human and nonhuman, but the problem is the misanthropy, not the nonhumanity. (Which, there's a conversation to be had about the way each can feed into the other, but that's a different conversation and the answer for sure isn't "nonhumanity makes you a misanthrope".)

...I think that's everything; if I missed anything you said forgive me, and sorry for how long this got. Hopefully this all makes sense? (And thank you again for being willing to discuss this and hear me out - a lot of people aren't.)

[human-breaking-down-deactivated]

I miss when sharing your kins just meant that you found a character relatable or said you were "literally them" jokingly. Now people get angry if you do that because "thats not real kin".

Are we really that connected to our phones that we need to create our identity around fictional faces on our carrds, flags that are unnecessary (not xenogender and lgbt, im talking about other flags) just to share more and more with complete strangers, and also make systems to be less lonely?

Please. What are we doing. Why are we just doing this and encouraging each other without questioning anything?

Why share my name? My pronouns? My age? My sexuality? My gender? If Im trans or not? My EVERYTHING with the internet?

There is nothing wrong in being yourself, but I feel like the internet is too exposing. Its like i have a second life here with a full time job and i need to say everything and a bit more. The bit more being identities like alterhumanity and kin and now also disorders (why share our disorders online? I dont want to just tell that to random people!)

I feel like the internet is too much and so little people criticize it. Everyone just accepts without knowing if something is harmful or not because "its my belief" or "i suffer x thing so you cant criticize me".

[a-dragons-explanations]

You do have some valid concerns and valid points here that I agree with - the Internet has gotten so goddamn weird about sharing every facet of your identity, including ones it's frankly dangerous to share sometimes (age, triggers, disorders), and acting like you're somehow suspicious if you defend your online privacy at all. People have also gotten... really weird about the things they hinge their identity on sometimes, though I think it has less to do with phone addiction and more to do with lack of genuine, strong community bonds (especially IRL) making people feel like they have to latch onto labels harder and harder to feel like they're a part of something - which is a deep human need that we've got to fulfill somehow.

But... I think you may be pointing your frustration with this phenomenon in the wrong direction in this case. While I understand where you're coming from, the "that's literally who and what I am" meaning of "kin" was here first - that's its original meaning. The term otherkind, from which otherkin came within a matter of months, was coined in 1990 to refer to people who felt they were nonhuman; the community that coined the term goes back at least to the 1970s. The "it just means relatable" thing only started maybe a decade ago, and it's been pushed back against by actual nonhumans and fictionkin since Day One... well, frankly, largely because it leads to posts like this - where people try to tell us we're wrong for using our own words in their original definitions because we're "taking it too seriously". It's a little like if people started calling playing a D&D character of another gender "transing" because they misunderstood what it meant, and then got weird and freaked out when they met trans people who actually genuinely identify as a gender other than what they were assigned at birth and started shouting that they're "taking it too seriously" and "ruining transing", y'feel?

Moreover, I don't think it's really fair to blame the otherkin community - which is, let's be real, incredibly small and niche - for a much larger trend over the Internet, especially since we predate that trend's existence. (Though we've certainly been affected by it, don't get me wrong! Oh boy do I have thoughts on how the otherkin community has been affected by this phenomenon at the core of what you're complaining about. But that's for another conversation.) Otherkin are just trying to exist, my friend; if we tend to be a little desperate for community, it's for the same reasons queer people tend to be a little desperate for community - being the only nonhuman in your vicinity IRL is often an isolating experience. Which might make us more susceptible to this thing the Internet's currently got going on about in-group signaling and whatnot, but it doesn't put us at fault or mean the community as a whole is a product of that phenomenon. You're being a little unfair to us in your frustration, friend - though if your main exposure to the concept has been through the "kinning for fun" community (that "haha relatable" thing you mentioned as being what you'd previously understood to be the original/primary meaning), I can certainly understand why you'd come away with the impression you have.

[human-breaking-down-deactivated]

I can see your point, and Im sorry that your community's label got used the wrong way and gave me the wrong impression. I still dont agree with the belief, but I respect that you were respectful in explaining to me. I like your blog's message about debate.

My frustration with the fictionkin community is more about fiction not being reality and that they turn fiction into reality by claiming to be someone who doesnt exist and connecting to characters in an unhealthy way.

I wish we could just have a space to find characters relatable and "kin" them.

I also dont think that otherkin has anything to do with transgender discussion. Because transgender identity is based on something entirely different from kin, since gender is something real and a real feeling on a real concept (not fiction into reality), and being trans can be proven as something that is healthy.

[a-dragons-explanations]

The space you're looking for is fandom, I think :P The words you're looking for might perhaps be "mood," "vibe with," "relate to," or perhaps "faceclaim". (EDIT: I realized after hitting post this may have come off a little dismissive - it's not meant to be. I do feel the struggle of having a hard time finding a community you work well with. But, genuinely, relating to characters is (among other things) exactly what fandom is for.)

Genuine questions, because I would genuinely like to discuss this if you're open to it - what makes you think being fictionkin is inherently unhealthy? And what makes a gender a "real feeling" but a fictotype not (or in other words, how are you defining what's a "real feeling," when feelings are inherently something subjective that can only be measured by self-reporting from the person experiencing them)?

[human-breaking-down-deactivated]

I miss when sharing your kins just meant that you found a character relatable or said you were "literally them" jokingly. Now people get angry if you do that because "thats not real kin".

Are we really that connected to our phones that we need to create our identity around fictional faces on our carrds, flags that are unnecessary (not xenogender and lgbt, im talking about other flags) just to share more and more with complete strangers, and also make systems to be less lonely?

Please. What are we doing. Why are we just doing this and encouraging each other without questioning anything?

