What do you think of gatekeeping in the kin community?
It depends on what you mean by ‘gatekeeping’.
I am strongly in favor of maintaining a somewhat ‘strong’ definition of what being kin means, and not stretching the definition to fit everyone who might want to use it.
As far as I am concerned, you are otherkin if you truly believe yourself to be mentally or spiritually non-human in some way, and you are fictionkin if you truly believe yourself to be mentally or spiritually a fictional character or person from a fictional world. Period.
You are not kin if you do not legitimately believe one of those things, and that’s okay. It doesn’t make you inferior.
Synpath, copinglink, otherhearted, and fictionhearted are not bad or lesser labels. They are words that describe beliefs, feelings and actions. Its important for the words we use to accurately and succinctly describe our feelings, beliefs, and actions, because if they do not, no one will know what anyone is saying and communication is pointless.
Otherkin, fictionkin, synpaths, copinglinks, and -hearted people share a community, but we are not all the same and we should not all be using the same words.
However, I am strongly AGAINST telling people who fit the definition of kin above that they ‘can’t be kin’ for any other reason. Gatekeeping people whose bodies or minds are different from their kintype is not only disgusting, but fundamentally misses the point of what being kin is.
Yes, you can have a kintype who is a different race than you. If you can have a kintype who is a different species, why the heck couldn’t you? Likewise there is no basis to say that you can not have a kintype that was disabled when you are not. Our bodies and minds are different than those of our kintypes. That’s practically the whole otherkin experience.
