Yes, but unfortunately we've got medical professionals telling parents that their children are at risk of self-harm and suicide if they don't affirm their identity. We've also got schools teaching children that it's important to support everyone's identity, that it's kind and respectful to do so.
A child who genuinely believes they have a therian identity is going to be no less serious about this than a child who genuinely believes that they have an identity of the opposite sex. It's just more obvious that it could lead to harm if it meant that the child was on a pathway to medical interventions. Well, (I assume for now at least) no doctor would agree to a wolf blood transfusion once that child got to 18. But overwhelm your body with hormones way above the natural levels for your sex because you identify as the opposite sex? Go for it. From 16 years old in fact. Oh, and if you're really serious about your identity, why not join our puberty blocker trial? That way you won't have to go through any puberty - so when those opposite sex hormones create a mimicry of your desired "look", they won't be battling against anything. Sadly your brain won't go through any pubertal development at all, but we'll collect data to track that for a couple of years, so all good 👍
Sticking with the parallels, letting a child wear wolf ears or clothes bought from the aisle that had been targeted at the opposite sex (as we know, clothing manufacturers use sex-based stereotypes when designing clothes) are equally innocuous. The point at which we attach significance to this, such as thinking of it as affirming that identity, is equally unhelpful. It's the sleight of hand moment where the clothing choice has now become a key milestone in an affirmation journey. Thankfully most people can easily see that you wouldn't keep going along this pathway until you're medicalised as a wolf... but there's enough momentum (and money) behind the human "sex change" medical industry that this has been normalised.
how have we made the world so fucking toxic they want to opt out of it as far as they possibly can?
Children have been identifying out of their bodies into alternative realities as coping mechanisms for a long time. It's going up though, which is scary and heartbreaking.
Some families will have assumed their boy was "broken" and was really a girl if their son was drawn towards clothing or toy choices targeted at girls. If those families are also homophobic, and in adolescence the child becomes same-sex attracted, he may have internalised his parents' homophobia because that's also "not what boys are supposed to do". His coping mechanism may be to opt out of his body and "fix" it by "becoming straight".
Girls who experience sexual assault or who find the changes in puberty distressing (e.g. periods, boys and men suddenly lusting after them) have been opting out of their bodies in various ways for a long time. The method of doing so is what changes. Anorexia is a good example. It's a way stop those changes, like a cloak of protection with a feeling of being in control. I saw an interesting presentation from the LGB Alliance which showed cases of anorexia are (thankfully) declining. But scarily, what we're seeing instead is a huge increase in girls identifying out of their bodies. Often starting with non-binary but many going instead for the opposite sex. When my own daughter wasn't sure if she was meant to be a girl, she said that one of the reasons she didn't like being a girl was because girls are weak.... and she wanted to be strong to beat the bullies (she's autistic and had been on the receiving end of relentless autism-related bullying for months). Mia Hughes (@crymiariver on X) has done some really interesting research into the prevalence of the various different coping mechanisms that girls turn to and what's being discussed socially at the time e.g. the increase in anorexia cases tracks to Karen Carpenter's death being in the news and the significant uptick in girls experiencing gender dysphoria tracks to smart phones and social media. The LGB Alliance presentation delved into various examples of social media apps where information is shared and amplified, and how this correlates to gender dysphoria increasing in girls.
Edited for clarity.