Why share my name? My pronouns? My age? My sexuality? My gender? If Im trans or not? My EVERYTHING with the internet?

There is nothing wrong in being yourself, but I feel like the internet is too exposing. Its like i have a second life here with a full time job and i need to say everything and a bit more. The bit more being identities like alterhumanity and kin and now also disorders (why share our disorders online? I dont want to just tell that to random people!)

I feel like the internet is too much and so little people criticize it. Everyone just accepts without knowing if something is harmful or not because "its my belief" or "i suffer x thing so you cant criticize me".

[a-dragons-explanations]

You do have some valid concerns and valid points here that I agree with - the Internet has gotten so goddamn weird about sharing every facet of your identity, including ones it's frankly dangerous to share sometimes (age, triggers, disorders), and acting like you're somehow suspicious if you defend your online privacy at all. People have also gotten... really weird about the things they hinge their identity on sometimes, though I think it has less to do with phone addiction and more to do with lack of genuine, strong community bonds (especially IRL) making people feel like they have to latch onto labels harder and harder to feel like they're a part of something - which is a deep human need that we've got to fulfill somehow.

But... I think you may be pointing your frustration with this phenomenon in the wrong direction in this case. While I understand where you're coming from, the "that's literally who and what I am" meaning of "kin" was here first - that's its original meaning. The term otherkind, from which otherkin came within a matter of months, was coined in 1990 to refer to people who felt they were nonhuman; the community that coined the term goes back at least to the 1970s. The "it just means relatable" thing only started maybe a decade ago, and it's been pushed back against by actual nonhumans and fictionkin since Day One... well, frankly, largely because it leads to posts like this - where people try to tell us we're wrong for using our own words in their original definitions because we're "taking it too seriously". It's a little like if people started calling playing a D&D character of another gender "transing" because they misunderstood what it meant, and then got weird and freaked out when they met trans people who actually genuinely identify as a gender other than what they were assigned at birth and started shouting that they're "taking it too seriously" and "ruining transing", y'feel?

Moreover, I don't think it's really fair to blame the otherkin community - which is, let's be real, incredibly small and niche - for a much larger trend over the Internet, especially since we predate that trend's existence. (Though we've certainly been affected by it, don't get me wrong! Oh boy do I have thoughts on how the otherkin community has been affected by this phenomenon at the core of what you're complaining about. But that's for another conversation.) Otherkin are just trying to exist, my friend; if we tend to be a little desperate for community, it's for the same reasons queer people tend to be a little desperate for community - being the only nonhuman in your vicinity IRL is often an isolating experience. Which might make us more susceptible to this thing the Internet's currently got going on about in-group signaling and whatnot, but it doesn't put us at fault or mean the community as a whole is a product of that phenomenon. You're being a little unfair to us in your frustration, friend - though if your main exposure to the concept has been through the "kinning for fun" community (that "haha relatable" thing you mentioned as being what you'd previously understood to be the original/primary meaning), I can certainly understand why you'd come away with the impression you have.

[a-dragons-journal]

Sometimes I genuinely want to reblog some of these posts just swapping every instance of "human" for "gay" and "misanthropy" for "homophobia," because it really puts it into perspective.

"But of course I know there are good humans out there -" Saying something to the effect of "Gay people are horrible" and then following up with "but of course I know there are good gays out there <3" doesn't actually make you not homophobic.

"But humans have actually done bad things that destroy the planet -!" 90% of my mom's internalized homophobia stems from real gay people she knew who intentionally spread HIV to other people, and that being her only exposure to the queer community before, like, me. Do you think that makes it fair for someone to be homophobic? Because a small proportion of the gay community does terrible things? Like, no, right? So why do you think it's fair for you to act misanthropic because a small proportion of the human species does terrible things?

[a-dragons-journal]

FAQ/Before You Reply for this post:

because no one reads the notes before they reply to see if anyone's already said the thing they're intending to say and I'm tired of repeating myself

"But gay people are oppressed and humans aren't oppressed (for being human, anyway), that's the difference!"

Is homophobia wrong because gay people are oppressed, or is it wrong because it's wrong to hate an entire group of people for a trait that isn't inherently harmful and which they probably didn't have a choice in to boot?

I'd like to think it's the latter, in which case this argument falls apart. The oppressed status of the comparison group has nothing to do with the argument I'm making; I'm not trying to argue that misanthropy is a form of systematic oppression. Therefore, the original question stands: Why is it okay to hate a group of people for a non-harmful trait when that trait is humanity, but not when it's queerness?

"A better comparison would really be to straight people/men/cishets/etc."

I know. I know it's a more 1:1 comparison. But I chose the comparison I did very deliberately, because I needed a group that I could reliably assume everyone in the discussion would agree it's not okay to hate for existing. With the problem the queer community has with hatred and vitriol toward men and sometimes other non-oppressed groups, that is unfortunately not true for those groups. If I'd made the comparison to hating men or hating cishet people, a chunk of my target audience would have been able to blow me off with "yeah, actually, I do think hating men is fine", and my point would have been missed. It's not supposed to be the most 1:1 comparison it could possibly be, it's supposed to make people think about why they think it's okay to hate one group but not another.

"Misanthropy isn't REALLY hurting anyone though"

The fact that I felt the need to make this post says that's not true, but let's set that aside. Misanthropy usually very quickly leads to ecofascism, in the "humans are evil" -> "therefore, the world would be better off if humans didn't exist" pipeline. I would argue it's inherently a defeatist worldview, because if humans are inherently bad, then there's not really any point in trying to fix anything, because you're doomed to failure. You don't have to be doing systematic oppression to be hurting people. And you haven't answered my question. Why is it different?

"But it's often a trauma response -"

Trauma doesn't absolve you of responsibility for your words and actions hurting people. And you haven't answered my question. Why is it different?

