I’m not sure if this belongs in GD, IMHO or perhaps even the Pit, but I’ll throw it in here because it could end up being an interesting conversation.
What are your impressions or thoughts when you hear the term “furries?” There has recently been some on- and offline exposure for this group of artists and fans, and, having some furry friends, it’s been interesting to hear their reactions, so I’m interested in getting yours as well.
I’m not going to give a definition here of “furry” just yet, because I want to hear your definitions. If you don’t know what a furry is, then just say so; if you think you do, tell us your impressions; and if you’re furry yourself, hang off for a bit until we get some input - I’d like a non-colored view first so we can get some honest feedback to work off of.
My experiences with furries have led me to the impression that there’s no one correct definition of a furry, however most of them have one or more of the following traits:
-A belief that they are in mind or spirit some sort of animal other than human.
-Openness about acting out their animal personality in their every day life.
-Wear or own a ‘fur suit’ in which they attempt to get in the body of the animal they feel they are.
-Have interest in anthropromorphic artwork/cartoons/comics involving animals (including themselves drawn as anthropromorphic animals).
-Either have an inclination to pornographic anthropromorphic art or a strong dislike of it.
-A sexual interest in plush animals.
-A sexual interest in real animals.
Not all the furries I’ve met have all of those traits, some do, some have various combinations of them. But perhaps the one thing they ALL have had was the belief that they ARE some sort of animal (mongoose, wolf, dolphin, crow, horse, etc).
I think a furry is a guy who wants to do it whith stuffed animals.
I’m a fairly tolerant guy, and I respect that people have different ways of expressing themselves sexually. Hell, I’ve had the occasional sheep turn my head. Who hasn’t?
That being said, the idea of someone wanting to do the nasty with a stuffed Winnie The Pooh is just icky, icky.
I mean it’s horrible. When the guy breaks up with Pooh, he’ll probably sell it at a garage sale or something and some little kid’ll buy it, and some poor unsuspecting kid’ll be hugging a crusty pre-humped, Pooh love slave.
Think of the children.
Or… maybe a furry is one of those covers you put over your mouse to make it more comfortable, in which case forget everything I said.
I had a good friend in high school who considered herself a “furry fan” – AFAIK she never used the term “furry” to apply to herself. I understood this to mean that she enjoyed comic books, etc., featuring anthropomorphized animal characters. She was also a very talented artist and produced a lot of “furry art” herself.
My impression is that anyone who uses the term “furry” as a self-descriptor believes that they possess or wishes to possess the spirit or personality of an animal or enjoys roleplaying or dressing up as an anthropomorphized animal character. There may or may not be a sexual element involved, depending on the person.
Most of my “data” on furries come from reading somethingawful.com, and as the name of the website suggests this data is unashamedly biased. Several Awful Links have been to the websites of artists who draw erotic furries (or anthromorphic animal pictures). I’ve never heard the term “furry” applied to a person, just a picture – even in the case of that one guy who tried to turn himself into a tiger (tatooed tiger stripes on himself, surgically implanted whiskers and fur, filed his teeth to points) I never heard of him referred to as a “furry,” just as a “nutcase.”
From what I’ve seen “furry” covers a broad range, but generally it means people who love Disney-esque cartoon furry animals. There are a lot of comics and portfolios devoted to such, not to mention websites, and a lot of these I’ve run across are pretty harmless and as innocent as they look.
What really surprised me was when I came across examples at a science fiction convention where people were drawing anatomically correct “furries”. I think the attraction here is to juxtapose the cute and innocent image of the cartoon animal with the traditionally taboo sex. For some people this is probably a turn-on because it asserts that, yes, sex isn’t some awful, dirty, thing. Even cartoon animals can have sex. To others, I suspect, there is the opposite joy of showing that even cartoon animals have their dark side.
From there it gets weirder, with various sexual kinks being demonstrated by these cartoon creatures – bondage, s&m, the sexual thrill of eating or being eaten (really – not oral sex). .
Ultimately, I expect that this is a way of looking at sex once removed from people, whether your view is that sex is clean or dirty, and getting a kick out of “forbidden” stuff. It takes all kinds.Not my kink, but I can see why people like it.
