Why are we taking these immature narcissists seriously?

“The comparison is often made by therians themselves, a minority of whom are transgender as well as “trans-species”, as they sometimes put it. (Not all transgender people are comfortable with this analogy, fearing that it complicates the public discourse and undermines their movement’s drive for recognition.) The obvious difference is that while you can change your gender, you cannot do anything about your species.”

Trans people don’t like the analogy because it’s on the nose and don’t want their preferred narrative being ‘complicated’ by dissenters. Because you cannot change ‘gender’ (weasel word) or s*x.

And how would Caeser the coyote know how a human thinks?

‘Neurological outliers’? How can this condition be anything other than a psychological disorder? As such, it deserves our sympathy but certainly not our affirmation. They are not ‘animals trapped in human bodies’. They are human beings with real problems
‘Therians are not delusional.’ Really? Unless ‘delusional’ has a technical meaning that I’m not aware of, how can they be anything else?

It seems, therians, like people who believe that they have lived past lives are never something humdrum. You’ll, I bet, never find a therian fruit fly, dung beetle, slug or crab ( NOT of the sea going variety). I, myself, believe that I am a bull elephant, which, trust me, has caused no end of surprises, or issues, as I attempt to mount my chosen mate. Attempts, likewise, to procreate with my ‘actual’ species (elephants) has left them distinctly unimpressed, as if I was hardly there at all. Not all sexual encounters are quite so disappointing though, my friend Catherine (she’s really Great), is also a fellow (is that a misgendering ?) therian, only she believes herself to be a horse, and being a powerful, wealthy, sort of individual has gone to some lengths, as it were, to ensure that she is ‘fully’ fulfilled.

Utter madness. We even have a name for them!! Next we will be affirming them and adding their missing tails!! I despair of this world that we are encouraging mental illness. Social media and the therapists and scientists have a lot to answer for.

I’m reminded of the Monty Python sketch about men who thought themselves Mice – dressed like Giant Mice, felt irresistible cravings for cheese and met in secret.

How did this nonsense become a “thing”? that social scientists study? that someone has to take seriously and write about?

I agree with comment questioning whether this is April 1.

” a disproportionate number of them had been diagnosed with autism… though it is not clear how the two conditions could be linked.”
The link is clear, in light of your next sentence –
“They also found that, compared with a control group, many therians struggle with relationships and social skills.”
Struggling with relationships and having poor social skills is practically the definition of autism. I suspect that people who struggle the most have a combination of narcissism (the desire to be the centre of attention) combined the inability to achieve such an outcome, except through extremely unconventional behaviour of some kind.

For both the people who believe that they are bears, and the people who believe that they are the other ‘gender’, the most simple and pragmatic response would be, ‘No you’re not’. Neither are possible, so should not be indulged. ‘Cruel to be kind’ might be unfashionable but sometimes it is necessary.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. What a load of codswallop.

I’m going to disagree with the majority of comments. I welcome this article by Unherd, which provides an insight into a neurological condition with historical precedent, and therefore worthy of study and discussion.
The links with transgenderism are interesting, since there’s nothing inherently wrong with someone feeling they’re a different gender to the body they were born with, providing they’re not trying to impose their wish to lead a different life on other people, thus trampling on their rights. Similarly, why not just live and let live with therians, providing they’re not going around attacking anyone; indeed, most of them seem to be leading otherwise exemplary lives.
Many of the comments are just childish, and rather than asking Unherd to do better, i’d suggest those who comment unintelligently should do better.

Is it April 1st?

This piece is frankly desperate. Also: ‘The obvious difference is that while you can change your gender, you cannot do anything about your species.’ Not a true opposition. The trans extremists do not claim to be changing gender, but changing sex. Which is no more possible than changing species.
More fundamentally, why is this piece of tenth-rate pseudo-psychology (‘therians are not delusional’) on UnHerd? I expect quality thinking on here, not jargon, fad and shallowness.

