Otherkin News

This blog post was written by Orion Scribner (frameacloud) on 2025 April 19 for Otherkin News, which is a volunteer run project. We welcome other people to submit articles about alterhumanity in current events. Learn more about this project and what we’re looking for.

Previously, we wrote an in-depth article about the F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act, a Republican proposed constitution amendment that proposes to criminalize allowing “non-human behavior” in public schools in Texas, which has been supported by the Governor. You can read it here. If you aren’t familiar with this news story yet, please read it first so that you can understand this one.

One more thing I noticed after I wrote my article is that the wording of the two F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act bills isn’t completely identical after all: one of them has a typographical error in it. The version filed as Texas House Bill 4814 (TX HB 4814) says the F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act stands for Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education, missing the final word of the initialism. The version filed as Texas House Bill 54 (TX HB 54) ends the initialism with Educational Spaces. I had assumed that its author, Republican Representative Stan Gerdes, must have filed the bill a second time because of this error, instead of correcting the introduced bill text afterward. However, in a post to his Facebook on March 14, Gerdes wrote that the bill

“now has the support of Governor Greg Abbott and Speaker Dustin Burrows, who recognize the importance of keeping distractions out of our classrooms. Speaker Burrows has reassigned our legislation as House Bill 54, a low bill number that signals its priority status in the Texas House! I’m grateful that our leadership is taking this issue seriously and ensuring that Texas schools remain places of learning, not roleplaying. I’ve appreciated the conversations I’ve had with my own Smithville ISD Superintendent on this issue—our educators should be focused on teaching, not managing classroom disruptions from kids pretending to be animals. This is common sense. Let’s get it passed.”

Given that the bill is associated with treating an urban legend as though it’s happening in real life, anything else he says about his bill is reasonable to view with doubt. Whatever the reason for the two different bill numbers, the bungled initialism is the one that most of the news articles repeat. At least one news source ends the initialism as “Education and Schools,” which doesn’t appear in either of the bill texts. I’m also skeptical of exactly what conversations Gerdes had with the Smithville ISD Superintendant, if any, for reasons that show up later in this post. I don’t recall seeing Burrows say anything about the bill, either.

Here is a round-up of some more of the media coverage about and response to the bill since I last wrote about it. This is a reference list, sorted alphabetically by surname of the author, with my own annotations about the accuracy of each article and any new information it contributed.

Bahari, Sarah (2025 March 17). Texas bill would ban ‘furry subculture’ from public schools. The Dallas Morning News. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/texas/2025/03/17/texas-bill-would-ban-furry-subculture-from-public-schools/ Archived 2025 April 8: https://web.archive.org/web/20250408185746/https://www.dallasnews.com/news/texas/2025/03/17/texas-bill-would-ban-furry-subculture-from-public-schools/

Media Bias Fact Check (MBFC) says that this Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper for a region of Texas has a right-center bias and high credibility. This article accurately says that the litter box rumor has been debunked, and that the bill is connected with Republican efforts to use taxpayer dollars for private schools, though it doesn’t bring up that this means defunding public schools or the connection with satirizing transgender students. This article adds important new information about the story: some written statements about the bill were provided directly to the Dallas Morning News for the above article from the legislator, Rep. Stan Gerdes, and a spokesperson for Gov. Greg Abbott’s office, Andrew Mahaleris. Bahari reports, “Gerdes acknowledged furries soon might show up at another place: the Capitol in Austin. ‘I fully expect the subculture to show up in full furry vengeance at the committee hearing,’ he said in a statement, adding that he will not tolerate theatrics during the legislative process.” Sounds like Gerdes meant for the bill to be bait for a spectacle. The same statement also claims that “he wrote the bill in response to an incident in Smithville ISD, but he did not elaborate. Smithville is about 45 miles southeast of Austin. Neither Gerdes nor the school district immediately responded to a request for more information Monday from The Dallas Morning News.” Over a month later, there still has been no public comment from that school district to substantiate Gerdes’s claim.

