Why the hatred for furries? (aka: Can't we all just get along?)

In My Humble Opinion
1

I recently had an online conversation with a friend I’ve known for a long time. He is very much of the left-wing liberal ‘can’t we all just get along ilk’ and a tireless crusader against all the ‘isms’, racism, sexism, presbyterianism (j/k) and for some reason the subject of furries came up. I was genuinely taken aback at the bile and vitriol that spewed forth, it was almost as if all his pent-up hatred and anger had found its one socially acceptable and legitimate outlet, because, hey everyone hates furries right? (or at least dislikes them or thinks they’re weird beyond comprehension)

So of course I said that his hatred was indictive of a deep-seated fascination and need towards the subject of his loathing, like the whole ‘homophobes are repressing their homosexuality’ thing. Naturally this tipped him completely over the edge, which is always fun.

Anyway as for myself I have no strong feelings on the subject either way, it is a distinctly odd thing to be interested in but I consider most sports to be an odd thing to be interested in as well, if more socially acceptable.

Just for a little background and in the interests of full disclosure, I was in my mid-teens before I had internet access and while looking for science-fiction stumbled across series of stories called The Winds of Change where by some plot twist which I can’t recall everyone in the world finds themselves changing species and a lot of people gaining superpowers at the same time.

I didn’t think much about it at the time and only later did I realise I’d been exposed to the horror that is furryness, and well, thought it was kind of fun, but that’s about as far as my interest went. Initially I just thought it was a science-fiction story-world with a particularly odd premise.

In my Mad Max style wanderings of the far-reaches of the internet wastelands I’ve seen some furry art that I thought was pretty cool and well done, and many self-confessed furry fans I’ve chatted to come across as interesting and creative people. (also plenty of loonies taking the whole thing a bit too seriously, but then every aspect of life has those)

Basically I don’t really understand why the subject arouses such passions in people, its strange but harmless in my opinion.

I get the impression the whole furry thing gets such a bad rep because its being judged by its most extreme elements (because they’re attention whores and the media is to an increasingly large extent nothing more than a modern day freakshow and likes to focus on those aspects), and judging anything by the extremes is going to give the rest a bad reputation.

I have to admit I have a soft spot for furries probably because they’re so unfairly maligned and misunderstood. Its just unfortunate that for most people ‘furry’ seems to mean ‘animal-porn obsessed weirdo with an obsession periously close to beastiality’.

Although as a bonus I’m now aware of my friends ‘nuclear release’ button if I’m ever bored and require entertainment… :smiley:

2

Really? I think most of the world either has no knowledge of their existence, or is totally ambivalent about them.

3

I never noticed widespread hatred of furries or that they prompt particularly strong feelings. I do notice a widespread belief among the relatively few that have even heard of such a thing that they are hilarious.

However IMHO the Plushies/plushophiles - the people who have sex with stuffed animals – are much more hilarious.

4

You guys may not have heard of the hatred against furries. And it’s true that the vast majority of the world is completely unaware of them. But they’re out there. And they need to be purged with fire. Every last one of them. The furries I mean.

5

I have some sympathy for furries and especially plushies, since they get so much flak on the internet (from places like Something Awful and Fark.) I don’t have any negative reaction to them. It’s so harmless, I don’t understand why people feel the need to dump on them.

6

Well, according to this chartFurries are at the very bottom of the pile.

As to why, I cannot say, but it’s certainly a Thing.

7

Because they’re harmless. And because some of them are weirdos. They’re who internet losers like to take a shit on to feel better about themselves.

If someone viciously hates furries, there’s also good odds they hang out on 4chan.

8

It’s the “… and the office boy kicked the cat” thing.

9

I don’t hate furries in general, but I find the “fantasy’s better with playable animals!” ones to be very annoying. That goes both for the ones that want to play an anthromorphic or sentient animal in D&D and the ones that think their choice of anthromorphic animal is special enough to deserve a costly new product line for a tabletop wargame.

10

You know, the problem with condemning a group for having a faction that likes porn about its area of interest is that pretty much condemns everybody. Religion? There’s porn with angels & demons, not to mention Catholic Schoolgirl porn. Business? Well, there’s sex-in-the-office porn. Engineer or mechanic? There’s porn with that theme. You like to read or watch movies & TV? There’s vast amounts of porn fanfiction. Rule 34.

11

I’ve seen more contempt and ridicule than hatred, but, yeah, there’s a lot of negativity.

Why? I can only theorize.

There are furries who like to dress up and play pretend on special occasions, and that’s as far as it goes with them. I think if it were just that, all anyone would have is a cocked eyebrow and an “oooookay”. It’s just a rather unusual fetish that most of us don’t get.

Then, there are the furries who make it a complete lifestyle - wear costumes anywhere they can get away with it, add prosthetic teeth or claws, get tattoos, and develop an entire persona with a back history, created world, clan affiliations and so on. They can be found at Ren Faires and conventions and any place they might not stick out too much, and they’ve either lost the ability or decided not to turn it off when dealing with non-furries. It’s difficult to form a relationship based on mutual respect with someone who’s abdicated “real life” in order to engage in a kind of perpetual play-land. Yes, there are a lot of other folks who do the same with different genre - Star Trek, science fiction, guns, political movements - but they can usually blend in visually, and their consuming devotion doesn’t necessarily become apparent until they open their mouths.

