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[otherkinnews]

The purpose of this survey is to collect data about the experiences of people who feel sensations of nonhuman body parts, for example, wings or a tail. Some call these supernumerary phantom limbs, phantom shifts, otherlimbs, or astral limbs, though you may have other preferences for the words you use for your own experiences. If you haven't had those experiences, you can participate in this survey too. This survey was made for people who call themselves otherkin, therianthrope, furry, or any other potentially alterhuman or nonhuman identity. If you don't describe yourself with any of those words, you can participate in this survey too.

The survey will take you about 6 to 15 minutes. Everyone age 18 and up is welcome to fill out the survey at the below link, until it closes on July 6, 2024:

Survey Link

Who is running this survey and why: The person running this survey is Orion Scribner (they/them), an otherkin/therianthrope who has been making projects about these communities since 2005. I will use the results in my panel at an Internet-based convention later this year (OtherCon 2024), and in other future research projects.

[otherkinnews]

One anti-furry bill died, the other two wait to be heard

(This blog post was originally posted on the Otherkin News blog on DreamWidth by Orion Scribner on March 24, 2024.)

Content warnings: Rated G. An urban legend that describes an unsanitary situation. Sexism against transgender people, including attempts to prevent them from going to school or using facilities, and outing children to their parents. A straw-man version of furries being used to try to discredit transgender people, in a way that could cause trouble for people who identify as nonhuman.

So far this year, Republicans have proposed three pieces of legislation that are opposed to furries or people who identify as nonhuman. That’s something they started doing last year, inspired by an urban legend about litter boxes in public schools, which they made up in parody of transgender students asking to use school restrooms. We’ve been ending up calling these “anti-furry bills” as we keep track of them in our Otherkin News blog. Furry isn’t the accurate word, but it is the word that Republicans use in the urban legend and usually in the bills too. Every once in a while, I’m checking on the status of the bills, and trying to see if there are any new ones. Here is the update for this week.

1. Oklahoma House Bill 3084 (OK HB 3084) “Schools; prohibiting certain students from participating in school curriculum or activities; effective date.”

Background: We wrote about this bill in detail in a previous Otherkin News post. The bill says that furry students should be taken out of school by animal control. Its only sponsor (writer) is Justin Humphrey (he/him). This seems linked with his opposition to LGBTQ people, as well as his efforts to legalize animal fighting. Later, Jim Olsen (he/him) took over as principal sponsor of the bill. He proposed changing it to have the same text as an unrelated bill of his, one requiring public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments.

Update: The bill’s current status hasn’t changed since our last update. It’s still at 25% progression toward becoming a law. Its text hasn’t changed from what it was originally, so it's still about furries.

2. Mississippi House Bill 176 (MS HB 176) “Gender dysphoria; require school personnel to notify parents of student who request to be referred to as different gender or nonhuman.”

Background: This was introduced at the same time as the first bill. As we previously wrote about it, the bill is mostly against transgender students in a way that could put them in real danger. It would require schools to out transgender students to parents, and to allow faculty to not accommodate any student who “identif[ies] at school as a gender or pronoun that does not align with the child's sex on their birth certificate, other official records, sex assigned at birth, or identifying as an animal species, extraterrestrial being or inanimate object.”

Update: This bill’s current status is dead! Hooray! It died in committee on March 3. When a bill dies, that means that it won’t progress toward becoming a law.

3. Missouri House Bill 2678 (MO HB 2678) “Prohibits students from engaging in ‘furry’ behavior while at school”

Background: We previously wrote about this bill. The bill says to pull students out of school for being furries or purporting to be animals. The bill’s only sponsor is Cheri Toalson Reisch (she/her). This appears to be connected with her opposition to transgender people as well as her efforts to undermine public schools in favor of charter schools.

Updates: This bill hasn’t changed or moved forward. It’s still the same as it was when it was introduced. A hearing hasn’t been scheduled for it, and it’s not on a House calendar.

-

About the writer: This blog post was written by Orion Scribner (they/them), who has been a community historian and archivist for more than ten years.

[otherkinnews]

One of the anti-furry bills might become about religion in schools instead

(Orion Scribner originally posted the following article to the Otherkin News blog on Dreamwidth on February 25, 2024.)

Content warnings: Rated G. Mentions of abortion and transphobia.

Summary: Checking for updates on this year's three anti-furry bills in the US. None of them have progressed. The bill for calling animal control on furry students has a new sponsor. He wants to rewrite it. It would instead become a duplicate of his bill that says classrooms must display the Ten Commandments. The bill hasn't changed yet, so it's still an anti-furry bill.

I just checked for updates about the current status of all of the proposed laws (bills) in the US that are about furries or people who identify as animals. Anti-furry bills aren't based on anything that anyone in real life is doing: not participants of the furry fandom, not children pretending to be animals in the playground, and not people who really do identify as animals. Republicans say they wrote these bills because of an urban legend that schools provide litter boxes for students who identify as animals. According to fact-checkers Reuters and Snopes, no schools have ever done that. Republicans made up the urban legend and bills in parody of transgender students asking to use school restrooms. On the Otherkin News blog, we have previously written about all three of the anti-furry bills that are active, which you can read here and here. I searched on LegiScan to see if Republicans have introduced more anti-furry bills since then, but I didn’t find any new ones.

Two of the bills haven’t had any action since we posted about them before. Those are Mississippi HB 176 and Missouri HB 2678. They’re both still at 25% progression toward becoming laws. Their state government sites don’t say that hearings have been scheduled for them.

Oklahoma HB 3084 is also still at 25% progression, but some things have been happening with it. This is the bill where Republican Representative Justin Humphrey (he/him) proposed that students who are furries should be taken away from school by animal control. As of the 15th, the bill added a second sponsor, Republican Representative Jim Olsen (he/him). Olsen took Humphrey's place as the principal sponsor. Some other bills that Olsen sponsors are against abortion (OK HB 1537, HB 3013, and HJR 1046), and to allow children to not get vaccines (HB 2963 and HB 3249). Last year, Olsen sponsored some anti-transgender bills (HB 1011, HB 2177, and HB 2186).

On the 19th, Olsen proposed an amendment to HB 3084, the anti-furry bill. You can read his proposed amendment on Oklahoma’s site, or read it on a third-party site, LegiScan. This amendment would delete the entire text of the bill and replace it with an unrelated text. The text of this amendment is the same as another bill Olsen sponsored this month, HB 2962. It would no longer be about furry students at all. Instead, it would propose a law requiring public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. That would be unlikely to pass. In the US, public schools are government establishments, which prohibits them from displaying religious materials like that. I don't know what the advantage would be of duplicating the same text in two bills, or changing the topic of a bill so much. At this time, Olsen’s proposed amendment hasn’t been accepted. The bill’s current text is still what Humphrey originally wrote about furries.

On the 21st, the bill was withdrawn from the Rules committee. Then it was referred to the House Appropriations and Budget Education Subcommittee Committee. They haven't voted on it. I don’t see that they have scheduled a hearing for it. I'll keep watching for whatever happens next.

About the writer of this blog post: Orion Scribner (they/them) is a moderator on the Otherkin News blog.

[otherkinnews]

Republicans introduce a 7th anti-furry bill and work to undermine student freedoms on a wider scale

(This blog post was written by Orion Scribner and N. Noel Sol, originally posted on February 18, 2024 to the Otherkin News Dreamwidth, at this link.)

Content warnings: Rated G. An urban legend that describes an unsanitary situation. Sexism against transgender people, including attempts to prevent them from participating in sports and using facilities like everyone else, and attempts to stop them from transitioning.

Summary: In 2023, Republicans began to propose laws (bills) in the US that would be against people who identify as animals. They base these on an urban legend that says schools provide litter boxes for students who identify as animals. Republicans made up that legend in parody of transgender students asking to use school restrooms (Scribner and Sol, 2024). The newest of these bills is Missouri House Bill 3678 (MO HB 2678). It’s the third such bill in 2024, bringing the historic total of these bills up to seven. This bill was written as part of a Republican effort to undermine public schools (which can’t ban transgender students from using the right restrooms, and students have First Amendment rights) in favor of religious charter schools (where students aren’t protected in those ways). The following blog post is a seven minute read.

What the Missouri bill says

Missouri House Bill 3678 (MO HB 2678) has the title “Prohibits students from engaging in ‘furry’ behavior while at school.” You can read this bill and see the latest actions on its official site, the Missouri House of Representatives, or on a third-party legislation tracking site, LegiScan. This bill was introduced this week, on February 13th, and read a second time on the 14th. It would add a law into the Revised Statutes of Missouri (RSMo). It would go in the part of the state laws about education, in Chapter 167, titled “Pupils and Special Services.” It would say:

“A student who purports to be an imaginary animal or animal species or who engages in anthropomorphic behavior consistent with the common designation of a ‘furry’ while at school shall not be allowed to participate in school curriculum or activities. The parent or guardian of a student in violation of this section shall remove the student from the school for the remainder of the school day.”

The same as the other bills like it, this bill is based on an urban legend, not on anything that was done in real life by students, furries, and/or people who identify as animals (McKinney, 2022a). This bill's wording looks like it was based on a bill from another state, Oklahoma House Bill 3084 (OK HB 3084), or its predecessor last year, Oklahoma Senate Bill 943 (OK SB 943). It shares their inaccuracies: though there are real people who identify as animals, surveys show that most furries don’t, and the dictionary definition of the word “anthropomorphic” means resembling a human, not resembling an animal (Scribner and Sol, 2024).

Who wrote the bill, and what is its context with that author’s other motivations?

The Missouri bill’s only sponsor (writer) is Cheri Toalson Reisch (she/her). She is a Missouri Republican who has supported anti-transgender bills in the past. One of those is MO SB 39, which would ban transgender students from participating in their gender’s sports division (both in private and public schools, up to and including in colleges and universities). Another one is MO SB 49. It would bar minors from accessing gender transition related surgeries or medications, removes adult coverage of hormone replacement therapy and any gender-affirming or transitioning surgeries from the Missouri Medicaid program, and denies prisoners and inmates access to any surgeries related to gender transitioning. She described both these bills as a “great move in the right direction,” and has been vocally critical that they were not harsher (Central MO Info, 2023).

Reisch is familiar with the urban legend started by conservatives of students using litter boxes in school bathrooms. She has posted about it on Facebook, telling her constituents that it is actively happening in Missouri and accusing the Columbia school district of taking part in it, stating “This is happening in Columbia Public Schools also. Yes, the janitor has to clean the litter box” (McKinney, 2022a). That's never happened. Schools say they have not been providing litter boxes to students in this way, and even deny that they have had any students identifying or behaving as animals, according to reliable fact checking resources (Reuters, 2022; Palma, Snopes, 2023).

Reisch has a history of being especially critical of the Columbia school district, which is one of the largest and most successful school districts in the state (McKinney, 2022b). She’s used this urban legend to attack the district’s legitimacy. This may be because Reisch prioritizes independently-run charter schools over standard public schools. Earlier this year, she sponsored MO HB 1941, which would allow for charter schools to operate within the Columbia school district without the district’s sponsorship.

Why are Republicans criticizing public schools and favoring charter schools?

In the US, the normal types of schools for children up to about age 18 are called public schools. Families don’t have to pay for their children to attend them. They represent the ideal that everyone growing up in the country should have equal access to school, regardless of income, class, race, religion, or ability. Because public schools are government establishments, the US Constitution protects the students’ rights there. The First Amendment of the Constitution protects the freedom of speech and religion of everyone, and that’s for students in public schools, too. In the landmark 1969 case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, students sued because they had gotten suspended for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. The Supreme Court decided that it would be as tyrannical to prevent students from expressing political opinions within public schools as it would be in any other government establishments. The Court said students don’t “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” In 1948, McCollum v. Board of Education had decided that public schools can’t give religious instruction during the school day. In 1962, Engel v. Vitale decided they can’t make students pray (Pew Research Center, 2019). Public school dress codes often aren’t as fair as they should be, but for the most part, their students can wear what they want and what their parents allow.

In contrast, what are known as charter schools in the US are privately owned, so they’re allowed to have requirements or education goals which would be considered a violation of the First Amendment. Some of them have religious affiliations and may be owned or operated by religious organizations. This can affect the way the school is run. For example, Oklahoma charter St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School has planned Catholic religious instruction classes, and the school’s active and intentional participation in what it refers to as “the evangelizing mission of the Church” (Fitzpatrick, 2023). Charter school dress codes can be much more strict. They are often segregated by gender stereotypes, forcing girls to wear skirts and boys trousers, no exceptions. This has been challenged in some places against specific schools, such as in North Carolina earlier this year in a lawsuit against the Charter Day School Inc (Chung, 2023). These challenges are the outlier and not the norm, however; gender-segregated dress codes are still a very common practice for charter schools overall. Charter schools also require applications and choose students based on random lottery systems. However, studies find that charter schools are more likely to ignore parents inquiring about the enrollment process if the student has a disability or other special needs (Darville, 2018). Unlike public schools, they don’t welcome everyone.

