#Therian discourse

[poplarbark]

i agree. so much of what i see is like very . Well you can tell a majority of therians are children or teenagers. and im glad theyre having fun in a community of likeminded people! but is so isolating as an adult.

the lens through which therianthropy is viewed changes a bit with age. as a kid youre supposed to play and have fun, and that's expected, and a lot of therio stuff goes hand in hand with that. doing quads and making masks and barking at packmates, for example.

when youre an adult, doing any of that is seen as strange, childish, etc. wear a collar outside? thats kink. bark or growl involuntarily? freakish. of course, quads, yarn tails, running in the woods or river---it's all still doable as an adult, but often only in private and with other therians, or at least others who accept you as one. and its just harder to do that when you have post secondary and a job. like, id feel bad for our downstairs neighbours if i were to try quads in my apartment lol

thats not all therianthropy needs to be though , it can be something quieter. i know mine is relatively lowkey like that. i like layong on the floor like a dog when i socialise. i like eating from those fuckass metal dogbowls my dad bought for my brother and i when we were kids. i like wearing my collar and my tail when my friends and i barhop

a lot of therianthropy shit feels very much the same as baby queers? like kids who have finally figured out a crucial part of themself, finding a space online to express it. a community. extremely prideful and defensive over who they are, over the finer details. because for so long they were denied that identity, and finally having a name for it feels good. theyre So desperate to carve out a place where they belong that they dont see themselves clawing at their brothers in the process. youre putting human restrictions and understandings on something wholly inhuman. thats what i mean by it feels a lot like baby queers. infighting over Proper Labels or The One Correct Experience. id see this kind of queer discourse on twt in 2020 yknow.

and speaking as an adult: you just. dont give a shit about that once youre there. it is what it is. transfag dogthing is just how i am and im making it everyones problem. and when youre older you realise that OTHER people really dont care about labels like that either , esp not irl

and i think another reason is that a lot of therianthropy sutff is infantilised is bc. so much of adulthood is trying to fall in line with The System. therianthropy (in my eyes) goes against all of that. being a wolf is commie shit. like carving a small community that lets you run free of all outward perception. thats the antithesis of capitalism. all that to say, outwardly doing that in a heavily urbanised city just. you get a target on your back. if id go run on all fours in the park behind our apt people would assume id snorted something.

huff. im almost done. my takes on this is mostly as an otherhearted canine. i dont really shift, and wear gear more for euphoric reasons rather than dysphoric ones. i still consider myself a therian though, i simply am a wolf. a few people i know irl are animals in a similar way that i am as well. so take this entire ramble with a not-quite-a-therian grain of salt. its not 1:1 to the tiktok therian experience. but its MY experience so that has to count for something.

tldr: young therians---get offline, go to punk shows and queer meets, talk to elder folk if you can. chances are youll find someone who is like you, or who at least understands. look past your identity beyond the aesthetics. it's lonely being an animal in a concrete jungle full of humans. dont bite your packmates; were supposed to be strong together. and finally: when someone asks you why youre wearing a cat mask, tell them to read the communists manifesto or something

Been thinking a lot about the things that seem to bring me the most inner peace as a werewolf, and the way that the community seems to be drifting away from being an experience driven group, towards being a fandom.

I want to put these two things together into some kind of essay or plea for change, but I'm not sure how I guess. I've let a lot of pain and frustration build up around the topic, and now I don't know what to say or how to make people listen.

Very open for suggestions and input - I like brainstorming this kind of stuff with other members of the community since I frequently miss out on perspectives different from the way I approach things.

[boycreature12]

who cares if physical nonhumans are delusional? their mental health isnt your responsibility. its also not your responsibility to reality check them without their consent. not to mention the majority of delusional physical nonhumans i see arent negatively impacted by their identity. and if they are? still not your responsibility. leave people alone.

[edit: this post wasnt intended to take away discussion from people who do want to discuss and receive help from beings online about their experiences with delusion and how it negatively impacts them. thats my bad, i was centered on how i feel about my experience as someone who doesnt like that and i failed to consider other experiences. sorry for the miscommunication everyone.]

[wulfbones]

This might be a hot take, but animal packers are not bad. Being trans-species is not bad. You may not understand it, but who are you to tell someone how they can and can't identify?

