Hello and Welcome!
Hello! We're the Ironwood Collective. This is our 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.
A bit about me:
I am a cultural anthropologist and folklorist by training.
I hold a master's degree in cultural anthropology.
I am a plural system. It will be primarily two sysmates conducting research.
I have been a part of the alterhuman community since 2007, though I was inactive for several years.
We are collectively theriomythic and have members who identify as therian, otherkin, fictionkin, and otherhearted.
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 beyond prohibiting harassment. 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 you may wish to know about me before you follow this blog.
This blog supports all good faith alterhuman identities. This includes otherkin of all stripes, therians, phylanthropes, nonhumans, transspecies folks, endels, fictionkin, factkin, otherhearts/otherkith, otherlinkers, otherpaws, 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.
This blog supports 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 the subjective internal experiences of others. This blog is therefore endo and willo safe, but all systems of any origin or discourse stance may interact respectfully.
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.
I may at times be slow to respond to things. The body we inhabit is physically disabled and we're managing a number of chronic health problems. Inevitably, these will occasionally flare up and may take us away from this project for a few days at a time. There may be longer interruptions if something bigger comes up.
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. I'm also happy to explain age requirements.
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. These are topics I love discussing. You're also 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. (I've been on this site long enough to miss when we turned everything into bread.)
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!
(As a side note, if you spot the blog rowanresearches, that's my old blog for this project. I've unfortunately lost access to it over the course of dealing with an emerging health condition.)