Rowan Researches

Anthropologist and alterhuman studying our community. This is my research tumblr. Please pardon the dust as I get it set up. Please see my pinned post for a list of open surveys. Icon is a portrait of Rowan by AlvaWings. Mobile header image is the nonhuman unity flag designed by Synanthrope.

[rowanresearches]

Hello and Welcome!

Hello! My name is Rowan. This is my blog dedicated to anthropological research on the alterhuman community. As this is intended to be a pinned introduction post, it will be a bit long. For that reason, most of the post is under a readmore, excepting the current surveys list.

Current alterhuman surveys:

None at this time. Soon!

A bit about me:

I am a cultural anthropologist and folklorist by training. I hold a master's degree in cultural anthropology.

I am the host of a plural system.

I have been a part of the alterhuman community since 2007, though I was inactive for several years. I identify as therian, otherkin, and otherkith.

A bit about my research:

I am only just beginning to research the alterhuman community from an academic perspective.

Because of the lack of consolidated data on the community, I am following the lead of several other researchers in running community surveys.

I am researching with an eye towards scholarly publication. My objective is to provide a resource for those both inside and outside the community who seek in good faith to understand us.

Who is welcome here:

The short answer is everyone. Because this blog was created for the express purpose of conducting research, I do not have any rules about who can or cannot follow or interact with this blog. I don't believe access to information should be gatekept and I believe that all folks who are part of a community should be seen.

There are, however, some things to know about me before you follow this blog.

I support all good faith alterhuman identities. This includes otherkin of all stripes, therians, nonhumans, transspecies folks, endels, fictionkin, factkin, otherhearts/otherkith, otherlinkers, and plural systems, as well as any others I've not listed. And there would always be others, no matter how long this list got.

I support systems of all origins. The brain is incredibly complex and it is not my place to tell anyone else what is happening in their own head. Besides which, not all plural folks even believe their systems to be psychological in origin. It is not my place to gatekeep their experiences. This blog is therefore endo and willo safe.

I will block those who target the alterhuman community. If you are here looking for beings to harass or attack, I will block you for my own safety and the safety of the communities I work with.

This blog is largely apolitical. While I as an individual do have very strongly held political views, I do not believe my personal politics should impact my research. (This point is why I'm not running this from my personal Tumblr.)

That said, I am opposed to ideologies that promote harm. This would include the typical things like racism, sexism, transphobia, and antisemitism, but also things such as being pro-contact for nonconsensual paraphilias. This is not an exhaustive list. I am also, for the same reason, against harassment. Harassing me or anyone else on this blog is a surefire way to get yourself blocked.

Ways to interact:

Surveys! I will be running surveys on the community. If you are over the age of majority for your country (18, if you're in the US), I strongly encourage you to participate in those. Feel free to share them, too! Here on Tumblr as well as on other sites.

Questions. I welcome these. And unlike surveys, the results of which are intended to eventually be synthesized into published articles, there is not an age requirement for this. If you have a question about an alterhuman topic, please feel free to ask. I will do my best to either answer it or suggest where to find the information you're looking for. I am also more than happy to answer questions about anthropology and folklore. The problem there may be getting me to shut up, as these are topics I love discussing. And you're welcome to ask me questions about my own alterhuman identities or non-alterhuman research. Please do understand, though, that I may decline to answer these types of questions if I feel they may pose a threat to my safety.

Reblogging. Yes, please do. We are, after all, on the rebageling website. (Why yes, I do miss the xkit extension that turned everything into bread. Hi, I've been here since the dawn of time.)

Comments. I welcome comments on my posts. However, I do reserve the right to remove hateful or threatening comments.

You've finally reached the bottom of the post! Thank you for taking the time to read all of that! I hope to hear from you!