Do not correlate trans-species creatures and animal packer users with zoophiles. There is a BIG difference.

[a-minke-whales-tale]

Delusion, Clinical Zoanthropy

I am a clinical zoanthrope. I have schizophrenia. If you have read my posts or blog before this should be no surprise as I am quite open about it. These labels that have been put on me affect nearly every aspect of my life, and greatly affect how I interact with the community. There is often a lot of discussion surrounding ideas of physical identity, delusion and if these things should be acceptable within the community or how to handle these topics.

Length: 3676 words

TW: delusions, reality checking, mentions of medical abuse

The year before last, I had spent quite a bit of time working with another academic to construct a historical materialist analysis of therianthropy. Historical materialism for people who are not familiar is a method of analysing history through the lens of production and class society. In particular, given the apparent wealth of historical therianthropy among “primitive” society, and the narrow niche of modern therianthropy, as well as my own treatment at the hands of the medical system, I wished to understand the origins of the oppression of therianthropic identity. I have to date not completed the project for a number of reasons - limited available literature regarding the transition from pre-class society to slave society particularly regarding religious and spiritual beliefs, personal health and time, and forcing myself to create a complex system of double bookkeeping and analysing my experiences through a materialist lens essentially constantly and forcibly reality checking myself constantly was very taxing.

Although I did not get to the state to write and publish the paper, I did learn a fair bit, and I think the most important concept within this discussion is the concept of delusion and how we define it. There is a common vulgar definition of delusion as believing anything that is not real or not backed by scientific consensus. But then there are many things people believe which is not backed by scientific consensus. While certainly there are people who would say that anyone who believes in ghosts or the Christian God are delusional, nearly half of the people in my country believe in God, however we lack any materialist evidence at this point for such a thing. The state of being identified by others as delusional comes with some pretty serious consequences, it should be noted though that these consequences are not applied to people who believe in God. Similarly, there are times when scientific consensus is simply wrong. Is the man who rejects the inherent inferiority of the [Sub-saharan Afrikan] race because of their skull shape and “thick skin” delusional? We today would collectively say no. For a man in the early 19th century, this would have been scientific consensus even if now we should find such a thought abhorrent. Was he then delusional? (Though some people did try to justify slaves escaping as a mental health condition Drapetomania, and historical terms like madness are often connected to modern terms like delusion and psychosis). I think often modern humans can create an almost religion out of science and progress and belief in their own rationalism - that not only is there absolute objective truth, but they can and do know it all in this particular moment, and that the society they exist within does not effect an impact on their view.

It is important to understand that delusion has a fairly specific definition and caveat when talking in a medical definition. That important caveat is that the belief conflicts, or is not standard, within their culture or subculture. Not only that, the belief must be very fixed and firmly set which does not respond/change to the presence of outside evidence. This cultural context is an important factor in the diagnostic criteria for delusions, as well as dissociative disorders like OSDD and DID (it may well be important for other conditions diagnostic criteria as well though I lack experience to speak on that topic).

Delusions -are- very much socially defined. I make the joke often that a rich man hears the voice of God he runs for office, I hear the voice of a spirit and need to be on antipsychotics. There are a number of examples namely in SEA where the experience of transforming into another animal would be considered entirely within the range of normal possibility (though notably with tigers primarily). There are also cultures and practices in which physical transformation is not considered delusion but a normal part of ritual notably among the Xan peoples. Among some Siberian cultures as part of hunting some will take essentially the mind of a wolf. In South Asia there are also recorded practices in which a person’s soul is bonded to and moved to an animal’s body in the night. Most people those reading this might encounter day to day would think these are surely delusions, but for those people, it is just a normal part of life and culture.

Most people here would collectively agree that therianthropy is not a delusion, however from outside the community many easily could argue it. You -are- human, you can look at your body and it and see that it -is- human. If you argue for past lives, there exists no evidence supporting that and no evidence supporting the existence of spirit or plausible explanation beyond hallucination despite many attempts to measure their existence. Nor do you have the instincts of that animal because you are clearly a human, and any "instincts" you might have are phantoms of the mind or attaching to a certain animal as a way to manage your life. However neither of these explanations would be acceptable nor would they convince you that you are wholly and entirely human.

