Speaking as a trans therian, being a therian is kind of like being trans, except there's no cross-species HRT, and even fewer people will be willing to respect your identity.
It is really hard to actually describe what this means, though. What's the actual distinction between "they so strongly identify with the animal" and "they are the animal, trapped in a human body"? Is it just the desire to tell us "ok but you know you really are human, right?" I know my body is a human body, I know my DNA is human DNA, but that doesn't say anything about the mind inside this body, the concept of self. What I experience can best be described by a thought experiment: imagine that, through some magic spell, an animal was put into the body of a human and had to learn how to fit in to human society. What would that animal be feeling after all that? Probably the same way I feel.
Ultimately though, it doesn't really matter how one tries to describe this. None of the descriptions will be sufficiently accurate. But what matters is that treating me as the animal whose identity I claim makes me happy, and it doesn't harm anyone.
I have now! Thanks for the recommendation. Consciousness, the subjective experience of what it is like to be something, is very difficult to explain except insofar as there are similar shared experiences that one can make analogy to. I certainly agree with Nagel that entities in human bodies are not equipped to understand the subjective experience of someone whose primary means of sensing the world is through echolocation. This does make me wonder how many bat therians there are, though I would imagine the answer is more than zero.
It is really hard to actually describe what this means, though. What's the actual distinction between "they so strongly identify with the animal" and "they are the animal, trapped in a human body"? Is it just the desire to tell us "ok but you know you really are human, right?" I know my body is a human body, I know my DNA is human DNA, but that doesn't say anything about the mind inside this body, the concept of self. What I experience can best be described by a thought experiment: imagine that, through some magic spell, an animal was put into the body of a human and had to learn how to fit in to human society. What would that animal be feeling after all that? Probably the same way I feel.
Ultimately though, it doesn't really matter how one tries to describe this. None of the descriptions will be sufficiently accurate. But what matters is that treating me as the animal whose identity I claim makes me happy, and it doesn't harm anyone.