The freedom of expression in public schools is important for transgender students. In 2020, the case ​​G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board decided in favor of transgender-friendly restroom policies in high schools. This precedent helps protect transgender students’ rights in public schools, but doesn’t apply to charter schools. During the course of the case, the Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund told the Court why to decide against transgender rights. In an effort to invalidate transgender people, the Fund compared transgender people to otherkin. The Fund used the word “otherkin,” and described them at length, mostly accurately but derisively (Brief Amicus Curiae, 2017, G.G. v. Gloucester Cty Sch Bd). This case was part of what inspired the Republicans to later make up the litter box urban legend. We don’t know if that particular brief inspired the legend too.

Republicans may be promoting charter schools because this would give them greater control over impressing their views about gender, religion, and politics on young generations. They may be undermining public schools because the separation of church and state limits their power to do so there. The urban legend and these bills are part of that.

Background about all of the furry bills and the urban legend that inspired them

To learn about this year’s first two anti-furry bills, read our post about them from last week (Scribner and Sol, 2024). That post also summarizes the four anti-furry bills last year, and the litter box urban legend. For further information about those aspects, you can watch our lecture about last year’s bills and what you do about bad bills (Chimeras, Scribner, and Shepard, 2023), and watch Chimeras’s lecture about the litter box urban legend (Chimeras, 2022).

What happens next with Reisch’s anti-furry bill?

The bill is at 25% progression toward becoming a law. The House heard the bill twice, but it hasn’t been voted on. At the time that we write this blog post, they haven’t scheduled the bill’s next hearing.

About the writers of this blog post

We are Orion Scribner (they/them) and N. Noel Sol (she/they), a couple of dragons. We never write articles with the assistance of procedural generation or so-called artificial intelligence (AI), and that type of content isn’t allowed on Otherkin News.

References

“Brief Amicus Curiae of Public Advocate of the United States, U.S. Justice Foundation, and Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund in Support of Petitioner.” Gloucester County School Bd. v. G. G. ex rel. Grimm, No. 16-273, 2017 WL 192454 (Jan. 10, 2017). http://files.eqcf.org/cases/16-273-amicus-brief-public-advocate-et-al/

Central MO Info (May 19, 2023). “Representative Toalson Reisch Disappointed in Senate’s Version of Trans Bills.” Central MO Info. https://www.centralmoinfo.com/representative-toalson-reisch-disappointed-in-senates-version-of-trans-bills/

Chung, Andrew (June 26, 2024). “US Supreme Court turns away case on charter school's mandatory skirts for girls.” Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-turns-away-case-charter-schools-mandatory-skirts-girls-2023-06-26

Darville, Sarah (Dec. 21, 2018). “Want a charter school application? If your child has a disability, your questions more likely to be ignored, study finds.” Chalkbeat. https://www.chalkbeat.org/2018/12/21/21106398/want-a-charter-school-application-if-your-child-has-a-disability-your-questions-more-likely-to-be-ig/

Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962). https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/370/421.html

Fitzpatrick, Cara (Sept. 9, 2023). “The Charter-School Movement’s New Divide.” The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/charter-schools-religion-public-secular/675293/

G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board. 972 F.3d 586 (4th Cir. 2020). https://casetext.com/case/grimm-v-gloucester-cnty-sch-bd-8

House of Chimeras (Aug. 12, 2022). "Litter Boxes in School Bathrooms: Dissecting the Alt-Right’s Current Moral Panic." OtherCon. https://youtu.be/WVjXOmN2IlU

House of Chimeras, Orion Scribner, and Page Shepard (2023). “Litter Box Hoax 2: Legislature Boogaloo.” OtherCon 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsXy_ctC4Jc&t=1425s

Legiscan. MO HB 2678. https://legiscan.com/MO/bill/HB2678/2024

Legiscan. MO HB 1941. https://legiscan.com/MO/bill/HB1941/2024

Mccollum v. Board Of Education, 333 U.S. 203 (1948). https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/333/203.html

McKinney, Rodger (Aug. 25, 2022). “State Rep. Cheri Reisch criticized for 'unwarranted' claim that CPS students use litterboxes.” Columbia Daily Tribune. https://www.columbiatribune.com/story/news/politics/elections/local/2022/08/25/state-rep-cheri-reisch-criticized-for-unwarranted-claim-that-cps-columbia-students-use-litterboxes/7895082001/

McKinney, Rodger (Feb. 6, 2022). “State Rep. Cheri Reisch states 'Columbia sucks' when referring to public schools in education hearing” Columbia Daily Tribune. https://www.columbiatribune.com/story/news/education/2022/02/06/cheri-reisch-states-columbia-sucks-when-referring-to-cps-in-education-hearing-mo-leg-basye/6662719001/

Missouri House of Representatives. MO HB 2678. https://house.mo.gov/Bill.aspx?bill=HB2678&year=2024&code=R

Missouri Senate. MO SB 49. https://www.senate.mo.gov/23info/BTS_Web/Bill.aspx?SessionType=R&BillID=44407

Missouri Senate. MO SB 39. https://senate.mo.gov/23info/BTS_Web/Bill.aspx?SessionType=R&BillID=44496

Palma, Bethania. (January 30, 2023). “How Furries Got Swept Up in Anti-Trans 'Litter Box' Rumors.” Snopes. https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/01/30/how-furries-got-swept-up-in-anti-trans-litter-box-rumors/ Archived on March 30, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230330232007/https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/01/30/how-furries-got-swept-up-in-anti-trans-litter-box-rumors/

Pew Research Center (Oct. 3, 2019). “Religion in the Public Schools.” https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/10/03/religion-in-the-public-schools-2019-update/

Reuters Fact Check (October 18, 2022). “Fact Check-No evidence of schools accommodating ‘furries’ with litter boxes.” https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-furries-rogan-litterbox-idUSL1N31J1KT Archived February 13, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230213110524/https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-furries-rogan-litterbox-idUSL1N31J1KT

Scribner, Orion, and N. Noel Sol (Feb. 9, 2024). “Will Oklahoma Call Animal Control on Students?” Otherkin News. https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/92680.html Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969). https://openjurist.org/393/us/503

[otherkinnews]

News Sites Mistake Video of Festival Attendees As Transspecies Protestors

(This blog post was written by the House of Chimeras, originally posted on February 16, 2024 to the Otherkin News Dreamwidth, at this link.)

Summary News reports claiming that a transspecies activist protest took place in Berlin, Germany in September 2023 is inaccurate. These fictitious stories are based on misinformation and assumptions made regarding a real video and of photographs taken of an event that took place in Berlin. The real event consisted of a gathering of people who partake in puppy play.

The Claim In the fall of 2023, multiple news agencies began publishing articles relaying that many people who identified as dogs, or who were transspecies, had gathered in Berlin, Germany in early September.

Several news sources claimed their appearance was part of a BDSM subculture street event (McManus) while other sources claimed it was part of a protest regarding transspecies rights or were otherwise “trans-species activists.” (Salvoni; Bishop)

News articles relating to this story were accompanied with either video clips or stills from a video said to have been taken during the claimed event.

Some stories claimed this event included “hundreds” of people (Salvoni, McManus), while several articles even claimed, around “1,000.” (Kato; Salvoni; Pandey; Bishop; Pisani, Jain)

Several stories also have insinuated or outright said that people called animal control to the event. (Kato; Pandey; Bishop; Jain)

Several of the news outlets sharing the story mentioned also therians and/or furries by name in relation to the event. (Kato; Pandey; Bishop; Jain)

The story was shared on news websites including GBNnews, DailyMail, the New York Post, the DailyStar, and IndiaTimes, among others.

This story is fictitious.

The Reality While the videos and photographs are genuine and there was indeed an event that took place in Berlin where multiple people were dressed in dog-inspired attire, those who attended were neither protesting nor were self-identified transspecies people. (Chacón; McCreary)

The truth was the video and photos were taken during the Folsom Europe event. Folsom Europe is an annual, multi-day festival celebrating kink, fetish and alternative sexuality subcultures. (Chacón; McCreary) Those among the leather and BDSM crowd included those interested in puppy play. (McCreary)

Puppy play (also called pup play) refers to a type of roleplay based around submissive/dominant interactions between an adult human adopting the characteristics of a domestic dog (the “pup”) and an adult human taking the role of an owner (also called a “handler”) for an agreed upon duration. Puppy play is not about identifying as a dog. It is merely a form of roleplay. (Langdridge & Lawson)

The videos and photos in question were taken during an event called the “puppy walk” that took place on the 9th as part of the larger festival. (Chacón; McCreary; Tereszcuk) A post from the events official Facebook page stated the event included around “400 puppies.” (Folsom Europe e.V.)

Further Context The misrepresentation and outright fabrications of this story is sadly part of a larger trend among conservative news agencies. (House of Chimeras, Scribner, and Shepard, 2023)

In recent years, there has been a dramatic rise in claims that the existence of transgender people is detrimental to society at large and there has been a sharp increase in anti-trans related bills being proposed and even passing within the past few years. The use of claims of people who identify as animals has increasingly been used as part of an effort to attack the transgender community. (House of Chimeras, 2022; Chacón)

Conservatives have a long history of branding unrelated events and people as “transspecies” for their own political gain. (House of Chimeras, 2021) Over the past few years there has also been a sharp increase of people making wild claims regarding “furries,” but using the term to mean people who identify as animals rather than the fans of anthropomorphic animals that furries actually are. (House of Chimeras, 2022) Within the past two years this has taken the form of various false claims regarding people identifying as animals asking for bathroom accommodations in public schools across the United States. (House of Chimeras, 2022; House of Chimeras, Orion Scribner, and Page Shepard; McCreary)

References Bishop, Holly. “Woke nonsense! Hundreds of humans identifying as DOGS gather in Berlin,” GB News, 21 September 2023, https://www.gbnews.com/news/world/gender-row-identity-woke-dogs-identifying-berlin

Chacón, Marcos Martínez. “Video shows fetish festival attendees, not ‘trans species’ rights protestors,” APNews, 3 October 2023, https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-trans-species-protest-fetish-festival-671841239565 .

Folsom Europe e.V., Facebook, 8 September 2023, https://www.facebook.com/FolsomEurope/posts/pfbid02HeyVkZjQ5Z1zug8E5aqyWQMVc61bReW8BWJxgwYJAZQTYsFDRgW3iFZ3UmNjBjdHl

House of Chimeras "Litter Boxes in School Bathrooms: Dissecting the Alt-Right’s Current Moral Panic." (12 August 2022). https://houseofchimeras.neocities.org/Lectures

House of Chimeras "The Use and Misuse of The Term Transspecies." (14 August 2021). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miSyXSesyzw

House of Chimeras, Orion Scribner, and Page Shepard. “Litter Box Hoax 2: Legislature Boogaloo.” OtherCon 2023. 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsXy_ctC4Jc&t=1425s

Jain, Anusha. "Viral Video: People Who Identify As Dogs Gather In Berlin For This Strange Meetup." India Times. 21 September 2023. https://www.indiatimes.com/trending/wtf/a-group-of-people-identifying-as-dogs-gathers-in-berlin-615611.html

Kato, Brooke. "Hundreds of people who identify as dogs gather in city center: ‘Call animal control’." New York Post. 19 September 2023. https://nypost.com/2023/09/19/hundreds-of-people-who-identify-as-dogs-gather-in-city-center-call-animal-control/

Langdridge, Darren & Lawson, Jamie. “The Psychology of Puppy Play: A Phenomenological Investigation.” Archives of Sexual Behavior, Volume 48, (2019): pages 2201–2215.

McCreary, Joedy. “False claim that people in dog costumes were part of 'trans-species' protest | Fact check,” USA Today, 10 October 2023, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/10/12/trans-species-rights-no-video-shows-fetish-festival-fact-check/71154892007/

McManus, Leigh. “Hundreds of people who ‘identify as dogs’ gather in major city to bark and howl,” DailyStar, 22 September 2023, https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/hundreds-people-who-identify-dogs-31001429

Pandey, Nikhil. "People Who Identify As Dogs Gather In Berlin, Prompting Calls For Animal Control." New Delhi Television Limited (NDTV). 20 September 2023. https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/people-who-identify-as-dogs-gather-in-berlin-prompting-calls-for-animal-control-4408339

Pisani, Joe. “What has ‘human dog’ unleashed?” The News-Times, 12 October 2023, Page A11.