Similarly with transgender identity, people here would collectively agree that is not a delusion. But 60 years ago? Or among transphobes? You are experiencing a delusion. You are obviously a wo/man, and no amount of hormones, [presentation], or [surgery] will change that. We would all collectively say fuck that shit, but you know who agrees under certain circumstances? WPATH in their Standards of Care directly notes among certain conditions of transgender identity as delusion (or at least in their old SOC before informed consent became common). It is common for people with schizo-spectrum disorders and higher level structural dissociative disorders to be denied care, or to face significant pushback. But this can also be true for all sorts of other “less serious” conditions such as austime, adhd, depression etc. This is something I have faced, and who knows how many others have faced it as well.

But what a delusion is very much defined by perspective and culture. It is easy when sitting on the "non-delusional" side of a cultural belief, to believe the order of things is logical. However, when I must construct materialist explanations of experiences, a task for which I am forced as part of double bookkeeping, the differences between my "delusional" experiences, and others "nondelusional" experiences especially in regards to therianthropy is one of degree, not of kind. Do not make the mistake to think that in other scenarios, other cultures, your experiences may be seen as delusions, and in other places, mine as natural and grounded in reality.

My experience as a clinical zoanthrope has left me often feeling quite divorced from the community, that I am separate, unwelcome, or an interloper in what is supposed to be my own community. I have been in the community for a while, but only at certain points felt comfortable to really call myself therian, a feeling which is again waning. There is a strong push constantly against physical identity. Even the most (in)famous phrase in wider culture about therians is the “on all levels except physical I am a wolf”. However this pushback against physical identities, especially from the concerns over P-shifter cults and abuses, created an environment that for me to be tolerated, I would have to constantly “show insight” or really reality check myself, and ensure all the others there knew that I knew my experience was not real and was not like their experiences were (that theirs were real and different). I still often have to do the dance describing my experiences, and even in the terms I use for myself as a clinical zoanthrope is indirectly that same dance.

The therian community often prides itself on how accepting it is. Though to be honest, I really have to question if this is the case. I have always felt unwelcome by the broader community. But so have very many others. It always strikes me that whenever I really share my experiences, how many others really relate to that feeling of not feeling wholly secure or belonging within the community. My orca friend, Ike, has talked quite a lot how they simply did not join the community for so long for feeling unwelcome. Sharing my experiences on a discord server a few weeks ago I learned another member was also a zoanthrope but had never shared it for fear of ostracization. A number of others expressed sentiments of feeling not total included, some for shift strengths, some for things like sexuality, theriomythics often get excluded, etc. Heck, by some accounts even the transition to the term Therian away from Were was an effort to include more people besides just shapeshifters.

Really when you think about it, it is not surprising so many people feel excluded in various ways. Therians have all these lines that you have to sit inside of and not cross to be acceptable to the community. But when you try to actually measure those lines many are not only extremely blurry, but vary person to person. Indeed my own experience is that there are people that do accept me, even if the wider community does not, and that is really the only reason I stayed.

The community has historically for instance a pretty hard stance on delusion and hallucination. The question though is, when does a shift move from being a socially acceptable phantom shift, to an unacceptable hallucination. For me in particular, my sensation of shift goes through a fairly long process of getting more and more intense, but it is also really a quite smooth process. It is like following a colour line, when does ‘blue’ truly begin? The first sensation is often a slight tickling, and very light phantom touch that you can sort of see through the feeling on your body. Beyond that the sensation gets more intense and becomes bothered from having things push against or intersect it. Further it begins to have not only form but colour and texture, but still if I look at the limb I cannot see it, I still see a human limb, though I do not expect it. Further the visual appearance comes in more and more until eventually my human parts are gone, transformed into animal parts I can see and I can touch. When we write it out like this it is pretty separately defined, but in the process this occurs for me, it is very smooth.

After enough quantitative change, there is a qualitative change, but where and when that occurs is hard to say. I think the first two experiences are very common among therians. I think the third experience is also fairly common but that starts to get more and more into the blurry lines, and if you cannot see where that line is you are likely to downplay your own experiences for fear if you say too much, you will be excised or ostracised from the community. But this fear also has the doubly cruel aspect that you can never really know where that line is because many people downplay their experiences to make them palatable, and so though many others might share in these experiences, people simply do not speak of them because they only see either extreme being shared, the particularly minor shifts being accepted, or the extreme shifts being sorted into delusions. I think it creates a false binary from a spectrum of experiences.

