About
The best way to get an idea of who I am is to read the essays, not this blurb. That's a lot of content, but this is how you'll find concepts echoing each others, how you'll notice patterns and will get a real picture of who I am and where I speak from, as incomplete as it will be.
The basics are that I'm in my mid-twenties, I'm French, I grew up near the Mediterranean sea, and I live in Paris right now. I learned English at school and then reading websites on Internet so my writing isn't perfect. I am into (a non-exhaustive list and in no particular order) linguistics, mythology, non-fluffy spirituality, sociology and anthropology, books, travelling, dream exploration and art (especially photography, calligraphy, and anthropomorphic as well as non-anthro illustration). I am both skeptical and spiritual, I incorporate in my beliefs system what I must admit by experience and what seems rational to me. A lack of tolerance annoys me as much as a lack of critical thinking.
I am a trans (-gender/-sexual/-feminist) person and I've been living as "male" for a bunch of years. The physical transition part of this feels long past behind me, though its memory is vivid and I still talk and write about gender regularly. I identify more as something "other" than anything and I can be quite androgynous in various ways. I'm also an animal-person, which means I feel that my identity is other than only human. My inner-self is a combination of clouded leopard and common raven; every side is an integrated part of me, they are not entities living in my head. If you're here you probably alread know what a "therianthrope" is, but if not then you'll find more information in the Echoes section.
That's for the most basic stuff, read the rest of the content to find out more.
This website has seen many redesigns and many essays used to be edited regularly as I found some things were not working for me anymore. I even took several of them down at some point, and still have to bring back one or two. At this point I've mostly made peace with the fact that growing as a person means that I can come to disagree with things I believed and said in the past, and instead of trying to erase those I can simply leave them as just that - statements of who I used to be at a specific time, in a specific space, brought forth by a specific context; what was going in my life, who was around in these moments, what I was searching for in the end.
I started this website in 2004 as a way to store somewhere the ideas and opinions I had, several of which came in reaction to behaviors and discussions I witnessed among animal-people. I don't consider this a good or bad thing in itself, just a period of my life that is over. The website has long become a more general archive for my self-ponderings, something to look at as I walk my path to remember where I come from and think further of what is ahead.
Hopefully you'll take my words for what they are, written accounts of someone's experiences and opinions, and not as a universal truth. Everything is dated, and when I post content that was developped earlier I usually indicate it in the introduction. Indeed I go more and more through periods of time where I think a lot and write nothing at all, and later on I update the site with fewer essays than I used to, though much more dense in content. I'm busier than I used to so I have less time and energy to update the thing. The site has also become less animal-focused and more about my worldview as a whole and how the different aspects of my identity play together. I like this. The teeth and claws are still there, underneath; just not advertised as such.
There's no need to ask if you can link to my website from another place, and it's perfectly legal to quote my writings. Just give the source and be reasonable: quote to show a point or as an example, but do not quote instead of writing your own content. I feel I have to say this because someone in the past once asked to use my work and they took whole paragraphs from my stuff, using my words as their introduction, conclusion and several bits of content. Even when they eventually added quotation marks this wasn't proper usage still. And please do not repost my essays on other blogs and websites, you can link from here instead. If I find out that you failed to respect copyrights, I will ask you to take the thing down, and I may contact your hosting service or take legal action.
One last thing: if you want to mention my stuff in your research paper or book, please contact me first. I've never said "no" to anyone but it's better and more professional to ask before you do so, and I'm saying this as a fellow in the research field so I know what it can be like. People are not disposable ressources, please respect the basic rules of politeness and deontology.
~Akhila
August 2004 - March 2011