Salvoni, Elena. “Are they barking mad? Hundreds of people who identify as DOGS gather to bark and howl at each other in Germany,” DailyMail, 21 September 2023, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12544297/Hundreds-people-identify-DOGS-gather-bark-howl-Germany.html

Tereszcuk, Alexis. “Fact Check: Video Does NOT Show 'Trans Species Rights' Protest In Germany -- People Barking Like Dogs Were At A Fetish Events Rally,” LeadStories, 4 October 2023, https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2023/10/fact-check-video-does-not-show-trans-species-rights-protest-in-germany-people-barking-like-dogs-were-at-a-fetish-events-rally.html .

[otherkinnews]

I appreciate the need for a tl;dr, because my article is rather long. However, your suggested summary is slightly off from my article's intended message, and I don't want it that to be missed. I'm saying that, so far, the sponsors aren't trying to do that, in the sense that they aren't earnestly pursuing the anti-furry aspects of these bills. They're not very interested in getting those passed into law. The anti-furry (parts of) bills are jokes that Republicans are making and then allowing to die in committee, for tactical reasons. Instead, the sponsors' intentions with these so-called "crazy bills" are:

1. to use the Republicans' urban legend about furries to satirize transgender rights, to support the anti-transgender aspects of bills that the sponsors do pursue in earnest and are passing into law. And:

2. to attract attention away from unrelated bills that the sponsors pursue in earnest. For example, the anti-Hispanic bills that this year's sponsors introduced at the same time, OK HB 3133 and MS HR 17.

Could some bills eventually become laws that ban supposed animal-like attire, identification, and behavior in schools? Maybe, it's not impossible, schools have had more absurd rules, but it might not be upheld because it would violate students' Constitutional rights to freedom of expression.

Are Republicans trying to pass laws that ban furries from schools? Maybe, but not especially, not with as much commitment as they have about other things.

With that in mind, I suggest this as a more accurate elevator-pitch of what I meant with my article...

tl;dr: Republicans are trying to support or distract from their sexist and racist bills by writing some that are partly based on their urban legend about furry students. So far, no bills are sure to pass into law with parts that would be against furries or people who identify as animals.

Will Oklahoma Call Animal Control on Students?

Content warnings: Rated G. Sexism against transgender people. Adults who cause danger or distress for children by outing them as transgender or showing them animal bloodsports.

Summary: In 2023, Republicans in the US began to propose laws (bills) that would be against furries or people who identify as animals. They continue to do so in 2024. The first two such bills of this year are Oklahoma House Bill 3084 (OK HB 3084) and Mississippi House Bill 176 (MS HB 176). Read on for information about these bills from this and last year, the urban legend that inspired them, what may happen next, and what you can do. This five page article (plus references) is a twelve minute read.

Humphrey’s anti-furry bill in Oklahoma

Republican Representative Justin Humphrey (he/him) specializes in writing bills that are intentionally bizarre so they will attract attention, and then cleaning them up later so that they will pass into law. On December 6, he wrote OK HB 3084, as its only sponsor. He prefiled it on January 17. It was introduced for its first reading on February 5. Here is the bill on Oklahoma’s official site, and on the third-party site Legiscan. It proposes a new law, which would read in full: 

“Students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries at school shall not be allowed to participate in school curriculum or activities. The parent or guardian of a student in violation of this section shall pick the student up from the school, or animal control services shall be contacted to remove the student.”

In Humphrey’s interview with Rolling Stone about this, he specifically said that he wrote the furry bill in response to having heard about students using litter boxes in school. The Stone pointed out that that’s an urban legend that never happened at all, but he thinks it’s happened sometimes, if not widespread. He said that “furry” is the common name for a “mental illness” and “sexual habit,” and that there’s an “actual psychological term” for it, which he didn’t say because he found it “very, very difficult to pronounce” (Ehrlich, 2024). 

He probably was referring to “anthropomorphic behavior,” which he wrote in his bill text. That isn’t a psychological term or a mental illness, it’s about cartoon characters. The furry fandom uses “anthropomorphic animals” as a synonym for furries, fictional talking animal characters. “Anthropomorphic” often gets misused to mean “animal-like,” but its literal meaning is “human-like.” Humphrey’s wording would suffice to expel all students from a school: kids who act like animals and kids who act like humans. He likely based his bill on last year’s dead Oklahoma Senate Bill 943, which he didn’t write, but which also used the word.

Humphrey’s bill is the first that says to call animal control on furries. Would they refuse to pick up a student, or could this really cause students to be arrested and detained? Animal control is dictated by the local government (Bradshaw and Vankavage). Sometimes it may be outsourced to contractors who wouldn’t respond to this bizarre request, but in many cases it’s managed by local law enforcement. For example, one Oklahoman city ordinance says that all its animal control officers who are not already part of law enforcement “possess all authority of a police officer of the city for enforcing these animal regulations” (Vinita city code 2005 5-3-19). Humphrey explained that this part is a joke that he doesn’t intend to stick to, though, saying, 

“if you want to treat these people as actual animals, you call animal control. I’ll be happy to rewrite the language [to replace ‘animal control’ with mental health professionals]. But right now, I put that in there to make the point. A sarcastic point” (Erhlich, 2024). 

(Bracketed text in original.) Introducing a bill with an absurd part and then deleting or altering it to let it pass is a tactic that we see in one of last year’s bills, and it’s a favorite tactic of Humphrey’s.

The day after Humphrey filed his furry bill, he called it his “crazy” bill, saying, “I’ve laughed and said, well, we ought to neuter them and vaccinate them and send them to the pound." KOCO News reported, “Humphrey said although it may not become law, he wants to bring attention to what he called a problem” (Jones, 2024). Perhaps, like the urban legend that inspired it, the bill’s purpose is to attract attention by being intentionally absurd. It makes up a guy to get mad at: it describes an invented situation that has never happened, then recommends penalties for that imaginary situation, and those penalties themselves are something that may not be realistically carried out, or which would have absurdly high-stakes consequences. Humphrey’s furry bill doesn’t mention transgender people, but he wrote it in reference to an urban legend that parodies transgender people. Humphrey has also made many public remarks against transgender people, and he has supported anti-transgender bills (Murphy, 2021).

Other Representatives believe he may have intended for the absurdity of his furry bill to distract attention from more serious bills. On the same day that he prefiled this, he also filed a racially discriminatory bill about Oklahomans of Hispanic descent, House Bill 3133 (Jones, 2024).

Part of Humphrey’s amusement here is that he has a beef with animal control. In addition to his hostilities toward LGBTQ people, one of his long-term goals is to reduce the legal penalties for cockfighting from felony to misdemeanor. Throughout the US, this blood sport is illegal, and it is a federal crime to bring a child under age sixteen to any animal fighting events (Humane Society). Humphrey approves of allowing children there, saying, “You’re dang skippy I’ll take my kid to a chicken fighting before I’m gonna take them to see a drag queen” (Leigh, 2023).

This year’s anti-transgender and anti-furry bill in Mississippi

Introduced on January 17, MS HB 176 would require schools to out transgender students to parents, and to allow faculty to not accommodate any student who 

“identif[ies] at school as a gender or pronoun that does not align with the child's sex on their birth certificate, other official records, sex assigned at birth, or identifying as an animal species, extraterrestrial being or inanimate object.” 

As the nonprofit journalism site Mississippi Free Press noted, “There are no known incidents of Mississippi schoolchildren identifying as aliens or inanimate objects, but the idea of children identifying as animals may stem from an unsubstantiated urban myth about litter boxes that spread among Republican officials in recent years” (Harrison, 2024). Here is the bill on Mississippi’s official site, and on the third-party site Legiscan. The bill’s seven authors are all Republican Representatives: Charles “Chuck” Blackwell (main author), William Arnold, Randy Boyd, Larry Byrd, Dan Eubanks, Jimmy Fondren, and Donnie Scoggin. In the same month, Blackwell also sponsored the bill MS HB 303 (about digital currencies) and co-sponsored the bill MS HR 17 (for deporting undocumented immigrants back to Mexico) (TrackBill). 

An overview of last year’s anti-furry bills

Important background for what’s happening is that last year in the US, sexists introduced more than five hundred bills to limit the rights of transgender people (Reed, 2023). Four of those were also against furries or people who identify as animals. They were mainly against the rights of transgender students, and also opposed “a student's perception of being any animal species other than human” (North Dakota House Bill 1522) or “anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries” (Oklahoma Senate Bill 943). 

The text of the third, Indiana Statehouse Bill 380, only talked about dress codes and “disruptive behavior.” Later, this was amended to say “distractive behavior.” However, its writer said that it was to prevent “imitating or were behaving like a furry” (Herron, 2023). The bill’s unspoken real aim was to prevent transgender students from dressing as their gender. 

The fourth was a proposed amendment to Montana Senate Bill 544. It would have changed this internet censorship bill to also censor “acts of transgenderism,” which it defines as “a person being in the mental state of believing the person is transgender or transspecies” (Scribner, Shepard, and Sol, 2023). The word “transgenderism” is a dogwhistle used by people who oppose transgender rights. “Transspecies” is not typically thought of as a subset of it.

By the end of 2023, what came of those four bills? The line about animals was later deleted from the North Dakota bill, though it was still anti-transgender (Scribner, March 14, 2023). It passed on May 18, becoming law that will oppose the rights of transgender students. Last year’s Oklahoma bill died in committee. The Indiana bill passed on May 4, and will prohibit “distractive behavior” in schools. The Montana bill passed on May 19, and it’s still a clumsy plan for internet censorship, but the final text did not use the amendment that talked about transgender or transspecies (Legiscan). So far, no laws have passed with texts that mention anything along the lines of furries or identifying as nonhuman.

What are anti-furry bills really about?

These bills happened because of an urban legend. In parody of transgender students, Republicans made up a story that schools have litter boxes for students who identify as cats. Fact-checking site Snopes has been debunking this legend (Palma), as has Reuters Fact Check. This panel by a historian gives very detailed information about the legend’s development (Chimeras, 2022). Republicans imply through this legend that letting transgender students use the restroom that matches their gender identity would be as ridiculous as giving litter boxes to students who identify as animals.

What are the facts about people who identify as animals, if any exist? Surveys of the furry fandom show that most people who call themselves furries do not identify as animals (Plante et al, 2016, pp. 113-114). However, there are real people who sincerely identify as animals or nonhuman beings. Many call themselves therianthropes or otherkin (Scribner, 2023, “Simple introduction”). Sexists use the word “transspecies” to parody transgender people. However, a few transgender people call a nonhuman aspect of themselves transspecies (Chimeras, 2021). None of them did the things in schools that the urban legend says, so the legend isn’t true, and the legend wasn’t created in response to them. The threatening intent of the legend and bills is toward transgender people, but could cause trouble for furries and people who identify as animals.

Are there people who think of their gender identity as something nonhuman, and is that based on or part of the concept of being transgender? Transgender people who don’t feel they are a woman or man only or all the time have a nonbinary gender. Some people feel so different from a woman or man that they say their gender is something other than human. Since 2014, some call themselves xenogender, meaning “alien gender.” This can be a metaphor for something difficult to put into words, and they do not necessarily think of themselves as literally nonhuman, though some do. Surveys show that most nonbinary people define their gender in relation to being a woman or man; only 1.7% of nonbinary people call themselves xenogender or a variation on that word, and no other xenogender identity comes close to common (Gender Census, 2023). However, identifying as nonhuman is not inherently a form of being transgender, and was not developed based on the concept of being transgender.

What happens next for Humphrey’s anti-furry bill?

On February 5 and 6, it had its first and second readings, and it was referred to the House Rules Committee to read it next. That Committee has seven Republicans and two Democrats (State of Oklahoma). We’ll see if they let it die the same as last year’s Oklahoma bill, or if they vote for it to progress toward passing in some form. Remember the aforementioned interview where Humphrey said he doesn’t expect it to pass. Its purpose is to make “a sarcastic point” and attract attention away from other bills.

What happens next for the Mississippi bill? 

The day it was introduced, MS HB 176 was referred to the Mississippi House Education Committee and still waits for them to vote on it. Given that the Committee has a majority of Republicans (according to its government site and legislation tracking site, BillTracker.com), and the bill’s similarity to the North Dakota bill that passed last year with the portion about non-humans deleted, they’re likely to pass this bill in some form. The director of the Mississippi branch of the Human Rights Campaign, Rob Hill (he/him), said, 

“We’ve not seen this kind of bill in Mississippi before, and we hope that our leaders will resist another effort to stigmatize and isolate transgender and nonbinary youth and their peers [...] This is a very dangerous bill. It’s dangerous for the lives of youth … and it further perpetuates Mississippi’s image of being a place of discrimination” (Harrison, 2024).

What can you do?

Page Shepard (they/he), House of Chimeras (they/them), and I presented a panel about the bills last August. In the recording of our panel, skip to the timestamp 23:44 to hear what ordinary people can do about bad bills. In the written script of our lecture, see Slides 21 through 25.