So many of these blurry lines exist though. What age can you be taken seriously? What platform do you use? How many kintypes is too many? Theriotypes being too common? Theriotypes being too rare? Are paleotherians acceptable? Are theriomythics acceptable? Can a dragon be a therian? Can an otherlinker or copinglinker have their identity so long it becomes therian? Are beastly animals from fictional settings acceptable or should they be with fictionkind? What sort of sexual and romantic expression is allowable? Is transspecies an acceptable identity? Some of these are blurry, some of them are clear, but they all wiggle around in different ways of some people will find them acceptable and some not. This leads to people self-censoring to the safe answers that they know are acceptable and prevents them really exploring their own identities, but also these questions within the community as it learns and grows and becomes more inclusive. In a certain irony, therianthropes as a community, are actually quite demanding in their conformity while preaching of their acceptance.

There has been a significant push in recent years to give greater levels of inclusion to therians with both delusional identities and physical identities. People are generally more accepting of zoanthropes and at points I have felt comfortable even to call myself therian and not just a member of the community. But there are also a number of additional terms, namely endel and holothere, which cover these experiences. However, something I note often when people talk why I as a clinical zoanthrope can be acceptable, while P-shifters and at times holotheres cannot, still comes down to that I acknowledge my experience as delusion. When I read the experiences of at least some p-shifters and holotheres, often the difference really is not so great, I often see their experiences mimicking or mirroring my own. I do use the word clinical zoanthropy, which on some level does indicate an understanding I know that at least others see my experiences as not real. This is a pretty common feeling among zoanthropes, we use this word, we know the humans think our experiences are not real, but they are incredibly real to us.

The question then is what should be done with us? There is a lot of comment that allowing us in the community to share our experiences or not reality checking people is encouraging delusion. People also say that delusions are harmful and that we should seek medical help. There are quite a few people who even wish to excise or isolate those who are anti-psychiatry and anti-recovery from the community.

If I am forced to analyse my experiences through a materialist and distant lens, it is quite clear my experiences are heavily rooted in delusion. I am a scientist, and there is no means under current knowledge to explain what I experience except hallucination - still I believe it fully. My knowing this is the only logical explanation does not lead me to believe it, to truly believe it inside. I mentioned before I had to give up on projects I did really enjoy because forcing myself to continuously deny my experiences and continuously reality check myself, brought to me very much distress. There are times I have wanted to be reality checked, but for vast part that is the remainder it is really distressing. It is distressing to be told a core part of your identity is not real, to be told the you that exists isn’t the real you, and sometimes see people mourning the “sane you”. Individuals in the community are not going to solve my “delusion” by reality checking myself or others.

Nor will them blocking me from the community or ensuring I do the dance for them encourage my “delusions” away. Delusions are heavily fixed experiences, and though you can encourage them in certain ways (think the example of people making “in your walls” jokes at schizophrenics), us talking about and sharing our experiences with each other and in our own community helps us feel understood and a sense of belonging. There are so few of us to start with, and the community closest to us either often disallows us, or makes us sit at the edge never really able to join. All banning us does is further isolate us, and for many delusions reinforces that we will never be acceptable or tolerable to others and it is best we are alone so we don’t hurt others with our presence.

I cannot speak on every person’s delusions, but I can speak on my own. For the question of if delusions are harmful, I think it often asks the wrong question. Who is it harmful to? Under what framework? Who thinks it is harmful? What does the patient want? I think one could say that my delusions of turning into a whale do harm me. I have trouble to interact with humans, I cannot work a full time job, I struggle in relationships, many nights I lay on the couch stuck for hours simply unable to move. These are all pretty negative things no? But it fails to ask why are these things harmful? A doctor looks through a very human framework and sees that I cannot do the human things and sees that I must have a poor quality of life and these delusions need to be addressed. But I am a whale and it is a core part of me, these things can be distressing, but whales cannot interact with humans the same way two humans would, work a full time job, have relationships with humans, and if you stuck them on a couch they would also not be able to move. This all is distressing and perhaps harmful, but then what other option is there? What the humans offer to me as solution is far worse.

