#no-ai

Therianthropy Day is on the first full moon of November each year. This year, it will be on Wednesday, November 5, 2025. According to NASA, this will happen to be a supermoon, which means it might be slightly brighter than usual.

Why that date, and what is the history of that holiday? 

Therianthropy Day commemorates the first Howl, which was held 31 years ago in November 1994. A Howl is when therians meet up together in person. That was a year after the first therians started to meet up together online in November 1993. Therians first proposed commemorating it as a holiday on that date in 1996, in a conversation thread you can still see here. Based on that history, in 2016, Muninn the Raven proposed observing it as Therianthropy Day, though the first posts and community poll about it attracted little attention. I think the holiday finally really caught on in 2021, when I first saw many therians posting on social media about fun things they were doing for it.

What are therians, anyway?

If therianthropy is a new idea to you, or you want to explain it to others who are unfamiliar with it, this essay is a quick and easy introduction to it. It’s available in several languages, and the project welcomes more translations!

Learn more about our history by reading the Timeline of the Therian Community written by our community historian @liongoatsnake

What can we do for Therianthropy Day?

Therians have been celebrating it by wearing gear (for example, a necklace with the therian symbol, a tail, or clothes with pictures of their species), meeting up with their therian friends, and howling at the moon. (If you're meeting in person for the first time, stay safe!)

If you're not so open about your therianthropy, you can indulge in some quiet reflection by yourself with a guided meditation and self care.

Enjoy more than 40 games, zines, and other creations about therianthropy from this hand-curated itch.io collection.

Put on some jams that the Alterhuman Music blog tagged as therian, many composed by self-described therian musicians.

Cook a recipe inspired by what your species of animal side would eat. (Even if you're not a dragon, I recommend this presentation as an introduction to this practice because of the advice about how to adapt the sometimes strange foods that you may find species-affirming so that they'll be safe and delicious!)

Create something about your therianthropy! Draw a comic, write a zine, compose a song, design a game, craft some gear, use whatever creative medium you like. Everyone in our community takes part in creating it, it's all very much about DIY and self-expression.

Are there days for other sorts of alterhumans too?

[This article was originally posted on the main blog for Otherkin News, on DreamWidth: https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/95526.html Orion Scribner @frameacloud wrote it on January 8, 2025.]

During the previous two years, Republicans in the US have penned "anti-furry bills." These come from Republicans rumoring that schools also provide litter boxes for students who believe they are animals. The rumor has been debunked by the fact-checking sites Snopes and Reuters. Anti-furry bills oppose what the legislators variously and inaccurately describe as people who are furry, anthropomorphic, transspecies, identifying as animals, or having the "perception of being any animal species other than human". Sometimes the text of the bill itself uses those words, and sometimes the legislators only spell that out in interviews. The bills are based on the satirical urban legend about litter boxes, not on the behavior of any real people. The purpose is to satirize transgender students' requests to use the correct restrooms in schools. Republicans care about this as part of a vendetta against public schools and LGBT people.

The bills began in 2023 with North Dakota House Bill 1522, Oklahoma Senate Bill 943, Indiana Statehouse Bill 380, and a proposed amendment to Montana Senate Bill 544. 2024 had Oklahoma House Bill 3084, Mississippi House Bill 176, and Missouri House Bill 2678. No anti-furry bills have yet passed into law as such. Fellow volunteers and I have been reporting on these in the Otherkin News blog all along, which you can read in the tag for that purpose. I expect to see Republicans propose some more anti-furry bills this year, too. Here is the first relevant bill for 2025 that I've found, though it is not specifically what I would categorize as an anti-furry bill.

New York Senate Bill 723 would make it be a class B misdemeanor to wear a mask and/or costume in public places. It describes these as "deceptive wearing of a mask" and "disguised by unusual or unnatural attire." It would be a crime even for people who are doing harmless activities, such as "loiter[ing], remain[ing] or congregat[ing] in a public place with other persons so masked or disguised while engaged in a protest, rally or other public assembly." The explicit purpose is to make it more difficult for peaceful protestors to maintain any anonymity.

Today, one common tactic of protestors is "Black Bloc," in which all the protestors cover themselves in sunglasses and black clothing from head to foot. They hide their body shape as well as hair and faces as much as possible. Because Bloc makes the whole group look uniformly similar and anonymous, it makes it more difficult for police to identify an individual for later legal punishment or single someone out for immediate brutality. Covering one's skin and eyes as part of Black Bloc also gives some protection from pepper spray. If Black Bloc is banned, protestors will be more vulnerable to injury and police violence. If common attire of protestors is criminalized, then the bill could be used to some degree to limit or effectively ban peaceful protest, which is a First Amendment right. For centuries, disguises have played a role in how protestors protect their anonymity, show who they're together with, or invoke cultural symbols and beliefs (Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Warriors, pp. 75-80). In American history alone, disguises were a part of the famous protest that led to the US becoming an independent nation in the first place: the Boston Tea Party in 1773.

If your city in the state of New York requires permission from the police or other authorities for entertainment events, then Senate Bill 723 would require you to specifically get permission for people to wear disguises to the event, because it makes an exception for those. The bill also makes an exception for attire worn for religious reasons.

This bill could have an impact on other sorts of gatherings. It leaves itself open for various sorts of people to be considered to be wearing "unusual or unnatural attire." It doesn't specifically mention people who wear costumes and masks as part of hobbies such as fursuiting, cosplay, and quadrobics, but it could have an impact on them. There are other bills that oppose transgender people in much more explicit ways, but couldn't this one also be stretched to be used against people whose outfits don't conform with their assigned gender?

The bill was prefiled on January 8 by Republican Senators Steven Rhoads, George Borrello, Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick, Jack Martins, Mario Mattera, Dean Murray, Peter Oberacker, William Weber, and Alexis Weik. Here is the bill on the New York Senate government website: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S723

(Image description in alt text. Image credits: geologic map from USGS. Font is Throwback Glorious.)

Florida (Alterhu)man

Florida (Alterhu)man is a Discord server for plural systems, therianthropes, otherkin, and other alterhumans who live in or near the southeastern USA. Some states in or near there are Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Our gated lobby offers some protection for the privacy of who lives where. We have an online reference library of advice for safer meet-ups and other resources for keeping our communities healthy and informed.

As of this writing, our server has slightly more than a hundred members. It has been active since we opened more than a year ago in August 2024. We welcome plural systems of any origins and types: we're endogenic-safe, and we have PluralKit and Tupperbox. It's a safe space for LGBTQIA, people of color, and people with disabilities.

We don't allow aduIt content, but only aduIts may join this server because it's for finding local events and friends to meet, and we don’t want to encourage young ones to do that, for their safety.