All countries need official fursonas; can’t change my mind.
So in recent weeks I’ve learned that furries are a lot more shunned than I thought, and it’s one of those things like Bronies where it’s not the subject of their obsession but the enthusiasm they have for the subject of their fandom.
I grew up with Disney and Warner Brothers classics, read the Albedo comic anthology and a few others, but don’t see myself as a furry enthusiast (contrast my enthusiasm for late 20th century are we the real monsters? science fiction). Furry porn and furry-themed sex fantasies aren’t particularly my scene, but this is true for the majority of furries as well.
But our society has gotten weird about furries and anthros, which I guess became evident when the US right-wing started spreading the litter-boxes in schools canard. Curiously, in the porn media community, animal genital shapes are a controversy, and mainstream media platforms that sell furry porn will not allow for anthros with canine or equine genitals. I think VISA specifically will not allow transactions for such works, which is stunning interventionism both in its overreach and specificity.
And then some social media sites have special rules for furry content, that even SFW furry content can only appear inside furry-inclusive perimeters… unless it’s classical like Warner or Hanna Barbara. Wikipedia refuses to acknowledge Freefall (1998-present) one of the long-running fairly-hard-science-fiction webcomics (that gets into space-travel culture and robot culture), specifically because it has an anthro as a main character, more precisely, a genetically engineered wolf, next to a robot and a non-human trader.
It’s not that furries are weird. It’s that society is weird about furries.
I had an idea that the paws salute should become the official salute of the new resistance (since furries have been marked as a target for fascist enemy within rhetoric), but then trying to do some basic web searches, I couldn’t find a proper conventional name for the pose, nor easy-to-find art of it, even though I’ve seen the gesture made by catgirls often enough to know it’s a thing, and one of the salutes I might consider when standing before the firing squad.
In the last few years, I went from being resignedly a man to being enby, having become disgusted with how dudes obsessed with manhood have conducted themselves in our society. Before, I didn’t care that much, and my own notions of what it was to be a man turned into adulting in the 2010s (take care of business; make sure rent and utilities are paid; don’t do violence, especially when nuclear weapons are involved). Now men look like Matt Walsh and Donald Trump.
I’m not a furry or otherkin (yet), but considering how the furry community is among the untermenschen, I’m half-inclined to develop a fursona for sake of solidarity.
And I still think the paws salute should be the sign of the resistance.
I read somewhere that someone’s attitude to furries is a great litmus test for how tolerant that person actually is (assuming that person isn’t a furry, of course). I’ve always found myself mildly confused by furries (and I used to be somewhat weirded out because I mainly knew of furries because a friend bought a house from drawing furry porn). Hearing the litmus test thing helped me to chill out a bunch and recognise that seeing lots of furries in and adjacent to my community was a sign of a healthy social ecosystem, so to speak
Yes, furries seem to be the new group everyone is ready to hate no matter the political inclination. Gays are accepted more and more, trans people are far from safe, but at least have allies, furries seem to be the easiest target now. I need to learn the paws salute.
Please don’t compare your love for cartoon animals to being lgbt
Wow, bigoted much?
Tbf, furries are ⅔ LGBT.
There’s research on that. Thanks, Canadian goverment.
Edit: ITT: Someone spends 10 fucking hours responding to every single reply thats even remotely empathetic towards furries, while being a wedge-issue little shit. This is so sad.
Furry or not; we are stronger together.
That can be true at the same time as “being a furry doesn’t make you an at risk minority”
I see a huge potential for them to become an at risk minority. Why shouldn’t I defend a group that I think is innocent and under threat? I don’t want them to be next. Bullying of groups of people who do no harm, just want to express themselves in their own way, makes me sick.
Because being a furry is a hobby, engaging in a hobby doesn’t make you a minority.
No matter what happens, you can always stop looking at cartoon animals on the internet, can’t really stop being gay or trans.
This reads to me a lot like “I don’t care what they do in their bedroom, but why do they have to be that way in public?”
Are we gatekeeping being rejected now?
Let’s not tolerate narrowing the spectrum of ways people can enjoy their lives. That’s what totalitarian regimes do. They prohibit this and prohibit that, and in the end, you are only allowed to watch the approved movies, listen to the approved music and wear the approved clothes. You can stop expressing yourself, you can stop engaging in your hobbies, you can stop living the way you want to live, you can survive. But it sucks all happiness from your life.
Why? If someone’s identity as a furry is as much a part of them as your identity as gay, or for that matter, Marcus’ identity as black, isn’t it similar enough a violation that society deems you can’t be that and be a full equal?
This, to me, is the problem. Mystique shouldn’t have to hide her mutant status even though she could.