I am anti-recovery, at least for myself. I think it is important to ask what does recovery look like? For me recovery would be to return to the water where I belong. But the humans would certainly say otherwise. For them recovery would look like fitting into and functioning within human society - having a job, a house, a car, a husband, kids, going on holiday, etc. I am not a human and I do not wish to be a human and live among them. However what is worse is how the humans would go about fixing that. I have been locked in hospitals, I have been strapped down, I have been sedated, I have been put on horrible meds that destroyed things I cared about and have often left me a shell of a person (there is a reason they were marketed as a chemical lobotomy). Some things I have gotten better in over time, and I can hold a job for the moment, even quite technical and difficult jobs.

However, the damage done to me from the humans was severe. Although I can talk about being a whale as delusion, the why is really far more impactful and distressing in my life. I was taken from the water, turned human, and am a useful thing for the humans. This understanding of myself as merely a tool and something the humans can do whatever they want with me is the real distressing aspect of my life. For me, the ‘help’ I received at the hospital only strengthened and set this delusion in so much firmer. I can look back at certain experiences, I can see the humans don’t have the technology to do what they did to me, but then I also have those years in the hospital, those years where everything was very apparent and clear and something that others can confirm and it seems to only further make plausible the experiences of the past, and those in the present the fear for what the humans will do to me. I know that I am deteriorating, I am struggling more and more, but nothing the humans offer me will make things better, they will only hurt me more, and if I ask for help, and reject it, they will only see it as proof I need the help more and force it onto me, which will only further reinforce that delusion.

If someone wishes to see a doctor and talk about therian things, I do often warn them of caution for what happened to myself and I do not want others hurt that way. I also urge them to think about what they want as the outcome from that discussion or what they hope will happen. A lot of mentally ill people have been hurt by doctors who thought they knew best, and once something is said, it cannot be undone. However, in the end they are free to decide what they will, and are free to navigate the medical system if they think it will benefit them.

For myself, I struggle to believe that doctors would really help me and instead work to help myself and my cetacean friends so that maybe someday we could swim again and swim forever. That we can fix ourselves and heal. That in time the deep scars across our bodies might start to fade and look like the scars of other captive cetaceans. That instead of surviving merely trying to please the humans to not be hurt, that we might actually -live- and have the life we were denied.

We are still people with agency, agency to choose our own path, to choose what brings us joy, to decide what we want from life, and from our healthcare. Or at least we should be granted that agency. We should not be excluded from the community or forced to dance around our experiences as not real for the comfort of others who happen to lie on the other side of the sane-delusional line, afterall the positioning of that line is very arbitrary and could easily swing to find yourself on my side of that line.

~ Kala

[angxl-k9]

May I expand. It’s not about the “animal packers” and etc. I believe that it’s nobody’s business. The issue is how nonsensical it sounds to say “I am an animal” out loud. People will laugh at you. You will damage your own relationships. Think. Is it worth it? And why do people act like that? Because it’s crazy.

There’s a popular conservative lie that is spread around of “litter boxes in schools” and “people identifying as animals” and that’s NOT REAL. It comes from a complete fabrication to make trans people look worse. Don’t try to make it real. I don’t care if it’s “been around for decades” that doesn’t change anything. It’s not about streamlining your identity to make it more digestible to outsiders who don’t understand, it’s about the threshold where “identity” crosses between “genuine insanity” and if you can’t SEE the clear line between those two things then there isn’t much hope for you.

Hey anon! Great to see you actually just hate therians! Hooray!

Even longer post, will also be under a cut!

Firstly, addressing the very popular but very wrong lie of "kids are using litter boxes in schools": These are for service animals. These are put in place by schools who have students (or teachers) who have disabilities that require them to bring a service animal to school with them. This has nothing to do with therianthropy, it is just a lie that Tiktok caught on to and spread it like wildfire.

(Now, to add in before this section, this isn’t to “throw clinical zoanthropes under the bus” with therian discourse. There’s nothing “wrong” with clinical zoanthropes, just like there’s nothing “wrong” with therians. I am simply stating facts. That’s it. I think it’s important to be educated about things like this. Let’s continue.)