Billson, Chantelle (2025 March 26). Texas GOP lawmaker introduces Furries Act after falling for the litter-boxes-in-schools hoax. PinkNews. https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/03/26/stan-gerdes-texas-furries-act/ Archived 2025 April 2: https://web.archive.org/web/20250402063947/https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/03/26/stan-gerdes-texas-furries-act/

PinkNews is an online magazine focusing on LGBTQ+ pop culture for the UK and worldwide. MBFC says it has a left bias and high credibility. That may have been true once, but sadly, PinkNews has started using generative AI in their process for writing their articles, judging by a flag that appears on the end of some of the web addresses that they linked to in their article: /?utm_source=chatgpt.com. This reveals that PinkNews used the genAI ChatGPT as though it was a search engine for discovering those links. PinkNews also gives an inaccurate history of how the litter box urban legend arose and spread, giving the wrong dates and crediting the wrong people. PinkNews says the legend started in the early 2000s and only credits its popularity to a single deleted tweet from a random sports coach in 2023. This is very far away from the facts: the legend was invented decades later than that, in 2021 and 2022, and was very visibly popularized by a number of Republican politicians and public figures. The fact-checking sites Reuters, PolitiFact, and Snopes have all covered this history as part of debunking the urban legend. If PinkNews had been even partly overseen by a human who cares about writing accurate news articles, they would have proofread their machine-generated story against at least one of those fact-checking sites.

Bollinger, Alex (2025 March 24). GOP governor tells rally that kids are using litterboxes in classrooms. The crowd agreed. LGBTQ Nation. https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/03/gop-governor-tells-rally-that-kids-are-using-litterboxes-in-classrooms-the-crowd-agreed/ Archived 2025 March 26: https://web.archive.org/web/20250326051627/https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/03/gop-governor-tells-rally-that-kids-are-using-litterboxes-in-classrooms-the-crowd-agreed/

LGBTQ Nation is an online magazine in the US that specializes in queer-positive news. MBFC says it has a left bias and medium credibility because it doesn’t label its opinion articles and uses loaded words. LGBTQ Nation has had several pieces on the litter box urban legend. This article focuses on that aspect of the context of the bill, and especially on how a number of Republican politicians and public figures have promoted the urban legend during the past few years, and that its purpose was to criticize transgender students having access to public school restrooms. Otherwise, this article doesn’t add new information about the bill.

Codega, Lin (2025 March 19). A Texas conformity bill could impact tabletop roleplaying games in schools statewide. Rascal. https://www.rascal.news/texas-furries-act-tabletop-roleplaying-games-in-schools/ Archived 2025 March 20: https://web.archive.org/web/20250320225725/https://www.rascal.news/texas-furries-act-tabletop-roleplaying-games-in-schools/

Rascal is a site for news about role playing games and culture, run by three people. Rascal doesn’t have an entry in MBFC. Although it’s a small news source, this is an especially well written article that was cited in the article by Them.us. It offers some original insights to the story from a couple of lawyers, and looks at the bill from the angle of being part of another moral panic, similar to what happened in the 1980s when the Satanic Panic spread urban legends about Dungeons and Dragons being dangerous. A ban on role play is a ban on a part of the Constitutionally protected freedom of expression in public schools. One lawyer, Tess Lynch, compares cat ear headbands with the black armbands in the landmark case about students’ freedom of expression, Tinker v. Des Moines, which is the same thing that my partners Page Shepard, House of Chimeras and I said about it in our convention panel about anti-furry bills a couple of years ago. The other lawyer, Noah Downs, says that the bill text is worded in such a broad way that it could ban or criminalize school clubs for Dungeons and Dragons and many other play activities organized or approved of by teachers.

