this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
144 points (85.3% liked)
Gay: News, Memes and Discussion
1868 readers
50 users here now
Welcome to /c/Gay - Your LGBTQ+ Haven
We're more than just a community; we're your haven for celebrating LGBTQ+ culture and connecting with like-minded individuals.
Community Rules:
~ 1. No bigotry. Hating someone off of their race, culture, creed, sexuality, or identity is not remotely acceptable. Mistakes can happen but do your best to respect others.
~ 2. Keep it civil. Disagreements will happen. That's okay! Just don't let it make you forget that the person you are talking to is also a person.
~ 4. Keep it LGBTQ+ related. This one is kind of a gimme but keep as on topic as possible.
~ 5. Keep posts to a limit. We all love posts but 3-4 in an hour is plenty enough.
~ 6. Try to not repost. Mistakes happen, we get it! But try to not repost anything from within the past 1-2 months.
~ 7. No General AI Art. Posts of simple AI art do not 'inspire jamaharon' and fuck over our artist friends.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
They may not be part of your LGBTQ+ community, but there's a large percentage of furries that are LGBTQ+, so they're mostly a part of the same overall communities, with, or without their fursuit on.
Honestly, I didn't think there would be this much judgement from members of a community that should know how important inclusion is.
It's fine to not be a furry, it's fine to not want anything to do with furries. This is in the same way that has been yelled at the cisnormatives for a long time. It's okay to be straight, gay, lesbian, queer, trans, bi, (etc), and it's only to not be a part of that as well. Straight people are supporters of LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms, while not being LGBTQ+. I would think that someone who had to fight and struggle with being accepted by society, and in many ways is still shunned and ostracised by some communities, would understand that different isn't bad, and you can support people in their freedom to express themselves, without feeling the need to express yourself in the same manner. That different isn't bad, it's just different.
I'm disappointed right now. Holy heck.
I'm not a furry, and I have no sexual interest in anything that looks like an animal or anthropomorphic animal looking things either, but if that's what they like and enjoy, then fine. As long as they're not going out and engaging in actual bestiality, who cares? (They're not, btw)
Your judgmentalism is showing.
I've noticed the same thing. There are so many furries who are actually gay men (most of whom claim to be bisexual) - I've seen them actually having sex with other guys in costume to the point of orgasm(!) - who has to clean those things. Anyway - I like the costumes, I like the people involved, and at least they are out there and being proud.
BUT - and this is my own big BUTT showing - I do honestly think there's something to the idea of these people costuming themselves in a way to hide their real orientation from themselves and others. I've just seen so much of these guys obvious attraction to each other but unwillingness to openly say they are gay without any costume, disguise, or other armor on.
Maybe furry is part of a stage in acceptance of themselves, and I'm all OK with it, I just think it's kinda obvious that it's a masquerade about their real sexual feelings in certain ways. (MY thoughts only - feel free to lob horse apples if you disagree). Not that there's anything wrong with it!
You're close but coming in from an odd angle. The furry fandom is foremost extremely accepting, especially of people considered minorities or "weird" by normal society (LGBTQ+/autism/anything "cringe"). Putting on a fursuit or a furry avatar online and being able to pseudo-anonymously show the true parts of yourself is very liberating to those that don't feel safe being themselves IRL. As an example, I've seen many trans people first switch the gender of their fursona to see how it feels to present as their preferred gender, and how it feels to be acknowledged by others as the person they are inside. I won't say having a fursona is a mandatory part of being in the furry fandom (there are basically no rules on being included), but for many people that have one a fursona is often an idealized version of themselves and who they wish they could be IRL. So yes the furry fandom is often pivotal in a person's "stages of acceptance", but it has nothing to do with any kind of internalized "masking" and everything to do with the fandom's external supportive community helping them become more comfortable with who they've always been.
I'm with you here. For some it may be a transitional "phase" of getting to know yourself privately in the company of others.
I'm sure there's plenty of other reasons to put on a fursuit or fursona, most of which we wouldn't know about, and would vary on an individual basis. The fact remains that furries shouldn't be excluded because of a minority having some inane thought that they're somehow promoting bestiality. IMO, that's as wrong as saying all trans women just want to get into the ladies washroom for reasons.