Secondly, therianthropy is not "being crazy". It is not a mental illness, it is not a disability, it is not wrong. However, you may be interested im learning about "clinical lycanthropy" (or zoanthropy, different from therianthropy). This is an extremely rare, delusion-based psychiatric syndrome characterized by patients believing that they can or have physically transformed into a non-human animal. It is essentially the delusion that one can shapeshift into a werewolf (or similar animal). It is associated with psychosis (aka delusions and hallucinations). It is considered to be an expression of a psychotic or dissociative episode caused by another condition (like DID, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression).

This article describes a report done on clinical lycanthropy. Over 130 articles were screened and between 1852 and 2020, there were 43 cases of clinical lycanthropy identified. That's right. 43. Now, have you seen how many therians are on Tiktok? Yeah, more than 43. And they're definitely not from 1852. So how can you say that therianthropy is "being crazy"? And don't say "they're just delusional" because the only delusion that somewhat accurately presents like therianthropy is that of clinical lycan/zoanthropy. Professionals would know if someone is genuinely delusional, but why would they care about such a small group of people in the world?

There are also studies done on patients with clinical lycanthropy actually have differences in their brains. The part of the brain known to be involved with represent body shape can display unusual activation in patients with clinical lycanthropy, showing that when patients report their body changing and shapeshifting, they may genuinely be perceiving those feelings. Have therians ever claimed to you that they can feel their bones and skin and limbs shifting and changing to become that of a non-human animal? No, because therianthropy is not a delusion. There are often no physical feelings in the body of a therian when they, for example, experience phantom tails or ears etc. That begs the question, would you say that an amputee experiencing phantom limbs is psychotic?

So, people identifying as a non-human animal is real! There are reported cases of it in the medical field! Shocking, right? It must be crazy to you that there are documented medical cases of people identifying as animals, allllll the way back to 18-goddamn-52.

Thirdly, therianthropy has nothing to do with being trans. It never has, it never will. No one has ever claimed it to be. Being trans means that your assigned sex and birth does not match with how you perceive yourself and how you want others to perceive you. What you might be thinking of is being trans-species. This is okay too! It just means that your assigned species at birth (human, obviously) does not match with how you perceive yourself and how you want others to perceive you. See how I used two different words? Species and gender?

Plus not all therians are trans-species, like myself! Generally I don't have much of a desire to physically become a wolf or a cat or a shark. I'm comfortable being perceived as a human, even though sometimes I just wanna wag my tail and run around and put my ears back and growl! I know that some therians feel super uncomfortable in their human body and wish that they could change! And that's where the species-affirming packers come in. It's like being transgender but it is not! And no one is claiming it is.

Another thing is that a lot of therians tend to be neurodivergent. But you're not saying that therianthropy is ableist, are you? No, you're just trying to connect two dots that are miles away. Neurodiverse people can feel a disconnection with humanity, and that can explain for some people their alterhumanity. Of course, not all therians are neurodivergent nor do they believe that their neurodiversity are the root of their alterhumanity. Have a look at this poll from Reddit, almost two thirds of participants indicated that they're neurodiverse!

Now, being neurodivergent calls for being discriminated against in and of itself. Same with being LBGT+. And being any race except white. Do you really think that therians who are LBGT+ are going to be discriminated against more for their alterhumanity than their sexual orientation or gender? No. Do you really think that therians who are neurodiverse are going to be discriminated against more for their alterhumanity than their disabilities? No again. Do you really think that therians who are POC are going to be discriminated against more for their alterhumanity than their race? Absolutely not.

Ultimately, people have been discriminating against POC, gay, trans and neurodivergent people long before they were called "weird" for being a therian. People have been killed over simply being gay or trans or neurodivergent or . Therians may receive death threats, yes, and that is disgusting behaviour from hateful people, but no one (to my knowledge) has been killed simply for being a therian. The discrimination against LGBT+, neurodivergent and POC communities runs way way way deeper than anyone saying "therians are weird". Do you think that therians in these communities are going to be more worried about being laughed at because they're a therian than being literally slaughtered for their race, disabilities, sexual orientation or gender? No! There are way worse problems for people to worry about than people saying they identify as animals! It truly is not that deep to say "I identify as an animal". Some people identify as inanimate objects but you don't seem to care about that (although there is nothing wrong with identifying as an inanimate object).

