I have been blocked on my previous post about this distinction being made between clinical and non-clinical zoanthropes, but this discussion is important to have so I am going to repost my reply to the comments. Here is the original post and reply To those who identify as "non clinical zoanthropes" seperating your experince from "clinical zoanthropes" on the basis of psychosis, please read this.
Firstly, the concept of the term Zoanthrope being universal because of grammar is incorrect - the history of words is very important in how they are used and why you should not take or use some words. Lycanthropy has historical widespread use. Zoanthrope is however really limited to solely clinical zoanthropes. You can use almost any [noun]-thrope or were-[noun] without issue. Zoanthrope though specifically is used as shorthand by the clinical zoanthrope community as a means of rejecting the psychiatrisation we experience and it is through that means that it has been primarily used. Taking the word for yourself and seperating yourself entirely from that experience only serves to damage and - given the tendency of language to drift and soften - destroy our community and the limited means we have to find each other.
What you are doing is sanist, and amounts to the same behaviour engaged by therian communities to essentially cut us as seperate and it fails to understand our community, history, experiences, and why we word things certain ways. There has always been an understanding within the zoanthrope community that there is no requirement of specific diagnosis - just reasonable suspicion, psychiatrisation, or the understanding that psychiatrisation would be applied. Almost all zoanthropes reject the humans understanding of our experiences as psychosis or madness. The problem comes in trying to define yourself as "non-clinical" zoanthrope in opposition to "clinical" zoanthrope. There is no means to seperate the concept of "clinical" from "non-clinical" within the space which does not have sanist outcomes as it inherently frames one as mad and the other not. This plays out in your writing, and that of others that have replied, framing your experience in opposition to ours - with ours as a psychotic affect. This is not an analysis almost any zoanthrope accepts for themselves, but in placing it on others you inherently devalue our experiences and identity as genuine, while at the same time claiming yours as genuine affect of your existance.
Your background of being physical nonhuman and the treatment from therian community does not preclude you from engaging in sanism or mistreating further marginalised communities or further marginalising segments of that community. Genuinely, if you actually care about our experiences, and view yourselves as meaningfully different from us, please stop appropriating our terms. They are the only way we have to find others and to be able to express our experiences without bowing to the psychiatrisation and reality checking demanded by the human world and therian communities. Not every term is for you and you are not entitled to every word. Or, if you do view yourself as like us, you must stop creating this dichotomy which sets one experience of greater validity against anothers madness as this only serves to marginalise those already most marginalised within the community. You may not intend or consider this outcome, but intent is irrelevant, this is the outcome.
