I've mentioned so many times off-hand that I am a Monster, or a Creature, or a Beast, or some iteration of those, but I don't think I've ever really tried to fully explain what that means to me. So, here I go.
Monster is an Identity intersection and a philosophy I guess??
Or I suppose you could say that Monster as an identity has two main components, One which explains what it is, and one that explains how it impacts how I see the world. I'll start by trying to explain what it is.
The intersection
I'm not going to be prescriptive and say that if someone identifies as a Monster they have to fit these specific criteria, but for me, the intersecting aspects/elements are:
- Neurodiversity
- Alienated Sexuality
- Alienated Gender Identity
- Therianthropy
I'll try and do some light breakdowns of each of these, and hopefully that will explain a bit more about how these elements intersect and come together to form Monster Identity.
1 - Neurodiversity
A lot of us are neurodiverse (ND) and so our experience of the world is wildly different to most neurotypical people. Sensory issues, emotional processing differences, spatial awareness and processing, all of that good stuff means that we're already predisposed to feel very othered and alienated from the world at large. It is confusing in ways we might find hard to understand, the rules that govern social procedures seem opaque and nonsensical, and often contradictory.
ASD obviously isn't the only form of neurodiversity, but it is the one I'm most familiar with and boy howdy did I ever not feel human perpetually growing up, and even now. It can be very hard to navigate the world, and even as good at masking as I am often doesn't actually help, it just makes me appear less weird to others. It feels a little like being a mimic.
2 - Alienated Sexuality
When I say Alienated, I mean in the sense that (perhaps partially because of my various ND traits) I really really did not understand the concept of sexuality for a long time. It was a very much 'fake it until you make it' kind of situation. I did know I was queer though, which was a start, but I struggled hugely with the various boxes that society put on queer people.
This was before a lot of the more recent hangups about how someone could possibly be something like both 'bi' and 'lesbian' thank fuck. I managed to narrowly avoid growing up when that discourse started really heating up. I didn't neatly fit into any of the boxes. The labels were broadly useful for describing aspects of my sexuality but not all of it. Except the word queer. Queer felt good and useful.
But I was also growing up in the UK where Section 28 (a statute that prevented the teaching/promotion of homosexuality by any government funded institute i.e. almost all schools, community centers, etc.) had only been repealed a handful of years ago, and a lot of institutions didn't really know where to start with actually teaching people that queerness existed and was fine.
It wasn't until I was in college/sixth form (ages 16-18) that I found an LGBT support group and it was just a handful of students. I didn't know our history because it had been illegal for me to know, but soon enough gay marriage in the UK would be legalized which ushered forth more ideas about 'acceptable queers' so most of my exposure to queerness was these tightly delineated boxes which were far from reality.
3 - Alienated Gender Identity
As above, so below. What I explained in section 2 also describes a lot of section 3. It's fair to say the UK is somewhat infamous among western countries in how it treats Trans people and the medicalization factor runs rampant there. I grew up with that and unfortunately went through some of the bullshit that doctors employ to discourage people from transitioning and/or making sure they're correctly trans in order to receive care.
I was AMAB, which as far as they were concerned meant there was a very strict set of criteria I had to meet in order to qualify as trans. I didn't meet those criteria, so I was written off as just 'experiencing a phase'. Obviously, they were wrong, and here I am 15 some years later happily transitioned and delightfully non-binary a few weeks out from getting bottom surgery whilst using whichever pronouns I god damn want, including masc ones.
So in short: I was alienated from exploring gender identity because I was told there were only specific ways in which my gender was permitted to be fucky.
4 - Therianthropy
The queer ND Enby furry is also a Therian, what a surprise.
I don't know how to explain it. I get supernumerary phantom limb sensations sometimes like a tail, or horns, or big floppy ears, I walk on the balls of my feet a bit when I stim, I love to bite and chew things, I very much feel like an animal of some description (namely a cow-adjacent creature) more than I do a human and when I have those phantom sensations, and I allow myself to bite and huff and low and make noises rather than vocalise I feel so much more at home in my body than I normally do.
I'm not an expert on Therianthropy, there's lots of folks out there who could do it more justice than I can, but it's just a fact that I feel that way, and Identify with the term at least to some degree.
But that's the thrust of what it is, a combination of these elements that has left me feeling so thoroughly othered from the world at large in so many different ways that its hard to not feel like an outsider confused at the world they're supposed to be familiar with. Its so much more comfortable hanging out with me weird, freaky queer animal friends because they get it and I can be me around them.
The philosophy
So, what the fuck am I talking about a philosophy of being a Monster?
Well, Queerness gets commodified, sanitized and repackaged and sold. There are, as mentioned above, still persistent understandings by some people that there is a 'correct' way to be queer, and 'correct' usually just means 'marketable' and I don't want to be marketable.
It took me a long time to find my teeth, I refuse to be defanged now.
The funny thing is, I said earlier that it feels a little like being a mimic, and it does! I pass as conventionally Neurotypical and 'acceptably' queer a lot of the time but that's... just how I look and behave around most people. I don't dress super extravagantly or even wear makeup because I've just...not really wanted to? That doesn't make me less queer, it just creates a false sense of security in people who think I am 'one of the good ones'
Fuck you buddy I'm into some weird shit and if you get me in a room with other freaks I am going to be enraptured by everything they say while standing there with a flare and pompoms cheering them on.
That's the philosophy of being a Monster. Don't let your weirdness be watered down. If you wanna be outlandish and bombastic, Do it! Support small queer projects, fuck rainbow capitalism. Our communities are ours because we built them and continue to build them in the face of a world that just wishes we were a bit more marketable. We owe it to ourselves and others to be monstrous and weird and freaky and compassionate to other weird freaky monsters.
Wait Lexi this just sounds like you're describing Furry / conclusion
I mean I guess?! There's a lot of overlap for sure, but also, a lot of furry media that I consumed as I entered the fandom didn't really broach the subject of otherness. It was more a fantasy of feeling normal in a world that we had to construct in order to feel normal. That's not true for all furry media of course but I feel like Monster stuff tends to emphasize the difference and divergence away from humanity where a lot of furry stuff kind of just takes it as read that there are furries, and they're great, and fuck yeah bury your snout in that fuzz.
Furries are pretty familiar with the feeling of otherness but I guess the distinction I would draw is that I feel happier being weird and freaky by society's standards because it feels powerful and knowing that I am an outsider in a lot of respects is almost more grounding. I don't know, I think I'm over explaining it now. Go and watch Patricia Taxxon's Video On the ethics of boinking animal people, it's very good.
ANYWAY, I refuse to fit boxes that other people make, I refuse to get in the box in the first place. I'm a Monster. Let me bite, let me gnaw, let me stim, let me Rurrr. I'm an autistic ass queer creature that enjoys the fact every day society is confused by them.
