Otherkin and Transgenderism

A while ago, a friend of mine vlogged about misanthropy, identifying humanity as something so depraved and decadent that it can only do harm, while also admitting that he was part of the problem. However, he acknowledged only that he was part of the same race that causes the problem, not that he was in any way responsible for it. But at the same time, he was seized with a terrible guilt and impotence at how powerless he was to escape it.

In his mind, he was cursed with a self-hatred, in the sense that he despises his own race and feels trapped by it. I should clarify, this person identifies as an Otherkin. This is still quite a taboo and misunderstood topic that people love to jump all over, and I've been saddened in recent weeks to see people who I admire make arguments that seem to tear down other people for identifying as such, however I have a good few friends who identify as Otherkin, and more than a few Transgender friends as well, and in my mind they are very much in the same situation.

You can debate about how a person can know they are a different species in their head, what that means, whether it can be regarded as psychologically valid, how it works or whatever... but those same debates have been happening for decades about transgender people. Thus I've been particularly surprised to see certain popular members of the Youtube transgender community expressing their disapproval at being equated by their critics to furies and Otherkin (which are not the same thing by the way) as though this were a truly offensive reduction.

I find this sad. If a person feels trapped in their own body, that's valid. It doesn't NEED to be valid to anyone but them, and as long as they feel those emotions truly, it IS valid. For someone who knows exactly what that feels like, and who likely has to cope with a great deal of prejudice directed at them for it on a daily basis, I would expect a higher level of understanding about how painful this can be.

With that same sentiment in mind, hearing my Otherkin friend lament his distaste for his own humanity and how terrible his born species is compared to what he aspires to be, I was reminded of another, far more touchy conversation I once had with a transgender friend a long time ago. This friend of mine had said to me that she will never be a "real" woman, she will always have to carry the title of trans and would never quite be genuine. There was such a defeatist tone to what she was saying, or perhaps a fear of hope. I found this level of self-contempt to be appaling and distressing.

I explained to her that being born without breasts and the right plumbing does not make her any less a woman than a natural born woman who loses those body parts in a terrible accident. I explained that there is nothing inherently fake about her just because she was, for all intents and purposes, born with a genetic condition that gave her the wrong body, which in my opinion is the better way of looking at it. Unfortunately, she wouldn't listen to me. Maybe her opinion is more valid than mine, I can't know without being trasngendered myself. But I can imagine that living with the title of "fake" hanging over your head your whole life must be extremely depressing, and I simply don't agree that it belongs there.

So when I saw this Otherkin friend of mine, hating his humanity just as my other friend had resigned herself to being a less valid version of what she wanted to be based on how she was born, I felt compelled to say something about it. I'm sure I would have his permission in sharing what I said to him with you, as it gave me a much needed opportunity to get some thoughts off my chest that had been bouncing around in my head for a long time. This is what I said, and I'm not just speaking to him... but to all people:


Humanity has a very precious, special gift, one that comes with a tremendous burden. You might call it a blessing with a curse. We're self aware, introspective. We're capable of intelligent reasoning, curiosity, deduction - the ability to look at this world and want to know more about it.

And when you give something the ability to question, the first thing it will question is itself.

Think about that, just allow yourself to simmer over the incredible, monumental consequences of this simple gift. We're given the hands which can create or destroy as a god, and tongues to convey our thoughts, and yet seemingly there is no purpose for either. so we use our hands to dig our way to the truth, our tongues to forever question why - and never do we get an answer.

The consequence of having this born enlightenment is that we are capable of questioning the negative as well as the positive, and it is an unfortunate fact of nature that pain leaves scars while pleasure is fleeting. We're forever locked in this mentality of fixating on what has happened to us and why, and all that ever sticks with us is the bad.

This traps us in a downward spiral of depression and yes, selfishness too. We're forced to be introspective, selfish by default but this is not a bad thing. In nature morality doesn't even exist, and the only loyalty is that which continues your own species, so selfishness is not in and of itself a purely bad thing. It just means that your self is your primary concern, and when you are locked in your own thoughts as we are, this is inevitable.

The problem is it brings out the worst in us because deep down we're not all that much more evolved than lesser animals. It is, as I have said many times in the past, as though we happened across the tools of god, and had no understanding of how to use them.

The same primitive, primal, feral nature which so many bleeding heart spiritualists revere in the comparative harmony of animals, is what drives humanity to such madness. We have these natural, predatory beasts forever raging against the cages of our minds. Our sense of social warmth and conscience which so many people seem to believe does not exist is what forces us to bottle this up to hide it from everyone else.

So take a guess as to what happens when you try to throw the beast in a cage? I think you know all too well, we’ve all been there. Now intensify that by thousands of years of intensive oppression with no outlet, and apply it to the sheer scale of a global conscience and you have some idea of the effects it must have on society. This insidious bestial nature begins to seep through the cracks in civilized culture with venomous results, festering in the heart of every good deed.

