- Radical acceptance, in which you are what you say you are.
- Open exploration of your identity, including exploring and/or supporting affirming practices such as body modification.
- Advocacy for the natural world, which includes supporting animal rights and plant/environmental care
- Rejection of anthropocentrism. This includes the idea that people = human, that humans are more important than other life forms, and that humans are better and different than animals in exceptional ways.
- Rejection of the idea that the body is the center of identity, that one can have only one identity, and that identity can’t change.
- Rejection of the idea that one can't choose one's identity, or that chosen identities are lesser in comparison those that aren’t chosen.
- Rejection of intercommunal bias, particularly towards mammals as the nonhuman side of our community contains a vast quantity of mammalian members.
- I am not from this dimension, at least not originally. Many versions of me exist across different points in my dimension of origin.
- I see myself as a scholar, a quest guide and a figure akin to a wise serpent through my archetropy.
- I am transspecies. I experience having multiple forms outside of the human body I occupy, specifically through phantom bodies.
- I am a fictional character and creature. I hold connections to other fictional beings through soulbonding.
- I am also a creature with earthen connections, be it through my experiences with earthen animality or earthen mythology.
- I am an agnostic animist. In my opinion, the existence of deities and other manners of higher powers exist solely through the practitioner in question. The act of belief is what makes these figures real; otherwise, all other means of their existence can neither be proven nor disproven.
- That said, I believe objects and concepts have their own form of sentience. Lack of verbal, expressive and overall physical communication does not rule out the possibility of said sentience.
"You Can't Take Me": To Be Ontopunk in 2025
Sivaan of Candlekeep
January 23rd, 2025
Day 30 of the Alterhuman Writing Challenge
“Don't judge a thing until you know what's inside it. Don't push me, I'll fight it. Never gonna give in, never gonna give it up, no— if you can't catch a wave, then you're never gonna ride it. You can't come uninvited. Never gonna give in, never gonna give it up, no— You can't take me, I'm free.”
- Bryan Adams
Sometimes, I change shape based on my emotions. When I’m aggravated, I don’t become a lion. I don’t become a bear, or a gryphon, or a dragon. I don’t become any predatory species I belong to, contrary to the assumptions tied to those ‘types.
No, I become an oryx. I become a gemsbok, to be exact. My anger doesn’t look like unsheathed claws or gnashing fangs. It looks like a pair of slender, black horns, piercing through flesh. If not that, it’s in the form of an elk. It sounds like a furious, restless bugle that’s a little too close, like whatever’s coming is giving its final warning before it charges. I am a bull who’s sick and tired, especially with the United States as is. I don’t need to air out the list of reasons why my country’s government is looking to fuck over me and those like me. All of those changes in one day make that evident enough.
However, I will make one thing clear. Politicians hold no authority over my identity. Things are bleak, very bleak, but when haven’t they been that way? I can count the times I’ve truly felt safe in this country on one hand, but that didn’t stop me from putting my foot forward and making the effort to see another day. As years came and went, I grew more determined in spitting on the image of politicians and billionaires since my country is so adamant about propagating their filth. That included those who bootlick them so much that they forget they too are affected by the class disparity perpetuated between them and their “idols”. Said determination also meant emotionally preparing for outcomes like our recent election. It’s hard to find hope under these circumstances, but that doesn’t mean I can’t inspire hope for myself or those around me who need the support. When the second inauguration of that bastard and his fraternity of fascists unfolded, all I could think of was a song. It was a short and simple song from my childhood, albeit through a DVD bought by my parents many years after it released. Given the topic of this entry, I’ll admit that it’s not a punk song in terms of genre. It’s a song that came from the animated film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002). Nonetheless, it still holds so much power to me."
Performed by Bryan Adams, this song, “You Can’t Take Me”, plays as Spirit is dragged to a military encampment where he is expected to become a war horse. Despite how hopeless his situation seems, Spirit himself refuses to give into that hopelessness. He snaps at his captors, fights against their ropes, and digs his hooves into the dirt as the song progresses. Although he made a sacrifice to protect his herd, he is determined to return to them. That means securing his freedom at all costs. “You Can’t Take Me” stresses this in its chorus, but this isn’t the last time that this goal is given focus. Spirit’s freedom is the heart of the film’s plot. Freedom is also a recurring theme alongside resistance against oppressive systems and solidarity with other marginalized parties. Spirit defends his freedom no matter the circumstance, even when things take a turn for the worst. At the same time, he couldn’t do it alone nor could he abandon those in the same spot as him. Spirit knew a life of exploitation isn’t a life at all, not just in his case but in the case of other captured horses and Little Creek. To me, remembering this song and the context in which it exists may have been coincidences, but they sure were useful coincidences given my position. Yes, I am angry. I’m not devoid of a conscience, though. I can’t afford to give into hopelessness. No one can. It’s what our pathetic excuse for a government wants, and hopelessness will get us nowhere in the days ahead. Instead, I’m putting that energy into something that will provide better structure to my world view.
