More or less. It rather depends on how you define “furry”, but last I heard it was the word he’s using.
Mind you, he’s never mentioned it offline in front of me. (But then, he’s never mentioned that he smokes in front of me, either. He’s secretive like that, I guess.) I know because Mom leaves her email inbox open. While I was using her computer, I noticed a pseudonym in the “From” section with email titles of things Dad would talk about. I vaguely remembered hearing Dad had a Livejournal, so I put the name plus .livejournal.com into a browser and there it was. I remember my first thought was “I guess it runs in the family.”
It was because of him I first heard the term “otherkin”. Either he or someone in his commentariat linked to WikiFur. A bit of poking led me to the page on otherkin. (I don’t remember if there was as much focus on controversy at the time as there is now.) I didn’t think it fit at first: the people in the pages linked off the wiki entry talked about past lives and phantom limbs and other stuff I didn’t have. It took me a few years.
That’s pretty cool, actually.
Guh. I’m kind of envious of you—not having to deal with phantom limbs. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been really hyper aware of Extra Parts—wings, mostly.
Also, what does it say about me that I’m more surprised your dad has an LJ than anything else? XD Far as I know, my parents stay away from internet communities. (And as bad as the Mom-Found-Your-Tumblr conversation would be, the Dad-I-Found-Your-LJ conversation seems like it’d be just as awkward.)
—PM
The latest conversation of [insert one of the forums Mom’s on] is a regular topic at our dinner table. When we can’t think of what to say next, “So Mom, what did you read online today?” (It’s best to have an interesting thing you read online of your own ready to share, in case she turns the question back on you.)
I was reading his LJ for months and months before telling him (technically I told Mom, but the two of them were keeping each other updated).
Mom’s reaction was, “We know. Didn’t he say something along the lines of ‘My daughter’s been reading this’ on his blog a couple months back?”
“No*.”
Turns out she was referring to the time he wondered if I would ever send him a non-private version of my diary for him to use as a source for his travelogue. He concluded probably not, but the wondering reminded me and it arrived in his inbox the next day. They did not know I’d been reading it since December (this was the following autumn). I don’t know if he ever figured out I read through the whole archive. (Way back in the archive, I found him talking about an ultrasound Mom had when pregnant with me. (Long after the fact. The archives don’t go that far back.) He answered “Do you want a boy or girl?” with “Human”, and the rest of the story was written as if he had been successful in this. Oh, how I laughed. (Okay, technically he was right. He said he had “a human baby”. He did. It just didn’t stay human.))
I can kind of imagine Mom’s thought process upon finding my Tumblr. Something along the lines of Doctor Who, Doctor Who, Doctor Who, right up there with the DS9 geeks in terms of utterly harmless things to get up to on the Internet. Wait, she’s talking about what it’s like to be otherkin?
…
No wonder when I sent her that feminist piece she replied with a complaint about its human-centric language**. I guess it runs in the family.
*So first I knew, then he knew I knew, then I knew he knew I knew. I think I just figured out where my tendency to keep secrets merely for the sake of keeping secrets came from.
**
You are not the authority on what “real” human beings are, and who qualifies as “real” and on what basis. All human beings are real.
Yes, I know you’re tired of feeling disenfranchised. It is a tiresome and loathsome thing to be and to feel. But the tit-for-tat disenfranchisement of others is not going to solve that problem. Solidarity has to start somewhere and it might as well be with you and me.
From Hanne Blank’s “Real Women”.
My response was “What about otherkin? She’s using ‘human being’ like that’s as wide a group as she needs, like it’s as wide as ‘person’. So much for not disenfranchising anyone.” She was surprised I’d thought of it. It was another one of those tempting moments. (“That’s me! That’s me she’s excluding, when she claims to be including everyone! I notice because it’s me!”)
(Hmm, that probably could be made into a Hammerhead/Octopus with a bit of condensing.)
Tags:
#Generic Rambling #Otherkin #reply via reblog
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