Hey, Lets Talk About Therian Gatekeeping.
If you've ever seen my work, you know that I'm a very inclusionist therian. People & creatures who have read my work or been to one of my presentations of Therian: Dispelling the Earthen Animal Myth have been very receptive of the information and have passed it on to others in the community that havent been so fortunate as to have experienced and learned along side me. There's still a lot of work to be done in this venture, and every person & creature who shares it is a crucial part of history.
So why does the "therian = earthen animal" belief exist and persist? My favorite theory is that there's a pervasive need to be seen as legitimate. Fictional and mythical animals arent seen as real, in their therian-worldview. Not real enough for exclusionists, and that theory is constantly reinforced by exclusionists who insist that inclusionists are the ones trying to rewrite the term's history.
Let me show you what I mean.
Here's a link to where I got this screenshot. Please note the date in the upper right hand corner of the screenshot. For context, this is from a thread on the community's originating website, Alt.Horror.WereWolves. This is the thread that originates our current usage of Therian/thrope/y. (The censored info is the members' real names. You can see them uncensored at the link, unfortunately. I've censored them here for privacy.)
As I see it, therianthropy applies to *any* human/animal form, regardless of history, powers, or other attributes.
The original defining discussion thread of therianthropy includes "any human/animal form". Gatekeepers are the ones in the wrong here.
There's an argument amongst exclusionists, "if therianthropy can extend to include non-earthen animals, what's the point of therianthropy as a concept?" For those who arent aware, although therianthropy and otherkinity significantly overlap in their experiences and the way those experiences are described, the two communities developed separately, with overlap in experience and terms used, depending on which of the two a member found first. It's so deeply ingrained in these exclusionists that therians can only be real animals, that they choose a narrow inclusion or non-existence.
On top of this, it's incredibly disturbing that these people & creatures are encouraging revisionist history by completely denying original, first hand sources that tell them they're wrong. They delete messages that inclusionists reply with, giving them these primary sources. So I'm here showing you the truth.
If you've been led to believe, threatened even, that you're "not a real therian" if you believe therians can be non-earthen animals, then I'm here holding your paw, telling you that your inclusion in a term/experience doesnt hinge on how well you uphold the standards of a few.
If you would like more reading about this, I have a whole essay, linked at the beginning of the post, with dozens of citations to primary sources about this issue. If you agree that "therian = earthen animal only", I challenge you to read the essay. Read and really analyze the sources linked there. Engage with your history in it's purest form, not from others telling you things. Learning and expanding your worldview is the most powerful way to grow as a person.
