Why is therianthropy involuntary? A definitional boundry.

(2026-07-11 22:07)Abelioscruxthymn Wrote:  What's the appropriate response to the next generation who much more widely things therianthropy is a more malleable and subjective mental construct? There was an interaction on another server where that sort of belief was widely pervasive, and folks mentioning their perspective of it being involuntary were dismissed; it is my understanding that scenario sparked interest for this thread.

Ceding ground on terminology or perspective with a large group for substantial time creates a morass that is hard to undo.

That's a good question, since it's so wide-spread now on the internet.. My own (probably unpopular) opinion would be for us to cut it off at the source and distance ourselves from the Alterhuman umbrella. The anti-questioning culture and much of the identity-only concepts seem to have derived from it being a vehicle for ideas that originated in echo-chambers on tumblr and Alt+H's attempts to classify various communities as related identity groups without a clear understanding of what any of them were originally describing themselves as.. Other than that, I think we have to keep trying to find better ways to introduce and break down concepts of Ontology for an audience who likely has never encountered it.. I'm hoping it'll get easier once the social media craze dies down and the next generation tries to distance themselves from it; fads tend to come and go in cycles and, from what I've noticed, few seem to persist past the 10-year mark.

Much of what we're seeing now seem to have been recent developments occuring within the past 6 years.. The constant joining and leaving of people in the greater community sets up a situation where we have a lot of relatively new people teaching the completely new, with all of their information stemming from wikis, one-off posts, and whatever the spaces they join promote as acceptably-true..then the new ones branch out and propagate those views as if they're long-established community understandings when they're really not. TG isn't exempt from this either; the breakdown of views and experiences described here don't always represent what you'll find in other spaces, but we try to promote general critical thought, and we have a number of members who are still around from the early community who try to make it known when something is completely inconsistent with how we understood things.

Even so, you can't really have any cohesion of ideas if everyone's giving vastly different versions of what the single thing we're all supposed to have in common even is (that we're animals in some way). I think we could remedy this if we worked on improving our messaging and descriptions to be clearer and less up-for-interpretation, and if we try to foster a cultural shift, starting with the newcomers, that emphasizes the importance of understanding ourselves as animals over the more human-centered arguments that seek to emphasize it as separate, ephemeral, and non-essential to the experience. I realize it's kind of a vague statement, but we need to bring back the emphasis of the *animal* in animality..

As a final thought, I also think we should try to discourage advertising of the ideas of therianthropy to people who have not actively sought them out. If someone is really experiencing therianthropy then they will be drawn to find us on their own, and the community as a whole will benefit from having those who have had more time to consider what they are and establish their own understandings, without outside influences guiding their views and beliefs about themselves..

(2026-07-11 1:56)FernFox Wrote:  I believe (my) therianthropy is involuntary because I didn't choose my experiences, nor did I consciously decide to perceive myself as an animal. My behaviours came prior to any self-identity I had of being a fox.

My experiences began in very early childhood, and while there were times where I did the normal child thing of pretending to be different animals, there was never a time that I looked at a fox and thought "This is the creature I'm going to pretend to be from now on". In fact, behaving like a fox preceded any knowledge I have of reading or learning about canine behaviour. My body posturing, social cues, vocalizations, and other non-human-like instincts came naturally. And it took me a veeery long time (until adulthood) -- and lots of miserable masking and suppressing -- before I accepted that I was more fox than I was human.

I really relate to this!!

The shapeshifter side of my identity probably stemmed from my voluntary, playing-pretend years and turned into an involuntary experience and identity (in a sense, because I'd rather not identify as a shapeshifter, but I feel unfulfilled if I don't as it's an experience I'd be leaving out of my identity) over time.

The cat side of my experience is also involuntary, but it never started as a voluntary thing. I feel like I must have imprinted on cats due to my exposure to them at an early age. I never meant or particularly wanted to pretend to be a cat, it was just learned behavior I supose.

It's my wolf side that's really interesting, though. Originally, I thought I had developed canine experiences over time from media exposure, but I've had some memories come back to me recently and some stories told to me, and I know realize I displayed specifically wolf-like behaviors at a very young age before being exposed to canines in the media and in real life. Perhaps since humans are social animals and similar to wolves in some ways, this is why I was very wolf-like as a child? But then again, I still had behaviors that were noticeably different from other children's.

So what I do know is that even if, in my younger years, my cat experiences were much stronger and more visible (to myself and others), there were still those wolf behaviors that came from... absolutely nowhere. There is no way the experience of therianthropy could be voluntary, in my opinion. Just because there is absolutely no way I could've chosen to be a wolf and a cat.

I think that therianthropy is involuntary because you don't wake up one day and decide I'm going to be an animal today and I'm going to act like this and I'm going to pretend to have shifts and similar.

Therianthropy isn't a conscious choice for me - it is just simply who I am and who I will be.
Choosing to wear gear and do vocals and quads is a choice, a personal choice but being a therian in itself is just who you are.

Hi I had a question. If it's mostly involuntary then is it beyond control. As in I can't shift when I want too?

(2026-08-12 12:50)DannyTheOkami Wrote:  Hi I had a question. If it's mostly involuntary then is it beyond control. As in I can't shift when I want too?