[hushedhowls]

comparing hating humans to homophobia is actually fucking crazy WHHAAAAATTT

[a-dragons-explanations]

Forgive me for saying this bluntly, but: do you have a real argument to actually counter my point, or are you just knee-jerk responding with a "nuh-uh" in anger? (The point and challenging question in question being, if it wasn't clear, "if hating people for a trait that isn't inherently harmful and probably wasn't chosen to boot is wrong, why is it suddenly different when that trait is being human (or, for that matter, being cis or neurotypical or straight) instead of being gay?")

(This is OP, for the record, I'm just moving this to this sideblog because I'm sure my followers are tired of this post by now.)

[a-dragons-journal]

Genuine question, does our system need to label ourselves as ‘endo-neutral’? (Mostly because we just really, really cannot bring ourselves to care. Also people are people and we can’t care (low empathy))

I ask asking because I (and the system) are not involved in syscourse, and I’m not sure what to put in the tags to prevent people from being upset.

Ignore this ask if it is rude in any way (genuinely)

(This was written by the co-host)

If you want my opinion, if you want to say “we don’t want to be actively involved in syscourse,” that exact sentence is the only way to say it.

Personally, I’m kind of of the opinion that “endo-neutral” isn’t a real thing unless you’re “neutral” in the sense that you haven’t done enough research on it yet to have formed an opinion (which, that’s valid but a different thing than true neutrality). You can’t really be neutral on whether people are allowed to exist or not. Either you’re okay with people fakeclaiming other people, or you’re not. “Endo-neutral” just tells me you are okay with it, you’re just not actively doing it yourself - which is a little like this comic:

Y’feel?

This is not me saying you have to involve yourself actively in syscourse. As a matter of fact, I recommend you don’t actively seek that out, in most cases - it’s not really good for you, generally speaking. Not wanting people to drop syscourse on your doorstep is perfectly reasonable. But unfortunately, if you interact with other systems much, it’s probably going to come up eventually, whether you like it or not. Eventually you are going to be in a space where someone starts talking about how endogenic systems aren’t real, and you’re going to have to decide how to respond to that and whether you’re willing to tolerate it.

Ultimately, I don’t think you have to be emotionally invested to decide whether you think something is right or wrong. I know there’s probably some extra energy investment required for that for you, but unfortunately I think that’s just something you’re going to have to deal with, as harsh as that might sound. I don’t really see a way around it. Which, it’s as good a time as any to ask yourself - where do your morals lie? What basic principles do you build your morality on? Are they internally consistent, and if not, what needs to change to make it so? And if you follow those principles to their natural conclusion, what does that tell you about the situation you’ve been given?

(Also, entirely pragmatically, if your goal is to avoid people getting mad at you, “endo-neutral” in my experience kind of just gets both sides upset anyway - endo supporters because of everything I just said, anti-endos because anyone who tolerates endos is the enemy according to them. You’re probably better off just stating you don’t want to argue about syscourse to achieve that goal.)

But that’s just my two cents’ worth. Hopefully it’s good food for thought at least.

[a-dragons-explanations]

@rribb0n I’m gonna give you one more chance to actually engage seriously with me on this, because last time you did just ignore me and I do genuinely want your thoughts and a real discussion on this:

A) Why exactly do you think endogenic systems “[don’t] make logical sense”? What doesn’t make sense about it to you?

B) Even assuming for the sake of argument that that statement is correct, why should someone’s experiences “not making logical sense” mean it’s all right to decide their experiences aren’t real? Whom exactly do they have to “make sense” to in order to qualify as real and valid? Many things don’t make sense to portions of the population and are nonetheless real.

(Edit: fascinating. I can’t seem to get the link to that last post to work. It’s the previous post on this blog, sorry to anyone seeing this via a reblog in the future.)

[rribb0n-deactivated20250509]

i only "ignored you" bc i didn't know how to put my thoughts into words and i just forgot 😭 im not going to discuss this with you im not in the right headspace

[a-dragons-explanations]

All right, that's your prerogative. I will, however, encourage you to not go out of your way to attack someone if you're "not in the right headspace" to actually discuss it seriously if they respond, in the future. That is, bluntly, just being mean and starting shit for no reason, and if you do it again on one of my posts I will be blocking you. When it comes to doubting someone's existence/experiences, if you're not ready to have a serious conversation about it, you shouldn't say anything at all. When you are in the right headspace for that discussion, I'll be more than happy to have it with you.

(Re: forgetting to respond - fair enough; that happens. It's just kind of aggravating to have someone make a disparaging comment on your post (or your reblog, as the case may be), try to engage them on it, get zero response, and then have them make basically the same mean comment again on a different post as if you didn't say anything at all, y'feel?)

[rribb0n-deactivated20250509]

this is your account?? 😭 i thought it was someone else because the PFP is different- fuck im sorry 😭 (ok i just realized it's your alt

[a-dragons-explanations]

I mean… yes, but that is kind of beside the point. My point stands even if I’d been a different person from the OP.

[rribb0n-deactivated20250509]

how? i don't understand what you're trying to say

[a-dragons-explanations]

My point, if you'll reread what I said, was that it is pointlessly rude to be mean to someone (for example, publicly doubting the existence/legitimacy of a group of people because you don't understand them) and then retreat and claim that you're "not in the right headspace" to discuss it as soon as someone confronts you on that and tries to actually talk to you about it. It remains rude regardless of whether the person who engaged you on it is the same person you were originally responding to. Therefore, me being the same person is beside the point, and I'm not sure why that's the thing you chose to focus on while brushing past the point I was actually making.

