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+++ title = "Being Queer and Otherkin" date = 2023-06-09 [taxonomies] tags = ["personal", "queerness", "otherkin", "neurodivergency", "autism", "cat", "nya", "meow", "gender"] +++
This is a bit more of a personal one, some background on me personally and on my identity.
As you might have noticed, I am a catgirl. But what does that actually mean? For some, it might just be a weird cute thing they know from anime, others might think "a girl who likes cats". For me, it means I am a cat and a girl (kinda). Both are equally important parts of my identity.
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 add up to create this entity that's writing this post right now. Remove any single one of these properties, and you end up with a completely different being.
What even is this 'otherkin' thing???
The Otherkin Wiki describes Otherkin as a subculture of people who don't consider themselves human, although the specifics of what that means and how exactly it manifests can be very different on a personal basis, and the term functions as an umbrella term for a lot of different experiences.
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 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 part of me, the same way my gender and my neurodivergencies are.
In that way, being otherkin is very similar to being trans. There are trans people who, having no idea how it actually feels to be otherkin, disagree with this comparison, probably out of some kind of urge to appeal to a wider transmisic society, hoping for easier acceptance by not associating with "those weird ones". Personally, from my experience of living as a trans cat, those two things couldn't be any more similar.
I get the same kind of euphoria from getting referred to with feline-related terms that I get from being called a girl, or from being referred to with my correct pronouns. When I look into a mirror, both the cat ears on my head and the boobs on my body cause a little happy reaction. I love wearing a collar with a cute little bell the same way I love 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 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 equally important part of me.
Many of my instinctive and natural behaviours align with the stereotypical cat. I meow at people to get their attention, I get startled really easily by sudden loud noises and will perk up in alert mode as a reaction. I bump my head against 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 door while she's trying to unpack. When I feel comfortable, I start kneading with my paws. I love chasing things and trying to climb up places that are actually too high for me and then being scared of getting back down. The list goes on and on.
And then there is the overlap of being a cat and being autistic. Many autistic traits are similar to animalistic behaviour - Or the absence of "typical" human behaviour. I feel very uncomfortable around people who I don't know well, while being very affectionate and active around people I trust and love. I get overstimulated and confused when a lot of stuff is going on around me. I don't understand most human behaviours, and people think I'm unsociable and mean when I act distressed or overwhelmed in response to their behaviours and expectations.
In the end, all these parts of me affect each other in many ways. My pronouns, It/Its represent my gender, being distinct from the binaries made up by human society, and actively going against the notion of what pronouns are 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 expression - including pronouns - explicitly breaks human ideas of gender. While a lot of people also have different reasoning for similar gender expressions, for me those aspects are deeply interlinked.
So.. that was a weird one to write. Writing about personal topics can be so much more complex and hard than writing
about touching computers. I hope this was interesting to read, maybe you even learned something new about people like me
or have gained some kind of new perspective on gender and species. Either way, thank you so much for reading my blog,
remember to stay hydrated, and have a lovely {time of day}!