Esguerra, Vanessa (2025 March 20). A Texas bill could ban ‘furries’ from public schools—yes, really. The Mary Sue. https://www.themarysue.com/a-texas-bill-could-ban-furries-from-public-schools-yes-really/ or https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-texas-bill-could-ban-furries-from-public-schools-yes-really/ar-AA1BjM4r Archived 2025 March 23: https://web.archive.org/web/20250323101320/https://www.themarysue.com/a-texas-bill-could-ban-furries-from-public-schools-yes-really/

The Mary Sue is a feminist online magazine for women about geek culture. MBFC says it has a left bias and high credibility. It focuses on fact checking what the furry fandom is really like, as part of the magazine’s interest in fandoms, but only barely implies that the bill has an anti-LGBT context.

Fields, Alyssa (2025 March 17). Furries, Meowing in School Now a 'Radical Trend,' According to Lawmaker. The Dallas Observer. https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/texas-bill-aims-to-eliminate-furries-in-schools-21926996 Archived 2025 April 9: https://web.archive.org/web/20250409081416/https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/texas-bill-aims-to-eliminate-furries-in-schools-21926996

The Dallas Observer is a newspaper established in 1980 and appears to have a left bias, focusing on local businesses and lifestyle. It doesn’t have a listing in MBFC. The above article was cited in several other news sources because it has an interview with a member of the furry fandom, Andrew Kaiser, about what he thinks of the bill. Kaiser had been active in the fandom in Texas, but he’s one of many LGBTQIA people who move out of that state to flee conservative politics. Kaiser explained that since the fandom is known for having many LGBTQIA people in it, “any legislative discussion or any Republican talking points regarding furries are considered as a proxy attack on that [LGBTQ+] community.” Although the furry fandom has its sexual aspects, much of it is carefully kept separate from that, and animal characters and role-play are normal in children’s media and play. Kaiser pointed out that many conservative bills that are supposed to protect children from seeing anything remotely associated with sexuality are really “a disingenuous attack on people that [conservatives] don't like.”

McCormack, Caitlin (2025 March 17). Texas bill aims to ban barking, meowing and other ‘non-human behavior’ in schools to tackle furries trend. New York Post. https://nypost.com/2025/03/17/us-news/texas-bill-moves-to-ban-non-human-behavior-in-schools-to-eliminate-furry-trend/ Archived 2025 March 17: https://web.archive.org/web/20250328092550/https://nypost.com/2025/03/17/us-news/texas-bill-moves-to-ban-non-human-behavior-in-schools-to-eliminate-furry-trend/

MBFC says the New York Post is a newspaper with a right-center bias and medium credibility. I notice that the New York Post is a tabloid that has a consistently transphobic slant in its reporting, judging by the headlines in its transgender tag. This is relevant because this bill arose from anti-transgender urban legends. This is a poor article with no new scoop to offer of its own, and which fails to mention that there is no truth to the Republican politicians’ claims about furries disrupting schools. The New York Post treats the litter box urban legend as though it was fact.

Mion, Landon (2025 March 19). Texas lawmaker proposes bill targeting furries; measure seeks to ban 'non-human behavior' in schools. Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/texas-lawmaker-proposes-bill-targeting-furries-measure-seeks-ban-non-human-behavior-schools Archived 2025 April 6: https://web.archive.org/web/20250406225521/https://www.foxnews.com/politics/texas-lawmaker-proposes-bill-targeting-furries-measure-seeks-ban-non-human-behavior-schools

MBFC rates Fox News as a questionable source. Interestingly enough, even this article by Fox brings up that the litter box rumor is a debunked urban legend. However, Fox only says that the rumor “circulated online,” which is far less visibility than it demonstrably has had, even in this same article, where Republican politicians are promoting it as part of their platforms. Fox otherwise focuses on Gerdes and Abbott’s claims about furries being problems in schools. This allows the article to give the impression that there could be partly some substance to the claims about furries, even though they’re well-known to be baseless. It mentions that Abbott talked about “the furry issue as a motivating factor to allow private school choice vouchers,” but doesn’t explain that the vouchers would be made by sending taxpayer dollars away from public schools. Fox gave just enough of the facts to almost but not quite criticize Republican politicians or say something false.

