<rant>
So I recently stumbled out from my pile of scotch bottles and DMT sachets long enough to make it to Tumblr, whereupon I learned something unexpected:
Folks have started adopting the term "Teratophilia" to mean "I fantasize about banging monsters".
Now, to be clear, I'm in full support of that sentiment. Banging (sapient) monsters is my jam. But I've always viewed this as one of the outer limbs of the Furry Syndrome, a particular expression of Feral, not its own classification. If one wanted to be more specific, "monster fucker" was always available, and pleasingly self-deprecating.
So when did Teratophilia come to mean this? The "original" definition is a paraphilia for "deformed or monstrous people". This covers e.g.
Elephantiasis, and might extend to, say, Frankenstein's Monster, but not to
Deathclaws (as I've seen it used) nor to pretty boys who transform into ${something_else}.
Am I out of touch? No, it's the neo-Teratophiles who are wrong! The appropriation of a term for a different sort of paraphilia is clearly inappropriate!
What's going on here?
(I've a second rant in me about the popularity of "pretty boys who transform into ${something_else}" (and equivalently, monsters that spend their most of their time "glamored" as humans), versus honest-to-goodness Ferals and Monsters and Monstrous Humanoids, but that's a rant for a different day, and has more to do with personal tastes than the lofty ideals of taxonomy...)
