On "Theriocentrism"/"Canine-centrism"
Recently another wave of posts has cropped up complaining about therian-centrism and more specifically canine-centrism in the alterhuman community, and while this can be a real problem, I feel like a lot of posts complaining about it are... kind of missing the mark, to be honest.
Therian-centrism in the alterhuman community, and canine-centrism within that, is sometimes a real problem. You'll see posts marked as "for alterhumans" that are clearly actually just for therians, or community resources that seem to assume everyone viewing them will have paws and fur, or things like that. This can be genuinely grating, and kind of alienating for those getting subtly (or unsubtly) pushed out of our own words, and it absolutely is something to push back against.
But... a lot of the posts I'm seeing complaining about "therian-centrism" or "canine-centrism" are just complaining about there being a lot of posts about canine therian experiences. Fellas, that is not therian-centrism or canine-centrism. That's literally just people talking about their experiences. A lot of people in the community are canine therians, therefore a lot of experience posts are going to be about canine therian experiences. They're not excluding anyone or erasing anyone by just... existing and talking about their own experiences. I feel like we need to be careful, when talking about the real problem of community spaces and resources forgetting to account for experiences outside of the most common, to not start talking like people with those common experiences are wrong to discuss those experiences at all. Yes, it can sometimes be a little annoying to have so much of the otherkin or alterhuman or whatever community tag (or whatever space) be irrelevant to you - but those spaces are for those people too, and low-key implying that canine therians should shut up and stop talking about their experiences just because there's a lot of them is wrong and bad for the community. The annoyance is unfortunately just something you're gonna have to live with. Some experiences are always going to be more common than others, and thus you're going to hear about them more. There's nothing wrong with that, it just is.
Things that ARE therian-centrism/canine-centrism/whatever:
Community resources marked as "alterhuman" that only actually provide resources for therians and don't even acknowledge that alterhumans who aren't nonhuman exist
Surveys and polls marked as "alterhuman" that only contain questions relevant to therians, without a "N/A" option and without similar questions relevant only to other alterhuman identities and not therians
People misdefining "alterhuman" as "identifying as something nonhuman/an animal" and thus excluding everyone else
Resources like species dysphoria alleviation suggestion posts that are marketed as "for therians" but contain only suggestions clearly aimed at canines
People crosstagging their therian/canine specific posts with a bunch of irrelevant alterhuman tags (otherhearted, hearthome, archetrope, etc.) "for reach"
Things that ARE NOT therian-centrism/canine-centrism/whatever:
The alterhuman, otherkin, and therian tags having a lot of posts by therians/canines about their own experiences
Surveys and polls marked as "alterhuman" having questions relevant to only therians while still having an equal number of questions focused on only otherhearted people, only those with hearthomes, only archetropers, etc.
Resources specifically aimed at therians/canines existing