2015 Digest

[frameacloud]

Briefly, some news of interest to otherkin from 2015 that I haven't previously reported on this blog. In chronological order:



2015-03. An academic article, "Social Network Sites as Evolving Subculture" (PDF) by Gangadharan briefly mentions and defines otherkin.

2015-04. The Palgrave Handbook of the Psychology of Sexuality and Gender has a section about furries, which gives a paragraph defining some kinds of otherkin.

2015-07-21. In The Week magazine, an article about otherkin: "Meet the people who don't identify as human," by Baker-Whitelaw.

2015-08. Publication of a Master's thesis about furry and therianthrope identity. "Keeping the Magic: Fursona Identity and Performance in the Furry Fandom," by Maase.

2015-08-12. An academic article about gender non-conforming teens mentions that some identify as otherkin (PDF).

2015-08-24. An article about furries in the Journal of Business Research, "Being sub-culturally authentic and acceptable to the mainstream: Civilizing practices and self-authentication," mentions "species identity disorder."

2015-09. Article in History of Psychiatry: "Kynanthropy: canine madness in Byzantine late antiquity," about people who acted like dogs.

2015-11-24. A case of a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) in which some personalities were proven by brain scans to be blind, while others weren't, showing that multiple personalities can have real physical/neurological manifestations.

2015-12-09. An academic article published in Anthrozoös: A multidisciplinary journal of the interactions of people and animals, "The Anthrozoomorphic Identity: Furry Fandom Members’ Connections to Nonhuman Animals,", which talks some about people who identify as animals.

Throughout the year, newspapers and magazines published dozens of offensive opinion articles that made a comparison between Caitlyn Jenner, Rachel Dolezal, trans-abled people, and people who identify as animals, all with the aim of invalidating transgender people in particular. Given how the articles are all very similar to one another, it will suffice to give only one, just as an example. Here's a recent one, published on 2015-12-15, in a Christian magazine. (Warning: transphobia and other offensive content.)



I have an idea for how I could run this blog in a way that I hope would be efficient enough to be manageable. I could post to our Twitter about news articles as soon as I find them. Then, at the end of each month, I could post a digest to here and to our Tumblr. It would just be a collection of headlines, links, and brief summaries, rather than whole articles of original writing with complete citations. What do you think?

As always, there's a lot of news out there and I can't do this alone, so anyone who can help out by posting news links in this blog as they find them would be very much appreciated.

Comments

[houseofchimeras.livejournal.com]

To add to this -

On February 11th 2015 at 7:29 PM, a stage reading of Kin Folk took place at The Den Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. The playtold the story of a girl named Lucy who identified as a dragon and was otherkin. The story began with her coming out to her new family after having been recently orphaned. As the play goes on she meet other otherkin including an elf, a giant, and a werewolf. The play was written by William Glick and it was directed by Evan Linder. The actors taking part in the stage reading included Kate Carson-Groner, Chris Fowler, Sarah Gitenstein, Andrew Hobgood, Steve Love, Liz Sharpe and Stephanie Shum.

Source -
Staged Reading of Kin Folk," The New Colony, http://thenewcolony.org/view/staged_reading_of_kin_folk#sthash.mbaScC64.dpbs (accessed December 31 2015).

[frameacloud]

Thank you very much, this is a good addition!

[houseofchimeras.livejournal.com]

Here is another link - http://www.vgtv.no/#!/video/122325/jenny-tror-hun-var-drage-i-et-tidligere-liv

On December 30th 2015, VGTV interviewed a couple who both identify as dragon otherkin as well as interviewed Joseph Laycock (who has written an article about otherkin). [Most of the video is not in English so I'm not sure all of what is said.]

- Z

[frameacloud]

Wow! That's another good one.

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

Makes sense. That's essentially how we do newsbytes on Flayrah - posted immediately, with a monthly roundup.

[frameacloud]

That's good, so it's a system that's known to work! Great!