Otherkin News

Content warnings: Cissexism.

October: An animated sit-com called Family Guy included a skit that parodied trans people by having a main character get "reassignment surgery" to become a lizard. An otherkin named DLF reports that this scene was in "Season 12, Episode 2, titled Vestigial Peter," and gives a transcript of the scene. A few people in the otherkin community wondered if this scene was a reference to otherkin. I'm confident that the writers weren't making a reference to therianthropes or otherkin, because the analogy the writers were making is common in cissexist jokes. Cissexist people often try to parody and undermine transsexuality by comparing it to a straw-man scenario in which a person mimics or tries to become another species.

I've seen much more offensive iterations of that tired joke than that. The most offensive one I've seen is the satirical article "Transspecied dog bites man is not news," which Jared Olar published simultaneously to Pekin Times (and several other newspapers) last March. Olar's mean-spirited and cissexist article is about a fictional six year old boy who wants to become a dog. It is supposed to be ridiculous that adults take the child seriously by speaking of the child as "transspecied," and giving him a "social transition," which includes switching to the pronoun "it." The article parodies the situation of a non-fictional young trans girl who became famous around that time, to whom Olar refers by name. Olar uses the "transspecied dog" to suggest that trans children are probably just playing make-believe, and are too young to know how they identify. I'm confident that Olar had not heard of therianthropes, otherkin, or animal people. It looks like Olar just invented the "transspecied dog" as a straw-man to pick at what Olar believes to be flaws in arguments for the legitimacy of transsexuality.



Sources

DLF (justanotherkin), untitled post. 2013-10-09. Just Anotherkin (personal blog). http://justanotherkin.tumblr.com/post/63560415302/what-episode-of-family-guy-was-that-did-it-actually
(I linked to that post with permission from DLF.)

Jared Olar, "Transspecied dog bites man is not news." 2013-03-03. Pekin Times. http://www.pekintimes.com/article/20130303/OPINION/130309948/1001/NEWS
(Warning: lots of pop-up ads, some of which even got through my ad-blockers.)

Trigger warnings: Publicity trouble, derision.

Grantland.com has a couple of articles about the recent documentaries that have animal people in them. Grantland, established in 2011, is an online magazine focusing on sports and pop culture. ESPN owns it.¹ Both of these articles come from Tara Ariano’s article series about television documentaries that Ariano considers to be “freak shows.” The tone is derisive. Yesterday’s article dealt with Boomer the Dog on Taboo USA.² Another article in the series, from last April, talks about the appearance of Steven and Timothy in “I think I’m an animal.”³

For a round-up of all news about the “I think I’m an animal” documentary, see this earlier post on Otherkin News, which I updated today with more links.



Sources

1. “Bill Simmons.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Simmons
(Bill Simmons is the editor-in-chief of Grantland.)
2. Tara Ariano, “Freak Show & Tell: Something to put all that ‘otherkin’ stuff into perspective.” 2013-06-11. Grantland. http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/79238/freak-show-tell-something-to-put-all-that-otherkin-stuff-into-perspective
3. Tara Ariano, “Freak Show & Tell: A lovingly illustrated interspecies romance.” 2013-04-30. Grantland. http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/75646/freak-show-tell-a-lovingly-illustrated-interspecies-romance

Trigger warnings: Publicity, social drama.

This Tuesday, at 10 PM Eastern Standard Time, a documentary about otherkin will air on the Logo TV channel. As such, bloggers and administrators of sites about otherkin should be prepared for more web traffic later this week. Regardless of what TV channels you get, anyone in the world will be able to watch the show on its official web-site.

Below, a chronological list of all the articles we've had on the Otherkin News blog about this upcoming documentary.

This post has been updated on 2013-06-12, to add more articles to this list.