About the author of this article

I’m Orion Scribner (they/them), and I’ve been writing and researching as an alterhuman community historian for more than ten years. I’m a moderator on Otherkin News, a volunteer-run blog about current events relevant to the alterhuman communities. My partner N. Noel Sol (she/her) did some editing in this document, especially in regard to animal control. Thanks for proofreading by my partner system the House of Chimeras (they/them), and my colleague Xylanth (it/its). I never write articles with the assistance of procedural generation or so-called artificial intelligence (AI), and that type of content isn’t allowed on Otherkin News.

References

BillTrack50. "Mississippi House Education Committee." https://www.billtrack50.com/committee/4245#billReferral 

Bradshaw, A. and L. Vankavage. “The Role of Local Government in Animal Control.” Humane Animal Control.  https://resources.bestfriends.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/Chapter%202_Role%20of%20Local%20Government%20in%20Animal%20Control.pdf?bG9ehcLSrIR08a1N_X1wbpYDzgy8_orb 

Vinita city code 2005 5-3-19: ANIMAL CONTROL OFFICER; IMPOUNDMENT OF ANIMALS; REDEMPTION; SALE; EUTHANASIA. American Legal Publishing. https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/vinitaok/latest/vinita_ok/0-0-0-2467

Ehrlich, Brenna (January 17, 2024). “Students Dressed as Furries Could be Collected by Animal Control if New Oklahoma Bill Passes.” Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/furries-school-bill-animal-control-1234948434/ 

Jones, Alyse (January 18, 2024). "How many newly filed bills will become law in Oklahoma?". KOCO-TV. https://www.koco.com/article/oklahoma-new-filed-bills/46431213 

House of Chimeras (Aug. 12, 2022). "Litter Boxes in School Bathrooms: Dissecting the Alt-Right’s Current Moral Panic." https://houseofchimeras.neocities.org/Lectures

House of Chimeras (Aug. 14, 2021). "The Use and Misuse of The Term Transspecies." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miSyXSesyzw 

House of Chimeras, O. Scribner, and P. Shepard (2023). “Litter Box Hoax 2: Legislature Boogaloo.” OtherCon 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsXy_ctC4Jc&t=1425s 

Harrison, Heather (January 19, 2024). “Teachers Required to Out Trans Students to Families Under Proposed Mississippi Bill.” Mississippi Free Press. https://www.mississippifreepress.org/39193/teachers-required-to-out-trans-students-to-families-under-proposed-mississippi-bill 

Herron, Arika (Jan. 26, 2023). "Indiana lawmaker targets furries in schools. Schools say there's no problem." IndyStar. https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2023/01/26/indiana-statehouse-bill-targets-furries-schools-say-no-problem/69840839007/ Archived Jan. 26, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230126101035/https://eu.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2023/01/26/indiana-statehouse-bill-targets-furries-schools-say-no-problem/69840839007/

Humane Society Legislative Fund (February 4, 2014). “Farm Bill Strengthens Animal Fighting Law, Maintains State Farm Animal Protection Laws.” The Humane Society of the United States. https://web.archive.org/web/20141025151239/http://www.humanesociety.org/news/news_briefs/2014/02/farm_bill_passed_020414.html 

Legiscan, IN SB 380. https://legiscan.com/IN/bill/SB0380/2023 

Legiscan, MT SB 544. https://legiscan.com/MT/bill/SB544/2023

Legiscan, MS HB 176. https://legiscan.com/MS/bill/HB176/2024 

Legiscan, ND HB 1522. https://legiscan.com/ND/bill/HB1522/2023 

Legiscan, OK HB 3084. https://legiscan.com/OK/bill/HB3084/2024 

Legiscan, OK SB 943. https://legiscan.com/OK/bill/SB943/2023

Leigh, Sunny (April 15, 2023). "Bill to reduce penalties for animal fighting shut down in Oklahoma Senate". KTUL. https://ktul.com/news/local/bill-to-reduce-penalties-for-animal-fighting-shut-down-in-oklahoma-senate-cockfighting-chicken-fighting-dogfighting-humphrey-kunzweiler-humane-society-animal-wellness-gamefowl-lawmakers Content warning for animal cruelty. This article goes into some detail about the more criminal and violent extremes of animal fighting.

Mississippi Legislation. House of Representatives Committee Listing. https://www.legislature.ms.gov/committees/house-committees/ 

Murphy, Sean (15 April 2021). "GOP Oklahoma lawmaker criticized for transgender comments". AP. https://apnews.com/article/legislature-oklahoma-bills-oklahoma-city-5db54da2949c3398d3fc7c53714bdc36 

Palma, Bethania. (January 30, 2023). “How Furries Got Swept Up in Anti-Trans 'Litter Box' Rumors.” Snopes. https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/01/30/how-furries-got-swept-up-in-anti-trans-litter-box-rumors/ Archived on March 30, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230330232007/https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/01/30/how-furries-got-swept-up-in-anti-trans-litter-box-rumors/

Plante, C., S. Reysen, S. Roberts, and K. Gerbasi (2016). FurScience! A summary of five years of research from the International Anthropomorphic Research Project. FurScience: Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. ISBN: 978-0-9976288-0-7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304540208_FurScience_A_summary_of_five_years_of_research_from_the_International_Anthropomorphic_Research_Project The relevant section of the book is also on the project’s official web page here: https://furscience.com/research-findings/therians/7-2-animal-identification/ 

Reed, Erin (December 30, 2023). “Erin's 2024 Anti-Trans Legislative Risk Map.” Erin in the Morning. https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/erins-2024-anti-trans-legislative

Reuters Fact Check (October 18, 2022). “Fact Check-No evidence of schools accommodating ‘furries’ with litter boxes.” https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-furries-rogan-litterbox-idUSL1N31J1KT Archived February 13, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230213110524/https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-furries-rogan-litterbox-idUSL1N31J1KT

Scribner, O. (March 14, 2023). “A formerly anti-alterhuman but still anti-transgender bill will be heard Wednesday.” https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/88744.html 

Scribner, O. (April 13, 2023). “A Simple Introduction to Otherkin and Therianthropes: Version

2.4.7.” The Works of Orion Scribner. https://web.archive.org/web/20230603220035/http://frameacloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/simpleintro.pdf 

Scribner, O. (February 22, 2023). “In US, three anti-transgender bills also oppose alterhumans; similar recent Supreme Court cases.” Otherkin News. https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/86709.html 

Scribner, O., P. Shepard, and N. N. Sol (April 24, 2023). “Proposed amendment to Montana net censorship bill would ban transgender and transspecies people.” Otherkin News. https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/89561.html 

State of Oklahoma House of Representatives. Oklahoma House Rules Committee. https://www.okhouse.gov/committees/house/rules 

TrackBill. “Mississippi Rep. Charles Blackwell (R).” https://trackbill.com/legislator/mississippi-representative-charles-blackwell/981-27365/ 

[otherkinnews]

Will Oklahoma Call Animal Control on Students?

This article was originally posted to the Otherkin News blog on Dreamwidth.

Content warnings: Rated G. Sexism against transgender people. Adults who cause danger or distress for children by outing them as transgender or showing them animal bloodsports.

Summary: In 2023, Republicans in the US began to propose laws (bills) that would be against furries or people who identify as animals. They continue to do so in 2024. The first two such bills of this year are Oklahoma House Bill 3084 (OK HB 3084) and Mississippi House Bill 176 (MS HB 176). Read on for information about these bills from this and last year, the urban legend that inspired them, what may happen next, and what you can do. This five page article (plus references) is a twelve minute read.

Humphrey’s anti-furry bill in Oklahoma

Republican Representative Justin Humphrey (he/him) specializes in writing bills that are intentionally bizarre so they will attract attention, and then cleaning them up later so that they will pass into law. On December 6, he wrote OK HB 3084, as its only sponsor. He prefiled it on January 17. It was introduced for its first reading on February 5. Here is the bill on Oklahoma’s official site, and on the third-party site Legiscan. It proposes a new law, which would read in full: 

“Students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries at school shall not be allowed to participate in school curriculum or activities. The parent or guardian of a student in violation of this section shall pick the student up from the school, or animal control services shall be contacted to remove the student.”

In Humphrey’s interview with Rolling Stone about this, he specifically said that he wrote the furry bill in response to having heard about students using litter boxes in school. The Stone pointed out that that’s an urban legend that never happened at all, but he thinks it’s happened sometimes, if not widespread. He said that “furry” is the common name for a “mental illness” and “sexual habit,” and that there’s an “actual psychological term” for it, which he didn’t say because he found it “very, very difficult to pronounce” (Ehrlich, 2024). 

He probably was referring to “anthropomorphic behavior,” which he wrote in his bill text. That isn’t a psychological term or a mental illness, it’s about cartoon characters. The furry fandom uses “anthropomorphic animals” as a synonym for furries, fictional talking animal characters. “Anthropomorphic” often gets misused to mean “animal-like,” but its literal meaning is “human-like.” Humphrey’s wording would suffice to expel all students from a school: kids who act like animals and kids who act like humans. He likely based his bill on last year’s dead Oklahoma Senate Bill 943, which he didn’t write, but which also used the word.

Humphrey’s bill is the first that says to call animal control on furries. Would they refuse to pick up a student, or could this really cause students to be arrested and detained? Animal control is dictated by the local government (Bradshaw and Vankavage). Sometimes it may be outsourced to contractors who wouldn’t respond to this bizarre request, but in many cases it’s managed by local law enforcement. For example, one Oklahoman city ordinance says that all its animal control officers who are not already part of law enforcement “possess all authority of a police officer of the city for enforcing these animal regulations” (Vinita city code 2005 5-3-19). Humphrey explained that this part is a joke that he doesn’t intend to stick to, though, saying, 

“if you want to treat these people as actual animals, you call animal control. I’ll be happy to rewrite the language [to replace ‘animal control’ with mental health professionals]. But right now, I put that in there to make the point. A sarcastic point” (Erhlich, 2024). 

(Bracketed text in original.) Introducing a bill with an absurd part and then deleting or altering it to let it pass is a tactic that we see in one of last year’s bills, and it’s a favorite tactic of Humphrey’s.

The day after Humphrey filed his furry bill, he called it his “crazy” bill, saying, “I’ve laughed and said, well, we ought to neuter them and vaccinate them and send them to the pound." KOCO News reported, “Humphrey said although it may not become law, he wants to bring attention to what he called a problem” (Jones, 2024). Perhaps, like the urban legend that inspired it, the bill’s purpose is to attract attention by being intentionally absurd. It makes up a guy to get mad at: it describes an invented situation that has never happened, then recommends penalties for that imaginary situation, and those penalties themselves are something that may not be realistically carried out, or which would have absurdly high-stakes consequences. Humphrey’s furry bill doesn’t mention transgender people, but he wrote it in reference to an urban legend that parodies transgender people. Humphrey has also made many public remarks against transgender people, and he has supported anti-transgender bills (Murphy, 2021).

Other Representatives believe he may have intended for the absurdity of his furry bill to distract attention from more serious bills. On the same day that he prefiled this, he also filed a racially discriminatory bill about Oklahomans of Hispanic descent, House Bill 3133 (Jones, 2024).

Part of Humphrey’s amusement here is that he has a beef with animal control. In addition to his hostilities toward LGBTQ people, one of his long-term goals is to reduce the legal penalties for cockfighting from felony to misdemeanor. Throughout the US, this blood sport is illegal, and it is a federal crime to bring a child under age sixteen to any animal fighting events (Humane Society). Humphrey approves of allowing children there, saying, “You’re dang skippy I’ll take my kid to a chicken fighting before I’m gonna take them to see a drag queen” (Leigh, 2023).

This year’s anti-transgender and anti-furry bill in Mississippi

Introduced on January 17, MS HB 176 would require schools to out transgender students to parents, and to allow faculty to not accommodate any student who 

“identif[ies] at school as a gender or pronoun that does not align with the child's sex on their birth certificate, other official records, sex assigned at birth, or identifying as an animal species, extraterrestrial being or inanimate object.” 

As the nonprofit journalism site Mississippi Free Press noted, “There are no known incidents of Mississippi schoolchildren identifying as aliens or inanimate objects, but the idea of children identifying as animals may stem from an unsubstantiated urban myth about litter boxes that spread among Republican officials in recent years” (Harrison, 2024). Here is the bill on Mississippi’s official site, and on the third-party site Legiscan. The bill’s seven authors are all Republican Representatives: Charles “Chuck” Blackwell (main author), William Arnold, Randy Boyd, Larry Byrd, Dan Eubanks, Jimmy Fondren, and Donnie Scoggin. In the same month, Blackwell also sponsored the bill MS HB 303 (about digital currencies) and co-sponsored the bill MS HR 17 (for deporting undocumented immigrants back to Mexico) (TrackBill). 