We seek outlets such as religion, politics, business, even sport as a means to allow those predators some exercise without feeling ashamed, applying ourselves ignorantly to doctrinal obsessions that allow us to justify the rage we try so hard to unnaturally burry. It is, in fact, our eternal struggle to be good that forces us to burry this dark side and forces it to worm its way back out through our actions.

To put it another way, negativity feeds negativity. The self-loathing and insecurity which we are all plagued with, you included, me included, is the result of this feral fury turned inwards, the septic animal organ imploded and rotting our souls to the core because we try so hard to rise above it. And with every blow our egos take as a result, we fall down another level.

Every bruise stays with us forever, every kiss forgotten the moment it leaves our lips. The animal within only knows how to howl in pain because it has been cursed with this self-awareness and then given no direction, forcing it to wonder alone in the cold with its first emotion being the agony of birth into a dangerous and scary world of sheer powerlessness - a true original sin that taints the rest of its life.

The scars lead to resentment, the resentment causes habit, the habit governs what is perceived as truth. This downward spiral continues faster and faster, the negativity we feel doubling back on itself eternally - an ironic double helix of resentment both inward and outward that permeates the very fabric of this species and corrupts it from within.

But... just as sure as there is this self-perpetuating negativity everywhere, so too is there proof of the good in humanity.

After all, is it not true that nearly 7 billion people walk the earth this very moment? That's 7 billion individual lives, many if not most of whom may be suffering, yes, but seven BILLION nonetheless. And how did they get here? A union of love. Albeit sometimes rape, and often frivolous, nevertheless is there any better way to enter this world than through love?

Seven billion people, and how did they get here? How are they still here? Because someone cared for them.

Unlike the admirable power of the deer which walks mere moments after birth, or the resilient crocodile, unlike the cannibalistic mammals that practise sibling rivalry, the wily fish spawn that flee for their lives moments after birth or the determined terrapin that battles heroically to reach the water - unlike all of them, human babies are born helpless, powerless.

We fall out of our mothers as little more than soft balls of noisy meat on a string with absolutely no way to protect ourselves, no way to feed ourselves, very little in the way of survival instincts and zero physical strength. And yet... seven billion people, seven BILLION are alive today, right now, because someone cared for them. Someone protected them.

Seven billion testaments to the virtues of humanity, the good inside all of us. for while we may not be the best mothers and fathers, while we may fail as parents, sometimes horribly, sometimes in less obvious ways, while we are all imperfect guides and mentors we do, as a general rule, at least *try*. For at one time or another, all seven billion of us had to have been cared for by at least one other person.

Then, consider how people pull together during times of crisis. The earthquake in Haiti, the rebuilding efforts in New Orleans, the ongoing cleanup after the Tsunami, hell even the war in Iraq, while initiated dishonestly and carried out abominably, was only green lit because people had the best of intentions at heart. Thousands of people are out there elbow deep in filth and broken glass trying to help other people for no other reason than they choose to be.

Think of all the doctors and nurses, the carers and teachers, counsellors, therapists, police, firemen and social workers - the people who could have chosen any job but they all chose to do one that involves taking on other people burdens, putting up with the stress that other people deal with while the rest of us can barely handle our own. These are the people I have the most respect for, and they are the crucial backbone of any society without which it would fall apart.

There is proof everywhere you look of the ongoing good in humanity, you just have to see it with fresh eyes. To shrug off the habits of focussing on the lingering pains in order to gain new appreciation for the things you take for granted every day. Consider how far we've come from just a couple of centuries ago.

We remember every bruise, and forget every kiss, but each play an important factor in building up who we are as individuals. And if you are someone who can see the flaws in how we do things, then humanity needs YOU to help us fix them. Because it is only when those who can, do, that anything gets done. Every individual has that power.

Remember, negativity feeds negativity. Nothing constructive ever came from just hating the way things are, by simply resenting humanity you are only contributing to the choking climate that keeps them mentally subdued and fixated on failure. You're not superior, nor are you inferior, because what you see is the same as what we all see, and it's not going to change until we all start doing something about it.

We are above the animals, insomuch as we have the potential to take life a step further and make this world shine. Nature gave us that gift, the gift to understand what we do wrong, to question, and ultimately, to do. So my advice to you is, don't just hate the madness you see, to do so is to waste that beautiful gift and to squander it in the same way as those you hate. Use your power, be selfish, save your own race.





Bringing this back to the original topic for a moment, I would like to add that while making peace with the being you were born as is very important, there is no reason to abandon the being you feel you are inside. I think this sense of isolation from one's true self is something we can all relate to in one sense or another. We all want to be something... rich, heroic, popular... loved. We don't always get that chance. It is important we can still look in the mirror and love the person we see... but never stop chasing your dreams either.

