Several weeks ago someone sent me an anti kin-for-fun essay, which I promised to do a detailed review on, but didn’t get to it till tonight. You can view the original exchange here.
To lay some foundation, being kin with someone/something refers to a sense of identity with a different type of a being (or object/concept) than what you may appear as at a surface glance, and these identities are united under the umbrella of otherkin. This includes identifying as nonhuman animal species (sometimes referred to as being therian), fictional characters (fictionkin), other humans (factkin), and several more. Kin-for-fun, or kff, is a controversial topic in otherkin discourse due to many “old school” members perceiving it as disrespectful.
The essay is written by such old school community members. They start with 2013-2014 Tumblr and someone YandereBitchClub. They describe this person – or persons – as race faking, cis women posing as trans women, possibly faking dissociative identity disorder, and wanting to be “the specialest most valid fictionkin”. This framing alone reeks of KiwiFarm lolcow watching and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The authors proceed to claim that this account introduced the idea that being otherkin can be a choice. According to them, YandereBitchClub opposed “kinning outside your race” with the justification that everyone can choose what their kin identities are.
The authors make a side remark: “Which sounds like it checks out until you realize that it implies animals have more in common with you than people outside your race which is… Not The Greatest Implication.” This isn’t really important for the kin discussion, but I feel like it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the conversation around sensitive attitudes to race, ethnicity, and cultures works. The degree of proximity between groups does not matter as much. Instead more focus is given to privilege and oppression dynamics.
The authors describe harassment and damage to kin spaces that followed these accusations, and aside from being a little too willing to fake claim that individual, I have almost no problems with this part of the essay. I have also been harassed, including for my identities, and I can imagine that it was bad.
Neither I have a problem with the next section of the text – criticism of IRL terminology. IRL terminology arose from a trend of saying “I am X IRL” while explaining that you identify as X seriously and profoundly. Nowadays some refer to their identities as “IRLS”. While I do not want to tell others directly how to label their identities, I also do not see a reason why this type of experience should not be regarded as under the otherkin umbrella. However, I don’t think I and the authors of the essay have the same agenda here – I want to expand the definition of kin to something that’s inclusive of very varying things, meanwhile the authors seem to want to keep the involuntary identities under that umbrella while forcing everything else out.
Further in, however, we’re starting coming across things I have more and more problems with.
“Fictionkin (and fictives) in 2016 had a big habit of sending invasive, aggressive, no-boundaries messages to fandom creators about their kintypes, often without specifying what they actually were for the layman. As a community, we still have this problem, but it was ESPECIALLY BAD then. Fandom hated fictionkind for this. There is a reason so much fanart had ‘dont tag as me/ID/kin’ in the description. There were just so many no-boundaries fictionfolk giving the community a bad name in people’s inboxes and on their posts. It was very much not without reason that fictionfolk were disliked.”
I really dislike the idea that some members of a community behaving in upsetting ways justify hating the entire community and the experience around which it formed. There’s a difference between a reason and an excuse, and this one is an excuse.
“Because of this distaste, snappy posts deriding kin became staple fandom jokes in places. As what ‘kin’ meant was further distorted, some fandommers got the bright idea to ‘reclaim it’ from us freaks to mean liking and relating to a character.”
This is where the authors introduce the main idea of their essay – kffs originate from fandom bloggers seeking to “punish” the “real” kins. Unlike with some other statements in this essay, there is no proof or sources to back up this claim no dates or usernames, only one offhanded mention.
Then the authors make a strange jab at reclaiming of the word “kinnie”, stating that it’s not actually reclaimed by the otherkin community, and that only kffs identify as such. I can only say that there is absolutely no fun in my own kin identities, they’re involuntary and often painful experiences, yet I’ve been identifying as a kinnie since 2017 (when I joined that community). All this language trad kins frequently bash – “kinnie”, “kinning”, “kinsidering” – is something I perceive as liberating and hold dear. There is a big degree of desacralization in these words, I feel like they help me own my identities and manage them. There have never been good arguments why this word can’t or shouldn’t be used as an identity.
Then we’re getting to the point of introducing kff as a term. The authors attribute it to the group of fandom “appropriators” they described above:
“KFF, or ‘Kin for fun’ is a term for those who claim that ‘kin is only for fun and a choice and means identify with/relate to instead of ‘identify AS’ and the culture the people who said this built on their stolen word. Ie- The group of people above and the ensuing culture they created built on top of misinformation, a stolen word, and the harassment of fictionfolk.”
