Author Topic: Random Explains Therianthropy/answers questions  (Read 12695 times)

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Offline Igor

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Random Explains Therianthropy/answers questions
« on: September 12, 2012, 09:16:47 am »
    With all of these crazy -kin types popping up I feel the need to clarify a few things about my own beliefs and how they relate to this nonsense. I'm a little annoyed with all the strawmen and category-lumping I see.
     
    Now, please hear me out here, before I start, please don't just read the following statement and jump on me for being another crazy fundie type:
     
    I am a wolf therian. Now, hear me out for a minute here, please. What I believe isn't that complicated, and it isn't any more of a stretch than any other spiritual belief (and I know for a fact that not everyone here is an atheist). Essentially, I feel a deep connection to wolves to the point where I identify, not just with them, but as one. I know damn well I'm a human being, and it's actually really important that therians never forget that, it's really stressed in the more intelligent parts of the community. I'm not trying to make any stupid claims about how special I am or that I can P-shift** (nobody can, while it'd be awesome, that's stuck in the realm of fantasy), all I'm saying is that I, personally, have this belief and that it happens to be a very large part of my self identity.
     
    Now, about accusations of appropriating the trans* movement or anything similar: I've never known any therians to do this, unless they're silly 14-year-olds who really don't know what they're talking about. I have NOT been discriminated against for being a therian in any meaningful way, I'm not being denied any rights as a therian, nor do I run the risk of being beaten up or straight-up murdered for it. If anyone does make a claim like that, I can tell you now that they are full of shit.
     
    Therians, as a rule, generally have VERY little to do with otherkin. Even though we are technically a subset of otherkin, you're not going to find very many therians who will openly admit to this, and given the recent influx of... well, otakukin and similar, I now know why. But if you want to know something, most of us hate that shit, because it makes it hard for us to mind our own business identifying with actual animals that exist when there's a guy next door making stupid claims about being an alien or Naruto or a toaster, or all three, because why should anyone listen to us any more than NaruToaster?
     
    Well, for me, at least, plausibility comes into play a little, as it's easier to say that you have the spirit of something that could plausibly even have a spirit, if you believe in such things in the first place. (There are a few attempts to explain therianthropy scientifically as well, placing it as a firmly mental thing, but I'm not going to go over the details here.)
     
    As for the difference between therians and otherkin, therians are strictly animals that really exist, and otherkin believe that their soul (or whatever) is nonhuman in a more general sense, but the term is generally restricted to mythological creatures. Mythological, mind, not anime characters, certainly not specific ones. For people who believe in any kind of spirit world (as some people do) it's plausible that such mythological creatures could reside in such a world. Anime characters? No. Inanimate objects? Calling Poe's law on those ones. All of them. Or at least it started that way, started as parody before people started taking it seriously.
     
    Oh, and if I ever hear a therian that I know say "check your privilege" I will punch them in the face, I swear, because as I said, we aren't being denied any rights, the most we ever get is mockery from people who have only heard of the crazy types and silly documentaries about "animal people". Oh, and that one episode of CSI, because we all know that's totally a good source of info on subcultures.
     
    Getting back on track, I just want to reiterate that while I have my own problems with the community (namely 14 year old idiots and people who make stupid claims), I do want everyone to be aware that we're not all fundies about it, and please do not lump us all in the same category. I have this little belief about myself and who I am, and whether I'm right or wrong, it's certainly not hurting anybody. Having said that, the 14 year olds are likely to say things like "lol i hate humans" but that's just teenage misanthropy, I went through it too, they grow out of it. The ones who don't are generally yelled at or made fun of by the more intelligent members of the community anyway, because they make us all look like idiots.
     
    So I don't expect everyone to just believe me, I don't want people to go around picking animals for themselves either, that's a mistake a lot of people make. Therianthropy by nature is a very personal thing, and it takes sometimes a long journey of personal discovery to realize it. The best way I can describe it is that it feels right somehow, like when I found out about it a lot of things in my life suddenly made sense. Am I trying to be a speshul snowflake? No, and I sincerely hope I don't come off as one, I just want to make clear that not all of us are nutbar.
     
    So that's that, went on a little longer than I expected to. TL;DR: When I say I'm a wolf, I'm not referring to a character or a persona I've created for myself (I refuse to say "fursona") I'm simply talking about me. My inner wolf, you might say, who is not a separate entity, but an integral part of my identity. It's who I am, no more than that.
     