An overview of last year’s anti-furry bills

Important background for what’s happening is that last year in the US, sexists introduced more than five hundred bills to limit the rights of transgender people (Reed, 2023). Four of those were also against furries or people who identify as animals. They were mainly against the rights of transgender students, and also opposed “a student's perception of being any animal species other than human” (North Dakota House Bill 1522) or “anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries” (Oklahoma Senate Bill 943). 

The text of the third, Indiana Statehouse Bill 380, only talked about dress codes and “disruptive behavior.” Later, this was amended to say “distractive behavior.” However, its writer said that it was to prevent “imitating or were behaving like a furry” (Herron, 2023). The bill’s unspoken real aim was to prevent transgender students from dressing as their gender. 

The fourth was a proposed amendment to Montana Senate Bill 544. It would have changed this internet censorship bill to also censor “acts of transgenderism,” which it defines as “a person being in the mental state of believing the person is transgender or transspecies” (Scribner, Shepard, and Sol, 2023). The word “transgenderism” is a dogwhistle used by people who oppose transgender rights. “Transspecies” is not typically thought of as a subset of it.

By the end of 2023, what came of those four bills? The line about animals was later deleted from the North Dakota bill, though it was still anti-transgender (Scribner, March 14, 2023). It passed on May 18, becoming law that will oppose the rights of transgender students. Last year’s Oklahoma bill died in committee. The Indiana bill passed on May 4, and will prohibit “distractive behavior” in schools. The Montana bill passed on May 19, and it’s still a clumsy plan for internet censorship, but the final text did not use the amendment that talked about transgender or transspecies (Legiscan). So far, no laws have passed with texts that mention anything along the lines of furries or identifying as nonhuman.

What are anti-furry bills really about?

These bills happened because of an urban legend. In parody of transgender students, Republicans made up a story that schools have litter boxes for students who identify as cats. Fact-checking site Snopes has been debunking this legend (Palma), as has Reuters Fact Check. This panel by a historian gives very detailed information about the legend’s development (Chimeras, 2022). Republicans imply through this legend that letting transgender students use the restroom that matches their gender identity would be as ridiculous as giving litter boxes to students who identify as animals.

What are the facts about people who identify as animals, if any exist? Surveys of the furry fandom show that most people who call themselves furries do not identify as animals (Plante et al, 2016, pp. 113-114). However, there are real people who sincerely identify as animals or nonhuman beings. Many call themselves therianthropes or otherkin (Scribner, 2023, “Simple introduction”). Sexists use the word “transspecies” to parody transgender people. However, a few transgender people call a nonhuman aspect of themselves transspecies (Chimeras, 2021). None of them did the things in schools that the urban legend says, so the legend isn’t true, and the legend wasn’t created in response to them. The threatening intent of the legend and bills is toward transgender people, but could cause trouble for furries and people who identify as animals.

Are there people who think of their gender identity as something nonhuman, and is that based on or part of the concept of being transgender? Transgender people who don’t feel they are a woman or man only or all the time have a nonbinary gender. Some people feel so different from a woman or man that they say their gender is something other than human. Since 2014, some call themselves xenogender, meaning “alien gender.” This can be a metaphor for something difficult to put into words, and they do not necessarily think of themselves as literally nonhuman, though some do. Surveys show that most nonbinary people define their gender in relation to being a woman or man; only 1.7% of nonbinary people call themselves xenogender or a variation on that word, and no other xenogender identity comes close to common (Gender Census, 2023). However, identifying as nonhuman is not inherently a form of being transgender, and was not developed based on the concept of being transgender.

What happens next for Humphrey’s anti-furry bill?

On February 5 and 6, it had its first and second readings, and it was referred to the House Rules Committee to read it next. That Committee has seven Republicans and two Democrats (State of Oklahoma). We’ll see if they let it die the same as last year’s Oklahoma bill, or if they vote for it to progress toward passing in some form. Remember the aforementioned interview where Humphrey said he doesn’t expect it to pass. Its purpose is to make “a sarcastic point” and attract attention away from other bills.

What happens next for the Mississippi bill? 

The day it was introduced, MS HB 176 was referred to the Mississippi House Education Committee and still waits for them to vote on it. Given that the Committee has a majority of Republicans (according to its government site and legislation tracking site, BillTracker.com), and the bill’s similarity to the North Dakota bill that passed last year with the portion about non-humans deleted, they’re likely to pass this bill in some form. The director of the Mississippi branch of the Human Rights Campaign, Rob Hill (he/him), said, 

“We’ve not seen this kind of bill in Mississippi before, and we hope that our leaders will resist another effort to stigmatize and isolate transgender and nonbinary youth and their peers [...] This is a very dangerous bill. It’s dangerous for the lives of youth … and it further perpetuates Mississippi’s image of being a place of discrimination” (Harrison, 2024).

What can you do?

Page Shepard (they/he), House of Chimeras (they/them), and I presented a panel about the bills last August. In the recording of our panel, skip to the timestamp 23:44 to hear what ordinary people can do about bad bills. In the written script of our lecture, see Slides 21 through 25.

About the author of this article

I’m Orion Scribner (they/them), and I’ve been writing and researching as an alterhuman community historian for more than ten years. I’m a moderator on Otherkin News, a volunteer-run blog about current events relevant to the alterhuman communities. My partner N. Noel Sol (she/her) did some editing in this document, especially in regard to animal control. Thanks for proofreading by my partner system the House of Chimeras (they/them), and my colleague Xylanth (it/its). I never write articles with the assistance of procedural generation or so-called artificial intelligence (AI), and that type of content isn’t allowed on Otherkin News.

References

BillTrack50. "Mississippi House Education Committee." https://www.billtrack50.com/committee/4245#billReferral 

Bradshaw, A. and L. Vankavage. “The Role of Local Government in Animal Control.” Humane Animal Control.  https://resources.bestfriends.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/Chapter%202_Role%20of%20Local%20Government%20in%20Animal%20Control.pdf?bG9ehcLSrIR08a1N_X1wbpYDzgy8_orb 

Vinita city code 2005 5-3-19: ANIMAL CONTROL OFFICER; IMPOUNDMENT OF ANIMALS; REDEMPTION; SALE; EUTHANASIA. American Legal Publishing. https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/vinitaok/latest/vinita_ok/0-0-0-2467

Ehrlich, Brenna (January 17, 2024). “Students Dressed as Furries Could be Collected by Animal Control if New Oklahoma Bill Passes.” Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/furries-school-bill-animal-control-1234948434/ 

Jones, Alyse (January 18, 2024). "How many newly filed bills will become law in Oklahoma?". KOCO-TV. https://www.koco.com/article/oklahoma-new-filed-bills/46431213 

House of Chimeras (Aug. 12, 2022). "Litter Boxes in School Bathrooms: Dissecting the Alt-Right’s Current Moral Panic." https://houseofchimeras.neocities.org/Lectures

House of Chimeras (Aug. 14, 2021). "The Use and Misuse of The Term Transspecies." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miSyXSesyzw 

House of Chimeras, O. Scribner, and P. Shepard (2023). “Litter Box Hoax 2: Legislature Boogaloo.” OtherCon 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsXy_ctC4Jc&t=1425s 

Harrison, Heather (January 19, 2024). “Teachers Required to Out Trans Students to Families Under Proposed Mississippi Bill.” Mississippi Free Press. https://www.mississippifreepress.org/39193/teachers-required-to-out-trans-students-to-families-under-proposed-mississippi-bill 

Herron, Arika (Jan. 26, 2023). "Indiana lawmaker targets furries in schools. Schools say there's no problem." IndyStar. https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2023/01/26/indiana-statehouse-bill-targets-furries-schools-say-no-problem/69840839007/ Archived Jan. 26, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230126101035/https://eu.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2023/01/26/indiana-statehouse-bill-targets-furries-schools-say-no-problem/69840839007/

Humane Society Legislative Fund (February 4, 2014). “Farm Bill Strengthens Animal Fighting Law, Maintains State Farm Animal Protection Laws.” The Humane Society of the United States. https://web.archive.org/web/20141025151239/http://www.humanesociety.org/news/news_briefs/2014/02/farm_bill_passed_020414.html 

Legiscan, IN SB 380. https://legiscan.com/IN/bill/SB0380/2023 

Legiscan, MT SB 544. https://legiscan.com/MT/bill/SB544/2023

Legiscan, MS HB 176. https://legiscan.com/MS/bill/HB176/2024 

Legiscan, ND HB 1522. https://legiscan.com/ND/bill/HB1522/2023 

Legiscan, OK HB 3084. https://legiscan.com/OK/bill/HB3084/2024 

Legiscan, OK SB 943. https://legiscan.com/OK/bill/SB943/2023

Leigh, Sunny (April 15, 2023). "Bill to reduce penalties for animal fighting shut down in Oklahoma Senate". KTUL. https://ktul.com/news/local/bill-to-reduce-penalties-for-animal-fighting-shut-down-in-oklahoma-senate-cockfighting-chicken-fighting-dogfighting-humphrey-kunzweiler-humane-society-animal-wellness-gamefowl-lawmakers Content warning for animal cruelty. This article goes into some detail about the more criminal and violent extremes of animal fighting.

Mississippi Legislation. House of Representatives Committee Listing. https://www.legislature.ms.gov/committees/house-committees/ 

Murphy, Sean (15 April 2021). "GOP Oklahoma lawmaker criticized for transgender comments". AP. https://apnews.com/article/legislature-oklahoma-bills-oklahoma-city-5db54da2949c3398d3fc7c53714bdc36 

Palma, Bethania. (January 30, 2023). “How Furries Got Swept Up in Anti-Trans 'Litter Box' Rumors.” Snopes. https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/01/30/how-furries-got-swept-up-in-anti-trans-litter-box-rumors/ Archived on March 30, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230330232007/https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/01/30/how-furries-got-swept-up-in-anti-trans-litter-box-rumors/

Plante, C., S. Reysen, S. Roberts, and K. Gerbasi (2016). FurScience! A summary of five years of research from the International Anthropomorphic Research Project. FurScience: Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. ISBN: 978-0-9976288-0-7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304540208_FurScience_A_summary_of_five_years_of_research_from_the_International_Anthropomorphic_Research_Project The relevant section of the book is also on the project’s official web page here: https://furscience.com/research-findings/therians/7-2-animal-identification/ 

Reed, Erin (December 30, 2023). “Erin's 2024 Anti-Trans Legislative Risk Map.” Erin in the Morning. https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/erins-2024-anti-trans-legislative

Reuters Fact Check (October 18, 2022). “Fact Check-No evidence of schools accommodating ‘furries’ with litter boxes.” https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-furries-rogan-litterbox-idUSL1N31J1KT Archived February 13, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230213110524/https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-furries-rogan-litterbox-idUSL1N31J1KT

Scribner, O. (March 14, 2023). “A formerly anti-alterhuman but still anti-transgender bill will be heard Wednesday.” https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/88744.html 

Scribner, O. (April 13, 2023). “A Simple Introduction to Otherkin and Therianthropes: Version 2.4.7.” The Works of Orion Scribner. https://web.archive.org/web/20230603220035/http://frameacloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/simpleintro.pdf 

Scribner, O. (February 22, 2023). “In US, three anti-transgender bills also oppose alterhumans; similar recent Supreme Court cases.” Otherkin News. https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/86709.html 

Scribner, O., P. Shepard, and N. N. Sol (April 24, 2023). “Proposed amendment to Montana net censorship bill would ban transgender and transspecies people.” Otherkin News. https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/89561.html 

State of Oklahoma House of Representatives. Oklahoma House Rules Committee. https://www.okhouse.gov/committees/house/rules 

TrackBill. “Mississippi Rep. Charles Blackwell (R).” https://trackbill.com/legislator/mississippi-representative-charles-blackwell/981-27365/ 

[otherkinnews]

The effects of psilocybin on phantom limbs: an upcoming large study, and what otherkin have noticed

Orion Scribner posted on September 15, 2023:

Content warnings: This article talks about the use of psychoactive substances only as used in either medical treatment under the guidance of physicians, or in spiritual visionary experiences as entheogens. This article also talks about injuries and chronic pain, but it doesn't describe these in graphic detail. Be forewarned that some of the academic sources cited do go into graphic detail, if you choose to go read those next.

Summary: In California, a large study is looking for participants. Researchers want to see if psilocybin helps treat the participants' phantom limb pain. The study isn't about therians or otherkin. Many therians and otherkin experience phantom limbs, and some of them have made observations about how psilocybin and other psychoactive substances influence their phantom limbs. This article is an eight minute read, plus a bibliography.