Also I can't even comprehend what you're talking about "streamlining your identity to make it more digestible". How is identifying as an animal more digestible than identifying as a man instead of a female like I was born as?

[silly-fox-and-its-stuffies]

all yall are debating about animal packers but i just wanna know where to find them (idek if i want one yet or not but that's bc i haven't seen them lol)

[petsemataries]

this is killing me i really can't take anything serious

[serendipity-xoxo77]

i saw ur reblog and I'm curious

Why don't u like therians who r on tiktok? Wouldn't they be the same as someone who isn't on tiktok?

i am not a therian nor do I have tiktok so I'm just asking cause I generally don't know the difference 😭

Therians on tiktok are normally like 12-15 years old and really new to the community and don't fully understand how alterhumanity works, which is fine, but most of them are REALLY annoying.

They believe that therianthropy is only about wearing masks and doing quads, not about the actual spiritual/psychological aspect of it. They think of it like a fun trend or hobby like furries or spirit animals and that you can choose what you identify as and a bunch of other misinformation.

TikTok is also riddled with bullying and negativity in general. Your theriotype isn't a wolf, cat or fox? Bullied. You're fictionkin? Bullied. You're plantkin? A physical therian? Factkin? Have body mods? Abstract or mythological like demonkin or voidkin? Get ready to see death threats in your inbox.

They throw other therians under the bus to make themselve look good to normies. They make up stupid rules about what a therian can and cannot be. They spread misinformation that makes non therians hate us even more.

Sorry for the rant I get really defensive when it comes to kin discourse :'). But yea that's kinda why I don't like them summarized as best as I could.

[dogbites15]

i fucking hate the therian packer discourse. fyi, calling packers sexual is not only harmful to the therian community, but ALSO the trans community. wearing a furry packer is the exact same thing as wearing a tail, except that people can't see it. the existence of genitalia isn't sexual, as long as it's not in a sexual context. it's not zoophilia to have dysphoria ffs

[puriteenism]

I love tiktok therians sm like you don't even know

[thorn-the-silly-druid]

btw. fictotherian is a subset of both fictionkin and therian. animals from fiction are still animals and should be allowed to consider themselves part of a community of animals if their experiences are animal experiences.

dogs with wings, Pokemon, the leader of ThunderClan, idk yoshi from mario or smth, hell even dragons if they consider themselves animals. we all can be therians too if we want to. there is NO REASON to divide ourselves up by 'animal from earth' vs 'animal not from earth'. we are all animals.

im literally a monkey, im not in the same exact category as fictional humanoids just bc im from a fictional universe. my experiences as a monkey are largely the same as earth monkeys, and i relate more to other monkey therians than i do to the fictionkin community as a whole. so why am i not allowed to call myself a therian? i'm an animal even if i'm more anthropomorphic than earth monkeys and i'm from a universe where monkeys wage war on balloons and speak english. and i'm going to call myself a therian, because i'm an animal just as much as you cats and dogs and wolves are.

the divide stops now.

the divide stops now.

[rottenhellion]

Trying to claim "gatekeeper" is some kind of anti-therian slur is seriously so annoying? "If you tell me to quit spreading misinfo and being a dick that means you're literally calling me a SLUR you BIGOT" it's just. So blatantly an attempted silencing tactic

[a-minke-whales-tale]

Metacommentary on "TikTok Therians" - A Curious Observation

There is currently a lot of discourse regarding tiktok therians and I have noticed something odd. Often when I see people here complain about "TikTok therians" it is their lack of education and not taking things seiously and their views against physical nonhumans and CLCZs (clinical lycanthropes/clinical zoanthropes). Then often in replies there are comments from young therians expressing their frustration that they -do- put in the work and -are- serious and express acceptance of clczs. Today in a discord server someone was complaining of "TikTok therians" and their lack of education and their pushing of holothere and physical nonhuman identity.

This is rather curious naturally as you have two seperate groups hating "TikTok therians" for opposite reasons but similar justification. However, I see plenty on tumblr attacks against physical nonhuman identities, and often even when acceptance is expressed it is done so in a pretty belittling and invalidating way. However though, I have only seen other CLCZs express frustration with this situation. I think for most people on tumblr, you can pretty well curate your experience, and for myself as a CLCZ, it should be little surprise that most of my feed is people either in that community or adjacent communities and largely express support.