[rowanresearches]

An Update

Hello, everyone! I'm logging into this account on my phone to say that the survey will not launch tomorrow. It's going to be a couple of days. I do have some last minute things to edit and I can't do that at the moment because my internet has been out since last night. I spent a large chunk of time at the hospital today (don't worry, I'm fine) and therefore did not get to anywhere with internet. If my internet hasn't come back on by tomorrow, I will be taking my laptop to work with me so that I can just stay there once I'm done to finish what I need to finish. My apologies. I will have that up very soon.

[rowanresearches]

Upcoming Survey

I intend to launch a survey soon about the impact of nonhuman identity on gendered concept of self. In other words, how being in some way and to some degree nonhuman affects your gender identity. This particular survey will be for those whose nonhuman identity would fit loosely into the kingdom Animalia if one applied to it the same taxonomic categorization applied to earthly beings. Basically what that means is that if you identify as a humanoid or animal, whether extant or extinct, earthly or not, mythological or folkloric or fictional, this survey is for you.

This survey will NOT cover identities such as objects or plants, among others. Not because I wish to exclude anyone or because I feel the experiences of plantkin, placekin, objectkin, and so on aren't important or valid, but simply because I needed to narrow the scope in order to actually be able to write the article I'm working on with this data. However, I do plan to run surveys in the future about gender and kintypes that aren't animals (in the broadest possible meaning of that word). So you will be counted! I just need to be able to organize.

I'm planning to launch that on May 1st. I have it almost ready, I'm just finishing up a couple of last things. It will run for 12 months once it is launched in order to give folks a chance to find it. I plan on pretty much any survey I run being open for 12 months. It will be a Google form. It should let you complete it more than once, to account for systems. Individual system members who are nonhuman or alterhuman are welcome and encourage to complete the survey.

Anyway, that should be up on May 1st!

[who-is-page]

The Alterhumans in Relationships Survey is collecting data on alterhumans and queerplatonic, sexual, and romantic relationships. This survey asks questions about your current and past relationships, and how you feel about relationships and alterhumanity. This survey was made for otherkin, therians, fictionkin, systems, and other people who may call themself alterhuman. But even if you don't use any of those terms, you can take still this survey.

This survey is being organized by Who-is-Page, an alterhuman scholar who has been in the community since 2014. The data collected in this survey will be used for research purposes and may be presented at an online convention (OtherCon 2024) later this year. Depending on how much you write in the write-in questions, this survey takes about 15 minutes.

Survey Link

Your physical body must at least 18 years old to participate in this survey. The survey will close on July 6th.

[rowanresearches]

(Heads up, the Nonhuman Unity Flag in your header was designed by Synanthrope/Ember in 2020, not by Dinocanid. I saw the accidental misattribution in your blog description and wanted to let you know. Dino does have two redesigns of the flag which more distinctly define the symbols on his Twitter from 2021, if you intended to use those instead for your header.)

Thank you for catching that! It's fixed now. I think I confused it with the variant that has the colored symbols in center rather than the black one.

[rowanresearches]

Rowan the Alterhuman

Hello there fellow creatures! I know I already have an intro post technically. However, I didn't really get into things all that much in that post. So this is intended to just kind of give a little more information about who I am as an alterhuman.

I'm in my 30s and I first started identifying as a therian in 2007, although I've been one all my life. I just didn't always have a term for it. I'm a Canadian timber wolf and African golden wolf therian. I began identifying as otherkin in 2010. This was back before the umbrella term "alterhuman" existed and the two communities were fairly separate. I'm coastal gryphonkin. I'm also otherkith, a term I began using in 2022. I'm crowkith, ravenkith, and red-tailed hawk-kith.

I'm the host of the Ironwood Collective. We're a quiogenic plural system, meaning we don't care about our origins. I've known about the system for about two years now. That's been quite the adjustment. I'm far from the only person in our system to identify as alterhuman or nonhuman. I will almost definitely be the only one posting on this blog, though. There's only one other of us with my love for academia, and he doesn't front much.

I think that's sufficient for this post. I just wanted to give a little information about how I fall under the alterhuman umbrella.

[frameacloud]

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.