How does your kintype affect who you are?

I was just posting elsewhere...and it got me thinking about how many things about the way a being lives, can be extrapolated from the way their bodies have adapted to suit their needs. Both the needs and the adaptations to fill the needs, are often present in the form.

For example, a raptor can't easily run on the ground; it's adapted to flying. It can't see a wide range of vision without turning its head; its eyes are adapted to see a narrow, highly magnified field of vision. It eats meat; it has adapted to be able to kill and tear apart prey.

All of these things mean (if held true across species -- I wouldn't know, being majorly a bird person) that the way a being's body is formed often predicts what their life is going to consist of, at least in skeletal form. The way someone's body is seems to predict something about their experiences, and at least the ground-level basis for who they are.

Has your kintype predicted something about who you are?

Actually, I didn't think it had much of an effect at all...
Or at least, I considered it unlikely to associate it directly to my kintype.
I tend to go "but then it can be found in humans..."

And then...
I get compared to Gesgewigu's...
A LOT

In this case, the cause-effect relationship is reversed for me, as far as I can tell: my kintype doesn't cause who I am. Who I am causes my kintype.

Basically, of many possible options at the time, I was the best/most immediately available host for the sparkly wingdings, so they picked me to indwell.

They don't really like going into a lotta' details about why I got picked, because they want to avoid both making me feel victimized and giving me a swell head about any useful/positive qualities I have... but the gist of it is this: I had an injury that left an opening for them to take up housekeeping, and at the same time I had a promising predisposition to quick adaptation to change, self-direction and will, open-mindeness, and autodidactism. I was the right mix of "just damaged enough" and "just clever enough". <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz" /><!-- s -->

it doesn't.

Let me elaborate a bit, so my meaning will be obvious. (I'll try to do this as best I can, given that I haven't thought about the answer in advance for a while...[my norm is to wait].)

Essentially...it's fairly obvious from my standpoint, that the body I was given in this life has profoundly affected my experiences. This includes both the experiences coming at me, and the experiences that my body itself has had input on. That is, people see my body; because they see my body, they assume I must be a specific type of being which they associate with my visual cues. And, in addition, I have experienced psychiatrically-significant neurotransmitter imbalance. This affects the way I have interpreted the world around me.

This is without getting into what the experience of a nonhuman being would be like...though of course, we tend to project that these beings would know nothing else, and hence have nothing to compare it to from within their current life. I suppose a counterexample to this would be a butterfly, which might recall being a caterpillar; or a dragonfly, which might recall being a nymph, and an underwater life. Most people can recall childhood, however most people also don't go through a change as...impacting to their life as something like gender reassignment or gender confirmation.

For instance: I was born phenotypically female. For the first ...eleven or so years of my life, I was accepted, mostly, as unproblematically female. Around the time I turned twelve, I started being asked whether I was "a boy or a girl;" likely because I liked active play like boys, and because my relationship with my then-best-friend (female) was seen as too close and too exclusive. Plus, I didn't really see boys as "different" from myself. Hence the children around me started to be insecure as to my identity.

Age eleven to age 19, I'm slotted into the role of a lesbian by my peers (though they did not use so kind language), and for varying periods I'm largely treated as an outcast, rejected by "friends" who had once accepted me, or accepted by people older than myself. This is to the point of vocal and outright harassment by people who don't even know me (and some who do), mostly male, all age ranges, from the ninth to eleventh or twelfth grades (about 14-18 years old, for those outside the US).

If my body had been male, the issue of my supposedly being attracted to girls (I had no girlfriends, hence no confirmation) would have been normative. The issue of my liking physically active play would have been normative. My ability to outperform others of my sex at pull-ups (though to be honest that was kind of easy), and outrun most other people my age and sex, and want to play basketball and handball instead of watch from the sidelines, would have been normative or lauded; not seen as a reason for exclusion.

My habit of making ornaments for trees and hanging them in low-lying branches, however, probably wouldn't have been.

This is also fed into by, likely, my brain having been partially masculinized in-utero because of an adrenaline burst in my mother on the way to the hospital to give birth.

Early on in school, then, I was being expected to be someone I was not because of the way I looked; and my body was saying that the way I was, was correct for me. Both of these experiences were fed into by my corporeality. Because of the way I looked (like a girl), in context with who I was (excessively boyish in the eyes of my peers), I wasn't accepted. Because of the way my brain was formed, I did not have much of a choice but to be who I was, regardless of how I looked.

And I suppose I should mention that I didn't put together the idea that I was being victimized, with the idea that people were unsure of my gender or sexuality, until sometime late in the 11th grade...(up until then, I was just convinced that I was too intelligent for them to accept me as a girl, and they didn't respect girls as people at all anyway, and so because I didn't conform, they wanted to break my spirit).

If you take a look at the WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) Standards of Care (search WPATH SOC)...they say somewhere deep into that document that many people who at one time believe themselves to be transgender, turn out to be homosexual and not transsexual. Now I don't have a lot of experience with sexuality...which might be expected for what I've noted above. However, to protect the confidentiality of my partners, I can just say that I very much doubt that I'm actually attracted to physically male bodies, whether the person in question has taken estrogen or testosterone blockers or not. And I have no say in that. I can't force myself to like something I don't.

