Getting Started

What is website about?

This website is a collection of resources and online spaces regarding alterhumanity, with an emphasis on nonhumanity.

Alterhumanity is a very broad experience. The creator of the term summarized it as "a category of personal identity which encompasses identification that is alternative to the common societal idea of humanity" These "common societal ideas" can change drastically between individuals, making alterhumanity very hard to define. For some, alterhumanity is about spirituality, physical disability, or mental illness. Others experience plurality (more commonly known as DID, although that is not the only way to be plural) or nonhumanity.

The latter of those, nonhumanity, is what this website is primarily about. You may know us as therianthropes or otherkin, although there are many other labels than just those two. The definition for what it means to be nonhuman changes depending on who you ask. Broadly, I define it as an internal sense of self (be it in part or in whole) that is distinctly not human. Nonhumans all have different views and opinions on their relationship to humanity and we all experience it differently.

Some common nonhuman experiences include phantom sensations (feeling limbs or body parts that are not actually there, such as ears or a tail) and shifts (moments of more intense separation from humanity or closeness with their nonhuman identity), although neither are necessary.

Nonhumans have been around forever, although not always under these modern names. We started congregating online in the 1970s, over 50 years ago, and are still here today! This is not a bit, a trend, or roleplay. Our experiences can be isolating and lonely, so we turn to the internet to find community. We write, make art, and gather together to create a space where we can exist as we are. This website is an accumulation of these attempts at connection.

Required Reading

I have created a list of resources that I think will help out the newly awakened (our way of referring to those who have just discovered their nonhumanity) or those just curious. Many of these resources will show up on other parts of the website, but not all.

Many thanks to the Massive Alterhuman Resource Page for collecting a lot of these posts and links. I did not include everything from that document here, so be sure to check it out for more information!

Getting Started

What is website about?

Required Reading

Dictionaries, Definitions, and other Terminology

Writing and Essays

Self-Discovery and Common Questions

Community History

Personal Websites