[rribb0n-deactivated20250509]

jesus christ, i cant with people on tumblr bro they will literally try to argue with you any possible chance there is. i give up. that's literally not what happened at all

im not gonna have you fight me over being fucking traumatized just because you're bothered over me kindly telling you i don't feel like having a dicussion at this moment. I DONT OWE YOU THAT. I DONT WANNA TALK ABOUT IT.

[a-dragons-explanations]

Which is fine. That's your right. I'm not trying to force you to. All I said in response to that is that if you're not up to having a discussion, then you shouldn't open a discussion, especially if you're going to do it in a way that was, frankly, kind of rude and mean. That's setting yourself up for failure. The only reason I repeated it is because you brushed past it to focus on something completely beside the point, then seemed confused, giving me the impression you didn't understand the first time and I needed to clarify, not because I was trying to force you to have a discussion you said you weren't up for.

And with all due respect, that is exactly what happened. Reread the thread. You came onto a post about endogenic systems, went "omg why do you guys support something that doesn't make sense this is why people say leftists are sensitive", and when I went "okay, why do you believe that it doesn't make sense, and even if it doesn't, why does that make it okay to fakeclaim them?", you immediately backpedaled and said you weren't "in the right headspace" for discussing it, despite the fact that you are the one who started the discussion.

I'm sorry if you're having a trauma response over... something in this conversation? right now, and I encourage you to take a breather to calm yourself down if you need to, but that... doesn't change the thing that happened, nor does it make doing that not rude. I'm really not sure where your being traumatized is coming into this.

[rribb0n-deactivated20250509]

i can't tell if you're being dense on purpose like i said earlier but if you are i genuinely wanna throw myself off a bridge, maybe it's just my naive ass but ? i'm not trying to hurt you in any way so there's no reason to act in bad faith towards me. and honestly, doing this to someone in response to them saying they were traumatized or something is just fucked up. it's being made CLEAR to you that i wasn't trying to talk to you in bad faith, you're being told that you misunderstood something, and refusing to listen at all, just reiterating the same point, which makes me believe you're interacting in bad faith. and stop acting like you're not interacting in bad faith because we have different opinions.

i'm going to explain this to you because i wanna be done with this even though i'm fucking tired.

i commented on your post, not TRYING TO BE RUDE, but sharing my opinion. which apparently your closed-minded brain thinks that if someone disagrees with you that must mean they're interacting in bad faith, it can't possibly be that you just have different opinions.

you reposted getting upset that i ignored you last time and asking to have a discussion. i told you i did not want to have a discussion because i was in a bad headspace. that's called setting a boundary. i obviously didn't understand why you were upset because I DIDNT KNOW YOU WERE THE SAME PERSON.

you responded getting upset again because i ignored you last time and commenting again attacking you, then said i wasn't in the right headspace so i didn't have to have an actual discussion with you. which i will have to reiterate, wasn't what i was trying to do at all. my headspace got fucked up AFTER I WROTE THAT COMMENT. i didn't want to explain this because it made me uncomfortable. (footnote what i meant with the being traumatized thing) i was just telling you i didn't want to have the discussion right now, there was no malice in my post. (you told me you wanted to have a genuine discussion with me so why tf would i assume you were being hostile??) and it's honestly weird for you to get upset over that and keep responding.

i responded apologizing to you because i realized i did something that came across as bad, and you kept trying to argue. i was upset over other things and didn't have the time to write it out more coherently, so i'm sorry if you didn't understand that i was apologizing for everything i did.

obviously it matters if you were the same person?? i'm too tired to word this part but obviously you understand why it's important that i didn't know that right??

what part of me *apologizing* to you comes off as trying to "brush past the point." genuinely where the hell did you get that from?? if anything you should've assumed i just misunderstood but you saw me apologizing and decided i was doing it to intentionally hurt you in some way.

congrats for making my day harder. i hope you're happy!

[a-dragons-explanations]

Okay, I'd initially decided not to respond to this chain any further because it didn't seem like we were going to get anywhere other than stressing us both out, but in the interest of... idk, respecting the fact that I appreciate you stopping to explain what this has looked like from your end and clarifying some things, I guess? I do want to actually respond.

Which - thank you for doing that, genuinely, because I think we've been talking past each other for a lot of this conversation, and I apologize for my part in that. I have clearly misunderstood some things you've been saying. (For instance: at no point did I get the message that you thought I'd misunderstood something, and to be honest even reading back I can't parse that out of anything said prior to this response.)

I will be honest in saying that I do think that disagreeing on whether people are allowed to exist or not is not "just having a different opinion." I did not start thinking you were interacting in bad faith until the last couple of messages (where if I'm completely honest, I started getting the same "being dense on purpose" impression you've clearly been getting from me in turn), however expressing disbelief in the legitimacy of someone's experience is not really something you can just agree to disagree on. (Bad faith is different from malice.) I do appreciate that you weren't trying to be rude, but the fact remains that coming onto someone's post defending endogenic systems calling me "genuinely insane" and "probably why people say leftists are sensitive" for doing so is rude by I think anyone's measure. That's not a very neutral or respectful way to express an opinion, and it came off to me as starting an argument on purpose, which is why I responded the way I did.

My second response, to your initial "I don't want to discuss this right now" reblog, was not me getting upset about it again - it was me trying to explain why I'd gotten frustrated, while acknowledging that forgetting to respond to stuff happens and that explained why it had looked like you'd ignored me the first time.

The context that you lost the headspace for having the discussion after the initial comment explains why you suddenly reversed course after you started the conversation initially, and that's much more understandable now that I know that - if I'd known that to start with I wouldn't have been so annoyed. Without that context, from my perspective, the exchange basically looked like:

A: here's my opinion defending an often-bullied group's right to exist. B: hey this is a stupid opinion you have and I disagree. A: why do you think it's stupid and disagree? I'd like to talk about it. B: I don't want to talk about it actually.

