Late last night, the trio of authors of the Prince-Koyangi Tumblr decided to let the cat out of the bag. Or rather the “autistic pangender asexual demiromantic trans-asian cat,” as the blog’s fictional 16-year-old author “jun/june” describes “xieself.”
“This is starting to get kind of boring so I suppose it’s time to give it up,” says a post signed “Chloe, Stephanie and Tyler,” who claim to be the real authors of the Prince-Koyangi Tumblr. “As some of our more astute readers have noticed, this is a troll blog — a collaborative trolling effort between three teenagers with too much time on their hands. None of us are autistic, pangender, asexual, demiromantic, transethnic, or a cat, although one of us is 16 and Canadian. It was fun while it lasted.”
In case you just happened to stumble on this subculture say, oh, about 15 minutes ago, some of those words are actually real (“real”?) things. As the blog Modern Primate explains, there’s an academic definition of transethnicity, which refers to cases where an adopted child takes on the ethnicity of their adopted parents. That, however, is not how the term is employed by certain Tumblrites, like, for example, Ugandra Handra, a young white man who identifies as a black woman. Spoiler alert: Offensive stereotypes ensue!
“Otherkin,” on the other hand, are people who think they have been born into the wrong species. According to the scholars at Wikipedia, “Otherkin are a community of people who see themselves as partially or entirely non-human, contending that they are, in spirit if not in body, not human. This is explained by members of the otherkin community as possible through reincarnation, having a nonhuman soul, ancestry, or symbolic metaphor.” There is some overlap here with vampires, because of course.
That should be sufficient background to parse Prince-Koyangi’s gotcha post, which claims altruistic motivations for faking out their fellow Tumblrites. Switching from the first person singular to the first person plural, the post says:
Consider the following. You have created a community in which someone can claim to be an autistic pangender asexual demiromantic trans-Asian cat otherkin and not be immediately denounced as a troll. Whether you think these identities are valid or not, you find it plausible that someone would believe they are a Korean cat with autism and appropriate social justice terminology to defend that belief. What does that say about the state of your community? (And that’s not even starting on the people who actually supported us).
I find it so utterly absurd that a movement whose original purpose was to defend the rights of POC, trans* individuals, and other oppressed groups has been co-opted by people who believe they are dragons or that they have Homestuck characters living inside their head. It’s hilarious to me. It’s also incredibly offensive. I think what happened is that the SJ movement’s message of acceptance was somehow generalized to mean that if you don’t accept everything,you are a bigot —and the outcasts of the internet, the furries, the soulbonders, latched onto that, because they had finally found a place where no one could make fun of them. A “safe space”, if you will.
But it’s completely stupid (tw: ableism) and it trivializes the struggles of people who actually suffer from oppression (people laughing at you on the internet is not oppression).
Calling out Tumblr for excessive narcissism and self-aggrandizing sounds like a fool’s errand to us. But I’m-trolling-you-for-your-own-good is becoming kind of a popular excuse these days, huh?
Before concluding their rant, the trio sends a warning to a fellow Tumblrite Eric Draven, who blogs under the handle thedarkericdraven. “Get the fuck off the internet, you pedophile scum. I fucking mean it,” cries Prince-Koyangi.
As far as Mr. Draven’s identity, that when things really fall off the rails. According to an interview last month at The Anime Reality, Mr. Draven, who claims to be 16-years-old, is probably not someone you would want to meet in a dark corner of the Internet/any corner/ever.
Eric Draven has taken his online handle from the main character of The Crow, and believes he is a reincarnated Chinese half-giant kobold warrior that had magic powers, a magic sword, and a “willing slave” that was reincarnated as one of his classmates named Stephanie. Unfortunately, he seems to have wiped his tumblr, so I could only grab parts from the cached version. He mainly used this tumblr to talk about how being “otherkin” was just like being transgendered, and obsessed over the idea of regaining his magical kobold powers. He also kept hope that his classmate, Stephanie, would regain her “previous life’s” memories and submit to him as a slave again.
Before we start wondering what a German sprite is doing in China, let’s step back and say it’s possible we may have gone too deep. Someone please send cleansing cat photos or Magic Mike gifs c/o Betabeat. STAT.
(Hat tip: @KeyanaStevens)
