That said, I think it ultimately comes down to gender roles and perceptions.
Dressing up as a Star Wars or Star Trek character, or LARPing with a padded sword and plastic chainmail… sure, doing those things are nerdy as hell, but the basic idea they’re trying to emulate is essentially cool, right? I mean, spaceships and lasers and ogres and chopping off heads, those things are ultimately "guy " stuff. They’re not, like, *totally *lame.
Dressing up as a furry little animal, though - that’s indefensible. It’s something a little girl would do. As far as guys are concerned, there’s not even a kernel of cool hidden in there; it must be utterly rejected.
Well, I dislike furries. You’re free to open up a Pit thread on me.
I think I wanted to be an Auoron after I read Alien Chronicles, but I most certainly didn’t dress up as one and proclaim myself to be an animal that didn’t exist and trapped in the wrong human body. It was more of a, “Gee, this alternate universe is SO much cooler than my 16 year old life” sort of thing.
Also…I blame this craziness on Disney.
That’s otherkin - they can also think they’re an elf or an angel or whatever. And there’s otakukin who believe they’re really a Saiyin from Dragonball Z or a Navi from Avatar or whatever.
People conflate furries who dress up with furries who are perverts, and ignore the furries who don’t dress up and just like things like Bugs Bunny, the Land Before Time (talking animals count!), Pokemon, and everything else.
Plus furry fandom is very accepting of strange fetishes, weird preferences, and generally attracts odd people. And those odd people, a very very small percentage, are loud and weird and attract the attention of people who like to make fun of weird people. It’s like in the 80s, when people had to point out Trekkies, it wasn’t the people who watch the show, maybe read the novels, maybe write some fanfic. It was the people who dressed up like Vulcans, learned Klingon, and had made their living room look like the bridge of the Enterprise.
Back in the realm of sane people, most hotels where conventions are held, will say that the furry conventions are the least disruptive, and generally the cleanest. And that the attendees bathe regularly (no con funk).
I’m a furry fan (I’ve discussed it before.) I don’t dress up. I don’t go to cons. I don’t write or read furry porn. I have no kinks related to anthro stuff. I like media like Thundercats, Disney’s Robin Hood, CJ Cherryh Chanur series, etc. When I was younger, I had a furry persona I used online - but at the time I was very into Thundercats fandom and we all had more-or-less fandom related personas. I like the aesthetics of anthropomorphic animals, at least the more humanoid ones.
When you’re a teenager and you feel like a freak anyway, furry fandom is welcoming. Admittedly, it tends to encourage any strangeness you’re into, but so can the goth, emo, or other subcultures popular with teenagers.
But I’ve found that the people who hate furries can’t be convinced that there are furry fans that are normal. ‘Well, they’re not furries!’ They are if they say they are, just like someone who just watches the Star Wars movies and doesn’t consume all the other merchandise is a Star Wars fan if they say they are. That or they’re convinced that I’m lying and I actually do all the weird stuff.
I think XKCD covered this once. My best guess is that one time, a furry posted online, and someone, at random, maybe a 4chan-er (or it might have been before 4chan existed,) decided to flame them, and inexplicably, the hatred caught on and propagated. There’s almost no other explanation – for why furries are derided, and almost every other possible fetish is lauded.
The first time I heard about Furries was an episode of Entourage where Turtle and Johnny Drama were crusing for girls on CraigsList. The ending of that episode was one of the funniest moments in that series…
Of course, there are all the other posters with animal related names who aren’t furries.
But I haven’t done anything related to furry fandom in any sort of intensive way in a long long time. The closest thing is I watched two episodes of the new Thundercats. Probably while holding a cat, because that’s what happens when you sit down on the couch.
The thing is, there are plenty of “stealth furries” out there that are perfectly acceptable in geek circles. Werewolves, for instance. The Na’vi, who are essentially blue cat people. Comic book characters like Catwoman, Hawkgirl and let’s face it, Wolverine. I’m sure that if the Thundercats had a larger pop culture footprint, no-one would associate them with furries either.
You’re reaching. Catwoman is a human cat burglar with a cat motif - she’s got nothing to do with furries. Hawkgirl’s got wings (I don’t know if they’re natural or artificial), but the thing about winged humanoids is that flying is awesome, not that birds are awesome. Wolverine’s an anti-heroic Tank with built-in CCWs - again, his traits that people like are traits people like for their own sake, not because they’ve got anything to do with animals.
Werewolves can go either way, depending on whether they’re raging engines of murder that just happen to be wolf-shaped or whether someone fetishises the pack, “marking” and all that garbage. The latter is not “stealth furry”, it’s just plain “furry”.
Alright, furry comic characters: Nightcrawler; Tigra (the Avengers one); Beast, especially when he was more cat-like; Man-bat… Nobody is going to look down on you for liking them (maybe Tigra). Nightcrawler is tremendously popular with ladies in and out of story.
What?! I wasn’t aware there were people thinking they were Catwoman. Or even trying to dress up like her constantly.
The difference between Star Wars geeks and furries is that at least Star Wars (or Marvel or whatever) is a defined ‘thing’. There are stories and people and movies and whatever.
It’s not just ‘dressing up like animals’ or ‘mixing animal and human characteristics’.
It’s because, as you say, it’s socially-acceptable to hate furries (also, fat people).
Humans, even self-professed open-minded ones, still have a strong instinct to adhere to an “us vs them” mentality. The fewer “thems” one is allowed to dislike, the stronger their dislike will be for the ones remaining. I personally have gotten to a point where I am very accepting of alternative sexualities and all races, and I even try not to discriminate against people of other political persuasions. But I can’t get rid of my ***intensely ***strong dislike for religious people. And there are lots of people who feel that way about fat people. And many others who feel that way about furries.
So, I don’t hang around churches, and chalk it up to human nature.
Nightcrawler’s explicitly based on demons, not animals.
Tigra I agree with.
Beast… they only made him look catlike 10 years ago. Anyone who knows the character from before then or knows him from the movies would be going by the non-furry version of the character.
Man-Bat I’m not familiar with.
