Locke and Key would have been a clever name

Shown me there is more to reality than meets the eye.

Been there for me when I couldn't stand for myself

Taught me how to love myself

Been there for me when no one else was

Comforted me during loneliness 

Shown me how to confront my weaknesses and made me a better person 

Told me how to not take everything so seriously and that it's okay to just relax sometimes 

Helped me learn what matters to me when it comes to my sense of self and identity

I don’t know. Having a mental construct to talk to seems right up my alley.

Also, I get mixed answers from whoever I ask, but does daemonism have any relation to otherkin? I know they’re separate, but in what ways do they intersect? Can one of your kintypes be a daemon as well?

What I can say is objective truth on the matter: The daemian and otherkin communities overlap heavily, but they’re not inherently connected. They arose separately, although they share a good chunk of history, and although both share a passion for self-examination and introspection, ultimately they’re separate communities that for the vast majority of people probably serve different purposes.

What’s my subjective opinion: Your daemon could hypothetically share the same form as a kintype, but that doesn’t mean your daemon is your kintype - personally I don’t think I would be able to reconcile that with otherkinity being a personal identity and daemons being partially separated beings. Yes, a daemon is a part of you, but they’re a part of you given partial separation and fauxtonomy, and that just.. doesn’t make sense with a kintype. I wouldn’t be able to separate Rani from myself as a daemon, because I am Rani; I am inherently dragon and trying to extricate that from any other part of my identity would be impossible.

If daemons really existed, and had really been a part of humanity since the dawn of time, then it seems to me like most (if not all) languages would have evolved pronouns to reflect that.

You’d think most if not all languages would have a human-body-only pronoun (“he took down the glass from the shelf”), a daemon-only pronoun (“he took off with a powerful wingbeat”) and an entire-being, human-daemon combo pronoun (“they left early this morning”) that could be used to refer to a singular human-daemon pair as opposed to multiple human-daemon pairs.

(And it would make sense, since most humans and their daemons differ in gender, for that singular-pair pronoun to be genderless, but tbh they would probably be flavored by the human’s gender at least some of the time, because we can’t have nice things.)

"You live in a society" FUCK YOU

Inspired by this by @isashi-nigami / @daemonduo

Let’s first get this out of the way: being gay does not automatically mean your dæmon is the same sex as you. Are we good? All on the same page? Lovely. The whole idea behind gay people having a same-sex dæmon came from a singular character who was implied to be gay in the books, who also had a same-sex dæmon, and as far as I’m aware, Pullman has neither confirmed nor denied any theories regarding sexuality and dæmons. Even if he has, there are times when disagreeing with an author about their work is absolutely acceptable, and this would be one.

When examining dæmon genders in regards to human sexuality, I think it’s important to look at why dæmons come out a certain gender. I’ve seen a lot of theories floating around, one of the most popular ones (that I’ve seen, maybe it’s changed though) having to do with balance. For example, a masculine person needing a feminine dæmon to even them out. I wholeheartedly reject this idea, in part because it’s a bit derogatory, as it implies that gay men are feminine and gay women are masculine, therefore needing a dæmon of the same sex to even them out. I personally believe that when it comes to figuring out the gender of your dæmon, you should remove sexuality entirely.

When trying to decide what gender fits best, the consideration I think needs to be whether you’re more drawn to masculine or feminine energy (or other, but I’ll get back to that in a bit). Now, this doesn’t mean whether you’re attracted romantically/sexually to masculine or feminine people. It also doesn’t mean how you personally prefer to present. For example, I am female. I enjoy being feminine, acting feminine, and exuding feminine energy. However, I feel a strong connection to masculine energies, which is why I feel my dæmon is male. I like observing masculinity, hearing from the male perspective, and I also appreciate masculinity in part because I am not masculine. I appreciate the contrast to myself. For some people, they might feel very drawn to feminine energies, but again, this is not sexual or romantic. You could be a straight woman with a female dæmon because you simply prefer female energy, not because you dislike dick. A person might not want/need the contrast in gender the way I personally do, and that can be for so many reasons it isn’t even really possible to list them all.

