Otherkin

Otherkin are people who identify as partly or wholly non-human, most often as a mythical, fantastical, or fictional being such as an elf, dragon, angel, or fae. The Oxford English Dictionary, which added the word in 2017, glosses it as "a person who identifies as non-human, typically as being wholly or partially an animal or mythical being." The identity is non-sexual and self-described: otherkin remain aware that their bodies are human, and the felt non-humanity is experienced as spiritual, psychological, or existential rather than physical. This article sets out the boundaries of the term, traces its origins in early online communities, and summarises the modest academic literature.

Definition & scope

Otherkin is an umbrella for non-human kintypes drawn largely from myth, folklore, and popular fantasy. Where a person identifies specifically as a real-world animal, the usual term is therian rather than otherkin, though the communities overlap and share much vocabulary. Since around 2014 the broader label alterhuman has been used on Tumblr and elsewhere to group otherkin, therians, vampires, and plurality communities under one heading.

The identity is not a claim of literal physical transformation, and it is distinct from three things it is often confused with:

• Role-play and fandom: enjoying playing a character is not the same as feeling one is that being.
• Clinical delusion: otherkin retain reality-testing about their human bodies, unlike the rare psychiatric delusion of clinical lycanthropy.
• Erotic interest: otherkin identity is about being, not desiring, and should not be conflated with attraction to non-human figures.

Examples

What the term covers. Kintypes come mostly from myth and fantasy: elves, dragons, fae, angels and demons are the long-standing ones, joined by "fictionkin", whose kintype is a specific character from a novel, film or game. People describe an awakening, the point at which a long-felt sense is recognised and named, and share a vocabulary of shifts (episodes in which the non-human sense becomes vivid) and of phantom wings, tails or fangs felt as sensation rather than seen. Almost all of this is expressed online, in forums, Tumblr blogs and Discord servers grouped loosely by kintype, with no membership, hierarchy or authority to speak for anyone.

What the term does not cover. Therianthropy is the parallel identity for real-world animal kintypes; the communities overlap heavily and share vocabulary without being the same thing. The furry fandom and fursuiting are creative and social pursuits organised around anthropomorphic characters — a fandom rather than an identity claim, though many people belong to both. Clinical lycanthropy is a rare psychiatric syndrome of delusional physical transformation and is a different phenomenon altogether. Attraction-based interests such as teratophilia and monster fetish point desire outward at non-human figures rather than inward at the self. Xenogender identities describe gender through non-human reference points, which is a claim about gender, not about species.

How the word is used. It is self-applied community vernacular that has since reached general dictionaries, and in community usage "kin" also works as a verb — someone will say they kin a particular being. It is never a diagnosis: it appears in no edition of the DSM or the ICD, and no clinician assigns it.

History & origins

The modern otherkin community is a documented product of pre-web and early-web online culture, with a small pre-internet lineage.

1. Late 1960s to 1970s: The Elf Queen's Daughters, a group whose members described themselves as elves, are the earliest recorded antecedent. They circulated letters through the 1970s, including in the neopagan magazine Green Egg, before falling quiet.
2. April 1990: The variant otherkind appeared on an elf-oriented mailing list.
3. July 1990: The word otherkin was adopted on the Elfinkind Digest, a mailing list founded by a University of Kentucky student "for elves and interested observers." The term caught on as shorthand so members would not have to spell out "elf/dragon/orc/etc.-kin" each time.
4. 1990s onward: The community grew almost entirely online, through Usenet, mailing lists, and later web forums and Tumblr, organising loosely by kintype without any central authority.
5. c. 2014: The alterhuman umbrella term emerged to connect otherkin with adjacent non-human and plural identity communities.

Psychology

The research base is small and mostly qualitative, treating otherkin as an identity and meaning-making practice rather than a pathology. The fullest academic treatment is Danielle Kirby's Fantasy and Belief: Alternative Religions, Popular Narratives and Digital Cultures (Equinox, 2013), which situates otherkin at the meeting point of new religiosity, digital culture, and appropriated fantasy narratives. Religious-studies scholar Joseph P. Laycock (2012) reads otherkin identity work as serving existential and religious functions, and Jay Johnston (2013) has argued that non-human identity may be less a pathology than a political stance on the boundaries of the self. None of this literature frames otherkin as a mental disorder.

Is being otherkin a mental illness?

No. Otherkin identity is not a recognised disorder in the DSM-5-TR or the ICD-11, and it does not appear on the list of recognised paraphilias. Some members and observers connect the experience to neurodivergence or to spiritual frameworks, but these are self-descriptions, not diagnoses.

Prevalence & culture

The community is small, predominantly English-speaking and Western, and concentrated online. There is no reliable population estimate. The clearest quantitative signal comes from adjacent furry research: surveys of furry conventions and forums report that a sizeable minority (figures between roughly 25% and 44% across samples) identify as "less than 100% human," against around 7% of non-furries, per the Otherkin article. That indicates how broadly non-human-identity sentiment distributes rather than a count of otherkin specifically. Media coverage tends toward the sensational, while the lived community emphasises peer support and self-acceptance.

Variations & related interests

Kintypes range from classical mythical beings to creatures invented in modern fiction ("fictionkin"). The identity sits closest to therianthropy (animal kintypes), and is conceptually adjacent to embodiment themes explored in erotic target identity inversion and to fascination with the monstrous or non-human in teratophilia, though those are separate phenomena.

Safety, consent & law

Otherkin identity is legal and harms no one. Informal notions such as "species dysphoria" (distress at a felt mismatch between body and identity) are community language, not clinical diagnoses. Anyone in genuine distress is encouraged to seek affirming, non-judgemental support.