Otherkin News

Content warnings: none.

A therianthrope on Tumblr.com, Theangrylionshark, observed a new trend among otherkin on Tumblr. Some of them have started to call themselves otherkin in regard to things that they identify with, rather than beings that they identify as. Theangrylionshark sees this as misuse of the word, rather than semantic drift. Theangrylionshark wrote about all this in the article "Let's get something straight."

Examples of "identify as" include people who say "I am an elf," as otherkin have done for decades now. Examples of "identify with" are people who recently started saying they are otherkin because they feel a connection to a topic such as outer space, the ocean, or forests. These two things might be different enough from each other that it might be confusing to call them both "otherkin." I haven't heard them propose a word to call themselves by instead.

Some others on Tumblr have talked about this trend. Malchior (user-name Phasmovore) and Ash (Fuinseog) made a list of links to some of their writings about it in this conversation thread.

Source

Theangrylionshark, "Let's get something straight." 2014-07-10. Theangrylionshark (informal personal blog). http://theangrylionshark.tumblr.com/post/91364114706/lets-get-something-straight

Orion Scribner (frameacloud) and Malchior (phasmovore). Untitled conversation thread. 2014-07-14. Orion Scribner (informal personal blog). http://frameacloud.tumblr.com/post/91797968391/by-the-way-if-you-would-like-to-see-a-discussion-about

All above writings are linked here according to permission from their writers.

[Edit 2014-07-13: Changed article title, because I'm going to collect views on this topic from more than one author. Added a paragraph of my own observations on this new trend.]

[Edit 2014-07-14: Added a paragraph about some more perspectives.]

Content warnings: None. A linked article talks about animal suffering.

Several articles in Transgender Studies Quarterly used keywords of interest: trans-species and tranimal.

Lindsay Kelley's article "Tranimals" notes that "The term tranimals debuted at the 2009 annual meeting of the Society for Science, Literature, and Art panel 'TRANimalS: Theorizing the Trans- in Zoontology' (Kelley and Hayward 2009)" (p. 227).

In "Transxenoestrogenesis," Eva Hayward talks about the problem of the animal source of some forms of exogenous hormone therapy. Hayward observes, "historically, human bodies hormonally sex-transitioning from male to female have always been trans-species ('tranimal') bodies" (p. 256).

The full text of the journal is freely available online.

Source

TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1. 1-2 (May 2014).
http://tsq.dukejournals.org/content/1/1-2
http://tsq.dukejournals.org/content/1/1-2/255.full.pdf