Qureshi, Arshi (2025 March 20). ​​TEACHER'S PET: High school students identifying as cats & using litterboxes & leashes in class target of new crackdown with $25k fine. The US Sun. https://www.the-sun.com/news/13822175/texas-wants-ban-furry-culture-school/ Archived 2025 April 11: https://web.archive.org/web/20250411123606/https://www.the-sun.com/news/13822175/texas-wants-ban-furry-culture-school/

MBFC says the US Sun is an online-only tabloid with a focus on sensational news, a right bias, and mixed factual reporting due to failed fact checks and promotion of misinformation. The Sun outright says that the litter box urban legend is true, and fails to mention that it has been consistently debunked.

Ramirez, Juan Carlos (2025 April 6) Legislature should not focus on furries during current session. North Texas Daily. https://www.ntdaily.com/opinion/legislature-should-not-focus-on-furries-during-current-session/article_91a6ee7c-1f8c-4561-a665-5753a64b78bb.html Archived 2025 April 19: https://web.archive.org/web/20250419214919/https://www.ntdaily.com/opinion/legislature-should-not-focus-on-furries-during-current-session/article_91a6ee7c-1f8c-4561-a665-5753a64b78bb.html

Established in 1916, North Texas Daily is a student paper of the University of North Texas. MBFC doesn’t have an entry about this news source. Although this is an opinion article, it does well at summarizing various news sources related to this story. The author’s stance is that the bill distracts from real issues that lawmakers need to address about schools in the state. It doesn’t get into the context of Republican opposition to public schools or LGBT rights.

Riedel, Samantha (2025 March 26). Texas Republican Introduces Bill to Address the Nonexistent Problem of Furries in Schools. Them.us. https://www.them.us/story/texas-republican-legislation-furries-in-schools Archived 2025 April 10: https://web.archive.org/web/20250410001653/https://www.them.us/story/texas-republican-legislation-furries-in-schools

Them.us is an online magazine for LGBTQIA people, which MBFC rates as having a left bias and high credibility. This article is an accurate summary of the context around the bill. It also points out that the bill is "likely to fail as its predecessors have … not least because Texas legislators have filed over 10,000 bills in the 2025-2026 session so far.”

Villarreal, Daniel (2025 March 13). GOP legislator files bill to stop ‘furries’ from using litter boxes in schools. LGBTQ Nation. https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/03/gop-legislator-files-bill-to-stop-furries-from-using-litter-boxes-in-schools/ Archived 2025 March 14: https://web.archive.org/web/20250314064854/https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/03/gop-legislator-files-bill-to-stop-furries-from-using-litter-boxes-in-schools/

Another article from this online magazine. This is a good summary, focusing on the spread of the litter box urban legend among Republican politicians. In regard to the Smithville school district that Gerdes had said had a furry incident, this article notes that the district “serves only 1,885 students … [and no] known news reports covered the alleged incident.”

Villegas, Patti (2025 March 18). Texas Lawmaker Unleashes F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act: No More Barking In Classrooms. The Dallas Express. https://dallasexpress.com/education/texas-bill-would-ban-furry-behavior-in-schools/ Archived 2025 April 19: https://web.archive.org/web/20250419215048/https://dallasexpress.com/education/texas-bill-would-ban-furry-behavior-in-schools/

MBFC says the Dallas Express was founded in 2021 and has a right wing bias and medium credibility. This is a poor article because it fails to mention that the litter box rumor has been consistently debunked by fact-checkers as an urban legend, which is a crucial part of this news story. It makes it sound like the politicians are responding in a reasonable way to a bizarre youth fad. The Dallas Express selectively quotes the furry who was interviewed in the Dallas Observer to make it sound like he’s normalizing these behaviors in schools, instead of any of the parts where he said that it’s not happening like that.

Generally, what we see in this round-up of news articles is that right-wing news sources vary in what degree that they will admit that the Republicans who support the bill are basing it on a debunked urban legend. Meanwhile, left-wing news sources vary in how much they get into the context of the bill to explain what Republicans are getting at. If any of these articles make you feel concerned or unsafe, please read the part of my previous article about the bill talks about things that you can do, such as writing to your elected representative, or building solidarity with your local community.∎

Content warning: For this article, none. For the linked article: Adult content (description of body modification to genitals). Spiritual beliefs being equated with mental illness. Profanity. Clumsy analogy to transgender people.

