A History of the Therian and Otherkin Communities

Before there were words

People who felt themselves to be something other than human surely existed before any community formed around the feeling. They left few records, and it is not possible to say how many there were or how they understood themselves. This history begins where the evidence does: with people who found one another and wrote things down.

It is told here without the names of particular groups, sites or individuals. The library's concern is the shape of the story, and many of those involved were private people who used pen names.

A timeline

1. The 1970s Small circles of people who understand themselves to be elves begin to correspond by letter, mostly in North America, often through the pagan and occult networks of the time. They exchange letters, hand-copied newsletters and a symbol, the seven-pointed star.
2. 1990 An electronic mailing list for elves is founded. It draws people with similar feelings about other kinds of being. In the spring a member suggests the word otherkind for them, soon shortened to otherkin.
3. 1992 A public online discussion group is created for fans of werewolf fiction and film. It is meant for talk about stories.
4. 1993 Some regulars of the werewolf group begin to say, in earnest, that they feel themselves to be wolves or other animals inwardly. Others answer that they feel the same. They call themselves weres and, at first, lycanthropes. A similar group for dragon enthusiasts takes a similar turn.
5. 1994 Members of the werewolf group hold the first howl, an in-person gathering, in the autumn. In December the word therianthropy is put forward as a term wide enough for every species, and is taken up.
6. 1995 to 1996 The group compiles a long document of frequently asked questions, setting out its vocabulary: shifting, phantom limbs, and the distinction between spiritual and other understandings. The first howl in Europe is held. Live chat rooms open.
7. 1997 to 1999 After a quarrelsome period, many members leave the original group for independent sites and forums of their own. Personal pages multiply, linked together in rings. The word contherian is coined for those who do not shift.
8. The 2000s Large forums become the center of community life, and essay collections and indexes are built to preserve its writing. In 2003 the theta-delta is designed. New terms appear, among them suntherian and animal-hearted. The first books written from inside the community are published.
9. The 2010s Activity shifts from forums to blogging and social platforms, and a younger generation arrives. Community historians begin compiling careful timelines. In 2014 the umbrella term alterhuman is coined. The first academic studies of therians and otherkin appear.
10. The 2020s Short videos carry the word therian to an audience of millions, many of them very young. Masks, tails and quadrobics become its public face. Older and newer members work, not always smoothly, at understanding one another.

Two rivers

The therian and otherkin communities are often spoken of together, but they rose from different springs. The otherkin came out of a spiritual and magical milieu; their founding question was "what kind of soul do I have?" The therians came out of a fandom for monster stories; their founding question was "why do these stories feel like they are about me?" The first group started with belief and moved toward community. The second started with community and had to work out what it believed.

They met early, shared members throughout, and borrowed each other's words. Shifting passed from therians to otherkin. The idea of a non-human identity that needs no physical proof passed, in large part, the other way. By the 2000s it was common to treat therians as one branch of the otherkin, though many therians have always preferred to keep their own name.

What the arguments were about

A community's history is partly the history of its disagreements. Three run through the whole period.

Physical shifting. In the earliest years a few people claimed, or hoped, that bodily transformation was possible. The community's first hard-won consensus was that it is not. That position was firm by the later 1990s and has not changed. Newcomers who arrive believing otherwise are corrected, usually kindly.

Spirit or mind. Whether therianthropy is best understood spiritually or psychologically was fiercely debated in the first decade. The debate ended in a truce: both are accepted, and nobody is required to choose.

Who belongs. Each new group to arrive, the non-shifters, the mythic theriotypes, the fictionkin, the otherhearted, the very young, has prompted the question of where the edges lie. The usual outcome has been a new word and a slightly larger tent.

A culture of writing

From the start, these communities have thought by writing. The long essay is their characteristic form: a personal account, carefully reasoned, offered for others to test against their own experience. Hundreds were written in the forum years, and a good part of the vocabulary in the glossary was coined in them. Libraries and indexes of such essays were among the most valued sites of the 2000s, and this library is kept in the same spirit.

That habit of patient self-examination is, perhaps, the community's best inheritance. It is harder to maintain in an age of fifteen-second videos, and worth the effort.

The present

The community today is far larger, younger and more visible than at any time in its past. Visibility has brought welcome company to many isolated people. It has also brought misunderstanding. Alarmist rumors about therians, particularly about young people in schools, have circulated widely in recent years. None has been substantiated, and most describe behavior that therians themselves would not recognize.

Under the noise, the essentials are what they were in 1994. Some people find, usually early in life, that they are not only human. They look for others, they look for words, and they try to live well. The page on common misconceptions addresses what is most often said about them, and the stacks hold writing in the tradition this page has described.