And then, there are the furries who don’t just abdicate involvement in normal real life, they completely reject it. They don’t just invent a persona, they believe it. Sometimes, it’s stated as “I look human on the outside, but inside, I’m actually a zebra fairy princess”, other times as a “in this life, I’m human, but my last life, I was a zebra fairy princess, and I’m just much more comfortable as that.” I’ve heard one complain that God had played a cruel trick on her, putting her in the wrong body. She was supposed to have been a cat-dolphin-something instead.

I don’t want to be judgmental. Og knows my own inner landscape can’t withstand much scrutiny. But when someone gets that far away from the middle of the “normal” bell curve, they tend to evoke judgment, disgust, and hostility. Their earnestness actually works against them in this case. We can tolerate someone being silly, even join in with them. This, however, is not silly. Many people would denounce it as sick, and the rest of us are profoundly uncomfortable around it.

I suspect that in some of the extreme versions, there may be a type of mental illness - an inability to deal with the vicissitudes of regular life, an unwillingness to be “normal” or “average”, a compulsion to escape into a fantasy world where not only is everything okay, but everything is sparkles and rainbows and delightful games where there’s never any pain or sorrow. There’s also just enough fad there that it’s not hard to imagine this entire culture evaporating in twenty years and the participants moving to something else that exists on the fringe, keeps them isolated from regular society, and gives them the opportunity to ignore who they really are so they can be someone or something else that doesn’t really exist.

This is sheer speculation on my part, only that. It’s certainly not meant to impugn anyone within the furry culture. YMMV, not valid in certain states of mind, no cash value, blah blah blah.

12

Well, yes and no. We’ve already seen a little of that when Avatar came around and people got all obsessed over being Na’vi.

But I feel safe in saying that a preference for anthropomorphized intelligent animals has existed at least since Disney and Warner Brothers started making cartoons, if not earlier. I can’t imagine there weren’t at least some people for whom Mickey, Donald, Daffy, Bugs, and the rest resonated strongly, whether they merely liked the aesthetics or felt it touched something in their own identity. It’s just that, as with so many other things, it never found an outlet until the internet allowed everyone to anonymously spill all their secrets out where everyone could see them.

Anthropomorphism and people who enjoy it, even to an unhealthy degree, are probably going to exist for a long time. Whether or not the communities will is probably another matter.

13

Yup. What phouka said. You know how the Jack Chick tracts and the scare-of-the-month books and movies said that D&D will make your children believe they can cast spells and they’ll go insane? I’ve never met anyone who actually believed in D&D as a real thing. Oh, I’m sure they exist, but I’ve known tons of gamers, been a gamer myself on and off since grade school, and never met online or IRL someone who thought it was Real.

I’ve online-met furries who believed they actually were animal spirits and would get fucking offended if you suggested that it was symbolic of their personality or anything other than real and they were Special Snowflakes as a result.

I knew IRL one guy (who was a gamer, and other than being a sore loser was not deluded regarding D&D) who believed he was actually a female animal spirit, and would roleplay furry sex (including eventual pregnancy and giving birth) online and on the phone with another man. He denied he was gay even though he said he loved that guy so much and wanted to be with him IRL, because he did have a girlfriend - one with not only moderate learning disabilities and an equivalent “mental age” that was somewhere IIRC around barely pubescent (though an adult in actual age) but who was also physically violent and would throw things or hit him when they argued. And yes, they were having sex. And her parents knew and approved. His didn’t approve. I know this stuff about this guy because he tells people, and I don’t mean in an anonymous or online “I’m just raising awareness about this harmless fetish” fashion, I mean to friends of his in a “I am so socially awkward and inappropriate that this is the only girl who’s looked twice at me” fashion. (I met him via D&D, in college. He was friends since high school or so with the mutual friend who introduced us, and who found himself powerless to stop the train wreck this guy’s life turned into.)

So, yeah - sorry to the sane, just-having-fun furries out there, but holy shit, there are some insane and outspoken “ambassadors” of various forms of the lifestyle/fetish/preference.

14

Only ever heard of furries during that CSI episode. Apparently they liked to fuck each other while wearing animal costumes.

15

When the thing that you find most sexually appealing in the world isn’t even human, and in fact does not actually exist, I think there’s a legitimate case to be made that you might have something wrong with you. And even if there isn’t, well, I’m sorry but a world where it’s wrong to mock somebody because they fantasize about being an anthropomorphic skunk getting spit-roasted by a fox and a dolphin isn’t a world I want to live in.

16

They came for my Beavers and I didn’t complain because I didn’t chew wood…
They came for Kitty princesses, and I didn’t complain because I wasn’t a pussy…
Then they came for me. And there was no one left in the barnyard to oink and moo and baa.

17

I disagree. They aren’t unfairly misunderstood, because there’s not much to ‘misunderstand’ about goofballs who get off dressing up in animal costumes.

And they aren’t unfairly maligned, because… there’s nothing unfair about it.

18

They’re only slightly less creepy than people with scat fetishes.

Edit: I cannot stop laughing at this description, so I decided to quote for truth.

19

Probably because it seems only a few steps away from beastiality? Not saying that it is or it isn’t, but I can see how it would be viewed that way.

20

No, no we can’t.

People will find a reason to dislike/hate others. Always.
As the big reasons (race, religion,..) become less socially acceptable, we will find new ones. And OG forbid there is some difficulty (recession, terrorist attack, Yellowstone erupting,…), we will blame someone for it or the victims of it.

Furries are just one group on a looong list of things to hate people for.