2012-02-24: Media Exploiting Therians & Otherkin. Therianthrope Shiro tells people not to participate in this documentary.
2013-01-03: Upcoming otherkin documentary
2013-01-12: Upcoming otherkin documentary 2. Some background on Shiro's decision to participate in the discovery after telling others not to.
2013-01-20: When and where can we see Logo TV’s otherkin documentary?
2013-02-11: TV documentary about otherkin for April or May. We start to have a vague idea of when the episode will air.
2013-03-18: Otherkin Documentary to air on Logo on April 23rd at 10PM EST. We discover the air date and title of the episode: "I think I'm an animal." (Its working title was "Otherkin.")
2013-03-20: Otherkin Documentary, Preview on Youtube. It aired first in Russia.
2013-03-23: Otherkin documentary airs in other countries earlier than in US. It aired in Norway and Sweden.
2013-04-26: Grantland article about the documentary.
2013-04-27: Luna talks about having appeared in this documentary.
2013-04-29: Polls asking otherkin and therianthropes what they think of the documentary.
2013-05-18: Call for responses to the documentary.
2013-05-28: The documentary will be shown in the UK in July.
2013-06-12: Another Grantland article about the documentary.

Trigger warnings: violence, crime, trolling (harassment). Not described in graphic detail.

The following post uses excerpts from my newly updated free e-book, Otherkin Timeline, as well as excerpts from earlier posts on Otherkin News. This isn't a complete overview of everything on Otherkin News in 2011, just a selection of relatively significant events. During the latter half of this year, I became very active with researching current events in or related to the otherkin community, and began posting regularly to the Otherkin News blog. As a result, I have more information about events during the latter half of 2011 than the early half. Would you please help fill in some events from the first half of 2011?

During this year, an otherkin community blossomed on the blog-hosting site Tumblr.com. This includes the creation of a blog called ’Kin Speak, which people can post to anonymously. In the last couple of months of the year, the otherkin community on Tumblr came to be frequently vandalized and trolled (harassed), but the otherkin there didn't falter in their high level of activity. Meirya wrote about how the otherkin community on Tumblr differs from any before.

2011-01: Someone claiming to be from a casting department spammed the otherkin and therian forums to search for someone to interview for a purported documentary TV show about otherkin that would air on the Animal Planet channel. So far, nothing has come of it, but members of the WereList forums are researching it, with trigger warnings for that link: adult topics. Currently, it looks like it's a genuine casting call, not a phishing scam, but the show would also feature some adult topics.

2011-08-14: The first annual Mer-Con 2011, the world’s largest mermaid convention. Some of the attending self-proclaimed mer-people described a lifelong desire to become real mer-people, or assert that they are now real mer-people. Recently, a participant called Mermaid Shelley reflected on this and other events in the mermaid community during 2011. The mermaid community isn’t connected with the otherkin or therian communities, and is news to me and to the rest of the otherkin I've talked to.

2011-08-13?: A vampire crime. Lyle Monroe B., 19, broke into a stranger's apartment and injured the woman living there, and then told the police that he was a 500 year old vampire, but denied it later, claiming that he’d been under the influence of a drug. I haven’t found any follow-up articles explaining what the authorities concluded about him.

2011-08-29: Media. A polite article introducing otherkin to outsiders is published in a Polish-language women’s online magazine, We-Dwoje, which is otherwise mostly about fashion and health. The article is “Otherkin – a quirk, or a fantastic way to live?”

2011-09: A vampire/werewolf crime. Stephanie P., 18, was charged with accessory to the murder of Jacob H., 16 in July. One of six suspects for involvement in the murder, Stephanie told the news station that she believes herself to be part vampire and part werewolf. Later, she was ruled mentally unfit to stand trial. For a collection of all news articles on this topic, see the Atlanta Vampire Alliance (AVA) Media Center forums, with trigger warnings for what the articles describe: murder, rape, violence, blood-drinking, teenagers in a cult, animal sacrifice, some of which is described in graphic detail.

2011-10-04: Media. On Sweden’s channel 5, a TV series titled Outsiders aired an episode about the furry fandom. This includes at least one furry fan who is also a therian. Later, in acknowledgment of this episode, a newspaper editor publicly blogged a joke about killing a child who comes out as trans-species.

2011-11-13: Media. A TV documentary airs on Channel 4 about the Crimson Blood Wolf Pack in Texas, some of whom identify as werewolves, some as vampires. Soon, the vampire community condemned it for showing unsanitary and dangerous blood-drinking practices.

