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 (2017) glosses the word as "a person who identifies as non-human, typically as being wholly or partially an animal or mythical being." The identity is generally 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 best understood as 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 2014 the broader label alterhuman has been used on Tumblr and elsewhere to group otherkin, therians, vampires, and related identities under one heading.

The identity is not a claim of literal physical transformation, and it is distinct from:

• 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; it should not be conflated with attraction to non-human figures.

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–1970s: The Elf Queen's Daughters, founded by two people known as Arwen and Elenor ("The Tookes") in Oregon, are the earliest recorded group describing themselves as elves. They circulated letters through the 1970s before falling quiet by about 1977, as documented on the Otherkin Wikipedia article.
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 started by a University of Kentucky student. The list reporter Torin (Darren Stalder) is generally credited with coining the term as shorthand so members would not have to type "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 central authority.
5. 2014: The alterhuman umbrella term was introduced to connect otherkin with adjacent non-human 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 "perhaps not so much pathological as political." 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 summarised on Wikipedia indicate that a sizeable share of furries (often reported in the range of roughly a quarter to nearly half) identify as "less than 100% human," against around 7% of non-furries, which gives a sense of how the broader non-human-identity sentiment distributes rather than a count of otherkin specifically. Media coverage tends toward the sensational, but 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 close 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.