RE: Should we make a distinction between the different causes of therianthropy?
Why would this be a bad idea? While I do not know a specific answer to what we should use after good introspective discussion here, the idea of having more specific words to describe the experience of spiritual and psychological therianthropy sounds appealing. What exactly does spiritual therianthropy entail? Or the other one? What can we derive from both instances? When we say we're psychological therians, for instance, we do have to talk about what it means to us to get our point across and to each, the response will differ. The problem I had with zoesthesia was that it'll eventually lead us into the same problem we've had before. It will eventually be ridiculed (or misused) anyway, same as with therianthropy nowadays. But I don't see that problem here, since we're talking about totally new terminology, not in exchange of already common terms. If we could have additional terms to help explain the more abstract ones better, then by all means, do. We could benefit from having a couple of terms extra if they are wisely and uniformly chosen. It's not like spiritual therianthropy is to disappear from existence all of a sudden. It's always going to have its users who stand by the idea.
I'm just thinking that broadening the terminology could lead to better acceptance/understanding of the ones already in use. Because saying you're a psychological therian doesn't make it easier necessarily to introduce yourself in front of people. You'll always have to elaborate on your stance if you want to be taken seriously. With newer terms, the advantage is we'll get shortcuts to describe that which takes so much time nowadays to describe. In the end, all new systems, ideas, initiatives have their advantages and disadvantages. Heck, even the ones already in existence do.
If this initiative's been thought out well, I would say give it a shot. There's no harm in trying.
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