That's another way that my body is shaping my experience.

I've experimented with this -- exhibiting feminine gender cues while dressed as a man; exhibiting masculine gender cues while dressed as a woman. To a large extent...it's really very stupid; people see the clothes and from the clothes they assume what gender you are, to the best of my recollection. This is regardless of what you actually are; if you are female-bodied and dress as male and "pass", they will SEE you as male. They will see the clothes and the body and slot you into whatever variant or outlier (heh -- more laughing at myself here than anything) of "male" they have in their mind in which they can include you. This is regardless of whether you want to be treated as male or not (though I suppose they assume you do. But I would not be surprised if there were many male, man-identified people who actually want to be pretty like women). I do believe that in most people, it does boil down to wanting to be kind, but the dynamic is...inane. Especially as not everyone has the privilege to be able to "pass," or even wants to.

When Adrian has been fronting -- which includes one very clear memory-imprint of acting as a man while wearing a skirt and probably a women's tank top, and having his non-dress gender cues clearly ignored -- it's very clear that his version of masculinity is feminine-tinted, as he has access to the majority of the memories we can still recall (at least we so believe), and essentially, he's sharing a brain with a woman-loving woman. If this body had been male, he would not have had that perspective. He would have had other experiences coming at him (like, possibly, being discouraged from making jewelry because that's something "men aren't supposed to do"). He would not have the insight into our female condition that he does. He would probably have been excluded from the women's in-crowd, which is one of the things that we really do appreciate about being female. He isn't a man's man, and he's happy he is not.

I was born into this world as a person of unclear race, unclear gender, and gynecentric sexuality. All of those things, in cultural context, have powerfully shaped who I am today. They did not tell me how to accept or reject the experiences that came at me, but they did to some extent, determine my experiences. If you're human, cultural context matters, and what you look and sound and smell like, in cultural context, matters. That is, your body has an effect on your experience.

That's without going into species differentiation. My perspective -- or rather, Adrian's -- as questioning whether he is demonkin, and as being dark-oriented, does affect his outlook. It affects the angle from which he approaches things, in a way that I'm not sure those who approach the same phenomena from a "dominant" perspective ever have to question.

I'm being called away, but will be back later.

Being an energy being, I can't really say that any physical form I'd had now affects this body I'm in.

Additionally, considering that my "personality," if it can be called one at all, before becoming human was nothing more than a few simplistic primal functions, like feeding to sustain my existence, aggression when contained, and watered-down mimicry of any emotion I may have fed off of, I can't honestly say my personality is derived from prior un-incarnation.

However, I can say that my human/monkey/lizard brain has been in direct conflict with these rudimentary semblances of existence I carried onward. Surviving as an energy being, and surviving as a physical being, are two different things.

Food, for instance. Energy being me says I don't need it, lizard brain says I do. I don't want children because I find them an additional drain to the limited reserve of energy I need to sustain, meanwhile lizard brain biologically and instinctually wants to reproduce to survive. Energy being me occasionally forgets I can't just float through matter, human me hurts itself when trying, etc.

Psychologically/mentally, it may have impeded my morality and ethics. Stealing isn't stealing unless it's stealing from me. The few people I've met with similar energy readings to me I'm more apt to treat like family, even if logically I realize they're complete asshats. People with weaker energy readings I have to restrain myself from feeding off of. This has led to a few people who I've distanced myself from for no other good reason other than that I know I'll constantly have to keep myself in check around them.

And, of course, there are probably a multitude of things I'm not even aware of, simply because I've known no other alternative. The proposal here is similar to asking a person who was born blind how not seeing has affected who they are. They'd probably be like, "well, I can't see, for one," but they wouldn't be able to elaborate much more onto it, as they don't really know what vision is like.

Does past experience shape who you are?

How about if you are not aware of that experience?

Nature or Nurture?

tough questions, simple answer, this is your life, here as a Human, you could go up and down your life analyzing every aspect of yourself and comparing it with a viewpoint of what you believe you may truly by outside of this life based largely on whatever you happen to have learned about that type of being which may or may not be true and find things that match or dont... So the simple answer is maybe.

I have met individuals who display amazing traits that one would absolutely attest to a specific kin-type. As an example, Chai from this forum who believes she was a dragon in a past life or three, has always had a very strong habit of hoarding, additionally naturally eats by snaking her head towards the fork holding her food and then chewing it often times by "tossing and snapping" rather than a more traditional method. These may be attributed to Draconic traits... or it could be the result of being a Human who likes to collect specific things and display them, and a Human who eats a little less civilly than others.

So.... Maybe

I can't really say how it has impacted my life, because I have no other basis to compare it with. I'd have to know what it's like to not be otherkin of any sort before I could say how being otherkin makes my life experience different.

I think have a bit of a better handle on the inverse, though: How has being human effected my kintype? Sometimes I think it has changed my essential nature in ways that may be unforgivable.

