It’s no secret that there are many autistic folks in the otherkin community, and there is a surprising amount of overlap between the two identities. I recently put out a poll on Tumblr to see who in the community is autistic and according to the answers I got, there are quite a lot of us, which makes sense to me! The disconnect from humanity is where the Venn diagram overlaps. Personally, I’m autistic and a dragon - specifically a dragonkin - and would like to discuss my own overlap between both aspects of my identity and what it’s like to be both at the same time.
My fondness of dragons and draconity started early for me, probably as early as the age of 10 (so, around the year 2000.) I picked this up from my older brother, who also really loved dragons and even had them tattooed on his arms. I wanted to be that guy, with cool snaking dragons all over me. They felt like family, like these were the kinds of creatures that I could relate to the most, more than I could relate to any human. My favorite feature of some dragons was the crest of fur going all the way down the back to the tip of the tail - a common depiction of Chinese dragons - and it made me wish that I too could be a ferocious and furred dragon.
You could call this my very first special interest, or at least the first one that had a major impact on me as a person. At the time, I didn’t know what a special interest was and didn’t know anything about autism. All that I knew was that a lot of animals were really cool, and dragons may have been the best kind of animal out there. I was fascinated by them and found myself searching the internet for whatever dragons images I could find - artwork, 3D renders, characters from media. Ironically, this was an early hoard of mine. Years later, I’d realize that I’m a creature that naturally hoards.
Among my digital hoard was an even larger physical hoard building up. This would be in the form of dragon figurines - usually made of glass or ceramic. I collected a lot of those Chinese dragons I liked, with the flowing crest of hair down the back. Some were a single color while others were rainbowy. I had tiny ones and huge ones. One of them was made of brass and really heavy - it was probably meant to be a paperweight, but I kept it as part of my figurine collection. These felt like guardians of some sort, like they were a family that I could relate to and that maybe they would spiritually protect me in some way (I was a weird kid.)
I mentioned loving the fur on some dragons. This was a feature I really enjoyed and looked for, as well as feathers. While most dragons in media at the time were depicted as hairless, featherless lizard-like creatures - of course, this is okay if people relate to this sort of thing - I felt a kinship with warm-blooded dragons, those with mammalian or avian features. I could see myself having these types of features because something about them felt… familiar. I couldn’t explain it at the time, but I felt like I could be a dragon if I wanted to.
Turns out, I am a dragon. The problem is that there is a gap in my memory (because I’m plural, which was the topic of another one of my essays) and I don’t remember that turning point of realization. I do remember constantly daydreaming about being a dragon, exploring a world in my head that I invented that was filled with huge stretches of forest in all directions. I scaled rocky walls, ran through the trees, and took naps in forest clearings. This was my domain and it was my way to escape the everyday chaos of humanity. I was a dragon in this little head world and I didn’t have to be a human - or, rather, pretend to be a human.
This tendency to imagine myself as a dragon because it made me feel more comfortable than being a human would turn out to be a reverse form of masking, something that autistic people do in order to handle day-to-day life around neurotypicals and sensory-overloading environments. Autistics try to blend in using masking, whereas otherkin might use their kintypes as a mask to escape (rather than blend in.) Both of these are ways that I handle being around humans and their strange social constructs, but it’s not the only way for me to cope with certain situations or to fall into the comfort of my own identity.
Stimming is another common autistic experience, a way to self-stimulate to let off some steam or express excitement. This could be in the form of rocking, chewing, repeating words or phrases, fidgeting with objects, or any number of repetitions as a way to comfort oneself. I definitely relate to rocking or fidgeting as a way to stim, but I also have some more otherkin-focused methods. When I feel the most vulnerable, typically when I’m laying down in bed, I feel my astral wings and tail emerge. I like to thump my tail against the mattress when the appendage shows up, which is a way for me to stim in a nonphysical way. It’s also very validating because my autism and my draconity are important aspects of myself, and so it feels more “me” when I get the chance to see the overlap between the two.
Another way that I stim with my astral body is wrapping my wings around myself. It feels comforting and I can almost feel the warmth that comes from enveloping my body with a large pair of furred wings. It helps when I feel cold or overstimulated (such as when my partner has to turn the light on in the morning or something outside is too loud for me to sleep through.) It’s almost like an extra layer of blankets I can throw over myself and it’s even more comforting when I can wrap my tail around my body as well.
For the most part, my astral body parts only appear as a tail, a pair of wings, and a pair of ears. When there’s a lot of sound around me, I can feel my ears swiveling in all directions as an instinctual reaction to the stimulus. If it gets to be too loud, I pin my ears flat against my head. Sometimes, my tail tip will flick back and forth when I’m agitated or when I’m trying to concentrate. I may even swish my tail from side to side when I feel happy or content. My wings aren’t very expressive in most situations, but I do like to stretch them in the same way I might stretch my arms after a good sleep. Being able to access a nonphysical part of me in order to stim makes a huge difference when I’m masking (as in the autistic type of masking, not the draconic kind) because nobody can see it and so nobody can question it.
Besides the masking, the disconnect from humanity, and the stimming, there is one other feature otherkinity and autism seem to share: The invalidation from people who do not understand these identities. It’s especially bad when it comes to self-diagnosed autism, where ableists will question your very own understanding of yourself. You’re seen as a faker, someone who is just engaging in some kind of roleplay. Autism - self-diagnosed or not - and otherkinity are both treated as some kind of joke in much the same way. We’re seen as the weirdos, the confused, the childish.
That last point is especially notable because autism is sometimes assumed to be something you can grow out of, that only children struggle with. The otherkin identity is, at the same time, assumed to be something that only children engage in and that eventually I’ll grow tired of it. People expect that we would grow out of our kintypes and come back into “reality.” They might even think that with intensive therapy, we might revert back to being “normal” and that the whole thing turned out to be some kind of phase.
This is not a phase for me. Being autistic is not something to pity me for and being dragonkin doesn't make the autism “worse” in any way. I'm not broken or confused, and I certainly don’t need “fixing.” If anything, being able to experience both identities gives me some very unique insight into my place in the human world and helps me understand the various ways to navigate communication in such a world.
All in all, my otherkin identity and my autism seem to be inseparable aspects of myself, with the two of them working in tandem to create an identity and a personhood that is alternative to conventional humanity. To ask me to give up my draconity is to ask me to give up my autism, which is physically impossible. These two aspects of me are intertwined in such a way that they are basically one in the same.