This extremely idiotic trend for using “they” to refer to a single person – person, deluded or not – makes my teeth itch. He, she, or the person’s name. That’s it.
As for the substance of the article, people are free to believe anything they wish about themselves. The rest of us need not be involved.

I am not surprised that one study classed therians as having some form of autism. People with some degree of autism also exhibit feelings of being “different”, social awkwardness and so on. Neurological sciences are busy trying to keep up with each other, and haven’t yet agreed on what to call autism. Recognition is still a long way off, and general understanding even further away. Throw both into the melting pot along with gender and “identity” (etc) and we’re talking about a whole different type of medical science, as significant as the difference between ‘normal’ physics and quantum physics.
One day it will be routine to diagnose an autistic, transgender therian (using quite different wording!), but only when “post-modern science” has stopped fighting for little bits of fame and glory, and resumed the calmer behaviour of the Enlightenment.

I found this really interesting and a little moving in places. Yes, I’ll be mocked by some commentators but … They are not demanding we affirm their beliefs and some aspects, the phantom tail/wing/whatever are not dissimilar to recognised neurological issues that amputees, for example, deal with. Mostly, these are people who are aware of their oddness and just looking for others like them. Yes, I’m amazed that this is a thing but when compared to transgenderism at least they all understand that whatever they feel/believe they are, as one “coyote” put it, really weird.

I’m not surprised that the trans community don’t want to be aligned with them, not least because they, therians, are accepting of their beliefs, not demanding we accept them and not hating on others for getting their species wrong.

“The obvious difference is that while you can change your gender, you cannot do anything about your species.”

Well you can change your gender, yes, because gender is a made-up thing. You can’t change your sex, though, any more than you can change your species.

I’m really starting to be embarrassed by my diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder… this sort of nonsense has taken a fast hold in the ‘autism community’ (which is a nonsense in itself, actually, that a pack of terminally online ‘activists’ can claim to speak for a diverse section of the population).

It’s crazy, but no more so than legions of grown men crying with joy because a group of 11 millionaires managed to push a pig-skin ball into a net. etc etc etc

Interesting comments, a lot very quick to sharply and somewhat unkindly judge. If therians want to go quietly about their business feeling not quite human, that’s fine by me. We are a diverse species and long may it remain so. Until some AI nutters change us into robots or we die out, we remain Homo sapiens, an animal – one that is very good at absorbing the feelings of other beings.

This is meant as parody, right?
Nowadays it can sometimes be hard to be sure

“a disproportionate number of them had been diagnosed with autism (7.69%, compared with 1.5% in the general US population)”.

I would suggest that this is a massive underestimate. As with trans identifying individuals, the underlying sentiment is often a sense of ‘otherness’. The feeling of being ‘different’ can be interpreted according to whatever (ironically) is socially/culturally sanctioned at the time.

Hopefully the medical establishment will show less enthusiasm for transforming people into animals than they did for transitioning children with ASDs from one sex to the other.

Sounds like the conflation of disassociation and delusion.

The guy who thinks he is a bear – anyone want to guess where he goes to do a number 2?

This was a really interesting article – I had never heard of therians, although I have heard of otherkin and furries, both of which I believe to be some kind of kink rather than actual dysphoria. I am not sure why some of you are so doubtful about these people – they clearly differentiate from many trans people in that they acknowledge that they are not really animals and can never become an animal, regardless of the fact that they display more animal traits than the average human. We are, after all, descended from animals so why should this kind of dysphoria be so hard to believe? I am glad they have a supportive community around them – it must be incredibly difficult to feel that you are in the wrong body, my main issue with a lot of trans people is my lack of belief that they really do think they are in the wrong body, as opposed to it being autogynephilia or some similar sexual kink. All humans still display at least some animal traits leading back to our more primitive ancestors – we would never have survived as a species if we did not have these traits.

“…except furries daddy, they are just weird”.
“Yeah they give everyone the creeps, all my friends think they are scary and unsettling”.

From the mouths of my children.

Why several comments disappeared? Particularly ones questioning that this really is a thing.

