Transitioning into a Beastman: Examining My Gender, Humanity, and Nonhumanity Through Transspecies Identity

Sivaan of Candlekeep

February 4, 2025

I owe much of my masculinity to two groups: masculine-of-center lesbians and other gender-nonconforming queer people in the black community and furry characters of the bara variety. Odd combination at first glance, yeah?

It makes perfect sense from where I stand. I’m a beastman— as in an individual who has the qualities of a beast and a human, not a man (gender) who happens to be a beast. I'm also what's called a "boi", an overlooked identity that sprung up from the black queer community referring to individuals whose masculinity is not cisheteronormative. I am transmasculine and genderqueer, plain and simple. That said, being a boi’s still an intrinsic way of life for me. Boi simultaneously is its own thing and incorporated into the specifics of my gender identity. It cuts deeper into my queerness through my cultural experiences and connections. It also cuts into my sense of self outside of an anthropocentric lens.

I am transspecies. My idea of masculinity isn’t conceptualized in the same way as most cisgender, heterosexual, and typically (ortho)human men. I guess one could say I am a “beast boi” in this regard. The kind of masculinity I admire is the confidence and unapologetic self-love of an aggressive. I also admire the proud disposition of an anthropomorphic bear, one whose build is akin to a bear in the queer-specific sense. That’s the kind of masculinity I want to embody for myself. But it’s not all about the looks. It begs two questions. Where does boi come from, and why is it relevant to my transspecies identity?

The history of the term has bounced around different spots within the LGBTQ+ community. From butches and tomboys to transgender men and other transmasculine folks, that's the flavor of queer you'll find amongst bois. One group who’s established communal bonds and created initiatives through boi identity is bklyn boihood; I personally recommend Outside the XY: Queer Black and Brown Masculinity, a collection of essays, stories, and poetry created by members of the organization. I read it within the past year, and it’s personally one of my favorite books of all time.

A year after I came out as transmasculine, I discovered this term through the now defunct Queer Undefined website. Curious, I decided to look into it and learned more from Evan Urquhart's article on the subculture:

"The first major recorded use is attributed to rapper Big Boi (Antwan André Patton) of the duo Outkast, which formed in 1992. The I in Big Boi came from a street spelling of boy in the Black community in the early 1990s or before... Not long afterward, the gay community began using boi to mean a young, attractive gay man, as on the cover of XY magazine in 2000. Concurrently, boi came to be applied not only to men but also to boyish young women—originally young women in skateboarding. By 2003, the dominant definition on Urban Dictionary was a young butch lesbian, and so it remained until 2016."

“Boi was, and is, an identity term, primarily used by people of color, that traverses the messy, occasionally overlapping space that encompasses masculine women, nonbinary transmasculine people, and transgender men. (An earlier word, butch, pulls off a similar trick of spanning communities that are in the process of pulling apart.)"

If my interest wasn’t piqued before, it sure was right then and there. I’ve known for a while that my blackness plays a significant part in my queerness, even before I came to terms with my transmasculinity. The scope of my race and culture has touched on every facet of my selfhood.

The overall culture of black, queer people in the U.S. was extremely important in shaping how I understood queerness. Femme queens and butch queens, aggressives and studs, same-gender-loving people (SGLs), that’s the realm of queerness I knew. Some cases may not be black-exclusive nowadays (for example: ballroom), but all of it did come up from my people, our history, and our relationships with queer identity. So how does that intersect with my species?

Prior to joining the alterhuman community, I also identified with queer masculinity as seen in a particular subculture. For a lack of better words, something awakened in me when I discovered bara media within the furry community. There’s the attraction element, yes, but more importantly, it was their presentation that drew me in. I developed a personal attachment to these strong, beastly, and burly characters for reasons that I couldn’t quite explain yet. This attachment did not form for their human counterparts, however. My view of those characters was exclusively from a place of attraction.

At the time, I saw it as my preferred content within the subculture. I'll admit I was too young to be checking out things like Nekojishi, and I waited until college to actually engage with them. Nonetheless, I really clicked with these sorts of characters. This was applicable to characters that weren't specifically made within this subset of the furry community as well; characters such as Kumatetsu and Kimahri Ronso also resonated with me as ideal models of masculinity.

There's barely any overlap between this and the queer culture I've come to know in my youth. The only similarity between the two was the fact that each emerge from queer people of color, considering that this subset of furry media is based on the art and literature of Japanese gay men. That said, it is dependent on the artist whether or not they're fine with referring to their art and/or literature as "bara"; I certainly wouldn't recommend saying this in referral to the creative(s) themselves as bara has its roots as a pejorative term. Think of it in the similar vein as not all folks wanting to be labeled as queer within the western LGBTQ+ community.

Despite the absence of an overlap, I've come to establish my own connections between these snapshots of queer identity. I liken my experiences with species to my experiences with gender on account of their growth. Each began as a trek into the unknown. These were possibilities hidden within myself, and I approached it with confusion and uncertainty for the most part. Yet, I was full with the desire to explore. My worries didn’t stop me from combing through my introspections and fishing for insights from my surrounding communities, hoping to better understand what my relationship to either concept was.