I admit I have never used TikTok nor do I have any interest in it or shortform content in general. It makes me wonder though if either "TikTok therian" has simply become shorthand for "a -bad- therian" or if this might be a case of selection bias. Inside my ecosystem on tumblr there is a good amount of support and acceptance of people like me; however should a post come in from outside my ecosystem, it is not uncommon for the person to be against the inclusion of our voices and think that we need therapy and pills or hospitalisation (which I have had all of and I am still a whale). This does though beg the question - do these posts represent a large portion of belief on the site? Or alternatively - has this post entered my ecosystem because someone in my ecosystem got cross about the post and shared it to express their anger? And conversely - is my experience on the site being generally accepting of physical therian identity a result of the site being broadly accepting? Or have I instead simply curated my experience through liking and following people with similar views to me and blocking those who cause me distress and other people blocking myself? It is to be honest hard to know, and it would be honestly difficult to measure.

Conversely to the previous experience, is TikTok in general a platform with low acceptance and tolerance of physical identity? And if so, why then did that fellow from the first paragraph have the opposite experience? I am not myself a TikTok user, thus my experiences of TikTok are primarily others expressing their opinions or sometimes sharing a video clip. Generally if someone is riled up enough to express something that happened on another platform it is going to tend to be anger, and given my ecosystem that will be anger against people condemning physical identities.

This makes me ask - is "TikTok therian" simply a pejoritive meaning "the bad therians"? Do users of the site see those against physical identity and identify them as "TikTok therian" but see users aligned with them and see them not also as a "TikTok therian" but a comrade fighting the good fight? Negative expriences stand out more in the mind, do we simply only see those opposing us and forget the others? Or is the selection bias purposeful, not on our parts but on TikTok's part? There is a collective agreement TikTok is a hellhole, from both therians and the general public alike. This also applies similarly to other social media sites like twitter and facebook. There was at one point information that came out with facebook, I believe, that they would purposefully show things that made people angry because it would drive up use time and interaction. Could TikTok be doing the same? And if they are, is this divide in the community genuine, or exasperated by an algorithm trying to maximise profits for its owners?

On tumblr I have near complete control over my feed. At least my following feed, the people I see there are all my favourite people on the site and is usually the content I want to see, with the only exceptions being advertisements and tumblrs "because of your/your-followed-blog's likes" which I normally either follow, block, or tell tumblr I am not interested aftering seeing it so many times. From my understanding TikTok is entirely a feed, and though I think you can like, follow, and block, much of what you see is determined by an algorithm, and it would be to me entirely expected if that algorithm showed you things that make you angry because then youll watch it longer, you may even comment and share it beyond (and even if not malicious this would be the natural outcome of an ML algorithm targeted to maximize interaction and use time).

I really question if "TikTok therians" as we concieve them in our heads meaningfully exist. Yes there are of course many therians on TikTok and many of them are particularly young; however there are also very many young people on Tumblr as well. While there are a few of us in our 30s or older, there are far far more minors and quite young minors. We should also not forget that while we sit here now, that Tumblrkin was really not so long ago the same concept as current "TikTok therians" and most people here at least would like to consider this a more serious place for therianthropy with the days of the forums behind us. I think in the end, the kids will be alright, and should they find themselves here, for those who are earnest in their therian identity, I will welcome and accept them same as I would one from tumblr or discord or from the forums before.

~Kala

[cityan1mal]

This is the first and last time I'm addressing this discourse

Do not try to change my mind I do NOT care

Why is everyone in this community so anti Misanthrope. I understand you hold humans close to your heart but it's not fucking. Wrong. That some hate them. You can not want to interact with Misanthropes. But why do so many of you FUCKING CARE???????? There are so many valid reasons someone might have grown to hate humans. You can not want to interact with them all you want. But the constant hate on people who may have valid reasons not to fuck with humans is angering to see. We get it.

I am not a Misanthrope. But I do not see why they are so hated

[bugpalace]

there's no way i just saw a speciesmed on tumblr in 2025. it wasn't even u can't choose to be a therian they said u can't choose to be an Alterhuman. like. defining these identities by dysphoria is odd especially when alterhuman is not only identifying as something, it can also be so many more different experiences