Last May: A blog re-posted an interview with Luke, a Daonine-Sithe elf otherkin. This interview was supposedly originally published in “Dirty Bristow, a now dormant magazine,” but there’s no date or issue number given for when it was originally published.

Luke’s interview is mostly made of dubious claims. As Disinformation pointed out, “he worships Corellon, God of the Elves – a deity created for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.” I haven’t seen anyone else use his slang “Innate Species Persona (ISP),” and a search for that phrase only brings up his interview. I haven’t found evidence of people in the otherkin or therianthrope communities doing extreme body modifications at all, particularly not the one he describes. He claims there were groups of supposed otherkin back to the medieval ages, but there's no evidence of this. His description of the typical dragon otherkin doesn’t sound like he's been in the dragon community. His interview is the only Google result for the group Political Inclusiveness for Xenontic Individuals (PIXI). I don't know what "Xenontic" means, but a search for it mostly brings up role-playing resources.


Sources

Danny Smith (?), “Elf Reforms – an interview with an Otherkin.” 2013-05-28. Edge Trinkets (blog). http://edgetrinkets.com/2013/05/28/this-is-from-dirty-bristow-a-now-dormant/

Matt Staggs, “An Interview With An Otherkin.” 2013-05-28. Disinformation (online magazine). http://disinfo.com/2013/05/an-interview-with-an-otherkin/

Trigger warnings: nothing that I can think of.

The Forest Voice, an independent magazine “for those among us who are nonhuman in nature,” has today released its first issue, “Walking Man's Road,” as a free downloadable computer file (PDF) designed to be printed out on letter-size paper. It's listed on ZineLibrary,¹ and the file itself is hosted on Mediafire.²

The editor of the magazine, a winged person named Tsu, is accepting art, articles, and other media for the next issue. The submission deadline for the upcoming Spring issue is on 2012-03-01. See this post for details.³

See also this related article, shown earlier on Otherkin News: Last chance to submit articles to zine glamourbomb (2011-11-30).

- O. Scribner

( Sources )

Trigger warnings for this article: surgical body modification, body issues, gender issues, mental health.

Here's a list of some new projects, articles, blogs, and translations from the past few months. (And, in some cases, some that I discovered only in the past few months, but which existed earlier than that. I assume they could use a little publicity.) I intend to post a summary of new otherkin creations of this kind each month from now on. The highlights of the projects listed here include: plans to bring recognition for otherkin by means of something resembling the OpenID system, a couple articles about surgical body modification for otherkin, and several articles exploring whether being otherkin should be diagnosed as a mental variation.


NEW PROJECTS

Tsu, a winged person, is collecting entries for the first issue of a new otherkin ’zine, The Forest Voice. Tsu told me via e-mail that when finished, this will be available in both PDF and print-on-demand. The theme for the issue is “walking man’s road: the difficulty of living as nonhuman in the human world.” Do you have any writing or art to offer?
Trigger warnings: homesickness, but it's not currently described in a vivid way.

Spectrum-X, a mage, wants to write a “directory on post-human/species modification,” an organized collection of links that tell how people can physically transform themselves by means of virtual reality, costumes, and surgery. Send ideas! There’s not much to see there yet, but the directory will be at this web-site.
Trigger warnings: body issues, surgery. Currently not graphic, but may become graphic later.


NEW ARTICLES

“Feathertail’s otherkin FAQ,” by Feathertail, 2011-10-05,
Another introduction to otherkin, this one offering genuinely common questions with quite brief answers, well organized in sections: the basics; how to relate to otherkin; otherkin and religion; otherkin-ness and you.
Trigger warnings: none that I can think of.

“‘Non-human,’” by an anonymous bird otherkin, 2011-10-30.
On problems with calling ourselves “non-human:” it defines us by what we are not; and it denies our humanity, which is not the best solution.
Trigger warnings: none that I can think of.