That’s why it felt so right to call myself transspecies. I’m sure it’s why it felt so right to call myself a beastman, too. To be a beastman is an inherently transformative experience, no different than how it is for me as a transmasc and as a genderqueer person. Transspecies feels a lot like boi in the sense that it’s not only a broad label, but it’s reflective of my way of life in this community. It emphasizes on the discovery and intimacy I feel in taking this personal path, fully embracing myself instead of prioritizing what my society deems as “acceptable”. I am transitioning into a beastman. Simple as that.

I maintain my body hair not only as a preference for my presentation but also in resonance with my transspecies identity. I relish in the feeling of my body hair as well as faux fur clothing because it feels as though I have a body completely covered in fur. This euphoria is an additional reason for me to go on testosterone in the future. I have no interest in pursuing body surgery, but hormones have been something I’ve sat with for a while now and am now confident that I want to pursue. This is to affirm my masculinity and my beastliness, respectively.

My wild relatives are a part of my transness as well. Be it lions, antelopes, vultures or badgers, I am one of them. I associate them with my gender goals, just as much as I do with fellow masculine-of-center queer people of color. Those goals range anywhere from maned lionesses like Mmamoriri to the Hrothgar of Final Fantasy XIV, leaving me with a diverse array of gender expression woven from the natural world and elements of human society.

I’ve been stretched out and contorted into something strange and beautiful. In both the transgender community and the nonhuman community, I am someone whose views on either experience are shifting sands of possibility. Many won’t like it. Some may feel the same as me. Some will not care at all. Regardless, that is how those identities intersect for me. I am a self-made beastman. “Beastman” also suits me as a general label for my animality. It’s somewhat relative to therianthropy, specifically therianthropy in its original mythic context. Though when it comes to humanity and nonhumanity, this experience is holistic. The nonhuman animal is inseparable from the human animal. I’ve considered the possibility of having a beastman kintype or theriotype in the past. Much like my beastman identity now, these speculated ‘types were similar to Japanese juujin characters and other beastmen in fictional media. Yet, I’ve found that being transspecies, or a transbeast, was a more accurate descriptor for my experience.

Furthermore, one of my prominent phantom bodies is my ideal self as a beastman. This phantom body takes the shape of a humanoid lion or gemsbok with a stocky build. Occasionally, this body takes the shape of a humanoid honey badger or lammergeier as well. Besides those four, I’m rarely any other animal species within my beastman identity. Instead, those identities remain as constels. Either way, I’m some form of African wildlife with a human-like physique. The parts of this phantom body are sensitive as well. My tail is always swishing behind me, and my ears (when applicable) are quite reactive no matter the situation. I get a little dysphoric at the lack of fur or feathers along my body, but those feelings don’t always linger. They’re infrequent, thankfully. Otherwise, that’d be a massive inconvenience to wrestle with.

That aside, this is how I perceive myself on a daily basis. It’s not that I don’t relate to the general sentiments surrounding nonhuman identity. Most of my *anistels are experienced as they appear on Earth, in their sources, or whatever mythos they stem from. I’m no stranger to having a fully animal perspective. Yet, this union between humanity and nonhumanity is more prominent to me than anything else within the scope of my animality. It’s why I tend to have a sophont perspective.

^{*Constels that are species of animals. Relative to constelic identity.}

I am proudly and passionately someone whose nonhumanity doesn’t reject humanity, but rather, incorporates into my beastly nature.

I am an uncanny individual standing on two legs, acting as a human would, but once I open my mouth, my words are carried by a low rumble. Whether I bellow, grunt, growl or stay silent, I present myself in an unorthodox manner. I’d say it’s best compared to a maned lioness like before: visibly masculine yet not quite applicable to any binary that’s put upon nature. I’m not exactly male or female under the surface, and more notably, I’m not entirely human either. I have the head of a nonhuman animal. I have fur or feathers completely covering my body, adorning me with their patterns. I have a snout or a beak and a tail or tail feathers. I have retractable claws at the edge of my fingertips and talons at the tip of my feet. I have an animal’s eyes. I have an animal’s horns. I engage with the world of men and have no qualms living in said world, yet I’m clearly not interchangeable with your average human. Comparatively, I’m not interchangeable with my standard animal species either. I have human characteristics that set me apart from my fully nonhuman counterparts. I am exactly those animals, just in a complex and rather queer position.

I am a boi. I am a beastman. I am a beast boi, even. My sense of self is not cisheteronormative nor does it align with orthohumanity.

In being transspecies, transgender, and a reminder of my communities’ often silenced perspectives, I’ve come to terms with the fact that my species identity is inherently queer. I recognize that’s not the case for everyone else, but I refuse to disregard these connections in context to myself.

My gender identity and species identity are so deeply intertwined as personal discoveries that I’d be kidding myself if I kept ignoring their relevance to each other. The same happened in the case of my race and my gender. Although discovery had nothing to do with my cultural background, I’ve held the belief that said cultural background was pivotal in building my relationship with gender. After all, it was through my ethnic community that I began exploring and finding meaning in my own queer identity. I’d argue it’s come full circle now, seeing that I’ve also written on the relevance of my blackness to my alterhumanity. I don’t expect others to readily understand where I am coming from, especially when some folks still argue over whether or not transspecies is a “valid” enough descriptor for one’s species identity.

Nonetheless, I know what my identity looks like. I’m fond of the nuances between these experiences and the ways in which I’ve bridged them together. They’ve brought about some truly remarkable moments in my life that I can’t imagine going without. I look forward to many more for the journeys ahead.