Tell me you don’t know queer subcultures without telling me you don’t know queer subcultures. Would you like to complain about drag shows while you’re at it? I hear it is very in vogue at the moment.
While furries aren’t a marginalized group, 99% of furry hate is a proxy for queerphobia and ableism, the criticisms are almost 1:1 with the shit those same people say about queer and autistic folk.
SFW furry? There’s kinda no such thing.
If it’s identifiably furry then it tells me something about you and your sexual preferences that I didn’t want to know. The same if you had a Bad Dragon sticker or an Ahegao sweatshirt. Just because it doesn’t have explicit nudity doesn’t mean it’s not sexual and doesn’t mean it’s appropriate.
Y’all want to do things anonymously on the internet, great. Y’all want to have conferences or get together in spaces that support that, also great. You should absolutely have those spaces. But so many furries that I’ve met overshare about it. Don’t use your fursona as your work profile pic. Don’t tell me you’re a furry when I didn’t ask anything remotely related. Don’t openly thirst over Judy Hopps. Ain’t nobody going around saying “I like tentacles and I’m proud of it” - take a note.
What about people proudly showing things like this: 🏳️🌈
Another day, another sensationalization of the sexual aspects of a queer subcultures. If it’s not the “inherent sexualization of discussing gay people”, or trans people as "autogynephillia and autoandrophillia’, it’s furries or kink at pride. It’s really disheartening hearing the same tools of oppression being deployed over and over again.
How am I oppressing these people?
Perhaps you might examine the various way in which queer people in general have been marginalized by labelling all their activities as obscene and sexual. For example, you might take the example of teachers in Florida who are in a same-sex marriage being prohibited from mentioning their marriage lest they be sanctioned for sexual content, while teachers in straight marriages were under no such restrictions. Similarly, the existence of queer people itself has been deemed so sexual by some that even mentioning to a child who is struggling with their identity that queer people exist has been called–in all absence of reason–child abuse.
If you can take those example, and then consider that your perspective of furries, much like homo- and transphobes’ perspective of queer people, is skewed to view it as entirely sexual despite all the parts that aren’t and classify the parts that would be normal sexuality in any other subgroup as deviant. This, as you might be able to deduce, can be quite restrictive of those people’s “allowed” place in society.
I know multiple furries personally who are asexual. You are speaking out your ass and fetishizing furries out of your own sexual repression.
Asexual people can and do still use porn for sexual gratification. Just like how some Asexual people still have sex.
Hm, does that argument ring hollow to you? Maybe because you were trying to make a point about the group and not every individual in it?
I’m speaking from my own experience which has been that in 6/6 cases when I’ve learned that someone was a furry the conversation quickly turned towards the topic of furry porn, which I did not want to discuss.
You know what they say about personal experiences pertaining to a group. It’s 100% translatable to the entire group. Yup. That’s what they say. Even so far to remove the asexual from a furry because I guess being a furry is so sexual that it must trump sexuality.
Wild take. Bonkers even.
You’re wilfully misinterpreting me.
You are maliciously attacking a largely queer community with accusations of sexual deviancy in a way that has been historically used to demean queer folk in general. You are hyper focused on that sexual aspect to the point that you believe it to be all they are to the extent to claim asexual furries compromise their sexuality in the face of the pure sexyness of the furry community. I am not willfully misinterpreting you. I am interpreting you through a lense that you find unfavorable.
SFW furry? There’s kinda no such thing.
You realize that you’re the one sexualizing them, right?
There absolutely are people who have a fursona or participate in the fandom in completely SFW ways. A fursona tells you exactly nothing about their sexual preferences. Honestly you sound exactly like homophobes insisting that two boys holding hands is obscene. Just because you equate a fursona with sex doesn’t mean that every furry thinks the same way.
Your point comparing furry haters to homophobes struck true to me. I don’t know much about furries, but I live in the home of anthrocon and the annual furry parade is one of the most wholesome things this city has. Families and kids love to see all the costumes, and furries are some of the nicest folks I’ve met. I’m always a bit taken aback when people call them perverts - it seems like a harmless hobby to me.
From Wikipedia:
Another survey at a furry convention in 2013 found that 96.3% of male furry respondents reported viewing furry pornography, compared with 78.3% of females.
I don’t have an issue with gay people. I don’t have an issue with anybody existing or being who they are. I have an issue with repeatedly learning sexual things I didn’t want to know about people, which has happened multiple times with furries specifically. Maybe I’ve been unlucky or something, but my experience has been that furries far more than other groups overshare and don’t respect reasonable boundaries around this.
People who read a lot of books often enjoy the occasional smut. People who watch anime are probably more likely to watch hentai. It’s not really surprising that people’s passions and hobbies leak into their choice of pornography.
There’s some self selecting bias there, going to a ‘furry convention’ is a rather steeper level of engagement than just, say, looking at a webcomic featuring art like this mascot here.