Does it make sense why that felt frustrating and like shit-starting for no reason to me? (I don't want to keep overexplaining myself, just - this conversation looked very different without that piece of context you just provided, which is why I've been reacting the way I have.)

I'll be honest, I completely misunderstood what you were apologizing for. It sounded to me like you were apologizing for either not realizing I was the same person (???), or more likely apologizing for doing this twice on my posts/reblogs, without acknowledging the thing I was actually annoyed about, which was the perceived A-B interaction I just described above. This was a misread on my part, and I probably should have asked for clarification; that seemed clear enough to me that it didn't even occur to me that I might have misunderstood. (To the point where to be honest, even rereading it now knowing that's an incorrect interpretation, it still reads that way to my brain.) I apologize for that; that one's on me.

Given that understanding that the apology was actually meant to be for the thing I was annoyed about and not the mostly-unrelated things it seemed to be about, I appreciate the apology, and I think we can probably let this conversation rest there, unless some part of my explanation for why I've responded the way I have to all this needs more clarification?

[a-dragons-explanations]

I'm disturbed by how you handle some issues on Tumblr by responding to someone with a reblog that all your followers will see (which singles this person out and brings them unwanted attention) and attempting to continuously engage with them even after they felt really uncomfortable with your interaction It doesn't matter if they were wrong or right, you are overstepping boundaries multiple times over the course of a conversation. And I haven't forgotten that at one point a while back, someone asked that you remove your reblog of a post because it was getting them unwanted attention, and you. said. NO. You said you wouldn't remove your reblog because it wouldn't make a difference. Whether it did or not, that's really weird behavior to just refuse to remove someone's reblog. I'm in your circle of alterhuman bloggers and sometimes I have to turn off reblogs on specific posts because we're mutuals and I'm scared that you will bring unwanted attention to my much smaller blog (even if we generally have the same views, it still gives me anxiety.) You are not a very good representative of this community and yet you are a valuable resources, which frustrates me to no end.

I'm gonna break this down into chunks so it's a little easier to digest. I do want to say right off the bat that I appreciate you saying something when you feel like I'm not handling things well, and I did sit and chew on this feedback for a good while.

I'm disturbed by how you handle some issues on Tumblr by responding to someone with a reblog that all your followers will see (which singles this person out and brings them unwanted attention) ...

Honestly, I do worry about this. Sometimes I reblog people to this blog specifically because it's got a much smaller following than my main 'kin blog (a few hundred as compared to a few thousand) and I'm trying to avoid putting them on blast. My other option is to a) be significantly hampered by how much clunkier asks and replies are, including struggling to keep things coherent and having character limits that prevent me from having a discussion to the level of depth I prefer, or b) not say anything at all. I do worry about it sometimes, but I also don't feel like it's fair to hamstring me and basically disallow me from participating in discussions and discourse because I have a relatively large follower count. How else should I handle it, besides Simply Not Saying Anything? (Genuinely, not a rhetorical question.)

Ultimately, as harsh as this might sound, if someone puts an opinion out in public, then people are going to respond to them. Unfortunately sometimes that's going to mean interactions you'd rather not happen; that's the risk you take by posting in a public space. There's tools to help mitigate that if you want to - blocks, turning off reblogs, etc. - and I encourage people to use them, as it sounds like you've been doing, but the only way to avoid it completely is to only post to private spaces. I can't control how my followers act, unfortunately; the best I can do is preemptively warn people off from harassment and actively slap their hands when I do see people doing it.

... and attempting to continuously engage with them even after they felt really uncomfortable with your interaction It doesn't matter if they were wrong or right, you are overstepping boundaries multiple times over the course of a conversation.

Assuming this is about the most recent discussion on this blog - once again, they started the conversation. They have chosen to continue the conversation. No one is holding a gun to their head forcing them to continue it. I'm not even trying to get them to continue the conversation, really, I just want my words to be clear and not misconstrued, because initially it seemed like they hadn't understood me. (And for what it's worth, I had already decided I probably won't be responding beyond this even if they do, unless there's an unexpected turn, because at this point I have no hope of this conversation going anywhere constructive anymore.)

What boundaries have I been overstepping, exactly, genuinely? I don't see how it's "overstepping boundaries" to respond to someone who came onto my post to respond to something I said. I don't think them getting upset changes that - again, it's within their power to stop the conversation; I'm not, like, hunting them down and spam reblogging them or anything. You (general you, not you specifically) can't come onto my post, be mean to me and people I'm friends with, and then cry that I'm "overstepping boundaries" when I tell you to not do that if you're not ready to have a real conversation about the criticism you're making because it upset you that I said that.

I also don't feel like it's unreasonable of me to say "hey, if you aren't ready to actually have a serious discussion about this, you shouldn't have come onto my post to be mean about it, and if you do it again I will be blocking you" - which I have to point out is literally the only point I have made for this entire conversation since they said they didn't want to discuss the topic their original reply brought up.

And I haven't forgotten that at one point a while back, someone asked that you remove your reblog of a post because it was getting them unwanted attention, and you. said. NO. You said you wouldn't remove your reblog because it wouldn't make a difference. Whether it did or not, that's really weird behavior to just refuse to remove someone's reblog.

I'll be honest, I vaguely remember this happening but have zero recollection of what the post or the context were, so I can't really speak as to why I made that decision. If you happen to have the post link on-hand I can probably elaborate on why I decided what I did and whether I still think that was the right decision. (Sorry, my memory's just genuinely garbage and while I can probably guess some reasons why I would do that, I don't want to take shots in the dark and end up being wrong.)

