The politics of having a tail; anomalies, norms and the spirit

kaisakaarmemaa

18 min käytetty lukemiseen

Embracing our animalness

“In the very earliest time

When both people and animals lived on earth

A person could become an animal if he wanted to

and an animal could become a human being.”

Nalungiaq, Inuit woman interviewed by ethnologist Knud Rasmussen in the early twentieth century

In the myths from around the world the true bones of our animalness continue to live. Once upon a time we did not think animals and us were so very different, it wasn’t a debatable thing whether nonhumananimals, trees or stones are sentient as every single being was (and still is). Alive, pulsating, breathing, sensing, resonating. Back then, animals could become humans and humans could become animals. Humans could marry animals and animals marry humans. Together they could have offspring. A woman and a bear, a man and a seal, a girl and a dog. All could understand each other, talk the same language. In Finland the bear was the most human-like animal by appearance, diet and spirit. Bears were thought to be not animals but “foresthumans” or they were thought to be half human and/or descending from humans.

The colonialist divide between “animals” and “humans” or “humans” from “nature” as a separate thing keeps up the illusionary separation between humananimals and more-than-humans. I, like many of us, long for the reconnection with the wildness, the animalbody, the spirit, the body of the earth. Can we unlearn some of our western socialisation/domestication? To what extent is it even possible? Can our cells re-member? Can our animalbelly re-awaken? This is an ongoing exploration to reawaken, re-embody and realize the connection with my cells and the cells of the rest of the body of the earth. Not just with the animal, but the water, the air, the plants and the minerals that live in the earth and come from the sky as stardust. Through tales and tails, somatic practice, performance and art I keep exploring these questions.

Body identity-personal tail embodiment

“Tail: The terminal, and usually flexible, posterior appendage of an animal.

The tail of mammals and reptiles contains a series of movable vertebrae, and is covered with flesh and hairs or scales like those of other parts of the body. “

Biology dictionary

One of the ways of embracing my animalness was through an outer, hairy accessory of a tail, which I embodied for 1 year and 3 months. I wore my tail during that time almost every day with some exceptions when I forgot it home or misplaced it. Where I was, my tail was too: work, forest, winter swimming, parties, coffee places or a friend’s house. More-than-human- animals use their tails for movement, especially for balance. Some animals have grasping tails strong enough to hang from trees. Horses use their tails to drive away mosquitoes and flies. Other animals, like foxes use their tails for warmth to put around their own or another’s body. Snakes wiggle their tails to attract prey. Dogs use their tails for communication, deers warn other deers of possible danger. I used mine for comfort, communication, sexuality, dancing and balance and just plain fun.

The outer expression of my inner tail was of course an appendix, an accessory. I cannot know what a “true” tail would feel like, one with nerves and flesh and bone and blood rushing through it. I could not move it like I move my hand, even if I desperately wanted to. This is how some unfortunate accidents happened. In the beginning, much like becoming pregnant and not being aware of one’s body changing. With my pregnant, growing belly I used to get stuck in doorways thinking I could fit through only because my bodymemory remembered having fit through such a space before. But when one’s body image hasn’t integrated the change in the body it takes some time to adjust. It was much the same with my tail. At first I would accidentally pee on my tail while peeing outdoors (yes, I have washed it, several times!) or I would forget it and immerse it in the toilet bowl while peeing indoors. I would leave it between cardoors or sometimes accidentally step on it. Poor tail what it had to endure. However, with time my body reimagined itself and started to remember. The act of lifting my tail up before doing my business became automatic, and tending to it without consciously thinking about it became the new normal. My body slowly started to identify with the tail, how it moves behind me as I move and dance. Once you do something for long enough the integration happens. My tail influenced the way I move and hold myself, my posture and my walk. These were not small matters as the tail was partly helping me to heal from my leg injury. I noticed a significant improvement in my balance, which was and still is off after breaking both my shin and calf bones in my right leg. I started to identify with it so much so that if for some reason I did not have my tail I felt “tail dysphoria”. Like there was something significant missing and something is not right in the way my body feels. Some people started to call me kittycat or “kisuli”. I also started to use the word meeow a lot and I still do. (It has become a standard part of my vocabulary.) I first thought I might carry the live-in performance on for some months and yet I ended up being a animal-with-tail for more than a year. After May 2024 I started to forget the tail more and more and in the summer I decided to “officially” end the live-in performance. I still occasionally wear her, but not every day. And the effects on my body and self image are still there even if the tail is not. I guess I have a connection, an invisible astral tail that keeps on remembering what having a tail feels like and that keeps on reminding me of my backside, my coccyx, my whole pelvic region.

