Zoesthesia & Therianthropy

There is currently no word for "the experiences that give rise to therianthropy." The therian community has a million different terms for pieces of it - mental shifts, phantom shifts, sensory shifts, etc. I propose a new term. Hear me out:

Zoesthesia ("zo-esthesia", from the Greek "zōion" [life/animal] and "aisthesis" [perception]): "The subjective inner non-human animal experiences that give rise to therianthropy."

Therianthropy is an identity. Zoesthesia is the root of that identity, and can include all forms of shifts therians have previously described. Zoesthesia can be experienced from a young age and can occur before one's identity forms, before one knows the words for what they're experiencing. It is the "happening" behind the curtain - instinct. Consider:

1. It's neutral, even if it sounds like it implies a neurological bias.
2. It doesn't replace "therianthropy" as a term.
3. It sounds similar to synesthesia - the crossing of the senses in the brain, which is not seen as a disorder.
4. It's a spectrum, just like synesthesia - everyone's experiences are different.
5. Using "zoesthete" instead of "therian" is possible, though it does not imply any sort of identity, nor does it imply that one interprets these experiences as belonging to any specific non-human animal. This is primarily to describe "therianthropy underneath the hood." You could even say that therians are individuals who experience zoesthesia.
6. It is not exclusive. We could use it to account for spiritual experiences as well - past life memories, "auras," the whole nine yards. If you think about it, all of those things also occur in your brain. Literally everything does. Your brain is hallucinating its own version of reality right now, and everything "spiritual" that you believe is just based on something your brain experienced. And everything that appears to be "external" is a recreation of it by your neurons.

I suggest this because of the latest happenings within the global therian community. A lot of young people in China, for example, think that "therian" is a fandom they can join. Younger folks globally should know that becoming more aware of the happenings in their consciousness is the point - not joining a fandom or getting likes on TikTok.

I believe that the way we do that is by turning the focus beyond identity, toward the inner experiences that lead to that identity. Time and time again, I've heard non-therians say "You can't identify as an animal, that's just not possible." There are significantly more convincing ways to talk about the experiences we have. Zoesthesia has my vote.

A more general, similarly neutral version of this that would apply to all alterhumans would be "allosthesia," from the Greek "allos" (other) and "aisthesis."

What are your thoughts?

While I'm more often than not very quick to dismiss any new terms, my therianthropy is almost exclusively about nonhuman experiences and barely about identity... so I'm not so sure about outright dismissing it now.

I'm kinda torn here. On one hand, I think we should instead focus on clearing up misinformation surrounding the term we already have, therianthropy. But on the other hand, I feel like it's unfortunately tainted beyond recognition at a larger scale... though I don't think that's a term issue. If this new term actually does gain some traction I'm 100% positive that it will get mangled as well eventually.

On a personal level, I have been considering for some time to stop calling myself a therian because the current consensus on the definition is only partially true for me at this point and I was wondering what else I could possibly call myself. This would be it, however I don't know how much we as an entire community would really benefit from it given what I said in the previous paragraph.

As a concept that can be called upon in conversation, sure. But if the only reason for this new term is because people don't understand what a therian is, then I doubt it'll change anything. We can keep making up new terms and they can keep misunderstanding them and changing definitions, it would be a never-ending cycle of frustration and there is a limited number of relevant words we can put together to define ourselves.

Editing to add, I missed the "it doesn't replace "therianthropy" as a term" part, but I feel like my point still stands. The accepted definition of therianthropy already includes "a person who experiences being [...] a non-human animal" and people still managed to ignore that part.

(Today 1:15)Observer Wrote:  If this new term actually does gain some traction I'm 100% positive that it will get mangled as well eventually.

...

But if the only reason for this new term is because people don't understand what a therian is, then I doubt it'll change anything.

I actually think that this term could be used in scientific circles - something that researchers can use to refer to and study our experiences. Provided that researchers take this up, I think it could have a very positive impact.

(Today 1:15)Observer Wrote:  On a personal level, I have been considering for some time to stop calling myself a therian because the current consensus on the definition is only partially true for me at this point and I was wondering what else I could possibly call myself. This would be it, however I don't know how much we as an entire community would really benefit from it given what I said in the previous paragraph.

If it resonates with you, you're free to use it. It's just a mashup of words, like many of the words in the English language. If it does catch on, maybe the focus on inner experiences instead of identity will result in different kinds of conversations within the community.

Think of it this way. I've been part of the synesthesia community for a long time. In that community, discussions on experiences tend to be very formal or scientific. It's almost as if the structure of the word itself invites a certain type of conversation. Can you imagine what the public perception of that community might be like if it was officially called something that attracted hippies instead? Sure, there's talk of auras and other spiritual concepts at times (not that there's anything wrong with that!), but synesthesia is widely seen as a positive and verifiable phenomenon with empirical research to back it up. The same can be true of zoesthesia.