You are not a very good representative of this community and yet you are a valuable resources, which frustrates me to no end.

I'm sorry you feel this way, and I'm sorry you feel you have to say this on anon when it seems like you're implying we at least vaguely know each other. (I'm guessing that has to do mostly with not wanting the exposure to followers, which is fair.) I'm happy to take feedback if people think I'm doing something harmful and wrong (and like I said, I promise I did think seriously about the feedback you've already given before posting this reply, I'm not just dismissing you without even considering what you've said).

Ultimately I'm just doing my best, and on this blog I'm mostly doing my best to have genuine conversations about difficult topics and dissect different viewpoints in order to better understand them - largely because it's fun for me, not because I'm trying to represent the community to anyone. (This last conversation hasn't been a spectacular example of a fun conversation for me, for the record, before anyone misunderstands me, but like. the conversation I was trying to start, about worldviews and why people believe what they believe, which the person in question decided they weren't up for, was the kind of conversation I mean.)

So... yeah. Thank you for the feedback, genuinely, even though I do ultimately disagree with you on most of it. I do appreciate you checking me when you feel like I'm out of line - everyone needs that now and again, and I don't want to be the kind of person that other people don't feel like they can say "hey, that thing you said was hurtful" to. But I just don't think it's "overstepping boundaries" to respond to someone who came onto my post to talk to me and has continued to do so, and I have tried very hard to be about as polite to them (and everyone I respond to) as I can without losing my point. Hopefully you understand.

[a-dragons-journal]

Genuine question, does our system need to label ourselves as ‘endo-neutral’? (Mostly because we just really, really cannot bring ourselves to care. Also people are people and we can’t care (low empathy))

I ask asking because I (and the system) are not involved in syscourse, and I’m not sure what to put in the tags to prevent people from being upset.

Ignore this ask if it is rude in any way (genuinely)

(This was written by the co-host)

If you want my opinion, if you want to say “we don’t want to be actively involved in syscourse,” that exact sentence is the only way to say it.

Personally, I’m kind of of the opinion that “endo-neutral” isn’t a real thing unless you’re “neutral” in the sense that you haven’t done enough research on it yet to have formed an opinion (which, that’s valid but a different thing than true neutrality). You can’t really be neutral on whether people are allowed to exist or not. Either you’re okay with people fakeclaiming other people, or you’re not. “Endo-neutral” just tells me you are okay with it, you’re just not actively doing it yourself - which is a little like this comic:

Y’feel?

This is not me saying you have to involve yourself actively in syscourse. As a matter of fact, I recommend you don’t actively seek that out, in most cases - it’s not really good for you, generally speaking. Not wanting people to drop syscourse on your doorstep is perfectly reasonable. But unfortunately, if you interact with other systems much, it’s probably going to come up eventually, whether you like it or not. Eventually you are going to be in a space where someone starts talking about how endogenic systems aren’t real, and you’re going to have to decide how to respond to that and whether you’re willing to tolerate it.

Ultimately, I don’t think you have to be emotionally invested to decide whether you think something is right or wrong. I know there’s probably some extra energy investment required for that for you, but unfortunately I think that’s just something you’re going to have to deal with, as harsh as that might sound. I don’t really see a way around it. Which, it’s as good a time as any to ask yourself - where do your morals lie? What basic principles do you build your morality on? Are they internally consistent, and if not, what needs to change to make it so? And if you follow those principles to their natural conclusion, what does that tell you about the situation you’ve been given?

(Also, entirely pragmatically, if your goal is to avoid people getting mad at you, “endo-neutral” in my experience kind of just gets both sides upset anyway - endo supporters because of everything I just said, anti-endos because anyone who tolerates endos is the enemy according to them. You’re probably better off just stating you don’t want to argue about syscourse to achieve that goal.)

But that’s just my two cents’ worth. Hopefully it’s good food for thought at least.

[a-dragons-explanations]

@rribb0n I’m gonna give you one more chance to actually engage seriously with me on this, because last time you did just ignore me and I do genuinely want your thoughts and a real discussion on this:

A) Why exactly do you think endogenic systems “[don’t] make logical sense”? What doesn’t make sense about it to you?

B) Even assuming for the sake of argument that that statement is correct, why should someone’s experiences “not making logical sense” mean it’s all right to decide their experiences aren’t real? Whom exactly do they have to “make sense” to in order to qualify as real and valid? Many things don’t make sense to portions of the population and are nonetheless real.

(Edit: fascinating. I can’t seem to get the link to that last post to work. It’s the previous post on this blog, sorry to anyone seeing this via a reblog in the future.)

[rribb0n-deactivated20250509]

i only "ignored you" bc i didn't know how to put my thoughts into words and i just forgot 😭 im not going to discuss this with you im not in the right headspace

[a-dragons-explanations]

All right, that's your prerogative. I will, however, encourage you to not go out of your way to attack someone if you're "not in the right headspace" to actually discuss it seriously if they respond, in the future. That is, bluntly, just being mean and starting shit for no reason, and if you do it again on one of my posts I will be blocking you. When it comes to doubting someone's existence/experiences, if you're not ready to have a serious conversation about it, you shouldn't say anything at all. When you are in the right headspace for that discussion, I'll be more than happy to have it with you.

(Re: forgetting to respond - fair enough; that happens. It's just kind of aggravating to have someone make a disparaging comment on your post (or your reblog, as the case may be), try to engage them on it, get zero response, and then have them make basically the same mean comment again on a different post as if you didn't say anything at all, y'feel?)

[rribb0n-deactivated20250509]

this is your account?? 😭 i thought it was someone else because the PFP is different- fuck im sorry 😭 (ok i just realized it's your alt

[a-dragons-explanations]

I mean… yes, but that is kind of beside the point. My point stands even if I’d been a different person from the OP.