Now, having gotten all that out of the way, I do think that non-straight people are more likely to have same-sex dæmons. A correlation rather than a causation, if you will. In part I think this has to do with non cis-het people generally being more flexible in their gender performance (this is a big generalization, I am aware, don’t bite my head off) and because of this, might be more comfortably with a same-sex dæmon. As I said before, sexuality/your gender does not directly determine your dæmon’s gender, but there will probably be a correlation.

If you’ve read this whole thing and are asking, well, what about me? I/my dæmon don’t fit under male or female? Then the answer is that honestly not much changes, but deciding how your dæmon portrays themselves may be more challenging.

For those of you who don’t identify as male/female (I understand that there are a large number of labels you could use, but for the sake of brevity I’m going to use genderqueer as an umbrella term) you can absolutely still have a dæmon that identifies as male or female. As I pointed out earlier, your gender does not inherently determine the gender of your dæmon. If you feel particularly drawn to female energies and are genderqueer, congratulations, you probably have a female dæmon.

In regards to dæmons being genderqueer/not fitting the traditional gender binary, this is also an option if you feel that your dæmon does not fit within the confines of the gender binary. You do not need to identify as genderqueer for this to affect your dæmon. Admittedly I don’t think of genderqueer dæmons as particularly common, but that certainly doesn’t mean that it can’t/doesn’t happen. Again, this would probably be more commonplace in queer safe spaces, but not always.

Onto some commonly asked questions:

Gender is, at its core, a social construct. If we accept this, why then do dæmons have to conform to any gender at all?

Well, they don’t. Besides, just because gender is a construct doesn’t mean it isn’t useful. Money has no inherent value, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t massively influence our daily lives. You may decide that the traditional gender binary doesn’t suit either yourself or your dæmon, but that doesn’t mean that those who feel it does ought to be belittled.

So, if I’m gay, is my dæmon the same gender as me?

Nope, not necessarily. You can be gay and have a same-sex dæmon if that feel right, but you can also have a dæmon of the opposite sex. Both are completely fine.

What if I’m straight? Can I still have a same-sex dæmon?

Yes, you can!

What if I’m bi/pan/ace/whatever, does that affect my dæmon’s gender?

Your dæmon’s gender is separate from both your gender expression and your sexuality. Therefore, whatever you identify as does not inherently affect what your dæmon will present as.

Do dæmons have sexuality?

This is a harder question to answer, and I’m going to go with a resounding “eh”. I don’t think dæmons would have sexuality in the sense of desiring to have sex with another dæmon—at the very least, I have never experienced this. I do, however, think that some dæmons would show a marked preference for the gender of the dæmon that belongs to their human’s romantic interest. For example, a dæmon might be drawn to male dæmons than female dæmons. Could this affect their human’s romantic/sexual endeavors? Yes, I think so. Maybe not overtly, but a dæmon that likes male dæmons might encourage their human to go after their preferred gendered partner who also has a dæmon that is the gender they prefer. Does that make sense?

I still don’t know what gender my dæmon is, how do I figure that out?

If after reading this you still aren’t clear, that’s totally fine! Gender is a very complicated topic that uses a lot of abstract language; dæmonism is the same. Put the two together and nobody knows what’s going on anymore. There’s no need to immediately gender your dæmon. You can play around with what gender they present as for as long as you want. A lot of this is very instinct and vibes based, so it really is just whatever feels right to you.

I used to think my dæmon was X gender and now I think they might be Y gender. Is that okay?

Yep! Totally okay. Who’s going to stop you, the dæmon police?

What if I don’t want to gender them at all?

Again, perfectly fine, and really, who cares? Is anybody going to break down your door and tell you to stop imagining a talking animal that does or does not conform to a certain gender? I highly doubt it, or else you’re living a much more exciting life than I am.