Imo, based off of experience, you can 'trigger' a shift by doing things that make you feel that certain way and trigger you but otherwise it is mostly involuntary. So if you are to say choosing and roleplaying as that animal, it would be otherpaw (I believe)

My only dislike of the involuntary definition is that I have observed several individuals who's nonhuman identity seemed to originate as intentional, only to then be a core part of themselves they cannot remove. I think this "I cannot stop this without feeling untrue to myself" feeling is the more important part to me compared to perhaps having at the start been intentional. But I am also someone who believes mostly in psychological happenstances, of which there are multitude of cases of things starting of intentional to then become a core part of someone that isn't "maintained" so to speak for it to happen. I don't really care about the inherent soul or what's what. I myself do believe in some way the fact I am specifically a roadrunner was circumstances and a bit of confirmation bias that crystallized a generally blurry birdish identity in this specific creature.

I cannot stop being a roadrunner however, and it was not intentional in my specific case to make this happen, i just think it aligned correctly for me to latch on. But I've seen other seemingly construct their identity, and it's hard at some points to tell if, for example, a fursona is made from deep feelings that weren't yet easy to recognize which then is understood as a theriotype (involuntary fragments of nonhumanity being brought to light by a hobby that encourages animality), or if associating something with yourself so hard made it part of who you are (voluntary association to nonhumanity becoming an involuntary part of who you are). Chicken and the egg.

All that to say, I think the voluntary vs involuntary debate takes the back seat for me compared to things like having actual unusual experiences, a deep genuine itch to be nonhuman, or other much more "in the moment" experiences. i don't really care how you got there, just what you experience now, personally.

(2026-08-13 9:33)Hemlock Wrote:  My only dislike of the involuntary definition is that I have observed several individuals who’s nonhuman identity seemed to originate as intentional, only to then be a core part of themselves they cannot remove. I think this "I cannot stop this without feeling untrue to myself" feeling is the more important part to me compared to perhaps having at the start been intentional.

I heartily agree. I’m certain that the emphasis on it being “involuntary” is just to keep out younger folks drawn to the allure of being part animal, but hence why I take such issue with the common language of the community: that therianthropy is simply “identifying as an animal.” That sentence on its own is just too glamorous, of course it’ll attract kids curious about their identities. I understand why others don’t want to start pathologizing therianthropy and treating it like a disorder, but I still don’t think our discussions should gloss over the more disordered commonalities of it.

Psychologically speaking, I think some significant level of alienation from typical human behavior predisposes people to have a nonhuman self-concept. This is inherently ugly-looking much of the time, and many of us carry shame around it, such as with my asociality and low emotionality, which I’ve been told by my parents at a young age made me cruel and a sociopath. I had always wanted to be a bird even as a super young kid, but I think the long process of growing up different, and being treated as different because of it, caused my nonhuman feelings to snowball and crystallize more than would have occurred if I was raised in a vacuum. Like the formation of any other identity, including those that fall under the “normal human” umbrella, there is a mix of influences that are voluntary and involuntary, external and internal. Maybe, as an example, a very skittish and anxious kid who’s constantly bullied by his family for this difference starts choosing to view himself as “rabbit-like” in a bid to understand himself and feel normal, and over time, the identity grows with him and becomes inextricable. I see this as no different from growing with the ‘normal’ identities, such as gender affiliation; no one is born with any gender conditioning, and yet most humans will eventually grow up to see “man” and “woman” as unalienable parts of themselves.

So, tldr, I do find the “involuntary” language a bit confusing and misleading. It’s very easy for people to misinterpret, same as “I identify as an animal.” It’s why I always lead with my personal experiences rather than using any of this language in discussions with others.

-Rem

(2026-08-17 17:22)Remoniel Wrote:  Psychologically speaking, I think some significant level of alienation from typical human behavior predisposes people to have a nonhuman self-concept. This is inherently ugly-looking much of the time, and many of us carry shame around it, such as with my asociality and low emotionality, which I’ve been told by my parents at a young age made me cruel and a sociopath. I had always wanted to be a bird even as a super young kid, but I think the long process of growing up different, and being treated as different because of it, caused my nonhuman feelings to snowball and crystallize more than would have occurred if I was raised in a vacuum. Like the formation of any other identity, including those that fall under the “normal human” umbrella, there is a mix of influences that are voluntary and involuntary, external and internal. Maybe, as an example, a very skittish and anxious kid who’s constantly bullied by his family for this difference starts choosing to view himself as “rabbit-like” in a bid to understand himself and feel normal, and over time, the identity grows with him and becomes inextricable. I see this as no different from growing with the ‘normal’ identities, such as gender affiliation; no one is born with any gender conditioning, and yet most humans will eventually grow up to see “man” and “woman” as unalienable parts of themselves.

To the "involuntary" language at the heart of this thread, I put forward an identity that is "inextricable" is no longer voluntary.

I'm 38, yet I've just been looking into my otherkinity these past 2 months. Does this mean my draconity was never there previously when I wasn't looking for it? Or does that mean it was always there and only now being recognized? There are many parallels to the concept of gender in that fork in the road.