[rribb0n-deactivated20250509]

how? i don't understand what you're trying to say

[a-dragons-explanations]

My point, if you'll reread what I said, was that it is pointlessly rude to be mean to someone (for example, publicly doubting the existence/legitimacy of a group of people because you don't understand them) and then retreat and claim that you're "not in the right headspace" to discuss it as soon as someone confronts you on that and tries to actually talk to you about it. It remains rude regardless of whether the person who engaged you on it is the same person you were originally responding to. Therefore, me being the same person is beside the point, and I'm not sure why that's the thing you chose to focus on while brushing past the point I was actually making.

[rribb0n-deactivated20250509]

jesus christ, i cant with people on tumblr bro they will literally try to argue with you any possible chance there is. i give up. that's literally not what happened at all

im not gonna have you fight me over being fucking traumatized just because you're bothered over me kindly telling you i don't feel like having a dicussion at this moment. I DONT OWE YOU THAT. I DONT WANNA TALK ABOUT IT.

[a-dragons-explanations]

Which is fine. That's your right. I'm not trying to force you to. All I said in response to that is that if you're not up to having a discussion, then you shouldn't open a discussion, especially if you're going to do it in a way that was, frankly, kind of rude and mean. That's setting yourself up for failure. The only reason I repeated it is because you brushed past it to focus on something completely beside the point, then seemed confused, giving me the impression you didn't understand the first time and I needed to clarify, not because I was trying to force you to have a discussion you said you weren't up for.

And with all due respect, that is exactly what happened. Reread the thread. You came onto a post about endogenic systems, went "omg why do you guys support something that doesn't make sense this is why people say leftists are sensitive", and when I went "okay, why do you believe that it doesn't make sense, and even if it doesn't, why does that make it okay to fakeclaim them?", you immediately backpedaled and said you weren't "in the right headspace" for discussing it, despite the fact that you are the one who started the discussion.

I'm sorry if you're having a trauma response over... something in this conversation? right now, and I encourage you to take a breather to calm yourself down if you need to, but that... doesn't change the thing that happened, nor does it make doing that not rude. I'm really not sure where your being traumatized is coming into this.

[a-dragons-journal]

Genuine question, does our system need to label ourselves as ‘endo-neutral’? (Mostly because we just really, really cannot bring ourselves to care. Also people are people and we can’t care (low empathy))

I ask asking because I (and the system) are not involved in syscourse, and I’m not sure what to put in the tags to prevent people from being upset.

Ignore this ask if it is rude in any way (genuinely)

(This was written by the co-host)

If you want my opinion, if you want to say “we don’t want to be actively involved in syscourse,” that exact sentence is the only way to say it.

Personally, I’m kind of of the opinion that “endo-neutral” isn’t a real thing unless you’re “neutral” in the sense that you haven’t done enough research on it yet to have formed an opinion (which, that’s valid but a different thing than true neutrality). You can’t really be neutral on whether people are allowed to exist or not. Either you’re okay with people fakeclaiming other people, or you’re not. “Endo-neutral” just tells me you are okay with it, you’re just not actively doing it yourself - which is a little like this comic:

Y’feel?

This is not me saying you have to involve yourself actively in syscourse. As a matter of fact, I recommend you don’t actively seek that out, in most cases - it’s not really good for you, generally speaking. Not wanting people to drop syscourse on your doorstep is perfectly reasonable. But unfortunately, if you interact with other systems much, it’s probably going to come up eventually, whether you like it or not. Eventually you are going to be in a space where someone starts talking about how endogenic systems aren’t real, and you’re going to have to decide how to respond to that and whether you’re willing to tolerate it.

Ultimately, I don’t think you have to be emotionally invested to decide whether you think something is right or wrong. I know there’s probably some extra energy investment required for that for you, but unfortunately I think that’s just something you’re going to have to deal with, as harsh as that might sound. I don’t really see a way around it. Which, it’s as good a time as any to ask yourself - where do your morals lie? What basic principles do you build your morality on? Are they internally consistent, and if not, what needs to change to make it so? And if you follow those principles to their natural conclusion, what does that tell you about the situation you’ve been given?

(Also, entirely pragmatically, if your goal is to avoid people getting mad at you, “endo-neutral” in my experience kind of just gets both sides upset anyway - endo supporters because of everything I just said, anti-endos because anyone who tolerates endos is the enemy according to them. You’re probably better off just stating you don’t want to argue about syscourse to achieve that goal.)

But that’s just my two cents’ worth. Hopefully it’s good food for thought at least.

[a-dragons-explanations]

@rribb0n I’m gonna give you one more chance to actually engage seriously with me on this, because last time you did just ignore me and I do genuinely want your thoughts and a real discussion on this:

A) Why exactly do you think endogenic systems “[don’t] make logical sense”? What doesn’t make sense about it to you?

B) Even assuming for the sake of argument that that statement is correct, why should someone’s experiences “not making logical sense” mean it’s all right to decide their experiences aren’t real? Whom exactly do they have to “make sense” to in order to qualify as real and valid? Many things don’t make sense to portions of the population and are nonetheless real.

(Edit: fascinating. I can’t seem to get the link to that last post to work. It’s the previous post on this blog, sorry to anyone seeing this via a reblog in the future.)

[rribb0n-deactivated20250509]

i only "ignored you" bc i didn't know how to put my thoughts into words and i just forgot 😭 im not going to discuss this with you im not in the right headspace

[a-dragons-explanations]

All right, that's your prerogative. I will, however, encourage you to not go out of your way to attack someone if you're "not in the right headspace" to actually discuss it seriously if they respond, in the future. That is, bluntly, just being mean and starting shit for no reason, and if you do it again on one of my posts I will be blocking you. When it comes to doubting someone's existence/experiences, if you're not ready to have a serious conversation about it, you shouldn't say anything at all. When you are in the right headspace for that discussion, I'll be more than happy to have it with you.

