this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
719 points (98.0% liked)
196
16624 readers
3699 users here now
Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
Sorry, furries are weird and will continue to be weird. Not the people who watch furry porn or cosplay furries, but those that actually think their furries and act that lifestyle, or the new buzzword, "identify" as such. It is cringe and indicative of mental health issues.
Yeah! You know what else is weird? You. For picking out a tiny subset of an already tiny community and picking on it like it is at all the norm. I can rip out a million tiny subgroups of groups and say "group" is and always will be weird because of "insert small subgroup here".
It's like people who say "I don't like abortion because it shouldn't be used as a birth control" like bokay, no one was doing that. Why are you fucking mentioning it?
Fine, I'll rephrase: Furries that think they're actually furries, identify as furries or actively take part in furry fantasies that are aside from primarily sexual and stray into more representative roles are weird and will forever be weird.
STOP NORMALIZING MENTAL ILLNESSES!
Mental illness is normal in 2024, especially in the United States, which continues to go though a mental illness epidemic. The mental health sector of the world is looking at the results of the 2024 general election and noting the corellation not just of social and family dysfunction but intergenerational mental illness handed down through abuse and isolation, as a possible factor in the election results elevating a known threat to US democratic features to President of the United States.
While there may be correlation between mental illness and furry identity (I haven't seen any data based assertion this is true) that still would not indicate causality. Interest in TTRPGs correlates since gaming can serve to aleviate symptoms, distract from trauma, and give people with social deficiencies a mechanism by which to express themselves safely.
Besides, there is a notable similarity when calling furry identity a mental illness is juxtaposed to the classic assumtion that LGBT+ identities were indicative of mental illness.
That said, some of us are actually diagnosed and contend with symptoms like suicidality and interpersonal dysfunction, so please don't use mental illness as a subject of derision or contempt. We aren't 1980s era slasher antagonists.
Fair enough, you may have misunderstood my initial statement. I will once again clarify. I meant to say to stop validating abnormal behaviours that are likely mental illnesses. Now, you can make the claim that if someone wants to act like a furry even though it might be a mental illness, then let them be. But i know that if i ever had a child that exhibited these tendencies, i would want them to seek help for it, because it is NOT NORMAL - at least in my opinion.
Also, I don't mean to say that there's a mental illness necessarily causing these tendencies, rather it is the fact that these furry tendencies - the ones that I've described - are in and of themselves a mental illness.
It's entirely possible that i am wrong, and that it is not a mental illness, but i would bet big money that it is one.
Um, a mental illness is defined by being dysfunctional to the patient (and doing things that are odd enough that society throws rocks at them doesn't count). So if the patient is spending her rent money on furry comics, or is consuming furry media to the neglect of food and sleep, you might have an argument that it's a mental illness. (And then, in the 2010s, the psychiatric community has been having to consider that exposure to toxic circumstances: overmonitoring at work environments, bad bosses, not earning a living wage, excess rent, may be factors that drive dysfunction externally, figuring more largely in mental illness than internal factors like heredity. But that is bleeding edge still.)
But just a fanatic obsession of cute furry anthros, even if it is extreme, is not a mental illness, in exactly the same way that a man who is sexually and romantically attracted to other men is not a mental illness. Or if we want to get Victorian about it, exactly the same way a woman who refuses to accept her limited place in society is not a mental illness.
So I can assure you from here, the way mental illnesses have been defined since the 1990s, being a furry is not a mental illness.
Fair enough. It is a siiiiiiickneeeeeeess. Of the highest ordaaa.
How about you chill?
Your rephrase is a double down on your own absolute inability to tell fact from fiction. Stop being weird dude. Make a furry friend and talk to a human being Bout this shit rather than just letting your sexual fantasies about them go wild
Sexual fantasies about furries🤨? Me? I really don't know where you got this assumption from. I don't discriminate against furries nor would i hesitate to talk to one. It doesn't still change the fact that the specific furry I'm referring to's behaviour is weird, and probably indicative of a mental illness.
I rest my case
So you have never talked to a furry and you are just throwing wild weird sexual fantasies you made up at them? And you are confused why I am saying you have weird sexual fantasies about furries? My brother in Christ, you made up a sexual fantasy about furries and now your horny posting on main about how weird they are.
Woah wtf is this😂. Clearly you're uninterested in discourse, and are just resorting to throwing out wrong assumptions about me. Good luck man