Handbook of Hyper-Real Religions
http://www.brill.nl/handbook-hyper-real-religions

Announcing a significant academic advancement for the Otherkin Community as well as the Vampire Community.  Unlike 95% of the academic articles/papers written on the topic of "otherkin" or "real vampirism", this work is part of a prestigious published series of books entitled 'Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion' edited by Dr. Adam Possamai of the University of Western Sydney and distributed to hundreds of institutions throughout the world.  The Otherkin Community is discussed on pages 129-140 in an article by Danielle Kirby.  I can't speak to the content of the Otherkin material -- this is something you'd have to consult with Kirby or someone familiar with her past work.  The real Vampire Community is discussed on pages 141-163 by Dr. Joseph Laycock from the viewpoint of identity or cognitive praxis -- not religious institutions as some scholars have argued in the past.  Speaking only from what I've seen of the vampire-specific portion of this text by Laycock (which I hold in the highest regard), I would strongly encourage others to obtain a copy of this book or request that it be carried at your local college or university library.

Welcome to AnOtherWiki. This project is meant to create a free encyclopedia written by, for, and about the Otherkin community. If there's information about websites or people in the community, gathers, chatrooms, jargon, or anything else we want to see it here. We also take the view that a community is only as good as the collective memory it has, so we're particularly interested in information about our community's history and shared culture.

We've chosen to take a very broad view of the Otherkin community with this project, and so invite information about other related communities such as the Therian community, the Vampire community, the Draconity community, the Faeborn community, the Starseed community and any others which share in the experience of not considering themselves entirely human. We also invite information about communities which historically have had significant overlap with our community, such as the Multiplicity community, the Psionics community, or the Guardians community.

In terms of editing policy, things are relatively relaxed here. We strive mainly to write from an Objective point of view, in the journalistic sense of the word. This means we embrace the principles of fairness, disinterestedness, factuality, and nonpartisanship. Our goal, like any good reporter, is to get all the truth about the subjects we cover and nothing but. We're not perfect, however, and none of us can know everything about our communities. That's part of why working together is such an important aspect of a project like this. Accordingly, we also have a policy of no personal attacks here on AnOtherWiki, to help promote cooperation between editors. If you feel another user is behaving unreasonably in editing an article, and you can't work it out with them on the article's talk page, please contact an administrator rather than starting a flamewar or edit war with them.

SEE ALSO: NOVA RELIGIO ARTICLE (2010) CONCERNING REAL VAMPIRIES:

Real Vampires as an Identity Group: Analyzing Causes and Effects of an Introspective Survey by the Vampire Community
By Joseph Laycock
Nova Religio - The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions
August 2010, Vol. 14, No. 1, Pages 4–23

Purchase Article:  http://www.jstor.org/pss/10.1525/nr.2010.14.1.4

Abstract:

"Real vampires" believe that they must either consume blood or feed on "subtle" energy in order to maintain their physical, mental, and spiritual health. Recent scholarship has analyzed vampirism as a religious movement or as a cluster of "vampire religions." This article argues that vampirism should be viewed foremost as an identity around which social and religious institutions have formed. This model accounts for the mosaic of religious and cultural orientations held by vampires and acknowledges the vampire community's claims that vampirism is not a choice. It also facilitates a functionalist reading of vampire discourse as validating a new category of person.

Wulf Howl has recently had a user join under the name PRIMAL_researcher, who has private messaged a few users requesting they be interviewed for a television series on Animal Planet regarding their experience as a member of the therianthrope and otherkin communities. Our administration team was able to verify that this user was a representative of GRBTV, and was operating under the domain names of (http://myprimalbehavior.com/) and (http://primalprod.com/).

In case you weren't already aware, GRBTV is responsible for producing television shows of high shock value. This includes shows such as "Intervention", "Animal Hoarders", "American Occult" and more. We believe that many individuals whom have been casted for shows produced by GRBTV have been exploited - being told they were being cast in order to make their differences "accepted" or "understood", only to find out that they were made to look like freaks on national television - severely damaging reputation, and possibly careers of these individuals.

Upon searching the IP address they registered with, which for your reference, is 216.251.131.242, we found out via searching StopForumSpam that they had registered on another forum using an email at the domain (http://petfamily.org/), which seems to be an attempt to entice people into being cast for "Animal Hoarders", just in the same way they were doing to our community!

Due to this, we believe that GRBTV is only interested in shock-value, and that allowing them to seek interviews on Wulf Howl can only harm members of the community. For this reason, we have issued a ban on the user, and requested that members of their studio do not access Wulf Howl, or use any material here for their productions.

If you wish to be cast by them, it is up to each individual member, but we are not going to allow them to use Wulf Howl as a platform to exploit people and we recommend that you deny any requests from them to be interviewed or otherwise.

Please feel free to reference this thread on other therianthropy communities, or even copy & paste it.