For me, me it was more than a light humorous act of having and “wearing” a tail, a cute cosplay of an animal character, it was about creating a connection with my actual tail, re-awakening the tail that I have and instinctively feel as having, that makes total sense for me to have, that is more than imagining wings or having horns, to have a tail is closer and nearer, also evolutionary speaking. The tail, my backside, my bottom, my whole pelvic floor, especially the tailbone, (the coccyx) and the sacrum, in alignment with my whole spine. The tail was and is the outer expression of my spine and midline, my soul, my me-ness. The tail is the magical body part that blesses my pelvic region, the region of life and miracle and sex yet imagined collectively and historically in a patriarchy through fear and taboo. I did notice the sensuality of the tail. It made me feel more sensual and sexual, more wild. At one point I started to give out “tailtherapy”. Which only meant stroking or brushing people’s skin with my tail, on a bodypart of their choosing, most often their arm. I also used it this way for myself. The softness of it had a calming effect on my nervoussystem. It was like the passing caress of a cat. It brought safety and comfort and company. So from a somatic perspective the tail reverberated in me in a very comprehensive way- my nervoussystem, my muscles and balance, my connection to my coccyx, my spine and midline and my connection to my sexuality and my pelvic floor. No small accomplishment for an “accessory”.

Tales of tails: from insult to taboo to hype

Traditional tales of tails have in many traditions included stories of animals who either have tails or don’t have tails and the story tells how they lost their tail or how they got their tail. There is a story of the bears tail found in many continents. The Ojibwe version recounts an otter and the bear and the one I’ve heard as a child is the finnish version and has a fox and a bear. In it, once upon a time, before humans wandered here and animals could all speak the same language, the bear used to have a really long and beautiful tail, furry and bushy. The fox tricks the bear to fish with their tail. The bear believes and puts their tail in the ice whole, but of course, no fish can be caught that way and the tail gets frozen in the cold ice.In the end the bear is forced to rip their tail off by force and the beautiful bushy tail is left in the icehole and the bear is left with a short nugget tail. The teaching of the story is not only about bears and why they have short tails, but also to teach children that one shouldn’t always believe everything everyone tells you, one should use their own intuition. Then there is also the story of how the aurora borealis, the “fires of the fox” or revontulet in finnish, came to be. The fire fox has a flaming tail that glows and sparkles and as it runs in the fells the tail scratches on trees and whips some snow into the sky and sets the sky on fire. In later, colonialist times however, tails were associated with mainly negative things.

"Yahweh will make thee the head, and not the tail;

and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath;

if thou shalt hearken unto the commandments of Yahweh"

Deuteronomy 28:13

The colonialist mindset deems all that is “primitive” or “animal like” as inferior and is based on the concept of human superiority. Through it, tails symbolize the backside of an animal, the posterior, the last, the lower part. In comparison to the head of the animal, which according to the same mindset symbolizes wisdom and thought, leadership and superiority,mainly higher, godlike things,the tail symbolises inferiority, lower (earthly) things.

Curiously, between 1200 and 1400 centuries there was medieval slander about Englishmen having tails. The French especially believed or used these rumours to denote and diminish the English. Although the same belief was said by the English of the French, it seemed to be a common way to insult one’s enemies. To accuse them of having a tail.

“For God smote them in their hinder parts, giving them

everlasting shame

so that in the private parts both of themselves

and their descendants

all alike were born with a tail.’