(Re: forgetting to respond - fair enough; that happens. It's just kind of aggravating to have someone make a disparaging comment on your post (or your reblog, as the case may be), try to engage them on it, get zero response, and then have them make basically the same mean comment again on a different post as if you didn't say anything at all, y'feel?)

[rribb0n-deactivated20250509]

this is your account?? 😭 i thought it was someone else because the PFP is different- fuck im sorry 😭 (ok i just realized it's your alt

[a-dragons-explanations]

I mean… yes, but that is kind of beside the point. My point stands even if I’d been a different person from the OP.

[rribb0n-deactivated20250509]

how? i don't understand what you're trying to say

[a-dragons-explanations]

My point, if you'll reread what I said, was that it is pointlessly rude to be mean to someone (for example, publicly doubting the existence/legitimacy of a group of people because you don't understand them) and then retreat and claim that you're "not in the right headspace" to discuss it as soon as someone confronts you on that and tries to actually talk to you about it. It remains rude regardless of whether the person who engaged you on it is the same person you were originally responding to. Therefore, me being the same person is beside the point, and I'm not sure why that's the thing you chose to focus on while brushing past the point I was actually making.

[a-dragons-journal]

Genuine question, does our system need to label ourselves as ‘endo-neutral’? (Mostly because we just really, really cannot bring ourselves to care. Also people are people and we can’t care (low empathy))

I ask asking because I (and the system) are not involved in syscourse, and I’m not sure what to put in the tags to prevent people from being upset.

Ignore this ask if it is rude in any way (genuinely)

(This was written by the co-host)

If you want my opinion, if you want to say “we don’t want to be actively involved in syscourse,” that exact sentence is the only way to say it.

Personally, I’m kind of of the opinion that “endo-neutral” isn’t a real thing unless you’re “neutral” in the sense that you haven’t done enough research on it yet to have formed an opinion (which, that’s valid but a different thing than true neutrality). You can’t really be neutral on whether people are allowed to exist or not. Either you’re okay with people fakeclaiming other people, or you’re not. “Endo-neutral” just tells me you are okay with it, you’re just not actively doing it yourself - which is a little like this comic:

Y’feel?

This is not me saying you have to involve yourself actively in syscourse. As a matter of fact, I recommend you don’t actively seek that out, in most cases - it’s not really good for you, generally speaking. Not wanting people to drop syscourse on your doorstep is perfectly reasonable. But unfortunately, if you interact with other systems much, it’s probably going to come up eventually, whether you like it or not. Eventually you are going to be in a space where someone starts talking about how endogenic systems aren’t real, and you’re going to have to decide how to respond to that and whether you’re willing to tolerate it.

Ultimately, I don’t think you have to be emotionally invested to decide whether you think something is right or wrong. I know there’s probably some extra energy investment required for that for you, but unfortunately I think that’s just something you’re going to have to deal with, as harsh as that might sound. I don’t really see a way around it. Which, it’s as good a time as any to ask yourself - where do your morals lie? What basic principles do you build your morality on? Are they internally consistent, and if not, what needs to change to make it so? And if you follow those principles to their natural conclusion, what does that tell you about the situation you’ve been given?

(Also, entirely pragmatically, if your goal is to avoid people getting mad at you, “endo-neutral” in my experience kind of just gets both sides upset anyway - endo supporters because of everything I just said, anti-endos because anyone who tolerates endos is the enemy according to them. You’re probably better off just stating you don’t want to argue about syscourse to achieve that goal.)

But that’s just my two cents’ worth. Hopefully it’s good food for thought at least.

[a-dragons-explanations]

@rribb0n I’m gonna give you one more chance to actually engage seriously with me on this, because last time you did just ignore me and I do genuinely want your thoughts and a real discussion on this:

A) Why exactly do you think endogenic systems “[don’t] make logical sense”? What doesn’t make sense about it to you?

B) Even assuming for the sake of argument that that statement is correct, why should someone’s experiences “not making logical sense” mean it’s all right to decide their experiences aren’t real? Whom exactly do they have to “make sense” to in order to qualify as real and valid? Many things don’t make sense to portions of the population and are nonetheless real.

(Edit: fascinating. I can’t seem to get the link to that last post to work. It’s the previous post on this blog, sorry to anyone seeing this via a reblog in the future.)

[rribb0n-deactivated20250509]

i only "ignored you" bc i didn't know how to put my thoughts into words and i just forgot 😭 im not going to discuss this with you im not in the right headspace

[a-dragons-explanations]

All right, that's your prerogative. I will, however, encourage you to not go out of your way to attack someone if you're "not in the right headspace" to actually discuss it seriously if they respond, in the future. That is, bluntly, just being mean and starting shit for no reason, and if you do it again on one of my posts I will be blocking you. When it comes to doubting someone's existence/experiences, if you're not ready to have a serious conversation about it, you shouldn't say anything at all. When you are in the right headspace for that discussion, I'll be more than happy to have it with you.

(Re: forgetting to respond - fair enough; that happens. It's just kind of aggravating to have someone make a disparaging comment on your post (or your reblog, as the case may be), try to engage them on it, get zero response, and then have them make basically the same mean comment again on a different post as if you didn't say anything at all, y'feel?)

[rribb0n-deactivated20250509]

this is your account?? 😭 i thought it was someone else because the PFP is different- fuck im sorry 😭 (ok i just realized it's your alt

[a-dragons-explanations]

I mean… yes, but that is kind of beside the point. My point stands even if I’d been a different person from the OP.