2011-11-17: An early group of elf people called the Silver Elves return one of their books to print: An Elfin Book of Spirits: Evoking the Beneficent Powers of Faerie.

2011-12-05: Ashlyn Nafina prints To Dream, Perchance to Soar, an urban fantasy novel with intentional themes of the otherkin experience.

2011-12-20: The Forest Voice, an independent magazine “for those among us who are nonhuman in nature,” releases its first issue.

- O. Scribner

Trigger warnings for this article: none that I can think of.

On October 4, 2011, on Sweden's channel 5, a TV series titled Outsiders aired an episode about the furry fandom. This includes at least one furry fan who is also a therian.

You can watch the video itself on the official web site, in Swedish without subtitles, although some interviews are in spoken English:

To clarify how these terms are actually defined in our respective communities: Furry fans are not synonymous with therianthropes; their subcultures and priorities differ. People in the furry fandom do not necessarily identify as animals, in a spiritual way or otherwise. The furry fandom is primarily about appreciation of arts depicting humanized (anthropomorphic) animals. People who are therianthropes definitely do identify as animals, but they do not necessarily participate in the furry fandom.

According to Lanina, a therian in Sweden, this episode showed these people:

“- Big cat therian Pao …who wears cat ears and tail.
- A bunch of fursuiters, Swedish (person with snow leopard/wolf fursona), American (wolf fursona) and German (purple wolf fursona).

“During the entire programme they defined furry as ‘being spiritually connected to an animal’ or ‘wanting to be an animal’.”¹

Lanina then wrote a few blog posts in Swedish regarding the episode: “Outsiders om furries (Outsiders on furries),” offering a definition of furry fans. “Freakshow,” about wariness about appearing on TV. “Live and let live,” about Pao, who herself has a blog where she is trying to clear up misconceptions after the episode.

Thanks to Lanina for bringing this to the attention of the Werelist forums. I have cited Lanina with her permission.

- O. Scribner

( Source )

Trigger warnings for this post: publicity; animal death.

Correction: I made large changes to this post May 25, 2022, to correct misinformation about Blackheart that had previously appeared in this post. The post had originally repeated false rumors that Blackheart had ritually killed a dog. I recently found reliable sources that set the record straight. I added the most relevant source for that, the retrospective by Chasnoff. I apologize for the error.

According to Channel 4 press releases, a TV documentary will air on November 13, 2011. This documentary will be about the Crimson Blood Wolf Pack, which is a handful of teenagers in San Antonio, Texas, some of whom identify as werewolves, some as vampires.

The alpha of the pack is teen werewolf Wolfie Blackheart, who had attracted media attention in early 2010 because online vigilantes had accused her of killing a dog. Animal Care Services, a police investigation, and a necropsy on the animal remains proved that Blackheart had neither harmed nor killed the dog. The dog had already been dead when someone who claimed to be the dog's owner had asked Blackheart to preserve the dog with taxidermy. Blackheart was aspiring to a career in taxidermy, and occasionally accepted requests to preserve people's pets. A friend had photographed the remains without Blackheart's consent, and then the photos somehow ended up online. During the investigation, the news picked up the story and played up the shock value. Since then, numerous news articles and a short news story on TV last year have been about Blackheart and the pack, often with shocking and misleading headlines.

- O. Scribner

( Sources )

Trigger warnings for this article: possible scam and/or undesirable publicity. Work-safe.

Once again, it seems that somebody is trying to scam the otherkin and therian communities. The scam artists probably figure that people who believe unusual things must be gullible by nature.

This time, a scam artist is claiming to be a casting department searching for otherkin to interview for a documentary on otherkin that would air on Animal Planet. Jarandhel Dreamsinger has the details, and points out a few clues that this is a scam: use of a temporary e-mail address, lack of identifying information, and the IP address comes from the wrong place.

Don’t respond to this supposed “Casting Department” for a TV show. They’re fishing for personal information.

[Edit 2011-01-11] At this point, there's evidence that could be interpreted to mean that the casting call could be a scam or it could be authentic. If the casting call is authentic, it's still likely to be a very bad thing. See the otherkin blog for details and other new information.

- O. Scribner