Today’s Something Awful ( www.somethingawful.com ) Promted this question from me. Is cultural regulation of legal sexual practices a good thing? Now I fully understand that the above mentioned website is satire and not meant to be taken seriously, But the topic DID spark a bit of intrest in me.
For those who don’t want to bother reading it; the gist of the article was the internet’s validation of deviant sexual practices. The availability of such material and ease of connection to like-minded individuals certainly makes the creation of little sexual subcultures easier, no doubt about it. However, I’ve got to ask the question, What’s the harm? The article focused on Furries. Furries, for those who don’t know are people who like to like out fantasies through anthropomorphic characters that are mix of human and animal traits. Furry culture runs the gauntlet from everyday stuff to seriously bizzare harcore sexual material. Some of these people take it far enough to dress up in suits that resemble their alter egos and act out their sexual fantasies. Definetly a bizzare practice, but is it really hurting anyone?
The article mentioned that we ought to not let people get away with becoming so solidified within thier subcultures to the exclusion of the general culture. My question to you: Why Not? Is there really any harm in becoming fixated on a subculture that is for all purposes legal? I’m not referring to the above exclusively but any fetish group. If these people can get along in society and don’t commit any crimes is there ANY reason for condemning their sub-culture?
Is there any harm to the general populace by allowing these people to enjoy thier fetish? I can’t think of any. For the puposes of respones let’s keep off topics like pedophilia and other illegal practices. The question is about bizzare but legal deviation.
I think its absurd… being a Voyeur myself, a non-deviant and traditional subculture, I want to see skin. These furries are in bad taste and bad voyeurism. Why see two furry things grabbing at each other ?
I agree that these subcultures have the right to exist and in fact might help wacko’s find like minded “furries” and friends. Couple sharing too. The problem naturally is that illegal practices do prosper through similar new tech…
Any Furries here to tell me why they like it … well furry ?
I really don’t think I could care less what anyone else does sexually. So long as you’re not copulating or doing anything lewd in public, I say go for it.
Law should be to promote order and preserve freedoms, not to impose, by nature a specific, culture onto the people. If they want to dress up like animals and act out fantasies, why the hell not? They aren’t out there robbing a liquor store while they are doing that right!
(shakes his head) I don’t see the attraction either. I did a little bit of searching and found about a million bad art sites, and three or four gifted artists whose work was SO bizzare I’m not going to go into it. I think it’s simply the new “Dorky” thing to pick on. Treating them like child molesters though seems to go a bit over the line. Can someone explain the attraction to me? I don’t get it either.
Here’s my hamfisted attept at breaking it down. From the few and far between well drawn sites, I gather that it’s basically a sort of expression of repression. The fact that many of these characters have enormous genitalia, powerful builds, predatory animals etc; seems to be an expression of the inner libido. Through these “characters” the artists are free to explore what might otherwise be scary or emotionally questionable to themselves. It’s a chance to be “animalistic” in regards to sex. Of course I could be totally off bas and they could just be a bunch of horny otakus.
I can give it the best explanation I can from observation, but keep in mind that this is an outsider’s point of view. (An informed outsider, but still an outsider.)
First of all, like just about all minority communities, it’s really the extremists that get the media attention. A thing to keep in mind; people involved in furry stuff run the gamut from people who consider it interesting to explore as symbolism to people who believe that if they pray right they’ll grow fur and manifest as their true selves.
For a fair number of folks, I think it’s related to a certain amount of alienation or response to alienation. Whether that’s “I don’t understand anything humans do, the behaviour of [favored species] makes much more sense” or “They hate me because they’re jealous of my inner [favored species]” or any of the other variants on this depends on the person.
For some it’s, yeah, a feeling that human-ness is something of repression, and the way they find to break out of that sort of inculturation is to put on a non-human persona.
For some I think it’s a bit of New Age Power Animals gone completely berserk.
Only if it can be proven that the behaviour is causing physical or direct emotional harm to an unwilling participant.
There isn’t any.
Nope.
There’s no harm. It should be legal, and if the practitioners are discreet, it should be tolerated. I don’t like it when Something Awful tells its patrons that going out and harass furries.
That said, Something Awful is easy to understand: bizarre sex makes people uncomfortable. It’s hard to empathize with someone who wants to experience a 3-way with a donkey and an anthropomorphic vole. An easy way to relieve that feeling of discomfort is to crack jokes and ridicule what makes you uncomfortable. Something Awful excels at this–and it does a good job, too. They’re funny, and they can be quite amusing when they pick on furries (and even more amusing when they pick on Thomas Kinkaid–see the next feature after the furry one–a person far more deserving of ridicule then furries).
heh. Don’t even GET me started on Kinkaide. Two bit hack has got to be up for “Biggest Douche in the Universe” Award this year. I agree that it’s hilarious when S.A. picks on the furries, it’s just such an EASY target! However, the serious tone of the article got me wondering as to WHY people feel it’s necessary to pick on something that doesn’t affect them at all?
He definitely does not advocate legal interference, quite the opposite.
His concern seems to be - and it’s an interesting one, and something I had not really considered before - that the internet helps people isolate themselves from the norm. It helps them pervert themselves, if this makes any sense. Instead of people with x deviancy mixing in with the general public, and (perhaps) getting or keeping a taste for less deviant practices - not using deviant as a judgement word here, just to mean “deviating from the norm” - people with x deviancy find it easy to congregate.
This congregation results in them heightening and intensifying their preference for x deviance, at the cost of other (more normal) preferences.
Sort of: if you quite liked Chinese food, and there was a restaurant on the corner, and your neighbours also liked it, you might end up eating there every day. Getting so used to Chinese food that you forgot what other food times were liked, and never developed a taste for other foods.
It is an interesting theory but I don’t know if it is correct.
The problem with furries is that
a: we’re wierd, and
b: we contain some of the most dysfunctional people in the known universe.
This means that for the kind of mind that hasn’t left the hierarchical nature of high school, we’re perfect targets, as any criticism is guarenteed to draw a shrill response from someone, and you’ve got pleny to criticize. Of course, you also get the people who genuinely find us icky.
There is not an official furry FAQ that I am aware of, but PeterCat's Furry InfoPage: The FAQs About Furries and alt.fan.furry semi-FAQ seem to be decent.
Also, if you want to hear one furs’ opinion on why some people have such a hard-on for fur-bashing, listen to this rant. Warning: Obscene language, very not safe for work.
In high school (circa 1996) I sort of introduced a friend to furrydom. I liked it primarily in a fantasy way – imagining worlds of anthropomorphic animals and so on. I showed him some furry art, and showed him some websites relating to the topic. Somehow, I managed to miss the fact that furry culture has some prominent sexual aspects. I’d seen furry porn, but I didn’t realize it was such a big thing. And I certainly didn’t know that people actually dressed up in costumes to play out sexual fantasies. Nor did I know that different animals corresponded to different sexual personalities – wolves are dominant and aggressive, foxes are submissive, and so on. (Perhaps furrydom was less sexual then, or maybe I wasn’t looking at the right sites.)
Anyway, I no longer have any interest in it, but my friend went on to be quite involved with furrydom. I don’t know the extent, but he at least collected a lot of furry art, talked to other furries, and played on furry-related MUDs/MUCKs.
I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. It’s just a fantasy thing, something like wanting to have sex in a Star Trek uniform. Certainly, there is no relation to bestiality. Furries are aroused by anthropomorphic animals, and given that we do not live in a world with real anthropomorphic animals, that means they’re aroused by art, or by humans wearing costumes. Which is not so strange when you consider it beside some of the other unusual sexual proclivities out there.