This community should well know what it's like to be ostracised, so I would have a hard time believing that the LGBTQ+ community would reject furries because of a few people who have unfounded hangups about it.
I totally get that vibe, they seem ultra willing to be accepting and welcoming to anyone, and I love that. But like you said, a big reason for putting on a fursuit or avatar is liberating "to those that don't feel safe being themselves." That's what I'm getting at - part of the furry thing is disguising your real self.
My thing is, I just wish the world itself was so accepting and welcoming that nobody had to feel unsafe for being who they really are. I'm willing to bet that if we lived in a society where religious bigotry and hate didn't exist, you'd find that there was no furry community at all - no need for masks to hide who you really are or any need to go through "stages of acceptance."
But I'm not slamming the furry community. I've seen a few documentaries about it, and it seems fun and also like a great way to build community with like-minded guys (I'd say girls also, but I've almost never seen women participate in it). I support anything people do that helps them become outgoing or more confident people.
In an accepting world I think the furry fandom would still be quite large. The accepting community is why a lot of people stick around, but there are many other reasons for it to exist which aren't influenced by being persecuted. Some people feel like they're inherently furry from birth, like a gay person would, and some pick it up during their life as something they want to be associated with aesthetically or otherwise. You've also got therians and various other subcultures that are heavily based around the furry/animalistic themes themselves without considering any sort of societal values.
I also personally think pseudo-anonymity is healthy even when all of society is accepting, and I suspect there's a large draw in being to socialize and try out different versions of yourself while keeping the option to burn your account and start again if you make mistakes. Now more than ever in our surveillance state, it's nice to leave your identity behind and say things without worrying about it coming back to you IRL. I personally find furry/animal avatars to be a fun way of achieving this without needing to pick something boring and impersonal.
As for gender disparity I don't think this is any inherent aspect of the furry fandom but just how predominantly-online cultures are weighted in general. I'd expect this to change given enough time. You can see recent gender studies here, and I highly recommend checking out some of the other pages from their findings if you're interested in some of the bizarre trends that furries have compared to the average person. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that being furry is heavily biased by specific genetic circumstances, and that the explosion of furry culture is a figurative opening of Pandora's box.
Edit: Also I found this page and the graphs+text have a lot of overlap with this topic.
Well it's an interesting idea. People already are animals just as giraffes or elephants, we're just a different species - but still we are part of the Animal kingdom. So in a way, people ARE furry from birth, in having intrinsic animal-like qualities.
With furry-dom, you don an exaggerated physical costume with outsized features like large eyes and big teeth - rather than just developing into a furry from within. As you said, it's fun to leave your human identity behind and be something else for awhile, as we do with dress up at halloween or masquerade balls (do they really have those anymore?).
It's odd that most furry costumes basically look alike - I mean, basically with big eyes and ears and big mouths. Are those features we find attractive in other guys? I mean they look less like real life animals and more like cartoon variations - like you'd find in japanese anime versions of gay animals.
In a way, being a furry is kind of embracing the true animal aspects of human nature and human sexuality, but enlarged into a cartoonish exaggeration. I find it very interesting and if I were younger and had the time, it's something I would probably be into. It looks like fun - except aren't the costumes kind of hot after awhile?
I think the draw is a lot deeper especially when contrasted against people who don't consider themselves furry. The idea that a person "doesn't feel like they had a choice in the matter of being furry" is actually very common, and I can vouch for that feeling as well. Luckily I don't mind that part of me. I wonder how people that reject it feel about themselves - I suspect a lot of the loudest anti-furry people fall into this category, similar to the self-hating LGBTQ+ right-wing.
This is mostly a matter of practicality and logistics from my understanding. Even with giant eyes it's difficult to see out of them, and the big mouths probably need to be matched to the eye size so it doesn't look bizarre. The full head itself also needs to be big enough to fit over a regular human head. I don't think everyone intentionally wants the costumes to look like they do, but there's probably a handful of factors preventing more realistic costumes from being common, like cost increases for custom designs. I'm not really into the fursuiting part (many aren't), so this is just secondhand info.
From my understanding, they get very very hot. I think the main reason people get them is to have fun goofing off at cons or doing photo op stuff. They cost upwards of 3-4k IIRC and they're handmade, so it's probably something you have to wear carefully.