So anti-therian sentiments are pretty much always a front for hatred or discomfort towards queer people, the mentally ill and people of other races/cultures, I think we all agree on that, but I think it can also be clear at times that the people who spout this stuff don't have much respect for animals point blank.
Like, often the points they make come from a place of disgust at the thought of someone imitating nonhuman behaviours ("so you eat from a bowl and shit outside?") and its interesting to me how these behaviours are painted like they're... unbecoming. Like you should be above acting like an animal. It feels, to me, like they're subconsciously attached to the notion of animals being of "lesser intelligence" or lower ranked than humans, therefore being influenced by them is an embarrassment.
Some people, generally younger folk who wanna be edgy when they can't wrap their head around something from what I've seen, see an alterhuman or furry or whatever and threaten to hunt them or skin them or any other kind of act of animal cruelty they can think of. That speaks for itself, obviously, but also like... I've seen anecdotes a good few times of therians who've made genuine expressions of their nonhumanity in conversations, only for it to be interpreted as self deprecation. Most people can't seem to take the image of an animalistic person seriously in itself. You can see this in normie reactions to therianthropy and you can see it tenfold in their reactions to furry.
I believe that we're not gonna see progress in how alterhumans are treated till we make progress in accepting the wider marginalised groups that overlap with our own movement. But even so, its glaringly obvious how people can't even comprehend the thought of relating to animals as more than a curiosity or spectacle. They're seen as simple. They don't have language we see as complex, they don't do maths, art, philosophy, inventing to the same extent as people. They eat, shit, kill and fuck. They're purely biological. They have no inner world. Therefore, they're below humans.
Except... humans do all that stuff too. And most animals do the same things humans are so proud of themselves for, just in their own way. The only real difference is that animals don't go to great lengths to fill whatever void each human seems to have inside that pushes them to keep searching for a reason to live. Animals are better in tune with themselves, I think. Humans can't fathom that its okay to be internally fulfilled by simple things. They especially can't fathom how animals piss and shit and fuck without shame. It kind of speaks to a severe disconnection from nature, which we're unavoidably a part and product of. Many of us live in a culture where we're taught on some level to be ashamed of our basic needs. Its becoming increasingly hard to view ourselves as products of a mushy bloody biological world when our society values only the civil and the intellectual.
Hateful people will use this divide we've created as fuel to hurt others. You don't need me to explain to you how all throughout history bastards have done horrible things to innocent people for horrible reasons and all the while perpetuated an idea of their victims being apparently uncivilised. Treating the Other as subhuman, forcing them down to the same level we see animals as being at, is unfortunately nothing new. I believe part of the reason humans struggle to accept therianthropy is that therianthropy, in a way, elevates animals to beside humanity, and that's difficult to comprehend. It kind of forces you to question the hierarchy of living creatures you've built inside your head. Actively choosing to accept animalistic qualities into yourself 1. communicates implicitly to those around you that there's something about animals to respect and admire beyond usefulness/amusement, and 2. is inherently a pull towards the sensory, biological and "gross", which we don't make a whole lot of room for in our current world. We're taught to suppress the instinctual, and we're also pushing nature itself away more and more. Wanting to take joy in your own body and wanting to experience fur, scales, claws, meat, noise, the flesh and bones and mannerisms of an animal is deeply sensory. When someone is confronted with desires and self-perceptions like nonhumanity and the beliefs about the world it challenges... its easier to conclude that therians are pushing themselves down, rather than lifting animals, and the urges humans can't accept, up.
It's sad if you ask me. So many cultures around the world, now and in the past, live in tandem with animals and plants and soil and sea. We can live equal to the nature around us, because we are nature. Fuck, alterhumanity isnt even a newfangled thing. Folks have been emulating animal characteristics for all sorts of reasons for all of time. Animals are more than tools or commodities or things spawned in to make the landscape more interesting. I can't speak for any community beyond my own but all over the world folks have been chill with nature in all sorts of ways and actually respected the existence of the things around them instead of harvesting everything for personal gain.
I think we therians kind of have a duty to learn more about this stuff and try to advocate for the care of the creatures we've accepted into ourselves. Whether or not you're on board with your existence in a human society, you've been blessed with a voice to speak with. I'm not a genius and I can't tell you every single thing you should research or get involved in if you want to change the world, but maybe next time someone tries to fuck you over for being what you are, ask them "what's so bad about being an animal?"
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