Question for those who are mainly copingkin
Don’t worry, I’m not going to say you’re not really kin, I’m just really confused on some stuff and want some clarification. It has to do with being able to choose your kins or not.
So, I may be misunderstanding copingkin. I thought that the definition was ‘one who uses their otherkin/fictionkin identity(/ies) as a coping mechanism.’ As in, you are otherkin/fictionkin in the non-coping sense but that you also use it as a coping mechanism.
I tend to define otherkin as something like ‘Otherkin is the belief that one is non-human, either spiritually (in regards to the soul) or through reincarnation (past lives, etc).’ (I’ve seen something else mentioned but can’t remember at the moment and don’t have the mental energy to look, please let me know what it is if you know)
A past life is not something that affects you in this life (with notible exceptions such as trauma or ptsd) without outside forces such as having been a person who experienced sexism in both this life and the past life, and your soul is not something that you can control in my own experience (not sure about other people). You cannot forcibly change, destroy, or control these kintypes (people do experience kinshifts, which are not what I am talking about).
Now, with these definitions, which I don’t think are breaking the definition of what kinity is (correct me if i’m wrong), how does someone who is copingkin chose to stop being a kintype? Because if they stop coping with them, they would still have the spiritual/reincarnation/psycological/etc. kintype left and so they wouldn’t have stopped being kin of them, just stopped coping with them, which is not choosing/controlling your kin.
This really concerns me because if they CAN control kintypes in a way like “I no longer have the spiritual/etc connection to this kintype because I chose to stop/didn’t want to be kin of them anymore” then they aren’t kintypes, but instead either coping mechanisms, synpaths, and/or other-hearted, or maybe something else entirely.
If I am misunderstanding something, please tell me. I really want to make sure I’m not misinterpreting a good portion of the tumblr kin community.
TLDR; I’m confused because I thought that because of the nature of otherkin that you cannot chose to be or stop being a kintype, but I have seen copingkin mention being able to choose kintypes. Please let me know where the mistake is.
Reblogging for visibility.