“The skeptical otherkin #1: ‘Otherkin are delusional,’” by Feathertail, 2011-10-17.
An otherkin considers various aspects of how one can argue that otherkin are delusional.
Trigger warnings: mental health issues, ableist language.

“The skeptical otherkin #2: Relatively speaking,” by Feathertail, 2011-10-22.
Should otherkin be silenced so the concept won’t spread? Examining a slippery slope fallacy.
Trigger warnings: vividly describes religious intolerance.

“Transspecies diagnosis,” by Rua, 2011-09-27.
Rua, a sidhe, argues that the DSM-IVTR criterion for gender identity disorder (transgender) matches otherkin so closely that one need only swap the word “gender” for “species.” Rua argues that if we could get transspecies recognized as a mental “disorder,” it could be a step toward getting otherkin accepted as something for real… and acknowledges that this would be sort of an ironic way of accomplishing this.
Trigger warnings: gender issues, body issues, mental health issues, ableist language.

“Redefining p-shifting,” by Tsu, 2011-10-25.
Tsu argues that otherkin should consider surgery and virtual reality as a real way to attain physical transformation. Gives a few speculative examples.
Trigger warnings: body issues, surgery. Not graphic.

“I love you all; how can I help,” by Feathertail, 2011-10-21.
Forming plans to create an OpenID system for non-human avatars in virtual and augmented reality, as a way for otherkin to achieve mainstream recognition.
Trigger warnings: none that I can think of.

“Here’s how I can help,” by Feathertail, 2011-10-25
Sequel to the above article.
Trigger warnings: none that I can think of.

“Deconstruction of an idea,” by Feathertail, 2011-11-09.
Further thoughts on how to create an OpenID system for non-human avatars. Considering the role of a personality quiz in constructing such a thing.
Trigger warnings: none that I can think of.

“More on tagging,” by Feathertail, 2011-11-12.
Further thoughts on how to create an OpenID system for non-human avatars.
Trigger warnings: none that I can think of.

“The otherkin (Die Anderen - Otherkin),” by Apu Kuntur (Stefan N. K.), no date.
A dragon/seraphim otherkin points out the connection between dragons and angels: seraphim, the Biblical “fiery flying serpents.”
Original German, and English translation.
Trigger warnings: vivid description of metaphysical experiences.

“I, an angel? Flying With Angel Wings - The Path to Myself (Ich, ein Engel? Auf Engelsflügeln zur Erkenntnis),” by Apu Kuntur (Stefan N. K.), no date.
More thoughts on the similarities of dragons and angelic seraphim.
Original German, and English translation.
Trigger warnings: vivid description of metaphysical experiences.


NEW FOREIGN-LANGUAGE ARTICLES

“Pride – ett tal (Pride—a speech),” by Susitar, 2011-08-06.
(In Swedish.) Transcript of a speech about therianthropy, delivered at a Pride event by a wolf therian.
Trigger warnings: gender issues, body issues.

“Ich bin ein Drache (Die Otherkin-FAQ) (I am a dragon [The otherkin FAQ]),” by Apu Kuntur (Stefan N. K.), no date.
(In German.) Based on, but not completely a translation of, Baxil’s Draconity FAQ in English.
Trigger warnings: ableism.


NEW TRANSLATIONS OF ARTICLES FROM ENGLISH INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES

Laopa produced a Spanish translation of Wolf Van Zandt’s article "History of therianthropy and the therian community," which was originally in English.
Trigger warnings: mental health, metaphysics, brief description of some unhappy conflicts in the community.

“Smokowatość FAQ (Draconity FAQ),” by Baxil, Polish translation by Nufuwyr.
About those who call themselves dragons.
Trigger warnings: ableism.


NEW BLOGS

Kin Diet, by (author not stated?), first post 2011-10-02.
A collection of recipes selected to please various types of otherkin and therians.
Trigger warnings: this link sometimes describes and includes photographs of foods likely to make certain readers feel uncomfortable, including meat and blood.

- O. Scribner