[suggestion rescinded, please do not reblog this post unless you have read this first: http://fromfiction.tumblr.com/post/138647663977/it-seems-i-was-completely-wrong-in-my-thinking-in ]

So, the trans community, outside of those of us who are both transgender and kin, has made it pretty clear that they as a group are harmed by the kin community’s use of trans-specific language.

It’s pretty clear in fact, that it’s doing both groups harm, actually, because what do we hear again and again from anti-kin and confused people outside the community?

They think that being kin is a gender. Or that we are ‘trans-species’ or ‘trans-racial’ and want to somehow become our kintype, the way that transpeople transition to their gender.

And that perception makes both communities look stupid. 

It makes transpeople look stupid, because it trivializes their very real oppression and constant social stigma by comparing them to kin, who face neither of those things.

And it makes kin look stupid because it makes us look like we as a group want to get surgery to have dog ears, and earn the right to be called goku-self on our tax forms and IDs.

Informal polls and anecdotal evidence shows that the fictionkin community is something like 50% trans, so I think that this is something that we can agree is a problem. And I’d like to take steps to fix it.

I would like to stop using the word ‘dysphoria’ to characterize the kin experience, even though this term is accurate, and I have used it a lot myself. I think we can come up with a term that is equally accurate, but does not have the same medical and social connotations.

Disharmony, perhaps? (as in ‘I feel species disharmony’ or ‘I feel facial disharmony’?) Another person suggested ‘vexation’ to me, as a possibility.

I am open to suggestions, and open to looking at what other language we can change to disentangle ourselves from trans terminology.