I already mentioned that there’s no source or reference tying the emergence of kin as a chosen self-identity to these specific people, but in addition to that, this extract poses a new problem: the dichotomy between “identify with” and “identify as”. I don’t think these are drastically different things at all. Choosing either as the only correct way to define what being a kin is would be limiting and exclusionist.
Later we have the following statement from the authors:
“KFF is NOT:
• A term for people who had an element of choice in the formation of their genuine identity.
• A term for people who have fun with their identities but still genuinely identify as the thing.
• A term for people who don’t match the general definition perfectly but label their personal experience as ‘kin anyway without forcing their personal understanding on the community at large.”
I believe acceptance of chosen kins needs to go beyond “an element of choice”. I believe that a fully choice-based identity is still on the otherkin spectrum, just like choosing being trans is still a valid variant of the trans experience. Several paragraphs further the authors will make a comparison between kff and crossdressing, and you have to remember that a clear cut distinction between a transgender person and a crossdresser is a rather recent change in trans discourse, caused by medicalization of the trans community and creation of an artificial duality transvestite/transsexual in the previous century. In reality there is no hard line, people can be placed anywhere on that spectrum and still be under the trans umbrella. Same with otherkin, you can choose it, you can have it happen to you, and it is all a variation of the same spectrum.
I also do not like the insistence and emphasis on “genuine identity”. I do not believe in importance of genuineness of one’s identity, I believe in treating the members of communities you’re entering with respect and dignity. Which, according to the authors, the first kffs were not doing. But it should be possible to call out their behavior without denying them their identities.
Near the closing statement, the authors provide a list of terms they want kffs to use instead of “kin” – which includes several clearly unfitting ones, like “stan” or “blorbo” – and I appreciate it that they’re willing to at least promote alternatives rather than just say “you can’t use our word”, but I also feel like fragmentation of kin terminology has gone too far. During my time of more active engagement with the kin community, I was constantly seeing someone bully others out of using words and expressing experiences. The “breaking point” for me, after which I decided I don’t really want to engage with that community, was being told that factkin is a troll identity by a big name pro-kin account. I have also seen the opinion that fictionkins can’t call themselves otherkin since otherkin means “other than human” (it doesn’t – it means “other than elf”, since the first kins to self organize and self define were elves). I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having more words. I think there is something wrong with gatekeeping certain words.
And in the end it all loops back again to the “genuine” vs “fake” identity discourse. This is the type of discourse that the queer community is currently successfully overcoming, with acknowledgement that you don’t need to fit rigid requirements to claim a certain identity. When I first joined the queer community, people were operating in a dictionary-like manner, many identities (e.g. gay man and lesbian) were defined as mutually exclusive, and harassment over it was rampant. A change started happening, and I’m proud to say I’ve been a part of this change, and queer people now have much more complex and personal identities, including being trans and cis at once, or aroace and bi. Looking at contemporary kin discourse, though, feels like being dunked back into the exclusionist times.
I think a fundamental problem the authors (and many others alongside them) have is believing that genuineness of your identity makes you harmless for your community, or justifies your harm somehow, and fakeness literally equals harm. The essay makes excuses for the behavior of “kin elitists” (their words, not mine) who harassed kffs and everyone who even remotely resembled kffs. How is this harassment any better though? The authors say: “The entire [kff] community is built on that foundation of term stealing and harassment, regardless of if individual KFF participate in the harassment.” But you can’t impose collective responsibility onto a group you don’t like and take none for yourself. They say fictionkin folks should be allowed to be angry at kffs – but I am fictionkin, and I’m angry at otherkin “olds”, “greymuzzles”, “elitists”, everyone who policed how I and my friends call ourselves. The kin community is full of harassment, and that harassment is going in all directions, and you can’t assign guilt and virtue by the type of identity. If you want to discuss kins who disrespect and harass other kins, call them by some term that emphasizes harassment, not how they handle their identity.
The bottom line is, there’s nothing non-otherkin in kffs. You can’t and shouldn’t tolerate bigotry and exclusionism from kffs, but this behavior is not exclusive to kffs, and your attempts to label them as a malicious psy-op to “steal” otherkin terms – rather than random individuals seeing terms they liked and going “me!” – look flimsy. Kffs are on the kin spectrum, part of the kin community, and they should treat kins of a different type with respect, and they should get respect back.
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