nights/hollow | he/they/it | alterhuman sideblog of nightbody | icon from antiqueanimals
223 posts
Latest Posts by shadedhollow - Page 5
Reclaiming "Female" Through Therianthropy
This is my submission for the "My Gender is Not Human" zine. Here, I discuss how I realized I was not transgender because of my therianthropy and I hope that maybe someone else may relate and understand themselves in a new way. ♡
If you want to wait to read this until the Zine is released, then do not continue past the "keep reading" portion. Otherwise, enjoy!
PS: If this interests you, I'd strongly advise playing Shelter 2 (where I got the photo below from) as it relates a lot to my own experience.
CW: Body issues, misogyny
Can you imagine the scent of the velvet fuzz of a newborn animal? The experience of a dark den now filled with new life, life that hasn't even opened its eyes yet to the winter world just outside? Can you imagine the tiredness yet sheer love and comfort of having your children welcomed into the world, witnessed only by you and the Earth’s soil?
It's something I often dream of, and it's that very experience that made me realize that I am not transgender. It's funny because in this community, it feels as though the majority of individuals here are transgender and that experience ties closely into their nonhumanity. For me, the opposite occurred. I had a top surgery letter in my hand after years of feeling “not quite right” in my body or in how people perceived me. I had every reason to feel this way and to want this, even if it felt imperfect. Looking back, I remember how I got to this point.
“Be skinnier any way you can, it’ll make you prettier” they’d say as they, themselves, were ironically obese and I loved them no less for it.
“Grow your hair long and change your clothes, you’ll look more like a lady.” A projection rooted in the ideals of someone who reads far too much Jane Austen.
“Women should be subservient and provide endlessly, or they’re selfish.”
Dread set in every time I filled someone’s coffee or plate of food due to expectation or demand and not out of love and kindness. Everytime the topic of how I looked in a dress or how my hair wasn’t as long as someone else wanted. The disappointment of my family when they learned I had dated other women in the past and their relief when I dated one man. The eyerolls and my teacher’s discouragement when I expressed an interest in physics or chemistry. Even my finance degree was achieved through apparent luck despite graduating top of my class. Every “right” I accomplished was met with a “wrong” in some new category. The very things that made men impressive made me disobedient. I starved myself to look a little nicer to strangers, cried in bed after being talked down to at work, slept away all of my sorrows in a curled up ball. Humanity didn’t take kindly to me.
It frustrated me, and combined with my general lack of identity at the time along with diagnosed CPTSD, it was easy to relate to the plight that transgender individuals experienced. Surely that had to be me, but the label and being perceived as something besides female never clicked entirely. I figured that I may just have mild gender dysphoria instead, but for the first time, I really deep dived into what it meant to identify as a gender as everyone was needing urgent, permanent decisions to be made on my end. Around this time, I took on my first mammal label which was a feline. Ironically, cats are often the first animals to be associated with femininity and to be mistreated because of it.
I wanted motherhood, but I wanted my own kittens to rear more than I felt like I wanted to raise a human infant after spending time in a daycare and at a cat shelter. I didn’t want my breasts, but not because I wasn’t a girl, that’s just how other animals are. Perfume was a method to mark the rooms I had been in, not for elegance. I still felt so female, yet I didn’t see another way out besides transitioning until it occurred to me: what if I didn’t have to be a “woman”, and instead, I could simply be female the way animals are female?
There were so many women like me such as in Brave, Princess Mononoke, Poor Things, or Wolf Children. The women who strayed from polite society to walk their own paths and stuck to their own desires. Even my own cat was female and yet held her chin so high and demanded when she would or would not be held. This realization was the first time I found myself feeling feral freedom and uninhibited beauty in the way I was. I was going to be the woman that rolls in the dirt, who is unapologetically beautiful in her own way, who chases after whatever her wild heart desires. I am not transgender, but I am not entirely a woman. I am an animal, and I am female in all of its unbridled ways.
Shedding my domestic cat label, I have taken up the title of bobcat. With it, I swear on my name that I will bite the hand of any who wish to tame or domesticate me ever again. I have been released out of the crate and back into the wilderness where I belong, and I shall never look back down the mountain. I feel the moss beneath my paws, the cold breeze kissing my nose, the smell of rain soaked woods and wildflowers. Ravens cry as I run on four legs towards the peak, released at last from the grips of mankind. I feel the warmth of a life suddenly worth living, growing along with the hair I now reclaim as my own fur without shame or expectation. I am home at the summit of my own world.
My spirit runs wild, and she is female.
Do you miss all your old selves?
no they are inside of me i hug them everyday and say u did such a good job
not werewolf as in man twisted into a monstrous caricature of canine.
werewolf as in neither canine nor man.
werewolf as in tied to the moon, the eye ever blinking.
werewolf as in solitary despite your nature.
werewolf as in "i love you, but i'm just another animal."
hey!!
felinekin, caninekin, any kin of the sorts!!
please interact with me !! i need therian/alterhuman mutuals/friends :3c
please reblog (or just int) if youre on therian / otherkin / alterhuman tumblr im so desperate for more mutuals. pspsps. reveal yourselves
unhinged thirty days of otherkin challenge, day 30: has thirty days of this unhinged you further?
nah, but it was fun! i've been wanting to talk about my alterhumanity, but felt too wary - this was a good way to ease into it.
unhinged thirty days of otherkin challenge, day 29: what's a really nice smell?
broken sassafras branch. petrichor. bonfire in the distance. i could go on, plenty of nice smells out there.
unhinged thirty days of otherkin challenge, day 28: how many fingers do you have and why?
not sure about the fauns - either four or five on each hand, with the outermost fingers functioning as thumbs.
sleepyhead has five on each hand, same as humans do.
why? don't worry about it.
skipping day 26 bc i can't for the life of me come up w an answer
unhinged thirty days of otherkin challenge, day 27: it's getting dark out. does your kintype sleep, wake up, or PANIC??
the fauns wind down at night. after a long day of running and jumping and climbing, sleep is a strong possibility, all cuddled up in a pile of friends until first light.
sleepyhead sets up camp and sleeps by the fire. their sleep is light, since they can't afford to completely let their guard down. let's hope it's restful.
unhinged thirty days of otherkin challenge, day 25: alone in a forest with no provisions, how long does your kintype survive?
that's exactly where the fauns belong, baby! let's assume you mean a different forest, though. you'd have to transplant the trees somehow - we're tied to the trees - but let's say it's possible.
there'd be transplant shock, so the fauns would likely go into dormancy for a bit. the only provisions needed are good soil, sunlight, and water. easy peasy. after that, it's business as usual!
sleepyhead would be fine. they were raised in (by?) the forest, it's no stranger to them. after a moment to get their bearings, they'd soldier on.