A large study seeks participants who suffer phantom limb pain due to having had amputations

The Psychedelic Health and Research Initiative (PHRI) at the University of California, San Diego, is looking for participants for a study. They want adults who have had an amputation and who experience chronic phantom limb pain. The proposed will use MRI brain imaging to study the effects of a therapeutic dose of psilocybin on phantom pain. Psilocybin is the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms, which may have potential for addressing some forms of chronic pain that are difficult to treat. The $1.3 million study will be placebo-controlled and double-blind, and they will compensate participants $600. Specialized monitors will oversee each session, with doctors and rescue medications available. The pitch for the study doesn't say what dates it will take place, but a recruitment ad ran for it on August 31 in Amplitude, a news and lifestyle magazine for people who have had amputations. To learn more about the study or find how to contact its team by phone or email, see its pitch here, and Amplitude Magazine's ad here.

This proposed study doesn't say anything about otherkin and therians, and the recruitment ad only mentions that it's looking for people who experience phantom limbs due to having had amputations. Something intriguing is that that otherkin and therians have noticed that psilocybin and other psychoactive substances affect their own phantom sensations. The rest of my article will go into some background about all that.

Many sorts of people experience phantom limbs, of many kinds, for many reasons

When someone has sensations as though they have a body part that they do not physically have, the medical term for this is a phantom limb. It's best known in people who have had a limb amputated, but the phenomenon happens in many other cases. For example, it also occurs for people who have sensations of missing body parts other than limbs: ears, fingers, breasts, genitals, or internal organs (Langer et al, 2023; Dorpat, 1971; Ramachandran and McGeoch, 2007). The phenomenon also includes people who have sensations of body parts that they weren't born with (McGeoch and Ramachandran, 2012; Price, 2006). Some types of people who experience this are those who have had a stroke, who were born with incomplete limbs (McGeoch and Ramachandran, 2012), who are transgender (Ramachandran and McGeoch, 2008), or who elicit such experiences through experimental conditions (Casas et al, 2016). The medical term for a sensation of an extra limb is a supernumerary phantom limb (SPL) (Amoni et al, 2005).

Phantoms are underreported due to stigma. Most people who experience phantoms only talk to their doctors about having phantoms if they are very painful and they want help with that. The medical term for this is phantom limb pain (PLP). For people who do feel phantom pain, it can be different to treat than pain in a body part that is physically there. Experts are developing creative approaches for treating this pain, for example, mirror-box therapy (Imaizumi et al, 2017), virtual reality (Ambron et al, 2021), and psychedelic medicine.

What are therianthropes and otherkin?

Therianthropes (therians) and otherkin are people who have the long-term, integral experience and identity of being something other than human. For example, of being a wolf, elf, dragon, or Pokémon (Scribner, 2023; Sonne, 2021; Shepard, 2021). The explanations they give for why they are like this usually come from spirituality, psychology, or both (Kinmunity, 2016, pp. 19). Some common spiritual explanations are reincarnation or having been born with a nonhuman spirit, but not all therians and otherkin share these beliefs or hold them in similar ways (Lupa, 2007, pp. 27, 57-66). Though these examples of explanations are tied to spiritual beliefs, being an otherkin or therian isn't a religion and does not have religious or spiritual requirements. On the secular side, some explain themselves as having something about their mind or brain that's different than that of most people, not for spiritual reasons, but simply an undeniable part of their everyday lives (Lupa, pp. 80-86). Though this is an unusual way for a person to be, mental health experts say this isn't inherently a mental illness or delusion (Lupa, 2007, pp. 86, 261-262; Baker-Whitelaw, 2015).

Many therians and otherkin experience phantom limbs

Many therians and otherkin experience phantom limbs and phantom sensations of body parts that humans don't have, such as tails. When the therian community began in the 1990s, they contextualized their experiences with werewolf folklore. They developed jargon in which they refer to times of feeling nonhuman phantoms more vividly as phantom shapeshifting (House of Chimeras, 2021; Lupa, 2007, pp. 42-43, 126-127; Proctor, 2019, pp. 203-209). When the otherkin community mingled with the therian community in the 2000s, they adopted this shifting terminology as well.

Survey data suggests phantom sensations are prevalent among therians and otherkin. A large informal survey of otherkin and therians found that 72.1% of them experience nonhuman phantom limbs or phantom sensations (Kinmunity, 2016, p. 155). A team of scientists known as the International Anthropomorphic Research Project (IARP) or FurScience surveyed attendees of furry fandom conventions. The furry fandom is about enjoyment of fictional human-like animals in art, and its participants often roleplay as animal characters, but usually don't identify as animals. The IARP tended to find that 5% to 20% of furries identified as therians (Plante et al, p. 112). At AnthroCon 2015, the IARP found that phantoms were more prevalent among therians than other attendees of that convention. Of those therians who felt phantoms (percentage not specified in the IARP's public-facing materials), 70.4% of them tended to find it distressing (Plante et al, p. 116).

Otherkin and therian phantoms can feel different while influenced by psychoactive substances

Drugs are not a key aspect of therian and otherkin subcultures. Their communities rarely discuss the effects of substances in relationship to their therianthropy and otherkinship. Some otherkin and therians who have used mind-altering substances have noticed that these influence their phantom sensations.

The first source I've seen that describes this in significant depth is "Entheogens for Otherkin," an excellent presentation by Dove and Edge for verified adult attendees at Othercon 2022. A recording of the presentation is on Youtube. Though there isn't a written transcript of it, together with other attendees, I wrote five pages of notes on the presentation when I attended, which you can read in a section near the end of this document. Entheogens are psychoactive substances employed in culturally sanctioned visionary experiences in ritual and religious contexts. Othercon is a yearly virtual convention for otherkin, therians, and other sorts of alterhumans. Dove is a formally ordained Pagan priestess, an otherkin, therian, and host of a multiple system, with ten years of experience with entheogens. Her spouse Edge is a vampire and Catholic witch with twenty years of experience with entheogens. The panelists and attendees talked about harm reduction and safety. Some entheogens the panel talked about were psilocybin, ayahuasca, datura, and cannabis. Different entheogens each affect phantom sensations in their own characteristic ways, some having little effect on phantoms, and others making phantoms feel more vivid, or shifting, or developing entirely into an out-of-body experience. Entheogens may affect otherkin and therians’ phantoms in different ways from person to person.

About the writers: This article was written by Orion Scribner (they/them), with feedback from their boyfriend Page Shepard (he/they) and partner system House of Chimeras (they/them). The three& of them are historians and archivists for the communities of therians, otherkin, and other alterhumans.

References

Ambron, E., Buxbaum, L. J., Miller, A., Stoll, H., Kuchenbecker, K. J., & Coslett, H. B. (2021). Virtual Reality Treatment Displaying the Missing Leg Improves Phantom Limb Pain: A Small Clinical Trial. Neurorehabilitation and neural repair, 35(12), 1100–1111. https://doi.org/10.1177/15459683211054164

Amplitude Magazine (August 31, 2023). "Tripping the switch on PLP." Amplitude Magazine.https://livingwithamplitude.com/article/tripping-the-switch-on-plp/

Annoni, Blanke, Dieguez, Khateb, Landis, Lazeyras, Momjian-Mayor, Pegna, and Simon (March 20, 2009). “Seeing the phantom: A functional MRI study of a supernumerary phantom limb.” Annals of Neurology.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19557858/

Baker-Whitelaw, Gavia (February 22, 2015). “Understanding the otherkin.” The Kernel. Archived March 18, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150318110839/http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/11866/otherkin-tumblr-definition-pronouns/

Casas, D.M., G G Gentiletti, & A A Braidot. “Somatic and Movement Inductions Phantom Limb in Non-amputees.” Journal of Physics: Conference Series, Volume 705, Issue 1, (2016): 1-11 http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/705/1/012062/meta (accessed June 26 2016).

Dorpat, T. L. (1971). Phantom sensation of internal organs. Comprehensive psychiatry, 12(1), 27–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-440x(71)90053-8 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0010440X71900538?via%3Dihub

Dove and Edge (2022). "Entheogens for Otherkin." OtherCon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YEh0mVcLo0

House of Chimeras. (November 19, 2021). A Timeline of the Therianthrope Community.https://houseofchimeras.neocities.org/Nonfiction-Articles

Imaizumi, S., Asai, T., & Koyama, S. (2017). Agency over Phantom Limb Enhanced by Short-Term Mirror Therapy. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 11, 483. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00483

Kinmunity. "2016 Otherkin Community Survey." Kinmunity. 2016. Private collection.

Langer, S. J., Caso, T. J., & Gleichman, L. (2023). Examining the prevalence of trans phantoms among transgender, nonbinary and gender diverse individuals: An exploratory study. International journal of transgender health, 24(2), 225–233. https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2022.2164101https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37114107/

Lupa (2007). A Field Guide to Otherkin. Stafford, England: Immanion Press. https://www.worldcat.org/title/137242792

McGeoch, P., and Ramachandran, V. (2012). “The appearance of new phantom fingers post-amputation in a phocomelus.” Neurocase 18, no. 2, pp. 95-97. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13554794.2011.556128https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21598175/

Plante, Courtney N., Stephen Reysen, Sharon E. Roberts, and Kathleen C. Gerbasi (2016). "FurScience! A Summary of Five Years of Research from the International Anthropomorphic Research Project." FurScience. https://furscience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Fur-Science-Final-pdf-for-Website_2017_10_18.pdf

Price, E. H. (2006). A critical review of congenital phantom limb cases and a developmental theory for the basis of body image. Consciousness and cognition, 15(2), 310–322. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2005.07.003https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810005000917?via%3Dihub

Proctor, Devin (May 2019). On Being Non-Human: Otherkin Identification and Virtual Space. The George Washington University. https://search.proquest.com/openview/e156c24bf65c4efb0918a8db37433cce/

Psychedelics and Health Research Initiative (2023). "Research." UC San Diego. https://phri.ucsd.edu/research/

Ramachandran, V. S., & McGeoch, P. D. (2007). Occurrence of phantom genitalia after gender reassignment surgery. Medical hypotheses, 69(5), 1001–1003. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2007.02.024https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0306-9877(07)00181-8

Ramachandran, V.S. and Paul D. McGeoch. “Phantom Penises in Transsexuals: Evidence of an Innate Gender-Specific Body Image in the Brain,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 15, Number 1, (2008): pages 5-16, http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2008/00000015/00000001/art00001 (accessed November 5 2015).

Scribner, Orion (April 13, 2023). “A Simple Introduction to Otherkin and Therianthropes: Version 2.4.7.” The Works of Orion Scribner. https://www.frameacloud.com/nonfiction

Shepard, Page. “The 2021 Nonhumanity & Body Modification/Decoration Survey Results Breakdown.” Three Dragons and a Dog. August 28, 2021. Accessed December 4, 2022. https://invisibleotherkin.neocities.org/files/BodyModification-DecorationSurveyResults.pdf

Sonne (2021). “Terms and definitions.” Project Shift. https://projectshift.therianthropy.info/terms-definitions-by-sonne

A note for commenters on this article:

The author of this article is a layperson who isn’t involved in the study, so if you have questions about the study, please contact the researchers running the study instead, here. In your comments on my blog post, please exercise caution if you discuss psychotropic substances. If you write about illegal practices, for example, obtaining drugs that are illegal in your region, myself and other moderators of this forum may delete your comment. This is in alignment with Dreamwidth's Terms of Service, which forbids material that is illegal under United States law (section XI, subsection 8) or in your own jurisdiction (section II, subsection 2).

(This article was originally posted by Orion Scribner on September 15, 2023 on the Otherkin News blog on Dreamwidth, where you can read and write comments.)

[otherkinnews]

Alterhumanity and Autism Follow-Up Survey

August 17, 2023

Bedes posted:

After my previous survey polling the autistic alterhuman community for my panel, I've now created a second survey regarding the experiences of autistic members of the alterhuman community. Many questions are based off of suggestions from attendees of 2023’s Othercon!

This survey is entirely anonymous, and has a short time demand, with 10 questions in total. It will run until December 15th, includes self-diagnosed autistics, and asks for one answer per body!

Sharing this around alterhuman and/or autistic circles is appreciated!>>> TAKE THE SURVEY HERE! <<<

(The above was originally posted on August 17, 2023 by Bedes on the Otherkin News blog on Dreamwidth, where you can read and write comments.)

[otherkinnews]

An anti-transgender US Congress Senate Bill mentions DID

August 16, 2023

The site LegiScan.com is for tracking US legislation. It lets you arrange to receive email alerts for whether any new bills use keywords you're interested in. It recently notified me of a new one that mentions Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), which is a form of plurality.

General info about the bill and its main purpose: US Congress Senate Bill 2394 is for opposing the rights of transgender youth. This bill is harmful for human rights. Four Republican Senators introduced the bill on July 19, 2023: Sen. Tom Cotton (Arkansas), Sen. J.D. Vance (Ohio), Sen. Josh Hawley (Missouri), and Sen. Marco Rubio (Florida).

How the bill also involves plurality: The mention of DID happens once, on page 2, line 25: "... regardless of any medical diagnosis or indication of gender dysphoria, body dysphoria, dissociative identity disorder, or social anxiety disorder." You can see this line in the PDF of the bill as it was introduced.

