Updates and new blogpost!!!
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content/blog/being_queer_and_otherkin.md
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title = "Being Queer and Otherkin"
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date = 2023-06-09
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[taxonomies]
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tags = ["personal", "queerness", "otherkin", "neurodivergency", "autism", "cat", "nya", "meow", "gender"]
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This is a bit more of a personal one, some background on me personally and on my identity.
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As you might have noticed, I am a catgirl. But what does that actually mean?
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For some, it might just be a weird cute thing they know from anime, others might think "a girl who likes cats".
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For me, it means I am a cat and a girl ([kinda](https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/Demigender#Demigirl)). Both are equally important parts of my identity.
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I am trans, I am nonbinary, and I am otherkin. I am also autistic. All of these are properties of me as a whole. They
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add up to create this entity that's writing this post right now. Remove any single one of these properties, and you end
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up with a completely different being.
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<!-- more -->
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### What even is this 'otherkin' thing???
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The [Otherkin Wiki](https://otherkin.wiki/o/Main_Page) describes Otherkin as a _subculture of people who don't consider
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themselves human_, although the specifics of what that means and how exactly it manifests can be very different on a
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personal basis, and the term functions as an umbrella term for a lot of different experiences.
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For me, it means that in every way other than my physical body, I **am** a cat. I don't _identify_ as a cat, I don't
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_think_ that I'm a cat. I don't _act_ like a cat. I **am** a cat. I did not choose to be a cat, being a cat is simply a
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part of me, the same way my gender and my neurodivergencies are.
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In that way, being otherkin is very similar to being trans. There are trans people who, having no idea how it actually
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feels to be otherkin, disagree with this comparison, probably out of some kind of urge to appeal to a wider transmisic
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society, hoping for easier acceptance by not associating with _"those weird ones"_. Personally, from my experience of
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living as a trans cat, those two things couldn't be any more similar.
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I get the same kind of euphoria from getting referred to with feline-related terms that I get from being called a girl,
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or from being referred to with my correct pronouns. When I look into a mirror, both the cat ears on my head and the
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boobs on my body cause a little happy reaction. I love wearing a collar with a cute little bell the same way I love
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wearing a skirt or making my dress go spinny. If you refer to me as _"not a cat"_, I will feel a similar kind of hurt
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and anger as if you misgender me. I don't need people in my life who can accept one part of me, while not respecting an
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equally important part of me.
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Many of my instinctive and natural behaviours align with the stereotypical cat. I meow at people to get their attention,
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I get startled really easily by sudden loud noises and will perk up in alert mode as a reaction. I bump my head against
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people to show affection, and I'm always in the way when my girlfriend comes home and I rush over to greet her at the
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door while she's trying to unpack. When I feel comfortable, I start kneading with my paws. I love chasing things and
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trying to climb up places that are actually too high for me and then being scared of getting back down. The list goes on
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and on.
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And then there is the overlap of being a cat and being autistic. Many autistic traits are similar to animalistic
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behaviour - Or the absence of "typical" human behaviour. I feel **very** uncomfortable around people who I don't know
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well, while being very affectionate and active around people I trust and love. I get overstimulated and confused when a
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lot of stuff is going on around me. I don't understand most human behaviours, and people think I'm unsociable and mean
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when I act distressed or overwhelmed in response to their behaviours and expectations.
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In the end, all these parts of me affect each other in many ways. My pronouns, _It/Its_ represent my gender, being
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distinct from the binaries made up by human society, and actively going against the notion of what pronouns are
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acceptable or not. At the same time, they reinforce the non-human part of me. I am a cat, an animal, and thus my gender
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expression - including pronouns - explicitly breaks human ideas of gender. While a lot of people also have different
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reasoning for similar gender expressions, for me those aspects are deeply interlinked.
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So.. that was a weird one to write. Writing about personal topics can be so much more complex and hard than writing
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about touching computers. I hope this was interesting to read, maybe you even learned something new about people like me
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or have gained some kind of new perspective on gender and species. Either way, thank you so much for reading my blog,
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remember to stay hydrated, and have a lovely `{time of day}`!
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@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ The biggest misconception already starts with the recommendation itself. "You sh
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"Mastodon" is just one small piece of a bigger puzzle. When you sign up on a Mastodon instance, you're not joining just Mastodon.
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You are using Mastodon to join the so-called "Fediverse", a network of all kinds of different services that can all communicate with each other using a Protocol called [ActivityPub](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/).
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Now, because so many people on sites like Twitter frame Mastodon as its own seperate thing, new users who try out a big Mastodon instance and can't deal with its flaws, don't know better than to just write it off as bad and never look back.
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Now, because so many people on sites like Twitter frame Mastodon as its own separate thing, new users who try out a big Mastodon instance and can't deal with its flaws, don't know better than to just write it off as bad and never look back.
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Nobody told them that all their friends on Mastodon would also be reachable from a plethora of different platforms that they might be more comfortable with using.
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That's the beauty of a federated web, there are always alternatives, always different ways of interacting with the same people over the same protocols and on the same network.
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