Do you think itâs okay for people to identify as a physical nonhuman due to trans framework like âI am x therefore I have the body of x.â Is the problem that many are being cruel to other physical nonhumans- and not the identity itself? or is it both? Additionally, do you believe transspecies folk that socially/physically/etc transition or decide they feel more comfortable as physically nonhuman are accepted as physical nonhumans? Holothere label includes nonhuman alters, so does physical nonhuman include nonhuman alters? Can physical nonhumanity be a choice? Can you reject your biological species? Im curious of your thoughts on this
There are a bunch of questions here so I will break down each individually:
Do you think itâs okay for people to identify as a physical nonhuman due to trans framework like âI am x therefore I have the body of x.â Is the problem that many are being cruel to other physical nonhumans- and not the identity itself? or is it both?
Generally I would say no. I think identifying your body as [species] because you are that species is a valid way to approach things. The problem comes with the terminology and its function. These terms like physical nonhuman, transspecies, therian, etc are not just adjectives to gather but they are a means to find others and find community - which for some identities can be very difficult. This is part of the problem with tagspam, something many identities under wider alterhuman umbrella like otherlink and otherhearted struggle with as people crosstag their posts.
This philosophical or metaphorical approach does not provide, or does not appear to provide a meaningful difference in experience that is not already covered by therian, nor is that experience marginalised or ostracised within the therian and otherkind communities. For many the reason to take this language seemed very much in an attempt to gain legitimacy in their own mind and as a response to the rise of tiktok which led to significant incursions and tagspam in physical nonhuman, transspecies, holothere, and even at points clinical zoanthropy. The problem comes in that using that reasoning to claim physical nonhuman - or the other tags mentioned - displaced the original community as having this alternate use in the tags makes it functionally impossible to find others who actually share the same experience. That this use became so overwhelming it would come to dominate any discussions and when people would make various microlabels everything would always include options for metaphor, really defeats the purpose of the term.
The way we were treated by the interlopers did not help, but if they were nice about it (which would never have been an option as these communities and terms only existed because we had and still have no place within therian communities), the result would not have been meaningfully different. I could imagine a scenario where maybe we could have all integrated together, but we would still want to find people that connect to specific narrow experiences and so would still have had to create new terms. In the past there have been communities and spaces, namely transspecies, where several different definitions operate and different interpretations and experiences exist together fairly balanced (unless this all started happening a year or two ago and the tag sometimes became another therian tagspam combined with radqueer tagspam and pornbots) so it is not infeasible such could have happened. These hypotheticals though really do not matter because it did not happen that way, and realistically could not have happened another way, and I cannot seperate the history of what actually happened.
Additionally, do you believe transspecies folk that socially/physically/etc transition or decide they feel more comfortable as physically nonhuman are accepted as physical nonhumans?
Yes generally, there are quite a few people within transspecies community that identify themselves as physically nonhuman - I am one of them.
Holothere label includes nonhuman alters, so does physical nonhuman include nonhuman alters?
If that alter's experience of nonhumanity is physical and they relate to the community's experiences then yes. There are a number of physical nonhuman alters, or systems which contain multiple physical nonhumans, within the experience
Can physical nonhumanity be a choice? Can you reject your biological species?
I suppose it would mean what exactly you mean. I would tend to say yes, but a flat answer would be really confusing and insufficient as self-identity alone would be insufficient as the term asks or expects certain experiences, namely a physical experience of nonhumanity. It also makes things very confusing because where exactly is the line for choice? The line between voluntary and involuntary is very blurry and not nearly as binary as many present. But I do think someone could choose to become physically nonhuman. I could imagine a scenario in which someone becomes otherlink and then chooses to take steps in species transition. That would be a particular edgecase, but would fulfill it as being wholley a choice. For the vast majority of us though I do not think that having these experiences is a choice, though as many of us experience significant psychiatrisation and so choose to reject humans' interpretations of our experiences or demands that we view ourselves human. For me the question of voluntary versus involuntary is not particularly relavent or illustrating as much as the nature of the experience and shared experiences with others.
I hope this helps answer some of your questions.
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