I sympathise with you. The funny thing is, after I responded to you and realised that the word "zoomorphic" could be taken in entirely different ways, I've been wondering if "zoomorphic furry" was even a good label for myself to begin with.
When I first came out as furry, one of the things I really wanted to do was dig deep into my own psychology because the way my brain was responding to anthro animals was bizarre and fascinating to me. And for the most part, I just considered myself a standard furry because my experiences (creating fursonas since a young age, a "coming out" phase, a romantic attraction to anthro characters) were all things I'd seen other furries express online and in research studies I read about on adjective species.
But I wanted to go even further in understanding myself, and it was after a few days of thinking that I hit upon the point that my brain was interpreting anthro characters as human, not animal. That's when I decided on "zoomorphic" as a term. But now I'm thinking that if there were more furries who think like me, they almost certainly wouldn't dig as far into their psychologies as I did. They'd be satisfied with the idea of furries being about anthropomorphic animals, especially given that furries who self-identify specifically with animal attributes have their own terms like therian and otherkin.
I'm still going to hold onto zoomorphic as a symbol of my psychology, but I don't think I'm going to use it in conversation anymore. I've been using the word "core-identity furry" a lot in this thread so I'll probably stick to using that.
I sympathise with you. The funny thing is, after I responded to you and realised that the word "zoomorphic" could be taken in entirely different ways, I've been wondering if "zoomorphic furry" was even a good label for myself to begin with.
When I first came out as furry, one of the things I really wanted to do was dig deep into my own psychology because the way my brain was responding to anthro animals was bizarre and fascinating to me. And for the most part, I just considered myself a standard furry because my experiences (creating fursonas since a young age, a "coming out" phase, a romantic attraction to anthro characters) were all things I'd seen other furries express online and in research studies I read about on adjective species.
But I wanted to go even further in understanding myself, and it was after a few days of thinking that I hit upon the point that my brain was interpreting anthro characters as human, not animal. That's when I decided on "zoomorphic" as a term. But now I'm thinking that if there were more furries who think like me, they almost certainly wouldn't dig as far into their psychologies as I did. They'd be satisfied with the idea of furries being about anthropomorphic animals, especially given that furries who self-identify specifically with animal attributes have their own terms like therian and otherkin.
I'm still going to hold onto zoomorphic as a symbol of my psychology, but I don't think I'm going to use it in conversation anymore. I've been using the word "core-identity furry" a lot in this thread so I'll probably stick to using that.