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.
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.
The weird part comes from a lot of people not realizing it's a sexual thing. Adults and kids both. It was only relatively recently I've heard of people wearing those suits for other things. That seems weird too, honestly. It would be like if people started wearing gimp outfits to family events and having parents ask if their kids can get a photo with them.
Even if not all people in gimp outfits are wearing them for sexual reasons, it's still a thing that's part of a sexual fetish. People starting to wear them to family events because kids who don't understand that think it looks neat would be creepy.
Cakes are part of a sexual fetish; does that make all cakes weird? Should we not have them in public, or at kids' birthdays? The fact that that isn't their primary function probably suggests that no, they're fine.
But people aren't wearing cakes and interacting with people that are unsuspecting that it is a fetish.
In my experience it seems like the furry thing was heavily to primarily sexually focused from the start. That's why I compared it to gimp suits, not to cake.
Sure, and you've been given the wrong impression. Much as with anything humans are involved with, it's been sexualized in some segments - I know people who want to fuck mining equipment - but that isn't at all representative of wthe whole subculture. You're only seeing the "weird sex pervert" thing because that's an easy way to attack a group (look at how trans people are being presented), not because that's an accurate representation of the group given to you by well-informed authorities on the subject. It's unfortunately the effects of pretty straightforward bigotry.
I'm in my late 40s and have been an internet nerd since chatting on usenet before ICQ was a thing.. I've watched the fandom grow. It's difficult to take someone saying the sex part isn't sort of a big deal when it's a community that seems to have mostly spread online and the sexualization has always been front and center. These days scrolling Reddit, Bluesky, and many other places online you're pretty much guaranteed to see images of sexualized anthropomorphized animals.
We are open about sex, however that does not mean the fandom is centered on sex we just don't avoid it.
You mean to say that there's porn on the internet? Dear god, someone fetch me my clutching pearls! And they're going so far as to sexualize women, too?!? Clearly, that must mean everyone out there, wearing human clothes, attending human events with children, they must be doing it because they're all sex perverts who only want to trick the other humans into sexy sexing times! Disgusting!
The ones wearing their lingerie, gimp suits, strap-ons, and other items they use as part of their private sexual life just might be.
Yeah, and if you see a furry wearing a yiffing suit you might have a point. But I will bet all my money and a kidney that you have never, ever seen that in public. But you've declared, without evidence, that all fursuits are fetishwear, and that's how you're justifying your own behavior to yourself. Some people get turned on by jeans, or as someone else said wear buttplugs in public - and yet if you went around treating everyone like they were doing that, you'd be treated like a complete creep.
Again, the internet is full of sexualized furry images. The bulk of the people interested didn't come to it from normal daily offline activities. Likewise the bulk of the images of people wearing gimp suits on the internet are sexualized, because it's another thing used for fetish sex.
I don't feel a need to know that a specific gimp suit is used for fetish sex to know that it's creepy and weird for groups of people to be walking around in them in public.
Again, the internet is full of photos of gay men fucking, and those are extremely popular online. Most people's introduction to sex in general is through porn, and especially queer sex. But, if you see two men holding hands in public and your immediate reaction is to point out how you know they're being used for gay sex, and you don't like it because it's "creepy" and "weird" (i.e. you aren't into it), you'd be an asshole.
The extrapolation to absurdity is valid here. You've decided, without evidence, that fursuits == fetishwear. Your argument is only even slightly valid if that's true, and unfortunately as you have been repeatedly told, it's just not.
Bud, anyone who spends a lot of time on the internet is going to see an awful lot of images of sexualized anthropomorphized animals. It's not me extrapolating. Unlike pictures of gay men fucking it's not a thing you need to go to a specific type of site or forum to see. It's the impression being put out there. I'm not the one putting that art all over the place. I'm simply being honest at the impression most people likely have of it.
If you walk in to any public place with a group of adults and ask them what they think about furries I bet it will be something about sex and being creepy. It's not something I'm pulling out of my ass here. Literally any time I've been out in public with people and that topic somehow came up it was universally concluded to be creepy and weird.
Clearly you're extremely defensive of it and don't like my being honest. Ok. You don't have to talk to me. Enjoy your life.
I'm sorry, are you serious?
You scroll down /r/all or something and see tons of pictures of gay men fucking? Because I don't. Pictures of sexualized anthropomorphized animals, however, I see fairly often.
Uh. Yeah dude, I do. There's a fuckload of queer content on there, and you for SURE do not need to go to "a specific type of site or forum to find". This entire argument is based on your anecdotal experience and wow, turns out that's not exactly representative of reality, lmao.
