I am pretty open minded and liberal but WTH is this about? What is the appeal? I really don’t understand it…especially as a fetish? What is sexual about this?
Howdy. I am a published furry author, both in prose fiction and comic books.
Furry can have a sublimated sexual appeal, simply by dint of the ambiguity of nudity. If a cat-girl has fur overall, like a shaggy dog or long-haired cat, is she “naked?” Or not? The ambiguity is enticing.
Another appeal is the innocence, the simplicity, the openness and honesty of many animals. Your dog will never lie to you!
It is a short-cut (some would say a crutch) to characterization. The cat-guy is diffident, fickle, and a loner; the dog-guy is a team player; the wolf-guy is dangerous and scary; the rabbit guy is a sex-machine. This obviously doesn’t always apply, but many furry comics writers have mentioned this.
It has roots of great antiquity, being prominent in Egyptian and Greco-Roman mythology. If you think centaurs are keen, you might be a furry.
It’s an art style. An aesthetic. It isn’t for everyone, any more than rap music or cubism. If you like it, great. If you don’t, well, okay, fine: hope you find something you do like.
Heck, what I can’t understand is why so many people are virulently anti-furry, and spend so much of their energy attacking us “skunk-fuckers.”
(I have been accused of coining that phrase; I definitely did not! I was in the audience at a panel at the San Diego Comic Con when someone else used it, and comics historian Fred Patten has found no earlier instance of its use. I’m going to be a gentleman and not mention the name of the guy who did say it.)
This is what I love about this board - before reading the thread I was thinking “Well, unless someone in furry fandom happens to answer, it will all be speculation”.
But here on the Dope we have something with first hand knowledge of everything 
I don’t have much to add on furry fandom specifically, but
is typical of many fetishes, they often aren’t intuitive if you aren’t into that. For instance, I don’t find feet remotely sexy, but people with a foot fetish obviously do.
Nearly all of the people I’ve personally known who are into the furry scene (which can be anything from drawing art to writing fanfic, to wearing wolf shirts and/or cat ears) use it as an extreme form of escapism. They tend to be unattractive, mentally ill, and not very good at maintaining relationships. I’m sure there are some closeted furries who keep that part of their life private, to whom this characterization may not apply. But it’s like… furries will accept anybody, no matter how weird they are. That’s kind of become their calling-card. Are you odd and friendless because you’re ugly, socially unappealing, and nobody understands you? Become a furry and you’ll instantly have friends!
I do think it’s nice that people who otherwise wouldn’t have anybody to turn to have a “scene” for them. Everyone deserves to be accepted.
If I think Gadget from the Rescue Rangers is hawt does that make me a furry?
Maybe slightly, but if that’s the only example, I’d guess you wouldn’t fit in with the fandom very much.
At least, that’s my experience with just liking catgirls, as long as they don’t have much fur.
Telling stories with anthropomorphic animals? What’s not to understand? Everybody from Aesop to Nickelodeon has done that.
Dressing as such characters? Why not? I don’t do Anime cosplaying either, but I have been a professional clown, I have gone to Renn Faires for decades and have recently started “doing” Steampunk. Playing dress-up is a very common hobby, almost universal if you include wearing uniforms for sports teams of which you are a fan.
People telling dirty stories about their anthopomorphic animals? I am shocked, SHOCKED to find that there is sexualization going on among a group of people. Next thing you know, some writers and cartoonists will be telling sex stories about television characters or politicians. Won’t somebody think of the children??!!
As Dr. Fidelius notes, using animals as characters in stories has a long history. Lots of people loved Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge stories, which shows that there can be complexity to these things. It was only a matter of time before such comics got sexual, as well. Fritz the Cat popped up in the 1960s, and had lots of imitators. Omaha the Cat Dancer was an incredible popular comic in the 80s.
I first stumbled across the “furry” scene at a science fiction con in 1989, where I met artists who drew cute furry animals with sexual organs and indulging in straight sex and S&M. After my initial confusion, I came to the conclusion that there were plenty of motivations – some people like the thrill of seeing their childhood icons acting “adult”. To some people, I suspect the medium makes sex “safe” and acceptable – if even cute cartoon bunnies can have sex and spanking, it must be alright.
I didn’t find out about people actually dressing up in animal costumes until much later. Although this is what stands out in people’s minds, and some seem to think this is what all Furries are, I suspect this is only a small fractio n of them – it looks like too complex and expensive a hobby to get into, not to mention intrusive. You would really have to work your imaguination to think you’re, say, a sexy skunk while you’re wearing a big, heavy, carpet-like costume. S&M gear is lighter and cheaper that that.
I’m not a Furry, and don’t know anyone who is (or who admits to it). I do like some clever cartooning that involves animals, but it’s not a fetish and i don’t seek it out, but I’ve stumbled across plenty of internet sites devoted to this stuff. That, I believe, is what most people are really into – not the suits.
While I won’t argue that furry fandom isn’t a form of escapism, I don’t think the social aspect is a primary driver for furry fandom in particular. After all, you could say it for any fandom – if you’re socially awkward and bad with the opposite sex, why not get into Star Trek fandom or Brony fandom or model train clubs or amateur astronomy? Clearly, there’s got to be some level of interest in the actual hobby/fandom itself.
I don’t think it’s really complicated. Most of us grew up with emotional connections to furry characters as a part of childhood. Cartoons are rife with furry characters and, for some people, that childhood interest goes on to become adult (and sometimes sexual) interest. People get off on all kinds of weird stuff and frankly I think that being attracted to a drawing of a sexy female with fox attributes a lot less disturbing than constantly whacking it to bukkake or simulated rape videos. What humans do, and what we think about, and imagine, we sexualize.