Progress toward law: Currently, the bill is at 25% progression, meaning it hasn't passed yet. You can follow its progress on LegiScan here, or on the bill's US State Legislature page. If you live in the US, you can help stop bad bills from becoming laws. To learn how, look up how to provide legislative testimony.

The above article was originally posted on the Otherkin News blog on Dreamwidth on August 16, 2023, where you can also see and participate in its forum conversation.

[otherkinnews]

Twitter promotes hatred against transgender people, furries, therians

Summary: Since buying Twitter, Elon Musk has been pushing the platform into fascist politics by either manually or algorithmically suppressing LGBTQ content, welcoming back neo-nazis who’d been banned, and boosting hate speech. This Pride month, he used the platform to promote a stream of an anti-transgender movie, What Is A Woman? (2022). The movie attempts to ridicule transgender people by comparing them to other groups, so it contains misinformation about furries: the litter box urban legend again. It also had an interview about therianthropy with Naia Okami, who rejected therianthropy again a few months afterward. The free stream gathered more than 62 million views that day, so it will be how many people first heard of furries or therians. Twitter keeps getting worse for marginalized groups, and now for furries and therians too. If you and your friends haven’t already migrated away from the nazis-and-transphobes site, we have advice on how to move to safer alternatives: Mastodon, Tumblr, Discord, Dreamwidth, and forums. We also have advice on media literacy skills, how to recognize nazis and transphobes on social media, how to guard against this happening in the future, how to support transgender rights, and some options for what to do with your Twitter when you leave. At the end of this article, we have a timeline of events that happened in this story.

--

Musk promoted an anti-transgender movie

Since last October, billionaire Elon Musk has owned Twitter, a social media site with 450 million users. He started June by pinning his quote retweet of an anti-transgender movie. He remarked, "Every parent should watch this." The movie is What Is A Woman?, by Daily Wire columnist Matt Walsh. The Daily Wire invited everyone to stream the 95 minute movie for free. It is a propaganda piece that uses misinformation to oppose the existence of transgender people. Until then, the movie had been behind a paywall. Media Bias Fact Check describes the Daily Wire as a right-wing news and opinion site that has medium credibility. The civil rights nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hate Watch has called Walsh and his boss “peddlers of fear and disinformation about LGBTQ people” (Wilson, Nov 22, 2022). Musk has been known for his transphobia since before he bought Twitter (Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle, Dec 13 2022). NBC reported that the Daily Wire’s CEO and other anti-transgender influencers such as Robby Starbuck had demanded for Musk to make the site stop suppressing the movie for its hate speech. Musk complied. Walsh, who had released the movie in June last year, said “What a great way to ring in Pride Month.” (Tolentino and Ingram, NBC, June 2, 2023).

What is that movie, and why is it so harmful?

The movie’s title refers to how they spend the movie interviewing various people about what a woman is, with the goal to discredit the validity of transgender people. Matt Walsh and Justin Folk had a bad enough reputation that no transgender people or allies would willingly appear in their movie, so they tricked people into showing up. They founded a front group called the Gender Unity Project LLC, and used a registered agent to mask their connection to it. Their producer used a fake name when reaching out to people to interview. They advertised the movie and LLC to potential interviewees as being “about transgender and LGBTQIA+ communities, and the challenges they face in today’s culture” and that it would “[explore] the real lives of people in the LGBTQIA+ communities, and to shed some light on the topics of gender identity, and gender fluidity, in a way that will capture the attention of all Americans and be educational.” Transgender rights activist Eli Erlick discovered they were not who they seemed, and exposed them immediately.

The movie intentionally misrepresented and disparaged a variety of professionals and transgender individuals who Walsh misled into interviewing with him. He used deceptive editing and ambush interview tactics to make it look like the interviewees were either in complete agreement with his hateful perspective, or were contradicting themselves and didn’t make sense. He used the movie to push false claims about transgender people, including trying to connect transgender identity to sexual predation and implying that transgender individuals will regret transitioning or that transitioning is dangerous.

Far-right director Robby Starbuck plans to release a similar movie this summer, titled “It Takes a Village.” This will also be a hateful propaganda movie opposing the existence of transgender people. Starbuck, like Walsh, lied about the movie goals to potential interviewees. Erlick caught and exposed this trick even earlier than the last one. Starbuck’s team members misrepresented the project as “highlighting gender affirming care and the issues facing trans youth.” Erlick believes that Starbuck may have planned to arrest her should she have agreed to fly to Tennessee for the offered interview.

How did this movie misrepresent furries and therians?

A common illogical argument that bigots use to criticize LGBTQ people sounds something like this: “If we let women marry one another, then wouldn’t it be just as absurd if we let people marry animals? If someone can identify as a woman, wouldn’t it be just as absurd if someone identifies as an animal?” Walsh used that tactic in his picture book Johnny the Walrus. Walsh’s movie has segments about furries and therians, in an effort to say that saying you are a woman is as absurd as saying you are an animal.

In one segment in the movie, Walsh interviews Sara Stockton, a family therapist. She incorrectly tells him that furries have demanded litter boxes in schools. Reuters Fact Check has an article that debunks that part of the movie. It’s well-known to be an urban legend that has never happened in any school. Conservatives have circulated it for the past few years to satirize transgender students asking to use the restroom of their choice. An alterhuman community historian did a presentation about how the legend has developed (House of Chimeras, 2022). The legend is why a few of this year’s hundreds of anti-transgender bills in the US say they also oppose people who identify as animals. Those are Montana Senate Bill 544, North Dakota House Bill 1522, Oklahoma Senate Bill 943, and Indiana Statehouse Bill 380.

In the next segment, Walsh interviewed Naia Okami. Okami has frequently sought and accepted media publicity for the past decade, even with producers her peers advised her to avoid (Okami, Oct 18, 2022). Around the same time as when she interviewed with Walsh, she accepted interviews with two other far-right media known for their hostility toward openly transgender people such as herself: The Sun (Jan 23 2022) and Fox News (Feb 7 2022). In these three interviews, she described herself as a wolf otherkin and therian. When Walsh tried to get her to describe herself as transspecies, she “vehemently rejected” that, so Walsh didn’t use those parts of the interview in the movie (Okami, June 5, 2022). (Okami has never called herself transspecies, and had spoken against the word for years.) Instead, against her wishes, he referred to her as a “trans wolf,” a label that she never used and which makes her “want to vomit” (Okami, June 8, 2022). A few months after the movie came out, she announced that she no longer calls herself a therian. She said, “I will always be a wolf girl; but I am not nor do I want to be … a member of the alterhuman, therianthropy, or otherkin communities” (Okami, Oct 18, 2022).

Like many of the other interviewees, Okami has explained how she was interviewed under false pretenses by a producer who used an alias. She shared records of her correspondences with the producer. She was not aware that Walsh would be the one interviewing her. He asked “intentionally provocative and leading questions.” She was looking into taking legal action, because the movie used the appearances of herself and others without informed consent (Okami, May 21, 2022).

By the end of the day, Musk’s promotion of the free movie on Twitter had caused it to have more than 62 million views (Tolentino and Ingram, NBC, June 2, 2023). This may be how most people in the world first hear of anything like otherkin, therians, furries, or transspecies identity. This may contribute to more widespread attitudes that are misinformed about and hostile toward these groups.

Musk’s Twitter welcomes fascists while suppressing LGBT speech

Musk has a history of supporting antisemitic and fascist ideology and espousing anti-LGBT rhetoric. One of Musk’s first actions when he bought Twitter was to share an anti-gay conspiracy theory published by a right-wing news source about the October 2022 attack on Paul Delosi. Twitter under Musk rolled back content policy protections for the site’s transgender users. He has also been known to quote Nazis, has reinstated the Twitters accounts of multiple neo-Nazis who were previously banned for hate speech, and has transferred his Twitter CEO title to a former Trump appointee. On Transgender Day of Visibility, users noticed that Twitter’s algorithm flags tweets for sensitive content if they contain the words LGBT, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, trans, queer, gender identity, pronouns, or TERF. Meanwhile, it doesn’t flag the words gender critical (which is what many transphobes prefer to call themselves), Nazi, fascist, or fascism. The algorithm’s source code shows that it’s designed to suppress and hide tweets that contain external links, misspelled words (as happens when users to try to get around suppressed words), and all mention of Ukraine. If you wanted to stand your ground and use Twitter to speak up for good causes, that’s exactly what it makes sure nobody will hear.

Musk vows to criminalize transgender healthcare

Musk pushes his anti-transgender attitudes in more places than just in this platform he owns. He vowed that he will be “actively lobbying to criminalize” gender affirming care in individuals under the age of 18. He supports long-term imprisonment without parole for anyone who supports or assists in such care, including therapists (Thakker, New Republic, June 2, 2023). He can wield unmatched influence over politics because he is the world’s wealthiest person at more than $100 billion dollars (Toh, CNN, May 31, 2023).

What you can do

Leave Twitter and bring your friends. Musk, and the platform he has through Twitter, is a threat to our civil rights and our lives. Twitter is not a safe place to be, because it is increasingly being turned into a fascist platform. As long as you’re there, you’re handing money to fascists, even if you’re not paying a subscription (Solarbird, April 23, 2023). You can’t fight the normalization of fascism by continuing to contribute to a fascist space (Solarbird, Dec 7, 2022). If you work for free to be a content provider for Twitter, then you are supporting fascism. Remember a German proverb: “If one nazi sits at a table, and ten other people sit there talking with him, that’s a table with eleven nazis.” It will become harder to avoid sitting and talking with Nazis on Twitter, because Musk says he will get rid of the option to block users (Ngo, Washington Times, June 8, 2023). Many users have been migrating away from Twitter. We strongly advise that you do so as well, and help your friends migrate, too. You must, to protect your friends, and to quit supporting the normalization of fascism.

Follow relevant news, and sharpen your media literacy skills. Whenever a friend shares a news article with you, see what Media Bias Fact Check says about that news source, and see what Reuters Fact Check and Snopes have to say about its content. Avoid boosting or interacting with transphobes and nazis on social media by learning how to recognize their characteristic jargon and the “dog whistles” that they use to signal themselves to one another. See the Anti-Defamation League’s encyclopedia of hate group symbols. Here’s a list of dog whistles racists and nazis use, ones transphobes use, and more that transphobes use. We recommend following Solarbird’s Fascism Watch blog post series, where she has been keeping track of news about the rise of transphobia and fascism, with an eye on its rise on Twitter. If someone contacts you for interviews or media projects, your job is to research them and their previous work before you agree to anything. Document everything. If they turn out to be exploitative, spread the warning fast. Take some notes from how Erlick does it.

Donate to good causes and support marginalized peoples. Some reputable organizations that support LGBTQ people and their rights are The Trevor Project, GLAAD, Mermaids, Human Rights Campaign, and National Center for Transgender Equality, or other civil rights organizations, such as  The American Civil Liberties Union. Be cautious about sound-alikes that impersonate good organizations, and use Charity Navigator to check their backgrounds. Boost and donate to your friends’ personal fundraisers for their health, legal expenses, and moving expenses. Donate to the social media platforms that you prefer, so they can afford to keep going. Support and mutual aid means more than just sending money to the right places. Listen to your friends who are LGBTQ or members of other marginalized groups. Educate yourself.

Mastodon is a better Twitter

What is Mastodon? From the perspective of a user, Mastodon looks and behaves very similarly to Twitter. If you’ve used TweetDeck or other front-ends for Twitter, then Mastodon’s layout will look familiar. Users can create short posts, use hashtags, boost other people’s posts, and follow one another… even if those other people are on different Mastodon servers. Each Mastodon server is independently run, and has its own rules and moderators. These servers communicate with one another via the Fediverse, an interconnected network of servers. This is similar to how you can use a Gmail account to send an email to someone on a Yahoo account: they’re on different servers, with their own rules and owners, but they can communicate with one another. This decentralization protects against the owners or users of a particular server being able to ruin the whole thing for everyone.

How do you sign up on Mastodon? Click on a server in the below list of ones that we recommend, and then click “create account.” If it says an invitation is required to create an account, ask a friend for one from that server, or try another server. Don’t get overwhelmed trying to choose the perfect server before you begin. After all, you can use it to talk to people on any other servers, if its moderators haven’t chosen to block those particular servers. If you join a server, and then you don’t like its rules or moderators after all, or if the culture there goes bad, then you can move to another server, automatically bringing your follow list with you. You can carry on your Mastodon experience without a pause and without getting stuck with moderators you distrust. We recommend these servers to our readers because they’re LGBTQ friendly, welcome various sorts of alterhumans, are opposed to hate speech, and are open to new users, though some require an invitation. They’re owned and maintained by ordinary hobbyists and volunteers who care, not corporations or evil billionaires. Later, consider chipping in a little money to support your favorite server, if they offer that option.

https://awoo.space - This server “isn’t aimed at any specific audience, though there are a lot of queer furries here for some reason.”

https://bark.lgbt - This server *is* aimed at queer furries.

https://beach.city - Lightly themed around the cartoon Steven Universe.

https://chitter.xyz - For furries.

https://dragonscave.space - This dragon-themed server is especially for users who are visually impaired.

https://equestria.social - For fans of My Little Pony. The moderators speak French as well as English. (By the way, you can find servers in whatever languages you want, which is great for immersion language learning.)

https://meow.social - For furries.

https://plural.cafe - For plural systems.

https://plush.city

https://tech.lgbt

https://weirder.earth - Moderator team includes people who are POC, LGBTQ, and plural. Good track record at standing up to racism.