Dreams like that are what add new flavours to the mix of life, creating new experiences and points of view, an entire new substance in the make-up of the human experience that will bring more enjoyment of life to the next generation. There is no need to shy away from something just because it is different... if we haven't learned that by now, we never will. Don't be afraid of your dreams, no matter how strange. They are what keeps the world turning.

All the best, my friends.

Pride in prejudice, attack of the social police

I want to talk a little about pride today.

I am an artist, at least that’s how I typically define myself when prompted (in which I include my proclivity for writing), and I am damn good at it. Not the best, not even close to the best, but it is the thing I am best at and I am good enough to consider it something to be thankful about.

I take pride in what I can do well, I see this as a good thing. There are a lot of people who see pride as a bad thing, and take it upon themselves to hammer that negative trait out of your brain for your own good. I have encountered this many times over the years, and never with pleasant results. Reflecting on those experiences, I find myself wanting to articulate the problems with certain mentalities, and hopefully paint some kind of picture on how people can rise above them.

Now I just proudly announced that I’m a good artist, and this is an apt place to start, because many people consider that kind of behaviour to be an oddity of some kind. As I just explained, most people who would otherwise consider themselves to be decent people, would have difficulty recognizing the distinction between confidence and overconfidence, and thus see the need to stamp out any sign of it the moment they see it. I’ll explain the cause of this reaction later on.

To that end a bizarre social protocol has developed in the civilized world that forms under the flawed premise of a mutual understanding that confidence is inherently bad. The short of it is that in keeping with this unwritten rule it is understood that one should not behave in a confident manner, and that one should doubt oneself to excess, even if it leads to harming of one’s own self-image. That protocol is modesty.

I hate modesty, and let me just be clear why. I’m sure many people will disagree with this (and not easily), but I define modesty as the ritualistic social trend of shaming your assets. It is the expected behaviour of pretending to be ashamed of what you can do well. In fact it’s such a well integrated social norm, that it’s difficult for most people to look at this concept with a fresh perspective in order to see it the way I do, so let me clarify.

In a typical social setting when one is given a compliment, it is often expected (by which I mean it is more familiar and anticipated, not that it is outwardly demanded in any way) that one reacts with some form of trivialization. E.g. “I’m glad you like my painting but it’s not that good, ___ is a much better artist than me”, etc.

When someone behaves with open and brazen confidence this is often treated, and almost universally viewed with some degree of resentment. You might open your mouth to disagree here but before you do I want you to put yourself in that situation and be honest about your gut feeling, you’ve got some guy proclaiming his vast skills and how good he is at doing what he does, there is at least some small part of you that probably builds a small, but distinct association between that person and the feeling of dislike.

If not, then I envy you for your social adjustment – which is of course the whole problem and segues nicely into the next issue – envy.


It is my belief that this entire protocol came into existence through a convoluted process of envy melding with the tribal instinct that is built into our species. You see it is virtually unavoidable in any living conglomeration, but especially among humans, that we form some kind of tribal society. Get any bunch of humans into a room for long enough and a small community will be the inevitable result.

But just as with a pack of wolves or a litter of puppies, there is also a pecking order established. You have the alpha, who clearly defines his or her role early on, and then you have the subordinates. The alpha isn’t a bad guy, he is merely following the evolutionary imperative, he was the strongest, so he gets the first portion of food, he gets to choose his mate, he gets to decide what we do because all of that will ensure his survival and the propagation of his superior genes.

The point is, everyone is subordinate to someone, and almost everyone has a subordinate, a runt of the litter. And no matter where you go in human culture, you find examples of the superior beating on the [perceived] inferior. But why do we do this? Because we covet the role of the alpha. We want to be the top dog, to experience what he has.

Because we humans are intelligent, we want to usurp that position, to take what we don’t have. We have the intelligence to know that he has the survival advantages and our own genes demand that we do whatever it takes to survive. But I don’t want to bore you by focussing solely on the genetic side of this, what’s far more interesting is the complex psychological response to this.

In seeking to experience what the alpha experiences, we generate prejudice. We seek out flaws in others and punish them for those flaws. You are weak, evolution demands that you be fodder to keep me on top. Your inferiority makes me superior. Only by doing this can we appear flawless, or at least... less flawed. And that’s what sets the entire vicious cycle into motion – it’s all PRETEND.

The ones who punish others are the ones with the least confidence in themselves. Those who bash and hack away at the self esteem of other people most likely crave to feel like the top dog because they are so tired of feeling like an underdog. They want to feel superior because they feel inferior, they are infested by an inferiority complex that forever saps away their sense of self worth, and at the end of the day, even when you are on the bottom rung, you can still look down on someone else and feel high up.