I'll be honest, the reason why this came up was because I've been writing a guide for the Chinese therian community for the last week - first in English, before I translate it into Chinese. Part way through, I began using TG's own guide as reference. As someone who's studied psychology and tries to be precise with my speech, I was rather disappointed with how TG describes types of therianthropy (contherians, suntherians, non-shifting therians, etc.). It feels much more intuitive to describe zoesthesia as a spectrum that can give rise to a therian identity. The APA did the same thing to the autism spectrum when they removed Asperger's from the DSM. Everyone hated it at the time - I did too, but now I understand why they did it.

For those who are averse to using a new term such as this:

Using current terminology, it could be said that a "therian" is someone who identifies as a non-human animal, and "therianthropy" is the subjective inner animal experience and the mechanisms that might cause one to shift or remain shifted. Many online resources do not describe therianthropy this way. On Wikipedia, therianthropy is defined as "the enduring experience of identifying as a nonhuman animal." You have to read through 9 paragraphs before reading anything about the actual experience. On Therian Guide, therianthropy isn't even defined - "therianthrope" is. At least here, the experience is in focus, rather than the identity. Meanwhile, Therian Territory defines therianthropy as "the involuntary experience of animalistic behavior/instincts/urges/traits" - which is the best I've seen so far. But they have a YouTube channel, not a website.

Whether something new is adopted or we continue to use old terms, it would be sensible if each of these sites could come to some consensus on what it actually is. From the outside looking in, it appears as if nobody knows what they're talking about. To the trained eye, it smells like BS. But let's say the people who manage each of these platforms are actually able to do that and it was made crystal clear that there is a difference between the experience and the identity - and the experience is the primary focus moving forward. The term "therian" is still suffering from disinformation campaigns that are resulting in thousands of people taking to the streets to catch a glimpse of these "freaks" in countries all around the world. This may be temporary, but it is fresh in people's minds and may live there for a long time. So many therians are afraid to share themselves, even with their own friends - again.

No one knows about zoesthesia, and if it can be prioritized by researchers first and foremost, I believe it could drive a renaissance for the global community.

For me, "therianthropy" refers not to the identity but to the involuntary animalistic experiences themselves - behaviours, urges, instincts, traits, awareness, etc - and "therian" (or therianthrope) is the one experiencing them. So I'm not convinced we need to throw more Greek at this.

(Today 6:20)KeweyTanuki Wrote:  For me, "therianthropy" refers not to the identity but to the involuntary animalistic experiences themselves - behaviours, urges, instincts, traits, awareness, etc - and "therian" (or therianthrope) is the one experiencing them. So I'm not convinced we need to throw more Greek at this.

Quoting because I wanted to add on that technically therianthrope is the noun/identity part, but people tend to shorten it down to therian. But therian is also the adjective (“therian experiences” “a therianthrope experiences therianthropy”). Fighting over the urge to apologize for getting into the semantics but that’s quite literally what this thread is for so I should be fine LOL.

Anyway, while I can see merit in the term to disambiguate our experiences from roleplay, there is a part of my spirit that doesn’t sit right with the idea of relegating therianthropy to only the identity aspect. Echoing Kewey, it just sounds like the wrong part is being addressed. Rather, I’d think another word for the identity is fitting, and keep therianthropy with the experiences. Does it address the roleplayer problem? No, but I’m not letting anyone poach the term from me so I’m probably always going to feel this way lol.

I'm also on team "we should just kinda start to make sure people understand therianthropy is about the experiences". The problem being that Zoesthesia kind of means the same thing as therianthropy, as it stands, since therianthropy was meant to describe experiences. On a personal level I'm also less of a fan of how it sounds. And, yeah, the problem with otherkin, therian, etc, is not that it did not have a definition that included experiences, its that people willfully ignored them to misinterpret it into something its not. Otherkin has always had the part of the definition of "being a non-human creature, not as roleplay" yet people did immediately start using it to mean "fictional character I kinda relate to". The definition of otherkin may have been kinda vague, but it wasn't so vague as to allow that, people just decided to use it anyways. I don't think Zoesthesia is unable to be misinterpreted as "really liking to wear ears and a tail".

Quote:I actually think that this term could be used in scientific circles - something that researchers can use to refer to and study our experiences. Provided that researchers take this up, I think it could have a very positive impact.

Forgot to comment on this : therianthropy is already the word used in scientific articles so far. Otherwise, they use zoomorphism or anthrozoomorphism.