The fandom has a history of being inclusive of EVERYONE, no matter how socially awkward, and that opened the door to a lot of very vocal people with persecution complexes. There’s sort of an echo chamber effect where if any sort of behavior gets criticized, then it’s obviously because they’re a furry and not because of whatever unrelated sexual kink they’re parading around.
So you get this sort of feedback loop, where the furry fandom has a reputation for being the cesspool of the internet, which ends up attracting people who (possibly unconsciously) want to be on the bottom of the totem pole, and then behave in ways that give furries a bad reputation, over and over.
Once upon a time, the stigma that furries have now belonged to anime fans, and someday furries will pass the torch on to some other unpopular fandom.
Frankly, I think that they are persecuted just for being furries. I’ve run across quite a lot of people on the Internet* who positively froth at the mouth with hate for furries. Some are joking I’m sure, but I doubt it feels funny to their targets. Furries are an “acceptable target” that people who like to indulge in hatred can target without repercussions. But with all that hatred being expressed by so many people, I’m sure some unstable types are going to take it seriously and I keep wondering if I’m going to wake up some day to a news story about someone spraying gunfire into a crowd at a furry convention.
*It doesn’t really come up one way or the other in real life, at least for me
As noted, this tends to be true for a lot of special-interest fandom. It was true of Trekkies in the 60’s and 70’s, and of anime fans in the 90’s. And comic book fans forever!
That’s f’sure! I’ve seen some brilliant costumes, but few of us are that skillful, let alone that dedicated.
I own a few clip-on tails, but, to tell the truth, I’ve never had the courage to wear one in public, even at a furry convention!
This. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Is there a similar kind of organized hatred against rap music? Against cubism?
(I knew a guy who hated Picasso…but he was a neo-Nazi! He was adhering to Nazi standards of representational art! Fascinating to know such people still exist!)
I did get a grin out of 4-Chan’s reason for excluding furry art: they said that if they let it in, it would quickly take over completely!
I started a similar thread some time ago as I’m not sure why the whole ‘furry’ thing arouses such emotions in people.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=631745&highlight=furries
I beg to differ… 
But seriously, most fursuits are as you describe and I don’t see the attraction of them either.
I do think though that its a form of escapism, people get to pretend they are someone or something else for a day and most people can see the attraction in that. Like all things it only becomes a problem when its taken too far.
I didn’t just mean loving relationships, I mean *every *relationship. Oftentimes they can’t hold down friendships, except for other furries.
Furry fandom is just *not *the same as the other fandoms you mentioned. I was struggling to think why, and really I think it comes down to this: furdom is SO broad-based, and almost entirely fan-created. Meaning, Star Trek is a show that was professionally produced. Star Wars is a series of movies. My Little Pony is a cartoon. Astronomy is a real, legitimate science. Train modeling is engineering. But there is no discrete basis that furries can draw from, except for what other furries have independently created.
The closest fandom to furries (in terms of being SO broad-based) is anime, and even then there is an enormous amount of professionally-produced anime. Basically, all those other fandoms have an air of legitimacy that furry fandom lacks, and I think that’s the thing that really sets furries apart from other fanboys/fangirls.
Well, there was a huge variety of professionally published furry comics, back in the day. Not so much today (alas!) I think these comics, from the great “black and white explosion” of the 80’s (spearheaded by Cerebus the Aardvark) were the foundation for the fandom.
Worth noting, though, that an awful lot of furry fans point to Disney’s Robin Hood, with Robin and Marian as foxes, as their first great inspiration.
(A lot of others have mentioned Cordwainer Smith’s “C’mell.”)
Yes, thank goodness for the Dope, it’s so damn hard to find furries elsewhere. They’re so reclusive.
To me, this is sort of interestingly evocative of the bizarro social isolation of the furry crowd. I don’t know that there’s “organized” hatred of any of those things but are you really unfamiliar with hearing (usually middle-aged and sort of dumb) assholes say that “rap” should start with a C? Or the jokes about how a kid could have painted some modern art piece? Hatred of modern art and of rap music is pervasive, and there are probably more people who reflexively hate either of those than people who are aware of furryism.
I can’t understand how anyone who has been at all socially engaged with others could possibly be unfamiliar with the crazy amount of hatred that gets heaped on rap and modern art. (Granted, probably not cubism in particular, because it’s not like these people really sweat the details.)
That’s not the same thing. Talking about how “rap is crap” or how modern art is worthless isn’t at all the same thing as ranting about how furries are all monsters who should be killed. I hear very little from these people calling furry art or whatever ugly or stupid; what I hear is how furries are an abomination.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone seriously calling for furries to be killed.
Whereas the hate for rap usually comes across as being somewhat related to people’s feelings about black people. And there’s no doubt that a sizable number of people actually do what to see black people killed.
Furries equating obnoxious posts on 4chan with actual serious threats seems like the persecution mindset that is seemingly quite typical of them. As, of course, is denying that legitimate artistic movements also have been targets of hate.
I suppose I’m just engaging in fursecution, though.
I can understand the sexual allure of the furry. Animals have sex without shame or inhibition or remorse. They are hormonally driven to have sex, even if it’s painful or exhausting. They are usually promiscuous when in estrus. Females in estrus “present” and make their desire for sex abundantly clear. They do it publicly. They have sex with intense focus in order to satisfy their most basic urges. Some of this animal attitude toward sex undoubtedly spills over into the furry fans, don’t ya think?