The whole furry thing is creepy as hell. It's weird. Wanting to have sex with anthropomorphized animals is not a thing that should be normalized.
And it's even creepier when they add things like "kitten" or showing anthropomorphized animal kids.
And thank you to Unruffled [they/them] / Flatworm7591 @lemmy.dbzer0.com for this sane and reasonable response.
And thanks to recursive_recursion who seems to be an alt of Flatworm for continuing that sane and reasonable response. Note that in over 1,400 comments here I've never once said a single word against trans people. Not once.
It really bothers me when people lie about racism. So many people really do experience it so much in life, and lying using false racism accusations as a sword and shield to make other people look bad and make themselves look like the victim is demeaning to every real instance people suffer.
Hopefully one day this person realizes that lying about transphobia for the same reasons does the same thing.
I don’t mind what consenting adults do in their bedroom.
I very much mind when there’s a furries-day-out and they’re encouraging children to hug them for pictures and the like. I don’t know who is behind the mask and that sets off alarm bells for me.
It was odd to go to the zoo and see dozens of furries enjoying watching the caged animals.
Hi - I've got, not a fursuit per se, but a full-body costume that I wear to basically any event where it's appropriate to do so. It is very common for parents to come and ask to take their kids' pictures with me, not the other way around. I have in fact never approached anyone looking to have a picture taken, but kids still come interact with me - with their parents present - all the time.
You can certainly make the argument that that's irresponsible on the parents' behalf because, asd you note, nobody can tell who I am, but blaming furries for that is just wild.
Re: the zoo, furries tend, generally speaking, to be very pro-animal rights. Furries as a whole donate a lot of money to animal-benefiting charities and whatnot. (Most furry conventions include fundraising for some charity or another.) Furries also just tend to enjoy animals in general, and zoos tend to be the easiest place to go to see non-domesticated animals, so I'm not sure why you'd be surprised to see furries there.
I’m relaying an experience I’ve personally had with furries inviting children to take pictures with them while we were at the zoo.
I live in an area where it’s pretty common for furry events or meetups to happen at a regular occurrence.
It’s not that I’m surprised furries congregate at zoos. It’s that the sexualization of animals in the community feels weird to me to see them observing caged animals.
I grew up with deviantart around and the furry community has always presented as incredibly sexualized in my experience. It’s hard to separate that out these days.
There's a pretty big divide between sexualizing animals and sexually explicit art of anthropomorphic characters. I think you'll find that furries, as a whole, tend to be incredibly averse to the sexualization of actual animals, and to people who do so.
It's hard to see that divide outside of furry circles is more my point.
I don't say anything or try to ruin their fun if I see furries out and about, just to be clear. It raises some questions internally because of how the furry world has been presented to me.
How has it been presented to you, and by whom? If you're getting your information from sources intending to be detractors, then, sure, I can understand your viewpoint. If you're getting your information from furries who actually participate in the community, I don't understand your perspective at all.
I'm an older millennial that has been involved in queer and kink communities for decades. This is what I've gleaned from being terminally online and living in an area that is very popular for furries.
I'm not in furry circles because I am not a furry. But that's also why I've been asking sincere questions through this thread to learn. I'm always open to learning more about different cultures. The only thing that gives me pause about any kink or fetish or community is the involving others in kink without their consent.
Well, just scrolling through social spaces on the internet shows many sexualized images of anthropomorphized animals. That's the thing most people are going to see. It's not like I've been reading and buying in to anti-furry propaganda, the sexualization is something anyone who spends too much time online is going to run into constantly.
If your main exposure was deviantart as you said above, a website specifically tailored to nsfw art..... Thats like saying your only experience with trans people is from pornhub.... Your looking at the overtly sexualized part of the life not the day to day.
Let's be clear here - that was my first exposure to the furry community. Not my main exposure.
When I was first on deviantart, it was decidedly not specifically tailored to NSFW art. It hosted a LOT of SFW art. This was 20+ years ago.
Also the contraction of "you are" is "you're", just a heads up.
Shes saying she saw them at the zoo though. That, is.. certainly a choice no?
Sorry, are you implying that... they were at the zoo for sexual gratification...?
I know furries get really offended by this, so please keep an open mind here-
The majority of furry anything that I've seen over decades of being online and in queer and kink communities have been sexual. So yes, I wouldn't be surprised if some furries that go to the zoo are doing so with some sort of sexual desire in mind. The entirety of the community started as a kink or fetish as far as I can tell. I'm happy to stand corrected on this though.
So, this is a website dedicated to the results of a fairly large-scale survey of furries covering all kinds of topics, conducted by a couple scientists. It's generally considered to be a fairly accurate cross-section of the demographics represented.
This is specifically the section related to porn, and kind of addresses exactly what you're describing.
Rather than trying to influence you further, I'll just let you read through that if you want to and draw your own conclusions, but I'd be happy to discuss it with you once you have, if you wish.
Thank you so much for the sources! I love a good survey :)
It's really evolved beyond that, at least from what I can tell. I feel like being a furry is just a lifestyle at this point. It's not all about sexual aspects anymore, it's become a culture and an identity. You just don't really tend to see that aspect from the outside very often, or when people do they just assume it's still a sex thing.