The TL;DR of this post is that Twitter is generally just a very aggressive place. /hlh
Recently, one of our sources, OMORI, had caught some flak earlier today for being... ableist? apparently? And that got us thinking some more about purity culture (not just in terms of pro-shipping, which. we don't even wanna touch. very complex topic) and its effects on otherkinity as a whole.
See, in theory, I suppose purity culture is a nice idea. The thought that not showing dark or triggering topics in public places in order to not hurt anyone who might see them is admirable in theory, but, really only in theory. As with anything the internet conjures up, it was, of course, taken far past its original goal and now does the exact opposite of what it was meant to do, and honestly just hurts people at risk more than it helps them.
We don't really want to go too in depth on what happened with OMORI, because it really upsets one of our alters, who's a fictive from said source, but the takeaway we got from that situation is that people are basically accusing the game of doing something that: 1. It's not even actually doing, and 2. Wouldn't even be problematic in the first place if that was what it was doing.
Nowadays, problematic is starting to just equal "if you mention mental illness or any dark topics".
Now how does that tie into otherkinity? Well, canons, really. We've seen several instances, including within our own system, where 'kin folk are afraid to speak about their identities or are chastised for it because their canons and/or sources are labelled as "problematic". And that's quite a problem! otherkinity is something that can't really be controlled. What happened in a kintype's life generally isn't controllable, and otherkin shouldn't be demonized and cast out as evil just because they might have a kintype with a troubled past or because their source doesn't appease the purity crowd.
Otherkinity and specifically memories/noemata as a whole can be troubling and downright traumatizing, and these people deserve support while facing those things. But instead, they're often scared into hiding out of the fear that they'll be attacked for who they are.
I know that many otherkin would never do this, and would be really disgusted by that kind of behavior just as we are. We can't really say for sure who does this, as most of those attacks we've seen were pretty much always on anon, so. But we wouldn't be surprised if it's KFFies just infiltrating our spaces again.
In any case, we don't really have a solution for this problem. But if any otherkin out there reading this are affected by this kind of fear, just know that we won't judge you. You are always welcome here. :)