How do you make friends and find interesting blogs to follow on there? No algorithm plays matchmaker for you. We use hashtags, which is the only part of a post that shows up in a search. Usually people put hashtags that describe themselves and their interests in their #introduction post to help find others who share those interests.

How do you stay safe on there? Anyone with technical proficiency can create a Mastodon server and use it for good or bad. However, the Fediverse’s very design makes it easy for you to avoid the bad. Some Fediverse servers say they prohibit hate speech, but have been disappointing at enforcing that. Their moderators are overwhelmed, and unfamiliar with the needs of BIPOC, so racism goes unchecked. Those are widely-recognized problems with the servers mastodon.social and mastodon.online, so we don’t recommend joining those ones. Some Fediverse servers choose to allow hate speech, such as BlueSky. If you join a server that blocks problematic servers such as these, then those entire servers won’t be able to communicate with your server at all, period. Think of the story of the nazi bar: if a bartender lets in just one customer who wears nazi insignia but is polite, then that customer will come back with his nazi friends, everyone else will leave, and it will have become a nazi bar. A bartender who doesn’t want to accidentally find himself running a nazi bar has to prevent that from happening by kicking out even that one polite nazi. The Fediverse uses the nazi bar phenomenon against the nazis. Bigots and those who welcome them get isolated into their own space, and out of yours. By blocking entire servers because they have nazis there, your own server becomes something like Twitter without the nazis (Solarbird, Nov 6, 2022).

Mastodon has another safety feature: built-in content warnings. There is a widespread requirement to CW for content that is sexual, disturbing, or a spoiler. Followers will only see what’s beyond the CW if they click to open it. That’s good consent culture, and it makes Mastodon less stressful to scroll through than Twitter. In your settings, you can also filter out posts that use words that you don’t want to see at all.

Tumblr is great if you liked retweeting

What is Tumblr? Tumblr is a social media site that hosts 572 million blogs. It’s less similar to Twitter, but it does have a feature like retweeting, called reblogging. Even better, you can add tags to what you reblog, so you can categorize and later find things you’ve reblogged. That makes Tumblr an ideal platform for circulating fandom content, art, and memes.

How do you sign up on Tumblr? You can sign up on Twitter with just an email address, without sharing other personal information. Tumblr allows for users to have one primary blog, and as many side blogs as they want. You can customize the appearance of your blog using HTML and CSS. On desktop, install the browser extension xKit Rewritten and play with its settings to improve your experience of Tumblr.

How do you stay safe on Tumblr? You can curate your experience with blocking and filtering. Use tags to give content warnings, which others can use to filter your posts, and view them only if they consent to see that content. For that to work, don’t censor words. You can hide posts that use certain words, which helps you filter out posts from users who hate LGBTQ. Here’s a guide for how to do that. And another guide with screenshots for how to do that in the settings, and another guide. On desktop, install the third-party browser extension, Shinigami Eyes, which often helps warn you that a Tumblr account is known to express anti-transgender views.

How do you make friends and find interesting blogs on Tumblr? Tumblr tags are great for that. Use this web address, and replace the word “food” with some other key word for any topic that interests you: https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/food?sort=recent It will show you the most recent posts that people have tagged with that word. The accounts you follow will often reblog from other users, and you can use those as leads to find other interesting blogs.

Discord has many ways to communicate

What is Discord? Discord is a combination of many forms of communication in one. It supports group chat rooms, private messaging, voice calls, video calls, and streams for both one-on-one direct messages and for groups. It isn’t similar to Twitter at all, but it’s fantastic for talking with friends and meeting new people. All Discord servers are all required to follow Discord’s Community Guidelines, which bans hate speech, harassment, and violent extremism. Many plural systems enjoy using a bot on Discord, PluralKit, which lets you create something like separate accounts for each of your system members, without having to sign in and out.

What servers might you join? Discord allows for the creation of servers based around specific interests and groups of people. Servers can be tight-knit private groups, or huge public groups, or anything in-between. Most servers have a specific theme or focus that they adhere to. There are some excellent servers about being alterhuman. Ask your friends for recommendations and invitations to these and other servers.

Dreamwidth.org is the best social blog site

What is Dreamwidth? Dreamwidth is a social blogging platform based off of code from Livejournal. If you used Livejournal long ago, Dreamwidth will feel like home. If you’ve only used Twitter or Tumblr, you can adapt to the differences soon enough, because it has an especially well made FAQ. (Here is a collection of more info about how to use Dreamwidth, written for people who are more accustomed to Tumblr.) Dreamwidth focuses on creating your own original content and interacting with other folks’ original content in personal blogs and in “communities,” which are group forum blogs. Dreamwidth’s design is ideal for long pieces of writing, serialized works, and conversation threads. Because of this, many blogs that are especially active on Dreamwidth today are those that focus on fan fiction, role play, personal diaries, and essays, but you can put nearly any kind of subject matter there.

How do you join Dreamwidth? On the front page of Dreamwidth.org, click “create free account.” (Paying a subscription to help support the site will give you a few perks, but a free account is just as functional as a paid one.) Make up a username. Tell your email address and birthdate, which you can keep private in your profile settings. You can customize the appearance of your blog. We strongly recommend you use Solarbird’s theme that makes your blog mobile-friendly.

How do you find friends and interesting blogs on Dreamwidth? You can discover more blogs that focus on things you like by adding a list of interests to your profile, searching for others who put those interests in their profiles too. You can look at the Latest Things (the newest posts and tags by all users). You can also use Dreamwidth to follow the news! Dreamwidth has a built-in RSS feed reader, so you can use it to subscribe to content from other sites. Many sites offer RSS feeds: major news sources, comics, subreddits, Tumblr blogs, AO3 tags, and more. YsabetWordsmith regularly features interesting active communities in her FollowFriday tag. For the alterhuman readers of our blog, we recommend joining these communities:

Dreamwidth_therians: A members-only group for therians and otherkin.

Fictionkind: A members-only group for fictionfolk to discuss their experiences based on prompts.

Otherkin: A public group for otherkin.

Otherkin_haven: A members-only group for otherkin.

OtherkinNews (that’s us!): A volunteer-run blog for sharing news for otherkin, therianthropes, fictionfolk, plural systems, and all sorts of alterhumans.

PluralArchives: Citations of plural and pluralish phenomena collected in one place.

PluralStories: A searchable catalog of plural and pluralish stories.

TheriThere: A comic about therianthropes and otherkin.

Forums make great community spaces

If you simply want a place to talk with friends about shared interests, consider web-based forums. Each forum has its own rules, moderation teams, and features. Search for forums that are built around your fandoms or other interests. We recommend these for alterhumans:

Alt+H Forums: A quiet forum hosted by Alt+h, a nonhuman advocacy group. It is about alterhuman experiences as a whole.

Draconity: A forum focused on dragons specifically. It had a site-wide update in 2022.

Draconic: This forum for dragon otherkin has been running continuously since 1998.

Nonhuman National Park: A forum focused on inclusion and intersectionality of nonhuman, alterhuman, and plural identities.

What do you do with your Twitter after you leave?

Some people choose to delete their Twitter account completely. This erases all their tweets and connections to other users. Any conversation threads with this user will have pieces missing. That can interfere with other users’ archival efforts. Erasing your tracks that thoroughly can also make it difficult for your friends and followers to discover where you disappeared to and why.

If you don’t want to delete the account altogether, then sign into it once every 30 days, to prevent it from getting automatically deleted for inactivity. You don’t need to post anything: just sign in (Twitter, inactive account policy). Some people use a third-party tool to automatically delete all or most tweets. Removing content from the site is a good way to withdraw support from it. However, some users report that their deleted tweets come back later.

Should you leave your account public, or set it to “protected”? That status makes it so all your tweets, followers, and followed users can only be seen by users who you manually accept as your followers. Pros: this mostly prevents unwanted interactions or follows from random users, while leaving behind a signpost to let your friends know where you disappeared to and why. Cons: privating can interfere with others’ efforts to archive conversation threads just like if the account had been deleted. Archival tools can only pick up your tweets if they’re public. -- Appendix: A timeline of events related to this article

2022 January. The Gender Unity Project, LLC, invites transgender people and allies to interview in a movie. Meanwhile, Okami has interviews in The Sun, and UK breakfast TV show This Morning.

2022 February 7. Okami’s interview on Fox News. On the same day, Erlick publicly exposes that the Gender Unity Project is deceiving transgender people into interviewing with Walsh.

2022 March. Walsh publishes Johnny the Walrus, a picture book about a child being pressured to become a walrus, in parody of transgender children.

2022 May. Okami blogs a public statement about her involvement in What Is A Woman? with documentation of how they deceived her into showing up to it.

2022 June. Walsh releases What Is A Woman? Okami writes a detailed criticism of that movie.

2022 October. Okami announces that she no longer calls herself therian or otherkin. Musk buys Twitter and immediately posts an anti-gay conspiracy theory. He lays off thousands of employees, many crucial to the maintenance of the site software. He invites many users back to Twitter who had previously been banned for being nazis and white supremacists (Washington Post, Nov 11, 2022). Anticipating that Twitter will soon crash and/or become effectively a far-right site only, thousands of users leave or prepare to leave Twitter, filling their profiles and pinned tweets with links to where to find them on other social media sites.

2022 December. To discourage this, Twitter introduces an algorithm that prevents users from putting links to other social media sites in their profiles, and threatens to ban users for doing so.

2023 March and April. Users notice that Twitter’s algorithm suppresses tweets that contain external links, misspelled words, or mention of Ukraine. It suppresses LGBT related words, but not fascism related words. Twitter’s policy stops protecting transgender users against harassment. Even news agencies are quitting Twitter, such as NPR and PBS.

2023 May. To discourage this, Twitter starts banning accounts that have been inactive for a short amount of time.

2023 June. Musk quote-retweets and pins the Daily Wire’s free stream of What Is A Woman? The same day, he vows to lobby for the imprisonment of therapists who support transgender youth.

--

About the writers: Alterhuman community historians  and archivists House of Chimeras, Page Shepard, N. Noel Sol, and Orion Scribner collaborated on this article. Thanks to Solarbird for her Fascism Watch blog series, which helped us find news sources for much of what has been happening with Twitter.

This article is also on the Otherkin News Dreamwidth.

[otherkinnews]

(ID: A preview of the article that’s linked below. ID ends.)

Today in Otherkin News: sexists proposed an amendment to Montana Senate Bill 544 that would broaden the bill's scope to also censor everything about people who are transgender... or transspecies. What do the lawmakers think they're talking about when they use that word? To find out where this bill came from, where it’s going, how it might affect us, and what you can do, you can start by reading our eight page long article all about it: https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/89561.html

[otherkinnews]

Last month, the Swiss hacktivist maia arson crimew exposed the US government's no-fly list, proving that the list was as discriminatory as had been suspected. The hacktivist happens to be openly a kitten therian and otherkin. This article is about four pages long, with glossary and references.

[otherkinnews]

Otherkin News returns, with an article about the “anti-furry” bills in the US

The Otherkin News blog is a collaborative project on Dreamwidth, and it’s returning to activity after a long hiatus. You are welcome to make your own original posts to it about what's going on in or about any alterhuman communities, or about interesting news articles you've found. Its main location is on Dreamwidth, and I don’t plan to post regular updates about it on Tumblr, but I wanted to at least put this notification on Tumblr. On Dreamwidth, conversations in the comments of the article are encouraged, and moderated for quality. This is what its newest article is about:

In January, a ton of US bills opposed transgender rights... three of which also opposed "furries" and "identifying as animals" in schools: ND HB 1522, OK SB 943, and IN SH 380. I just wrote a detailed post to the Otherkin News blog about them and the background behind why anyone would think of proposing laws like that! Part of the background was the "litter boxes in high schools" urban legend, with which right-wingers meant to satirize transgender restroom access. Another part: the three Supreme Court cases from around 2019, where amici curiae submitted briefs that tried to ridicule transgender people by comparing them to otherkin. Read all about it in my nine page long article, with glossary, in-text citations, and references:

https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/86709.html