There is a particular way marginalised identities are often dismissed. They are called phases, coping mechanisms, and internet subcultures. Something aesthetic, performative, or juvenile; something you’ll surely grow out of once you get a job and a sensible haircut. Therianthropy is almost always treated this way in many respects and by people from across the political spectrum. And yet UK equality law is not concerned with whether a belief is fashionable, comfortable, or legible to the majority.

Britain is a country haunted by absences. We talk endlessly about heritage, landscape, countryside; and yet the land itself is silent in ways it should never be. We live in a place that once held wolves, lynx, bears, wild boar, and red deer, and now we pretend a pheasant is wildlife- as if we didn’t put the pheasants there in the first place.

I have spoken many a time about the concept of species being a social construct as opposed to a fixed property. This is a belief I stand by and the hill I will choose to die on.Something in the soil has been waiting for me there. We insist species are separate because we pray that the flesh is loyal, that the body answers only to one master.

I have seldom dared to commit to paper the nature of which I have endured within that unhallowed dwelling. That is not for a lack of words, but for the limits of mortal sanity. To describe it plainly would only provoke laughter in the untested mind, yet to hint at its full horror is to dance to close to a truth that slithers just beyond the range of perception.

This was going to be a post about the supreme courts ruling on the definition of women based on gender assigned at birth. It was going to be me explaining all the complexities of so called "biological sex". Yet so many have already explained this in so many ways that at this point it would be simply flogging a dead horse.

I still remember the first time I encountered Dr Who as a kid. It wasn’t the 26th of March 2005 like the majority of my generation, no instead it was the 29th of January- my grandfather’s birthday. That year my mother bought him a DVD copy of Remembrance of the Daleks. I still remember how excited he was to show me, and I am glad he did.

The kids are identifying as cats has become a strawman argument from those with right leaning tendencies, and has become a satirical meme on the left. This however has got an interesting argument within the otherwise seemingly ridiculous statement. I think the first part of this that we need to discuss is that yes, some of "the kids" are, in actual fact, identifying as animals- including but not limited to cats.

The historical basis for queer identity being considered sacred is deeply rooted in cultural, religious, and societal frameworks across various civilizations. Many societies before the invention of Abrahamic religion recognised and honoured queer individuals as integral and even sacred to their spiritual and social systems. This phenomenon can be seen evidenced all over the world, despite rampant attempts to supress it.

Despite living in Monmouth a great deal of my youth, a town with two rivers and multiple brooks and streams, until recently in my life I have never experienced severe flooding in person. In fact, I remember seeing the local playing grounds that I now live near flood at about the age of twelve and filming my dog swimming across the field after a pair of swans.

Discover the secrets of the legendary lake on our two-day Loch Ness tour from Inverness. For pleasure seekers & slow travelers.