Slicing off private parts is so last week. “No Medicaid funding for tail grafts, no peace!”

I’m curious to know if when the Therians identify as an animal if it’s the same sex animal as they are a human.

Poor Gregor Samsa, he just *thought* he was a roach

Are bears aware that they are bears? Do coyotes think about being coyotes? I’ve encountered quite a few of both, and most of them are primarily concerned with rummaging through your trash and stealing your chickens.
They aren’t delusional and should be taken seriously? In that case, BearX has obviously been habituated to humans and therefore it’s the responsibility of the Department of Wildlife to relocate or euthanize him. And shame on his wife for letting a dangerous animal into the house with children present.
Shooting coyotes (the vicious little pests) is legal in most U.S. states year round. Azi the Mexican wolf should avoid the Northern Rockies, as they just opened up wolf hunting.
I kid, of course. These people have never encountered a wild animal in their lives. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that there are very specific behaviors attributed to each of these animals. Bears don’t get engineering degrees; they forage, reproduce, and die. Has this guy even tried to sustain himself on a diet of raw elk, moths, and berries? Or does he dig through the trash while his wife screams at him and tries to bear spray him?
It’s notable that they want to be accepted by the wider world, i.e. people, and not the animals they claim to be. Don’t try to convince me you are a bear. Go convince the mama grizzly with two cubs. Good luck with that.

“The obvious difference is that while you can change your gender, you cannot do anything about your species.”
Ah…no you can’t – on both counts. Both are complex mental health conditions, delusions if you will. Saying you are the opposite sex or a cat, doesn’t make it so. If you lop off your breasts or sew on a tail, neither will alter the underlying mental health conditions or make you happy. No thought, word or action will change your gender or make you an animal.

If these peopleclaimed to be Napoleon or Julius Caesar, we would simply dismiss them as deluded fantasist.

What a crock of shite! But at least it made me laugh:

“In her book Unthinkable, Helen Thomson describes meeting a lycanthrope who periodically believes he has turned into a tiger; her interview with him was cut short when he suddenly started growling and threatening to attack her, a relapse his doctors blamed on his failure to take his anti-psychotic medication”

so i live in south africa on a very small income. i had to choose between the Spectator and unherd for subscriptions, can only afford one. i chose, to my everlasting chagrin Unherd, too many silly stories, few really well known writers, f**k.

It feels like a version of those medieval dancing crazes in which thousands bopped themselves to death

Enough of this please. Mental illness need not be further glorified.

On the plus side for a therian is that the waiting time to see a vet is much shorter than for a GP. Woof woof. The downside is that you need a tree to give your urine sample.

“The obvious difference is that while you can change your gender, you cannot do anything about your species.” IS it obvious, though? How is it any different? Given enough mutilative surgery and drugs, isn’t the fiction of being “trans-species” no more difficult to maintain than “trans-sex”?

This article has got to be a spoof… right?

Puts ‘trans’ in perspective. If ‘wolf man’ had never seen or heard of a wolf, what would he be? Conversely, if the shrinks crack it, could they make me believe I’m Einstein, at least during working hours, so I could solve the quantum gravity problem? Another thought. Most of the vertebrate animals are now domesticated. All the ones where I live are dogs, though not all recognisable as such. Are there any therians who believe themselves to be a pig with no tail and sticking-up ears, or one of those white dusting wands with stubby legs?

This is quite obviously the Dialectic of Inclusion. It’s a set of Abstract Mind over Matter principles Reified into Objective Reality. A simulation of Reality is performed and the performance creates “reality” or Hyperreality when Society affirms it.

Social Scientists may feel this will create a more integrated, empathetic population. It will not. It will create a complete inability to accomplish objectives because people aren’t living in the same realities.

At some point in order to live in a “Sustainable Economy” there would have to be an Authoritarian clamp down to assure economies could function in an environment where nothing makes sense. A new set of Universal Values would be imposed from Above (Principle of Correspondence) by an Expert Class that would shepherd the masses. We’ve seen this before many times throughout history.