Earlier last year, I familiarized myself with two ideologies within the alterhuman community: ontopunk and beastpunk. Both subcultures are alike in their values and practices, but have a set focus at their core. Ontopunk centers radical acceptance of all forms of existence and the autonomy within it, whereas beastpunk centers radical reclamation of nonhuman animal identity. I'm more familiar with the latter of the two since a couple of my friends are beastpunk. That said, I've found myself gravitating more towards ontopunk as a personal ideology.
Ontopunk is often associated with kinpunk, a communal concept that technically predates it. However, I learned recently that the conception of ontopunk and its connection to kinpunk were coincidences. Ontopunk happened to come around the same time as the coining of kinpunk. Created during discussions within the Alt+H Discord server, two terms with similar approaches as kinpunk came to be: alterpunk and ontopunk. From what I could tell, these terms essentially meant the same thing. When kinpunk started floating around on Tumblr, these terms were then suggested as all-inclusive alternatives.
Of the two, ontopunk won out due to its emphasis on being. Since ontopunk’s point of reference is usually a clarification for what the term is and its purpose, I personally go off of Sapphire (@/bigendering)’s proposed outline for alterpunk due to these terms’ shared basis:
Note: much of this is paraphrased from the original thread covering alterpunk / ontopunk. The original thread is linked in the passage that first mentions ontopunk and beastpunk.
With this considered, ontopunk isn’t exclusive to alterhumans either. It’s open to all. Whether inside or outside of this community, it’s about embracing all who express themselves how they see fit.Furthermore, there’s the nuances of being besides oneself to acknowledge. Ontopunk isn’t only for those who actively define their own means of being but those who’re treated as if they have no perceivable sense of being as well.
Mord (@/vagabondsun) quoted itself on how ontopunk could be applied in this context:
“vagabondsun (77): [...] i think a line in there about like, acknowledging the... not ‘personhood' exactly, but the sovreignity of inanimate objects? I...] especially if we're alluding to ontology, like, object oriented ontology is a philosophical theory that exists which rejects anthropocentrism by saying that all entities, including inanimate objects and concepts, have some kind of (in very simplified and not-quite-accurate terms) a subjective awareness.”
This caught my eye as someone who’s *multiposic (aniposic and psyposic, to be exact). For the objects in my day-to-day life, my relationship with them is usually platonic or familial in nature. Although I don’t always talk to them, I know that they coexist alongside me and are close to me as individuals. I appreciated this approach from Mord since not everyone considers the presence of objects and concepts in these conversations.
*Multiposic refers to an individual who is POSIC+ for multiple reasons; the following two labels are why I’m POSIC+. Aniposic refers to an individual who is POSIC+ due to being a practicing animist. Psyposic refers to an individual who is POSIC+ due to psychological reasons but either chooses not to disclose why or does not know why.
Aside from those details, I thought of my own sense of being. Here are some examples:
I am many, many things that question the boundaries of being as proposed by the society I currently live in. If I said I was any of these truths aloud, I would be given a sideways glance by your average citizen in the United States. I don’t particularly care about that result, so long as I am in the right company. Most of them believe one inconceivable, all-powerful spirit of a man created the pots we piss in, and also use him as an excuse to condemn my existence, but you don’t see me casting judgment upon the possibility of said spirit’s existence or the beliefs inspired by him. The problem is when people fully believe their way of being is superior to others or that someone else’s way of being is weird, questionable, or generally “wrong” when it doesn’t harm anyone. Perhaps, that’s why I gravitate towards ontopunk ideologies so much. The very margins of how I perceive my existence, the existence of others and the worlds surrounding us challenges those norms. It doesn’t stop at my alterhumanity. It extends into my relationship with my environment and my day-to-day life. It includes how I envision not only my existence in this world, but how I envision the existence of all things. It is thoroughly, unapologetically about embracing what it means to be anything.
So why not embrace all of me? Why not wear that on my sleeve, defying the “policies” proposed by those who aim to destroy people like me? You can’t put a law on existence. Damn them all if they do. I’ll continue to take heed of existence and the autonomy it provides.
Everyone is deserving of ontological freedom. As the coiners addressed before, ontological freedom isn’t exclusive to us alterhumans either. We share many of those freedoms with orthohumans and non-sapient beings simply by existing alongside each other. Hell, I insist that we assert our ontological freedoms even more.
Self-denial has held me back in my past, but I refuse to let it cage me in the future. I will lock my horns together and wrestle hatred to the ground. I will pierce the throats of fear and compliance until my dominance is made clear. I will drive them from my home, from those I share space with and from myself above all else.
I will still be here, and I will continue to be who I am. That is what being ontopunk means to me, especially at the start of this year.
Come what may. Know that I am free.