Walter Bower

Everlasting shame! The whole thing seems quite absurd from this point in time. Yet these beliefs reveal the worldview from which they have grown. The need to be “civilised”, to be other than “wild, feral, primitive creatures”, animals, nature and of course indigenous people, lower class, (who maintained their pagan beliefs longer) To be pure and chaste and clean and holy and above all “in control”. Away from all things close to earth, dirt and mud and puss and blood and sweat and mess and instinct. Tails have also been equated to serpents, which have been largely demonised in christian tradition. The serpent then has been associated with satan. So has the goat. Many portrayals of the devil have animalistic features; hooves,tails and claws. The association of the satan and demons and devils with these animal qualities are likely to be based on the pagan deities of fertility and sexuality who had tails and horns like the greek fertility God Pan or the Minoan snake goddess. To associate evil and satan with actual deities was one way to turn people away from these “dangerous” gods and goddesses, so called “false prophets” that were deeply associated with the wilderness and sexuality. A tail is often also used as a euphemism for penis and not surprisingly as the word penis earlier meant “tail” in latin. Also the tail's proximity to our bottom and sexual organs, connect it with not only “sinful” sex but also the materiality of shit and piss. Beware the tail of an animal cause you might turn into an animal yourself! I honestly believe that we would be much better off with Pan and the snake goddess than patriarchal organised religions. I doubt one could use any fertility goddesses, symbols of creation of life and motherhood as an excuse to kill. These connections to sexuality and tails haven’t gone anywhere, they just are looked at from a much more sexpositive way. I honestly wasn’t aware before I started my tail life of all the devilish connotations or the sexual trends attached to tails, especially furry ones, animalsuits and so on. “How is it attached?” was a common question I used to get. “Is it an anal plug?” It wasn’t and I honestly hadn’t realized these trends even existed. There is a section on furry tail porn videos on pornhub. You can find tails that are attached with an analplug. You can get electric tails that move, hypermotion tails!!!! All this I only googled and found out later. There is a whole subculture of people wearing animalcostumes, “furry fandom” with conventions where people go dressed in fursuits. Yiff is the term used for pornographic material of people in furry suits. Although the furconventions have been going on since the 90’s I wasnt aware of even them. (It comes to show that I truly have been living in the forest)

Yiffs and furries, which I’m neither, are not to be mixed up with therians, people who identify with more-than-humans. I’m not a therian either. I identify as a human, who wants to embrace their animalness, that’s all. And then there are all the cosplays and animecharacters that have tails that have fans too. Tails now are practically trending! Is this the work of a devil? Someone might think so. I think that the culture is turning back on itself and making a circle, tails are making a comeback! In Tik Tok there is a trend called TailTok; people posting videos of their tails. I only now realize I have been trendy for once! There is a huge change in culture from traditional tales of tails to “everlasting shame” and satan’s tail to tailporn and all this “tailhype”.

Tail politics-tail as an anomaly

While wandering with my tail in public spaces my tail got some attention. The comments my tail got (in addition to the sexual questions) were almost always positive. “Nice tail” “You’re tail is hanging” or “Oh,you have a tail.” The tail is an element that had a weirding effect. There are spaces where a tail these days is not an anomaly (as mentioned above) and one can see tails on people, in parties, on teenagers and in social media if you know where to look, but in the spaces where it still is weird, it is an anomaly that at present time is non-threatening. Its slanderous insulting past is not known to many and it seems as though it is not a political statement. To have a tail as an adult nowadays seems just plainly weird.

The tail breaks the bubble of normality. Gabor Mate talks about the concept of normality in his book “The myth of normal”. He talks about how the “myth of normal” creates illness through the constant need for control in the name of normality and how this control, restriction creates toxicity instead of health and supposed normality. After having lived close to poverty as a singlemother for years, I got used to being looked upon as somehow “other” and sometimes treated as an “other” too. I feel most spaces are entangled in this concept of normality and there are huge amount of different people whose normal lives are not included in it. The concept of normal is intertwined in the concepts of white superiority, colonialism, patriarchy and ableism. And in my case the normal of capitalism and class have had their effects on my mentalhealth. There are very few spaces where one doesn’t need to spend any money to be able to just exist. There is definitely more to be said about oppression in general and class and it’s effects on one’s body and bodyimage and the way one moves through this world. Suffice to say now here, class has had it’s effects on me, on my self image and my sense of worth in the society. But as I got used to being looked at solely because of my tail I experienced it as empowering. The tail dispersed the other ways I might have been seen through. I felt as though I was more in control of the gaze, of how I am being seen and looked at. The tail changed the direction of the possible gaze of others, the possible labeling of my appearance, body and being. As a tailed being the attention was not on my worn down shoes or the woolly sweater with holes in it or the or how my card doesn’t have enough credit on the shop till again. The main focus was instead on the tail. There was a sense of freedom in being “weird” enough. When one cannot fit into an existing label or classification (based on normal) I needed a whole new label or classification. This was the political aspect of my tail in my personal liberation. The tail allowed me to hold myself in a different way and allowed me to disperse my own invisibility created by experiences of class differences.