Those more hard core sexual furries scare off casual furries as well as folks a bit timid about being associated with the most… Forthcoming portion of the fandom.
It’s rough on some as they want to engage without sexual interest in the aesthetic, but as a result get grouped in with those with a sexual interest. They want to identify as something, and furry is closest, but they aren’t into the sexual facet and struggle with that broad association.
What in the useless statistics Batman? So because a large percentage of people who identify as furries have viewed (not actively view, not prefer, quite simply have viewed) furry pornography, the entire furry community must be a sex thing? That misses more than a few possibilities. Fuck, I’ve seen gay porn, and I’m not gay. As far as “learning something sexual about someone”, unless you’re calling learning someone has a fursona learning something sexual about them, this whole thing is a non-sequiter based entirely on anecdotal experience.
Bizarrely, I had never heard of this before, and I am Australian. So maybe it was released, but maybe quietly swept under the rug?
Weird. A real thing that somehow made it through every level… This is truly a remarkable example of the Swiss cheese model in action.
I give you, an eBay listing: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/314945286881
Why would it be a hazard or remarkable or even something special that it “made through”… It’s just a mascot, and a good one as well
Because it’s very very obviously a fursona
… and?
Why would that be a hazard or remarkable or even something special that it “made through”… It’s just a (furry) mascot, and a good one as well
That’s not something that’s generally appropriate for a government to post, or anyone in a professional setting.
Because…? In what way is a fursona not “aPpRoPrIaTe”? That literally just describes half of all mascots, furry is essentially just an antropomorphic animal. Again, you haven’t given any real reason why there would be anything wrong with this, at all.
Because a furry is a sexual fetish/kink and a mascot is not typically a fetish or kink.
Hey, sorry for the really late answer lol; I was busy and then forgot about it. But I hope that you’ll still see / read this.
Because that’s actually just a misconception and not true. Being a furry is nothing inherently sexual.
I even know quite some furries that are asexual and do nothing sexual or kinky in any way. Of course there are furries that also see it as something sexual, but that’s just a part of it. I think you can compare it to anime. Anime is just an art form that many people find interesting and like. And yes, there is hentai, yaoi, etc. because you can sexualize anime, and some people like sexual animes, but that doesn’t make the concept of a anime itself sexual.Being a furry is primarily just liking anthropomorphic animals and the art that contains them. Furries like stuff like Zootopia or Robin Hood (Disney), The Fantastic Mr. Fox or Puss in Boots. Many furries like to draw art of their own anthropomorphic version, their fursona, something like the image above. And some furries have fursuits in which they can feel more liberated as their persona they identify with. In the city here, there is a public fursuit walk once a month where hundreds of furries walk in fursuits through the city. None of that is sexual whatsoever; they’re just people that like the concept and art of anthropomorphic animals.
I got reminded of this because I’m currently on the university fair (of my uni) with my official university furry group (I’m a member). And that is nothing sexual either. We’re just some nice people that chill here, some wear ears or tail (one even a full fursuit) and we just like anthropomorphic animals and find them interesting.
You’re a furry if you like anthros, like media of them (like movies) or like to draw them by yourself, maybe make an own character. And yes, some also like this in a sexual way, like you can sexualise everything that’s part of your life, and any art style. But it’s really just wrong to say being a furry is primarily something sexual, because it’s primarily just liking this kind of art, like anime fans are primarily fans of such an art style and liking anime itself is not a fetish either. There is nothing inherently sexual or bad or inappropriate about furries.
What’s wrong with having a furry mascot exactly? I mean the Japanese Air force had a furry mascot for one of their bases, not only is he a furry but also a femboy. His name is Omaneko (おまねこ)
Omaneko images
not only is he a furry but also a femboy
Are you sure it isn’t the navy?
Japanese Air Self Defense Force (JASDF)
Yeah I’m sure about that.
I’m no scholar, but I believe when it’s an anime furry you call it kemono
I love him 😍
He is very cute.
Perhaps someone can help me understand the difference between an anthropromorphic animal mascot (which as a tale as old as time) and a furry? When does one cease to be one and becomes another?
There are animal mascots all the time in sports. Why is that not weird, but it’s weird to have a sporty animal mascot for coins?
For me it tends to be realism vs exaggerated qualities? I think these look like furry characters because they have realistic body proportions, structure, and expressions despite the animal faces and features vs something like Mickey Mouse or Sonic the Hedgehog. This allows someone to more easily see in them the physical features humans find attractive, even a lot of subtle ones considering these characters aren’t sexualized in their official art. It’s not perfect and obviously there are people who have cartoonish fursona’s and there’s cartoonish furry porn out there, but it’s a basic observation
