So, am I furry or not?

[elfs]

I have no desire to put on a fursuit and have sex. I imagine awkward moments through obscuring eye-holes interspersed with moments of heat exhaustion, and the payoff seems absolutely absurd.

I have no desire to bang any stuffed animals. At least not until they come with the complete friendly AI package, automatic maintenance, and a decent personality. Until then, they're just furniture. I don't do furniture. I do living bodies bent over furniture, sometimes tied to it. (Hmmm....)

I have no desire to have sex with anything living short of homo sapiens. I don't imagine any other species really having the capacity, the oomph, that a living, breathing man or woman brings to the bedroom.

I actually have no objection to people who want to do any of the above. But I am not one of those people.

And yet, when I read about furries on the Internet, I get the impression that I must be one of the above, or I'm not a furry. I'm something else; I have the same relationship to furrydom that Margaret Atwood has with science fiction, or tofurkey has with Thanksgiving dinner, or Brittney Spears with adulthood: it's not quite there. The descriptions don't match. I have the oddest sensation of looking into a mirror and not seeing myself.

I think furries make great metaphors. I think they're wonderful in literature, shorthands for all kinds of human foibles, premade slates onto which one may impress overblown human characteristics. I'll even admit to thinking the artwork is hot, and collecting some it strictly because the artwork manages to stay on the far side of the uncanny valley while still poking hard at my pineal gland. I can't help but look at Dr. Comet's[NSFW!] or Jeremy Bernal's[NSFW!] or any number of furry artists' work and think, "Yeah, I'd sleep with him/her/it."

But apparently, that's not enough to "a furry." A furry some combination of fursuit fetishist, plushfucker, or zoophile, and I'm not any of those.

Pity, that. My experiment to get back to my porny roots last year was rather successful with Sterlings. I was thinking about trying to recover my furry roots as well, but apparently I'm not a furry anymore.

Comments

[panthyrr.livejournal.com]

what have you heard about therianthropy?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

This is the first time I've ever heard the word. That said, it doesn't really help as a concept. It's not the term found in the press; it's not the popular term found in blogs and presses.

I actually don't mind being the butt of so much puerile "You jerk off to thoughts of Zig Zag, who you'll never have. I'm better than that; I jerk off to thoughts of Jessica Alba, who I'll never have," humor. I just wish they knew what they were making fun of.

[raggedrobin.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's wondered that. I like the art, the stories (especially yours), but I'm not into the whole fursuit/plushie thing. I guess I'm bi in real life, so half in other erotic genres as well. *shrug*

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

Sure, I'll volunteer to walk into the bear trap here: according to *who*? Granted that I haven't been as tightly coupled to the fandom as I used to be, but I'm pretty sure there's still no SMOFF gathering holding arbitration panels on who is and isn't. Sure, there are individual twits who'll claim that 'you must be this' or 'you must be that'. I'm pretty sure their parents were the ones claiming that Twilight Zone wasn't real SF because it was on TV...

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

There's an important element which you haven't mentioned, and which I think makes the difference you're probing for. Namely, most furries I'm familiar with - who, I'm pretty sure, represent a reasonable cross-section of the fandom - all self-identify with an animal (or occasionally mythical beast) to some significant degree. I don't see that so much in you.

[omahas.livejournal.com]

I think this is the real nail on the head, actually. Elf has always identified in his stories as a human being, while anthropomorphics moved and interacted around/with him. In real life, there's never really been an animal that speaks to his soul (although he does have a special place in his heart for Newfoundlands). In a way, maybe Elf is a furry-fan, if you will. Heh.

With me it's always been cats, especially house cats, cheetahs, or leopards...even when I was young.

[solarbird]

Well, you can be a furry without being a "lifestyler," and I rather think you've run into a bunch of lifestylers declaring themselves the only "true" furries.

That's just a guess, mind you.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

No, it's more fundamental than that. Try to remember that once upon a time, you couldn't identify as being a homosexual without also being a paedophile, a pervert, a sex maniac. You couldn't identify as a socialist without immediately being associated with the Communist Party and the violent overthrow of America. You cannot now identify as a Muslim without immediately having to demonstrate your innocuousness.

There have always been decent gay men, decent socialists, and decent Muslims. But you couldn't claim to be one; nobody would believe you. The popular notion was outrageously extreme compared to the reality.

The last few media reports I've read about furrydom, even in the popular press, immediately and unapologetically go for the lonely, socially inadept zoophile who makes due with a stuffed husky (http://www.nextag.com/stuffed-husky/search-html?nxtg=347630a1c051e-64C4D2BD53803BB7).

I mean, why the Hell does the wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furry_fandom) have a subsection on "Sex and Furry Fandom" anyway? I don't see than in the Doctor Who fandom, or the Tolkein fandom pages.

[ben-raccoon.livejournal.com]

That's odd. Here, I thought all you needed to be a furry was to say, "I'm a furry."

Whoever seeks to convince you otherwise needs a good hard boot to the head.

[solarbird]

There's always someone trying to establish some sort of Furry Authentication Protocol. Thankfully, it never really works for long.

If you're not a furry anymore...

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

...than neither am I, to be rather blunt and short about it. Personally, I don't have a clue when the 'definition' of furry shifted so far into the fetishist zone, but the shift seems to have been rather abrupt and recent. I'd blame the media, but I'm not sure if they're really to blame, they just opened the door to this path and apparently a large chunk of the Google-able fandom lept down that way.

Re: If you're not a furry anymore...

[elfs.livejournal.com]

And I think that's the core of the problem. The elevator pitch for Furry has become "Guys who want to fuck Lola Bunny."

I blame Spry and Microsoft. They lowered the IQ and literacy requirement for getting onto the Internet so low that mouthbreathers with double-digit IQs now create the mass zeitgeist.

Weren't those the days...

[lionman.livejournal.com]

...when we could be "furries" and not have to be able to sew a fursuit, or draw, or ...well, any of the things you listed. I've seen that too, in the last handful of years. The "younger crowd" seems to assume that you're part of one of those parties.

"What, you can't draw? You don't have a fursuit? ... