Long Ass Post - Blog Posts

Not your typical coat color in a cat

I think it's probably actually an orange kitten with a very 'sooty' cast to it.

Hello! I have some questions for you, if you don't mind.

What does transspecies mean to you?

How did you discover you were transspecies?

How do you feel about the myth that transspecies makes fun of transgender people?

How do you feel about the idea that transspecies should not be used or people who are transspecies should stay hidden because it can be used against the transgender community

(A controversial one) Why did rad-q takeover the transspecies term, how does that effect the alterhuman community, and how do you feel about it?

Hi thank you sm for asking hehe :3 I love getting to talk about this stuff (and knowing that others are interested in hearing about it lol)

Long ass post below the cut

1. To me, transspecies is the rawest, most direct way for me to express my nonhumanity. It cuts through a lot of the vagueness and nuance of some other nonhuman labels (not that there's anything wrong with that ofc) and gets straight to the point: Im not entirely human and want to be acknowledged as such by my peers and society at large. It emphasizes my desire to move through life as nonhuman, and that there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I also like that it challenges the narrative of human superiority and the idea that species identity is purely biology based. For me personally, it also ties into my experience with being transgender, as I often see my gender as being partially nonhuman. Many things that are gender affirming are also species affirming and vice versa. But obviously you don't have to be transgender to be transspecies, one of my irl packmates and close friend is cisgender transspecies and she's awesome <3

2. It wasn't so much a "discovery" for me. My transspecies identity is very closely tied to my therianthropy, the species I identify as and see myself transitioning into are also all kintypes. So after I realized I was a therianthrope, it was kind of just a slow realization that it was also a label that fit my experiences well. Like most alterhumans I had heard the word used as a weapon against transgender people and alterhumans, so I had a very negative perception of it for a long time. I think the first time I ever heard it referred to in a not-outright-negative sense was in PDTherians "Trans-species?!" youtube video (which I do not recommend as a source of education at all it's a very flawed video that's riddled with misinformation) a few years back, and from there I slowly started to open up to the idea and yeah. The rest is history pretty much lol

3. To some degree I actually can empathize with the stance because I used to be in the same camp, and I know from experience that for a lot of folks it's just well intentioned but misplaced passion of trans liberation. But at the same time it's still a harmful belief and one I grew out of because I matured and learned more about the communities I was part of. Anytime you cast judgement onto a group of people with a harmless identity/belief/interest for the sole purpose of "they're too weird", that harms everyone, not just that group. In this case, hatred against transspecies folks implies that there is a right and a wrong way to be queer/trans, which is harmful not only to nonhumans but to all queer individuals.

4. I think it's bullshit lmao. Shying away from it and outcasting the people who use it does absolutely nothing but divide us further and make us an easier target for discrimination. Categorizing it as a community taboo just turns it into ammunition for transphobes and anti-alterhumans alike. Turning against each other and fighting over stupid shit like labels is exactly what oppressors want, a house divided against itself cannot stand. It also just doesn't make sense, species identity is socially constructed, similar to gender, so why should people be forbidden from using a word to describe that experience just because it's misunderstood?

5. I honestly have no idea why radqueers do anything at all lmaoooo. But if I had to guess, I think it's because on some level, they know that nobody with any semblance of social education or moral compass is ever going to be on board with their beliefs, so instead of trying to fight a losing battle they just barge their way into other small, marginalized, and outcasted groups (alterhuman, altage, paraphiles, etc.) and try to claim them as "part of them". It's a lot easier to tell a group of people "Hey you guys are actually just like us so you need to support our ideology because otherwise you're just fighting against yourself" than it is to try to convince them from scratch that you're not a horrible person.

As for how it's impacted the alterhuman community, Im not entirely sure but luckily I think its effects have been fairly minimal thus far. The alterhuman community is significantly bigger and older than the rq community, I've only ever run into rqs on Tumblr and even here Ive met transspecies folks who had never heard of radqueers before. I think its biggest impacts have been on the transspecies niche specifically, since they often try to lump it in with transid's like "transrace" and "transharmful", which leads to the assumption from outsiders that they're inherently connected and that all transspecies folks agree with those stances as well. But I think as transspecies and alterhumanity as a whole slowly becomes less stigmatized and more widely understood over time, that belief will also fade and die off.

Sorry for the massive text wall lmao, I hope that wasn't too much info. But again thank you sm for asking ^^ I think it's super important that folks out there are interested in learning more about this stuff and that alterhumans are able to communicate their experiences to one another <3