Or maybe it hasn't. Maybe that's just your average, perfectly human existential anxiety, and I really don't have any clue either way.

Actually, that's more likely.

I suppose I can step in here.

This is Adrian, by the way. We also have "Birdy" (bird/dinosaur/gryphon-type thing here)...we think we know who she is from our past, now, and she kind of wanted to answer this, but it's probably best that I get this out of the way, first, and leave the floor open subsequently. Right now there's a conflict over mental resources, and I know what I want to say; she doesn't.

I should add before it evaporates, though; with Birdy we've been having serpent/bird/dragon? energy coming through. We aren't sure why yet. (Also adding in that, at least, we know bird energy depends on species and individual.) Birdy has an affinity with the Snake totem we've mentioned before -- this or there's some fire-serpent thing going on for some reason (kundalini?).

I presently consider myself a trauma-split, going with plural terminology...meaning that because of some events in the body's early history, either a trauma window was opened that allowed my entry, or the original identity (Core/Host) was segmented off and went into dormancy, leaving myself and Bell to deal with the rest of the life. The body can't be certain (at least, without seeking and faith) because of the brain's limitations.

Kintype. Right. So going on the hypothesis that I actually am demonkin. ...which is uncertain, but going with it.

This has not been an easy thing for us as a collective, or for me. While I can say that I'm easily at a much better part of my life than I was before college...or during college, for that matter...my presence has been associated with a couple of neurological tendencies. Because I can exist without them, I know that they aren't intrinsically part of me; but I was the one left to deal with the fighting, depression, isolation, abuse and pain that we went through in high school. It's taken about a decade of reprogramming to get to the point we're at now, where we aren't expecting to someday die by our own hand.

So anyway. Kintype. The body...I'm not sure if it was myself or someone else here...we were involved for several years on Satanist listservs, and I believe that this had a hand in shaping my identity; at the very least, it resonated with me.

I should clarify what I mean by "Satanist"; I don't mean worshipping "Evil" (I don't believe in "Evil"), and I don't mean that I was a Fascist or a LaVeyan. Nor was I ever Christian. For various reasons (including having never been Christian) we got out of the subculture, but the drive to identify as demonic (note that I do not here mean "Evil") is still pretty strong. If you asked me to identify (again) what "demonic" means to me...with me it denotes passion, allowing thought outside of accepted spheres, having experienced intense suffering, tending to identify with people who are "cast out" or downtrodden, knowing what it's like to be an outsider, and to be stigmatized. And accepting our "shadow" aspects, as I mention below.

In addition we have the chaos thing going on, at least if you look at my system as a whole. The entire identifying-as-plural thing is an attempt to make sense out of what happens in this mind. So is the "sensitive" thing that Core experiences; though recall that if Core and I are connected (that is, not disparate beings who just experience via the same body), what is true for me...well, it's pretty clear she doesn't entirely contain me (what would be the point of externalizing something that was actually already included as an aspect of yourself), but at the least we would spring from the same source.

So...what I'm trying to get around to saying is that I've (I've? we've?) done some experiments with trying to accept myself as Satanist. And as a demon. Both of those options are fear-inducing, though for reasons that wouldn't be entirely apparent unless you were the person doing the experiment. The fear doesn't come from being frightened of the other demons. The fear comes from people who misunderstand what it means to be Satanist or a demon, and think that because you claim either or both of those titles, that you're allying yourself with "Evil" and thus are setting yourself up to be destroyed by them.

That is to say; to identify as "Demon," and/or "Satanist," in most people's minds, falls into the slot where people irrationally believe we must hate them and want to harm and torture them because of what we are. Or, at least...that's the idea I've gotten. Because they've already cast us as the villains, we then may end up taking part in the other person's psychodrama where we're now the person to be belittled, taunted, abused, or destroyed, because we're embodying that person's (Jungian) Shadow. And as they force that Shadow away by forcing us away, we are the ones harmed. We are the ones hurt.

But the thing is that we have not done anything any more severe than declare an allegiance, an identity. And people misunderstand that allegiance and identity, because what we're allied with is the popular bogeyman (the popularized motives of which don't even make any sense in this culture -- though that doesn't stop the story from being passed around). We see through the illusion; they do not. They have not lived our reality, so they can not be expected to understand in the way we do that not everything that is reminiscent of the Shadow is bad. Rejected; yes. But the state of being rejected doesn't mean that the rejection itself was just.

We have had to encounter our own Shadows. I am an embodiment of the Shadow of this form (well -- part of it, anyway), which is probably why I identify as demonic. It's also probably why I am not a woman. I can't help this. This is, intrinsically, who I am. But to come out and talk about it means to open myself -- ourselves -- to rejection and harm, by people who would use us in their own internal melodrama to reinforce their own internal boundaries against their own internal demons which they refuse to accept. It's *not my fault* that they reject part of themselves, so why should I have to suffer for it?

Then on top of this, there is just the state of fear that is called up in certain people, whenever anyone says the word, "demon." If you have to have close relations with someone of this type...of no fault or realistic choice of your own, it can drive you underground and put you into outward denial, just to survive on a daily basis.

I think I can quiet down now...