It would be a bit difficult for me to form my personal opinions based on your life experience instead of my own.
(Ooo, cute false dichotomy!)
Anyways yes, that's why anecdotes really shouldn't be used to justify hate.
No false dichotomy, just the only way people can form opinions.
"people can only form opinions is through experiences" is not the same thing as "anecdotal evidence"
(edit: formatting oopsie)
I'm tired of bickering with you. You don't have to agree with my opinion. I don't care how you feel about it.
Sure! Unfortunately I don't get the luxury of running away from this, since your opinion is that you're allowed to hate me for offenses you've completely made up.
To me a sexual attraction to animals is much the same as a sexual attraction to children. It's not a thing that should be celebrated. Actually having sex with either of them is wrong. Somehow the internet in general has seemingly decided that people attracted to children who never act on it are still monsters who should die, but people attracted to animals are totally fine and it's alright to plaster that art everywhere and show up in costume in public.
It's creepy and weird. I'm not advocating for furries to be sent to concentration camps or killed, but I do think they should have a bit of tact and understand that the constant sexualization of animals in their art is going to make people think of that when they see the costumes so perhaps it's not something to do in public.
Being sexually attracted to animals isn't normal. Being sexually attracted to imaginary creatures isn't also abnormal. Being honest about that isn't being racist or sexist or homophobic. It's just being honest. People who want to have sex with imaginary creatures or toasters or clouds aren't a protected class.
You need to let go of the idea that all furries are sexually attracted to animals, and only wear fursuits for sexual reasons. It's both wrong, and it's making you spit out the kind of gauche rhetoric that even 4chan has moved on from. Furries don't all want to fuck animals - and the existence of porn does not describe the motivations of the group the porn is aimed at. If that were true, no stepsister in the world would ever be safe, and no black men would be more than a walking sex drive.
You're not racist or bigoted towards gay people, but you are using the exact same chains of reasoning that racists and bigots use to justify their racist bigotry. You can dislike furry porn all you want, and that's fine - really, nobody is going to hold that against you. But before you fall further down this chain of justifying your hate for an extremely queer-heavy group, you need to separate your distaste for the porn from the reality that the furry community is incredibly vast, on the whole overwhelmingly supportive and beyond everything a diverse group people, and that treating them as one sex-obsessed monolithic group of creepy weirdos is doing them and yourself as a decent human being a serious disservice.
Given that the bulk of the art people who don't look in to furry things at all run across on the internet is sexualized, it seems a good amount do. And the defense of "we don't all want to fuck animals" almost made me lose control of my bladder from laughing.
I really don't care if it's not all sex. Wearing animal suits and wanting to pretend to be imaginary creatures is also weird and creepy. All of it is weird and creepy.
You keep comparing things to racism and discrimination, but I'm very sure there are people in the world who do things you find to be weird and creepy too. That isn't discrimination. People are allowed to have opinions you don't agree with or like. The entire furry thing is weird and creepy. Nothing is ever going to make me think it's anything else. I'm sure some or even most of the people are decent people, but the thing they do is weird and should not be normalized.
I don't care if that opinion makes you think I lose credibility and am no longer a good person. You're allowed to have your own opinions. You can have a hard drive full of furry porn and closets full of animal sex suits, or just enjoy spending your time pretending you're a wolf-person because it's easier than dealing with reality. I can say that's weird and creepy.
People have opinions that not all people agree with. If they didn't there would be nothing to ever post in a community like this. I'm done with this conversation. You can tell yourself I'm running away to cry if that makes you feel better.
You're acting like a petty, lying child and rolling your eyes at me? I've never said a word against trans anything. Is this Lemmy? Post an opinion some random person doesn't like and they do this childish shit? I have over 1,400 comments and not a single one of them says a single word against trans people. But it makes a convenient lie for you to ban someone from every community you can, because it makes them sound bad.
Spaces on lemmy are protected quite fiercely, and as the communities are quite close-knit, that protection can have a far-reaching impact. There's no all-high set of admins you can appeal to, which benefits us in that we can have incredibly diverse sets of opinions, but at the cost of ensuring that what you say should be something you truly are committed to. As the man said, "I believe in freedom. Not many people do, although they will, of course, protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based."
This is the third time you've told me you're done with this conversation, and yes, I am indeed aware that it's because you've realized the inherent hypocrisy of your argument and are attempting to save face by doubling down and then storming off. That's very common behavior, and I'll happily take the win for decent human behavior, even if that comes in the form of a transparently patronizing concession that you've saved face. So in that spirit: Well done! You've bested me! Congratulations!