So you’ve got all these people gnawing away at the self confidence of everyone else, who then feel inferior and so do the same to others, and over time you end up with this surreal stalemate wherein everyone knows and quietly obeys the unwritten rule that confidence is bad and should be avoided. Whenever someone deviates, we rain down hell on them, whenever we have an opportunity to feel confident, a subliminal hysteria kicks like a raid alarm alerting you to something potentially dangerous, and so you play it down.


People should play down the things they do badly, not the things they do well. In every other example of human culture, we try to lessen the impact of bad things, and make the most we possibly can out of the good things. But when it comes to personal achievement? Oh no, that is wrong, you shouldn’t feel like you achieved something because then you will look egotistical.

I get called egotistical *all* the time. Most people don’t even understand what they mean when they say it, mind you even when “correctly used” it’s something of a misnomer but that’s besides the point, they just habitually utter it with mindless dead eyes as some instinctual response to being proved wrong or seeing something they don’t like, like it is the default position of being in an uncomfortable situation that you must try to lash out at someone else where you think you can hurt them most (which of course leads back to the inferiority thing).

However, those who know me well are always trying to *encourage me*, and break through my self doubt. Now you wouldn’t be able to convince the haters of this even if you tied them down and forced them to watch every second of my life for ten years, but there it is. Those who see me for what I am see me in the exact opposite light to those who make a snap judgment and decide it is their responsibility to bash out of my head what dangerously depleted levels of confidence remain.

However, when I talk to other people I am more often than not, a sarcastic (though usually for comedic effect) elitist bastard, who is quick to pounce on the poor grammar and/or stupid ill-conceived opinions and beliefs of others. Are you seeing the connection?

Earlier I admitted to envy, then to self-doubt, and now elitism, so it goes without saying that despite my recognizing and understanding the cycle that causes this unbreakable chain of events, I am not immune to it. So why don’t I learn from it? Well to a large degree I have, as I said earlier I am happy to renounce modesty as an archaic and oppressive ritual, and despite the fact that ripping on others still invokes the heightened sense of self-worth that dispels insecurity (and it does) I try to focus this instinct with purpose.

I only ever use those situations to try and encourage thought, because I truly believe that everyone, even the stupidest of us, have the potential to start using our brains and escape the middle ages. I don’t want to change anyone, and wouldn’t even if I had the power to, but sometimes all someone needs is to be shown a door to recognize that they have the ability to go through it and change their way of thinking. I’ve been shown a few doors in my time that changed my life, to know that this is a power to be used responsibly.

Like everyone else, I still covet the alpha position. Though I am intelligent enough to know that even if I had it, I would continue to pursue it. Genes don’t come with an off switch. But we can, however rise above the unusual redundancies that come about through the oil and water mixing of our base genetic drives and our higher intelligence. With a little thought and consideration (like only being an asshole to assholes and even then only with constructive criticism) we can generate a frame shift in the way those cycles envelop us, and turn them into useful tools.

Do not be ashamed to admit what you can do well. I acknowledge and even frequently rant about the need for humility in the world, but humility and shame are not the same thing! You can go through life not thinking yourself superior to everyone else without having to make yourself feel inferior to them and miserable. Confidence and overconfidence are vastly different mentalities with a football field between them, it’s not hard to distinguish the two.

This world does not need less people who feel good about themselves, our society will not benefit from its population holding down their heads and averting their eyes from their talents. Stand up and be proud of what you can do well, announce it to the world, flaunt it, and when you see someone better at it, be happy for them! Or better yet learn from them. You don’t have to be the best in the world at what you can do, you can be just as happy knowing that it is the best thing in the world that YOU can do. Pride is not a sin!

And when you do this, and you get someone muttering about how full of yourself you are, don’t bother reacting with hatred or anger, don’t bother feeling ashamed or embarrassed, just go to that person and ask them what they can do well, and compliment them for it. Everyone has something, something they enjoy, something they are good at, something that moves them. If we all focussed on that, rather than the fact that we don’t have what they do, imagine what the world would be like?

One of the biggest problems is that people feel like they wouldn’t change anything by changing their own attitude, it seems futile, so why bother? Well the world is made up of individuals. So just remind yourself of the last time your world was changed by the words of another, the last time someone made you feel bad by criticizing you, or trampled over your confidence, or even how good it felt when you were last complimented, even if you did try to reject it.

That one person changed you, and then you probably changed other people as did they and so on. So think of the difference that one single person like you could make to the world by turning things around? If one person can affect you like that, then you can affect others just as easily. It’s easy to change the world when you are at its foundation.

Wouldn’t it be great if the only thing we didn’t all take pride in, was prejudice?