**physical shift.
*here's a footnote because I know you're looking for one.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2012, 08:35:35 pm by Randomwolf42 »


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Offline The Right Honourable Mlle Antéchrist

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Re: Just wanted to say...
« Reply #1 on: September 12, 2012, 11:29:03 am »
I can only speak for myself, but: The only people I'm referring to when posting about otherkin/therians in the SJA thread are those who treat it as the cross-species equivalent of being transgender, rather than people like you, who treat it as a form of spirituality (or something akin to spirituality).
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Offline SpaceProg

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Re: Just wanted to say...
« Reply #2 on: September 12, 2012, 01:25:39 pm »
What Mlle said.  I don't mind or wish to ridicule any of what Randomwolf described.  Besides, a guy with a K9 av has to be cool, ya know. ;)

Offline Sylvana

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Re: Just wanted to say...
« Reply #3 on: September 13, 2012, 02:09:45 am »
I will be honest, I perceive most/all other-kin as delusional. I am even willing to include furies in that list. However, I would like to say that it just my own opinion and I follow a live and let live approach.

Admittedly I can have a degree of respect for the spiritual position described by Randomwolf42. I can actually understand a spiritual position that sees oneself as either having the soul of an animal (from the religious re-incarnation point of view), or that of having a spiritual animal companion. Sure, both positions have about as much backing their validity as almost all religion, but unlike essentially all other-kin I have seen, I cant point out that it is blatantly bullshit either. Hence I can respect it as a viable form of spirituality.

I would like some clarity though on exactly the spiritual position of this animal kinship.(I am not trying to mock, These are actually honest questions asked from someone ignorant and trying to understand.) How do you know that you have a connection to wolves specifically. Do you interact with wolves on a regular basis? Have you interacted with a wolf before? I am curious because where does the wolf aspect of the spirituality come from exactly. I ask this because I have a good connecting with mammals and get along exceptionally well with house pets and such, so I could understand a spiritual connection to say dogs. However wolves are very removed from human society so I would like to know about the foundation of the wolf spirituality specifically.

Similarly, I would like to understand the exact nature of this animal spirituality. As I mentioned is it seen as an extension of re-incarnation spirituality in that you believe that your soul is that of a wolf, and that is based on that soul being a wolf in the previous life? Is it instead a human soul that has the additional soul of a wolf alongside / inside them as well? This would be similar to the Native American animal companion/ spirit companion beliefs. Alternatively is this belief that your soul is simply that of a wolf but placed in the wrong body, or is it something else entirely? I will admit to being a pit prejudiced here in that I have little or less respect for the last option. However I would really like to understand the core of this belief.

Offline Igor

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Re: Just wanted to say...
« Reply #4 on: September 13, 2012, 03:53:13 am »
Because therianthropy is so personally subjective, it's not easy to answer these kinds of questions, but I'll give it a go here. There's an old joke that if you ask five therians what the definition of it is you'll get six different answers, because everybody sees it a little bit differently.

This is going to be kind of disappointing to hear, but as for why a wolf, it's what feels right, I don't know how else to put it. It makes sense to me in a way nothing else does. Same for how I know I actually am a therian, it feels right to me. You would be surprised how many posts we get on this other forum I'm on where somebody will show up and ask "Hey, am I a therian? here are a bunch of things I think might be symptoms" and then they'll spout off a list of things like how they like raw meat and the moon affects their mood and whatnot. Those things have nothing to do with whether or not one is a therian, at all. The answer to that question is basically "If you have to ask, you most likely aren't one." If you find out about therianthropy and what it actually is and say "Hey, that's me, I've always felt that way", you very often don't have to ask.

I've noticed a lot of therians are wild animals, so it has little to do with how much interaction an animal has with humans. I happen to know, off the top of my head, three other wolves, a cat (domestic), an otter, a raccoon/dragon*, at least one fox, and a husky (My husky <3).

Now, as for the nature of it, it's not a companion animal or spirit guide, that's a different thing again, but I have heard the words "spirit animal" used to describe therianthropy before. When I explain it, people often ask me if it's like what First Nations people believe, and I do think there are a lot of similarities, but it's not quite the same. To make things simpler I generally answer "Yeah, kinda like that" though. Because it's, well, kinda like that, but not exactly. A lot of therians do see it as having been a wolf in a past life, and they try to connect with that past life as much as they can, but not every therian believes that, we don't all believe in reincarnation at all.