I did not think as my tail being a political statement. Once I was asked “what is it that you want to convey through your tail?”. I didn’t think there was anything I wanted to convey or say or state. I simply enjoyed having a tail. However pondering this question I realized there is a statement underneath,a wish for the world to be such where people and all beings can be whatever they are. I wanted to live in a world where people can have a tail, or they can have wings, where people can be themselves, whatever that might look of feel like. I want diversity, I want creativity, I want “normal” to include tails and hooves and claws and weird dancemoves and diversity in being. I wanted more space for all of us. Looking at the whole thing from this perspective, the anomaly of my tail was a way to metamorphose my own selfimage from within and break the capitalist middleclass “clean” normal and bring animalness into the forefront. More anomalies like tails into all spaces, I say!

From a mythological perspective all kinds of anomalies are more the norm than the disruption from the norm. In mythology there are countless of tales of metamorphose where a human is being transformed by gods or other forces either as a reward or punishment to animal, plant, object or as in many folktales the stars. Shamans could turn themselves into animals. The transformation of nature is a constant, an actual normal. In my opinion there is nothing supernatural or mythological about turning into a tree. We all turn to earth and our bodies nutrients turn to trees once we die. We all have once been stardust. So what is mythological or supernatural in having been a constellation once or becoming one? Or turning into a river? The waters that live in us will go somewhere once we die, the moistness that inhabits us while we still live will carry on the water cycle. We are the flesh of this planet in life and in death.

Whilst for a human it is an anomaly to have a tail, for an animal the anomaly is to either be a creature that combines different bodyparts of different animals like the greek Chimera that has the front of a lion a goat in the middlebody and a dragon in the behind. Or an animal that has many heads or also, multiple tails. In Chinese folklore there is the nine-tailed fox known as the Húli jing, fox spirit or known also as the Kitsune in Japan.

Multiple tails establish the creatures uniqueness,other-worldliness. (or in christian tales:devilness) The fox spirit is depicted both as a demon and as a benevolent creature. It can shapeshift into human form. In some writings it is said that the fox spirit appears in times of peace and that it symbolises abundance of offspring. The manytailed creatures live on in popculture and anime like Pokemon and Naruto.

Then there is of course, the ultimate tail symbol, the ouroboros, the symbol of eternal cyclic renewal, the cyclical year, the neverending cycle. The snake biting it’s own tail is in some cultures also a fertility symbol, the tail seens as a phallic symbol and the mouth as a symbol of the womb. Ouroboros symbolises the eternal cycles of life, death and rebirth. Oh eternal tail I worship thee!

Tailbuds, truetails and astraltails

Our tailbone, the coccyx, is attached to our pelvis. It consists from 3 to 5 bones that are fused together. It doesn’t stick out and continue to a tail and humans are therefore now classified as tailless creatures. Yet, If I go way way back, I can imagine, I can almost remember what having a tail could have felt like. 25 million years ago I too waved my tail around, hung from trees, could use it to grab to branches perhaps. 25 million years ago tails made total sense to humans. What then happened evolutionary and why we lost them I’m not quite sure as the researchers are not either. There is speculation that humans lost their tails while starting to walk on two legs, that a tail was no longer necessary and/or when they “came down from the trees”, which one could imagine might have happened around the same time. Maybe taillessness was a necessary step in the evolution of our spine to become a two-legged creature from four-legged one. From a mythological perspective I wonder whether the stories about how the bear lost it’s tail was a metaphor for ourselves too. Since the bear is so closely linked to humans throughitss appearance and ability to stand in two feet. Maybe behind these stories there is and was the understanding that we have come from other animals and therefore we have also had tails and lost them. Or some of us have.

“People have a lot of faith in me. They are cured of severe ailments when they touch my tail. I believe I can do a lot of good to those who come to me with devotion.”

-Chandre Oram

Some humans are still born with a tail, or a boneless appendage up to 18 centimeters long and these are called “true tails”. The true tails are distant memories of the embryonic tail we all once used to have. THey are often soft tissue without any bone and are easily removed. (says wikipedia). Then there is a classification of “pseudotails”, which are (according to tail experts who reward the status of true tails), lesions, or some kind of protrusions that only “look like” tails. Most often these are a some kind of lengthening growths that arise from the coccyx and the vertebrae. Apparently these are harder to remove surgically. The photos or old drawings I could find online of babies or grownups with tails (whether true or pseudo) were weird and cute at the same time. Most of them look like tiny little pig tails or little soft sausages. They are soft and skincolored, very few of them hairy.

