I would say YES because I AM a caver - but please note that the words "spelunker" and "spelunking" are not normally used by cavers themselves in any serious way.
Nor, unless very mean-spirited, can anyone be "pro" - or "anti" - a hobby or leisure pursuit. Either you are interested in it or you are not. I am not interested in football, be it soccer or the American version of rugby football, but I respect the ability and fitness of the players, and I am neither For or Against the sport.
I looked into the etymology. The word "Spelunk -er/ing"was coined by a couple of American cavers in the 1930s to give the hobby a fancy title rooted in the Greek "spelæos" (= "cave"), and for a while American cavers did use it normally and respectably. However, it never caught on in other countries, and even in its own country the term degenerated into caver's own slang to insult novices and dilettantes in the pursuit; although many non-cavers would not have known of this change of meaning.
In the UK, caving is still sometimes called "pot-holing" by non-cavers including many journalists and insurance companies (neither noted for assiduous research of the fields they cover), and the word "pothole" survives in the names of a few long-established caving-clubs in Northern England. It was derived from the many Pennine Hills caves whose entrances are open, vertical shafts once called "pot-holes". Of these, the best-known outside of caving is almost certainly Gaping Gill, thanks to the two annual "Winch Meets" that give non-cavers access to it, and run separately by two local societies: the Craven Pothole Club and the Bradford Pothole Club. The term "pot-hole" as used in physical geography has a different meaning.
Throughout the English-speaking world, and in caving literature by authors for whom English is a second language, the word for exploring caves is "caving"; the explorers are "cavers".
The root word IS used, in Spelaeology - the dipthong "ae" should be "æ" but is often spelled rather lazily as just "e". This is the umbrella term for the scientific study of caves and their contents, and covers geology, geomorphology, hydrology, physics, chemistry, biology, archaeology and cave-surveying (mapping) techniques; and Spelaeologists may be professional scientists whose hobby is caving, or amateurs who have extended their hobby of visiting and exploring caves for purely sporting and aesthetic motives, into the scientific aspects too. This is logical - you cannot study caves unless you can negotiate them to reach the particular points of interest! A good deal of current spelæological research is into the evidence preserved in sediments etc. underground, of past climate changes - for obvious reasons.
So am I "pro-spelunking"? No, because I am not a "spelunker"; but I am a caver. I enjoy caves and caving, and am interested in the caves themselves as geological entities!