Sex with stuffed animals, I learn from the 'net, is called “plushie”, not “furry” (despite the fact that people seem to confuse the two). Not my kink at all. But, again, if people make it with dolls or rubber gadgets, why not stuffed animals?
I’m with Guin, this stuff just always strikes me as kind of creepy. If you actually follow some of those links to real furry sites that they make “Awful Link of the Day” on somethingawful.com, you can’t help but get a little creeped out. Some sites feature artwork and stories in which the animals are eating each other’s intestines whilst having sex with each other, or hawks are raping rabbits, and so on.
Some things are simply so bizarre that all talk of “different strokes for different folks” goes out the window. These people, at least the ones with websites and those who read them, are perhaps the creepiest people on the net. I have no problem with them having such a forum as the net to share their…whatever, and doing what they want to do with their sexual lives is A-OK, but I also feel no shame in saying how incredibly disturbingly icky the entire furry fetish is. The way a furry talks about being a furry is perhaps the creepiest of all.
The only encounter I’ve had with ‘furries’ was seeing some fantasy fan art that had animal-people-things. Bodies mostly human shaped, faces of bunnies or kitties or somesuch, usually a big furry tail, all covered in fur.
The female characters seemed to invariably have big boobs and erect nipple-shapes pushing out from thier chests. I thought this was kinda creepy.
Is this what we’re discussing or something else?
Maybe we need a link to a furry-faq or something, Esprix.
Sigh. Rexdart, young one, you will soon learn that there are ALWAYS creepier people on the internet.
Here at Va Tech we have our very own society of anthropomorphics. I personally have too much fun being human to take much of an interest in such things.
Based on the costumes that I’ve seen (big on the skin-tightness), would any professional psychologists care to offer an opinion on how much of this is sex?
Is any of this vaguely related to Dana Carvey thinking that Bugs Bunny is kinda sexy? This has “sick twist” written all over it. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)
BTW, there was an episode of ER where two furries came into the hospital. One guy just liked dressing up in a fur suit because he was shy and this way he could sort of “hide”. The other guy liked to have sex in fur suits and with stuffed animals.
At the end of the night, Weaver finds the 2nd guy masturbating with her kitten puppet.
My experience with furries began with knowing a few of them in real life, including a girl who believed she was a wolf.
To relate one instance of what I meant by ‘acting out’ her wolf-self, she had a piece of chicken parmesan with marinara sauce on it which she ate with no hands or utensils of any kind while sitting on her ‘haunches’ at the coffee table. She growled, snarled, and made comments like ‘I wish this were blood.’
Then she attempted to hump my leg and sit on my lap. When I rebuffed her advances (cause I’m not into girls, although I have dated a male furry) she went on to other potential mates and eventually rolled around on the floor for a while making very odd yipping noises.
My other experiences with furries was on an IRC network known as yiff-net.
There were definitely two distinct groups of furries there. those who were just into the art and the fandom and all of that, and those who really lived the furry life, spending their days in fur-suits and having sex with stuffed animals… oh yea, and copious amounts of furry cyber.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and speculate in a general sense. So take this as merely what it is, a speculation attempting to grasp some of these bizarre sexual behaviours(meaning differing greatly from the norms.)
Having been around the internet a few times, and encountered alot of people, I think I can split sexual fetishes into two categories. First are people who have a sexual fixation on something that endures during the sexual act, or becomes operative during sexual arousal (foot fetish, water sports, fisting, some types of transvestitism.) Then there are people whose fetish becomes a lifestyle for them, with which they may become obsessed and sometimes alternate between embracing and battling against it (furries, adult babies or infantilists, BDSM, some goth, some sorts of tattoo/piercing.)
It strikes me that the first category might truly fall into the “different strokes for different folks” description. The second category…well, I suspect there are psychological reasons for the behaviour. You can’t help but think, when reading about furries, that there’s an extent to which being a furry defines them as people. It intuitively seems as if something must be wrong with the connections in their brain that relate to sexual arousal and identity, thus leading to their immersion in fetishism. (NOTE: this is not the same sense in which some have described homosexuality as a fetish, because homosexuality is still based on human relationships and love…these fetishes of which I speak seem to shortcircuit the part of the brain that encourages loving relationships between individuals, and instead fixate people on objects and situations.)