Chandre Orams tail is not, according to physicians a “true” tail but nevertheless he has one and is worshipped for it. He has a hairy tail that is said to be either 33cm or 37cm long, depends where you read from, but it seems to be the longest tail anyone has in the world. He refuses to have it removed as it has become a part of him and he couldn’t live without it! And why would he need to , even if his wife dislikes it. Chandre is believed by many to be the incarnation of Hanuman, a Hindu deity that looks a little bit like a monkey and is associated with them. Chandre also claims to have other monkey-like qualities like liking bananas and climbing a lot. So the tail seems to have worked for him quite well.

We all have had tails once. Not as big as Chandre Oram but tails anyhow. The memory of a tail is much closer, much nearer than 25 million years of evolution, it is in the cells of this body, the cells of the embryo. And if one believes in the memory of the cell we can still access this memory of a tail. Because of this evolutionary fact that animals are our ancestors, the embryo still looks and develops very much in the same ways as other mammals. And not just mammals, we first look like tiny fish babies. (And semen, half of our ancestors, look exactly like tadpoles! )The embryo has a tail. Or cuter name would be a tail bud. The tail bud forms in the 4th to the 6th gestational weeks. It has 10–12 caudal (caudal means tailly) vertebrae. The tail usually disappears by the time the now called fetus is 8 weeks old. Imagine that! A tiny little tail bud in your butt.

“When you have a tail, you are never alone”

“Jos sinulla on häntä, et ole koskaan yksin” (Finnish original)

-my meow friend Pauli

When I started my live-in performance, or my journey as a tailed creature my friend Pauli said: “when you have a tail, you are never alone”. This was such an awakening sentence that it inspired me. The tail truly was a companion for me, I didn’t feel as alone when I had a tail. I felt less human, and when I remember that I am an animal, I feel less separated, less lonely, less inside the illusion of capitalist toxicity.The tail can act as a reminder of the fact that, no we are not alone, we are inseparable parts of this planet, of the mycelial networks of life and death.

The hype around tails sexual or nonsexual is not coincidental in my opinion. The fact that there are people, (or therians as they don’t identify as people) identifying as cats or bears or wolves, others dressing up in fursuits and going to conventions with abunch of other furry cretures, others watching tailporn online and masturbating and yet others worshipping an indian teepicker who has a very hairy over 30 cm tail, be it a pseudotail or not. A friend of mine claims to have an astral tail., which he received from a psychedelic trip. Tails are everywhere!

I believe there is a collective longing for a reconnection with our animalness, maybe also a collective longing for astraltails? This yearning is born from the western separateness from everything, our own body, other bodies, the spirit, the living breathing body of the earth. We long to become animals again. We long to smell things, feel things, touch and sense and move our tails about.. We long to be sexual creatures, to be free and sensuous. We long to have connection to our own bodies, each other and the other animals. And of course, the actual truth is that we are animals. No amount of academic texts, fancy words, shiny clothes and smart phones or silverware, tall buildings or screwed up governments or weird religious beliefs can take that simple truth away. We are still, even how much we pretend not to be, animals.

The tail, whether astral or true or electric has potential to awaken your pelvic region, which in us Finns is often quite stiff. We are not collectively the most sexual dancers, or eager to shake and move our pelvis. I suspect the years of lutherian socialisation has done its course, or years of cold weather. The pelvic region needs to be shaked and moved and waggled about. To become an animal, to become the animal that you already are, one needs to shake one's tail.

Can you remember having a tail? Can you feel your tail now? Can you remember being an oceanic creature swimming in the amniotic seawater of your mothers womb? Can you wiggle your tail now? The spirit of this tail bud is in the coccyx this very moment. We can begin to initiate movement from the coccyx. Visualise having a tail and let it be a continuation of your spine. Imagine your midline carrying on from your bottom. This practice of the astral tail can also be done by wearing an actual tail if you have little imagination for tails.

Imagine the tail awakening not only your connection to your spine and your sexual organs and your balance but also to your mother, your ancestors, other humananimals, more-than-humans like monkeys, reptilians and fish. Re-awaken your connection with the spirit of the tail, the mythical tails, the fire fox setting the sky on fire, the 9-tailed fox, the ouroboros sucking it’s tail over and over and over again.

So go on, wiggle your astral tail!