As a side-note, therianthropy is a weird little thing that exists outside of religion, it's not one, because by definition you can't become one, you either are or you aren't (this is where a lot of people start acting like entitled assholes, which is where the speshul snowflake reputation comes from). A lot of people try to reconcile it with their religions, to varying degrees of success. There's a whole forum of Christian therianthropes which has managed to completely make it work with their beliefs. I've never gone there because I'm not Christian, but there you go, that's a thing.

Actually, to amend my statement before, there are a few isolated cases of abuse of therians because of their belief, but what that generally is is somebody's fundie family can't take the fact that their kid believes something that isn't in the Bible, and thinks it's Of Satan™, so they go ape shit. But that doesn't happen very often. We have a fundie problem too :P

Well, I hope this answers a couple of questions, I'm tired as all get out, so if it doesn't, I'm sorry. If you need more clarification (you probably do) let me know.

*poly-were**, it's something that I, myself, am still extremely iffy on, but he's really smart about this kind of thing, he doesn't like people to blindly agree with him though, he very much encourages everyone to come to their own conclusions. He believes he's a poly-were, and while I'm skeptical of it, we agree to disagree about that one.
**were- is a generic term for a therian, werewolf, werefox, were-raccoon. "I'm aware, I'm also a were". When I say "I'm a werewolf", this is what I'm talking about, I'm not saying I'm a movie werewolf, it's just slang that exists in the therian community.


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The logical response to getting that tingle in his dingle is turning into an asshat, of course.

Les ananas ne parlent pas!

Offline SpaceProg

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Re: Just wanted to say...
« Reply #5 on: September 13, 2012, 04:06:31 am »
Eh, I don't really see any harm in this.  Rock and roll, Random.

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Re: Just wanted to say...
« Reply #6 on: September 13, 2012, 06:14:35 am »
To me, what you're saying is that wolves are a part of your identity or something you identify with. That's not offensive or even particularly weird to me.

What's offensive and pisses me off are people who call any differences "privilege," invent terms to make themselves look like a minority to feel special (e.g. "demisexual," which describes like 95% of all humans), and appropriate queer terminology and struggles and equate it with their own for attention or to feel like ~special snowflakes~ ("transethnic," "transpecies," etc. which cannot fucking exist).

More power to you!

Offline Igor

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Re: Just wanted to say...
« Reply #7 on: September 17, 2012, 05:44:17 pm »
Exactly, Shy, that's what I'm saying. I actually get really pissed off at -kin types that make all of these stupid claims so that now instead of saying "Hey, I'm a therian, I believe [what I just said, but in brief]", I have to... well, do this. I'm kind of annoyed that it got far enough that I felt it necessary to make this thread in the first place and explain myself.

Having said that, thank you for understanding, everyone. It makes me feel a lot better to know that there is a distinction being made from what I mean when I say I'm a therian and... all those people on tumblr.


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The logical response to getting that tingle in his dingle is turning into an asshat, of course.

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Offline SpaceProg

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Re: Just wanted to say...
« Reply #8 on: September 17, 2012, 10:09:50 pm »
Reminds me a lot of some native American beliefs.  Shamanism and the like.  Don't worry, Random.  You're cool. :)

Offline Igor

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Re: Just wanted to say...
« Reply #9 on: September 24, 2012, 10:31:38 am »
Like I said, it's kinda like that, I've noticed that there are actually a lot of Native therians out there, actually. I know one person who says therianthropy is inherently shamanistic, though I take that with a grain of salt, that particular person has a few odd ideas, he has this whole timeline of therianthropy (in various forms) throughout history and says werewolves (as he insists on calling us - note that this is just slang within the community, people rarely make claims about physically shifting, and if they do they're usually laughed off of whatever site they're on unless they can provide photographic evidence, which they never can) were very important to the early Christian church. So again, grain of salt.

There are a few things I think I should elaborate on at some point, when I'm less tired and lazy, and I think I'm going to edit up my OP and post it elsewhere so I can actually link it to people who ask, because I keep forgetting that posts in F&B are hidden from unregistered users. I'm not always very good at explaining things, but if anyone else has any questions about it, this is something I could go on about for a long time.


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The logical response to getting that tingle in his dingle is turning into an asshat, of course.

