These people are making a mockery of transexuality.

Doctoral student identifies as a hippo.

//In an article published in a peer-reviewed academic journal, a PhD student at the University of Arizona claims he identifies as a hippopotamus. Yes, you read it right. A hippopotamus. If you’re waiting for the punch line, don’t hold your breath.

I guess the ever-growing list of 58+ human-based gender identities just isn’t inclusive enough to escape the realm of pure bigotry and discrimination against “tranimals.” That’s why Florentin Felix Morin argues in the Journal of Theoretical Humanities that his hippo identity allows him to defy traditional gender norms and break free of the constraints that “govern human bodies.”

“This article explores the formation of a tranimal hippopotamus alter-ego,” he writes in the paper’s abstract. “Confronting transgender with transpecies, the author claims that his hippopotamus ‘identity’ allowed him to (verbally) escape, all at once, several sets of categorization that govern human bodies (‘gender,’ ‘sexuality,’ ‘age’).”

The Story of a ‘Tranimal’s’ Search For Self-Definition
Morin says his hippo ego started as a strange joke that later evolved into a full-fledged identity, which made him “feel cute, confident, sexy and safe.”

“For a while, if someone was asking me how I ‘identified,’ I would joke about being a hippopotamus trapped in a human’s body—later, a human trapped in a hippopotamus’ body, until my humorous ‘truth’ solidified and I began announcing myself as an old butch hippo dyke trapped in a young human faggy transboy’s body,” he writes.

Of course, in an effort to steer clear of the irredeemable label of “transphobic,” Morin’s peers play along.

“I do strongly love when my friends call me ‘hippo,’ refer to my ‘paws’ and pretend they see no difference between me and one of my stuffed hippopotamuses, except that I’m a little bigger than most of them,” he says. “I discovered that another self was available for me: being a hippo means that I don’t have to be a boy or a girl, a child or an adult, normal or strange. It means that my smile becomes a hippo smile, and the way that I carry my body, a hippo walk. It brings me freedom, space, and a thrilling sense of possibility.”//

So, this is not just a human pretending to be a hippo, but a male human pretending to be a lesbian hippo.

Normally, we'd think this person is engaging in a strange prank or needed psychological intervention, but, now, who the heck knows?

Six Degrees of Separation sidenote - the article mentions an article by Ken Karst. Karst was my Con Law Prof UCLA Law and gave me the top mark in that class even though he was an old lefty and I wrote an essay pointing out how liberal judges had recreated substantive due process in their abortion jurisprudence.

They were a different kind of lefty back then.