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Offline Sylvana

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Re: Just wanted to say...
« Reply #10 on: September 27, 2012, 03:11:03 am »
I had a thought enter my mind and I would be interested in Randomwolf42's opinion on it.

I personally don't believe i otherkin. However, like all religions and spiritualities there are generally reasons for why people feel a certain way. I was thinking that the foundation for the otherkin feelings comes from the fact that we as humans really do have multiple aspects to our personalities. We have 3 primary spheres of brain functioning. The reptilian brain which handles the autonomous system, the mammalian brain which handles instincts and the primate brain which is our conscious self. Also, as much as we like to deny it, we are animals and to be blunt really not special. As such we still have many strong instinctive animal instincts.

I was wondering if perhaps for otherkin they have a closer than normal relationship with their more animalistic instinctive aspect of their brains. Hence they feel more like an animal on the inside underneath their conscious self. They would be consciously aware they are human and could function normally as a human but would be exerting a degree of keeping their instincts in control all or most of the time. Hence they would feel like they have an animal caged inside them.

To take this further though, the reason why people associate with wolves and other animals other than apes is because we are apes still, that aspect never went away. To claim we have an ape as our other self would be accurate, but lack any kind of impact especially when describing the feeling. I think it is a kind of association, if the instincts are aggressive one would associate an aggressive animal like wolves or bears etc to the animal feeling within. The emotions and instincts of this inner animal would also seem exaggerated because they would have to be to be noticed by our conscious minds. Hence like I said an aggressive feeling would feel more like the aggression of a traditionally predatory animal than that of a primate.

This is just a thought, and I would like to know what others think about it.

Offline Igor

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Re: Just wanted to say...
« Reply #11 on: September 27, 2012, 02:56:33 pm »
I remember having a few conversations about this before, but that's definitely one way of looking at it, yes. You could say that we have these feelings, these instincts, which are connected and identified by our subconscious as a given animal. I wouldn't say, though, that the instincts are necessarily aggressive, though. I like to think I'm a fairly calm person, though I will say I get very defensive and protective about people and things I care about, that defensiveness being actually part of why I made this thread in the first place.

Interesting thing about primates, actually. For the longest time everybody thought there was no such thing as a primate therian, simply because... there weren't any. It was actually thought to be impossible, partly for the reasons you stated, but I actually know someone who says he's a monkey. His presence made a lot of people re-think things.


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The logical response to getting that tingle in his dingle is turning into an asshat, of course.

Les ananas ne parlent pas!

Offline Igor

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Re: Just wanted to say...
« Reply #12 on: October 20, 2012, 08:25:56 pm »
Not to resurrect my own thread, but I'm going to resurrect my own thread. I'm not ready to let this die, there's a lot of stuff about this I haven't covered/ For one thing, I have neglected to mention that while therians and otherkin are kinda somewhat similarish, we tend to be skeptical of otherkin in general, and really don't have anything to do with them. Otherkin, as a reminder, being mythological creatures whereas therians are all actual animals that actually exist, by definition. As a small update, I've started to get slightly more active in the therian community and they were actually somewhat unaware of all the tumblrkin types out there, and the general reaction to them is pretty much the same reaction I had: "Oh great, more bad press. Just what we need."

On the other side of things, as far as bullshit calling goes, there's this meme going around on therian boards that "the veil will fall" and something about the end of the world, probably brought on by the Mayan calendar bullshit. Just about nobody takes it seriously, and a friend of mine (A fairly well-known [in the community] troll who nonetheless knows his shit) was all "Ooh, are we a death cult now? I wanna be in a death cult!" because he's weird like that. Again, more bad press and eye-rolling was to be had.


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The logical response to getting that tingle in his dingle is turning into an asshat, of course.

Les ananas ne parlent pas!

Offline Meshakhad

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Re: Just wanted to say...
« Reply #13 on: October 20, 2012, 09:54:49 pm »
Just out of curiosity, are there any therians (as in, considered therians and not otherkin) who identify with extinct animals, like dinosaurs, mammoths, or even stuff like thylacines or dodos?
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Offline Igor

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Re: Just wanted to say...
« Reply #14 on: October 20, 2012, 09:58:27 pm »
That's actually a very interesting question. I'm inclined to say there are but I don't personally know any. I'll ask around.


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The logical response to getting that tingle in his dingle is turning into an asshat, of course.

Les ananas ne parlent pas!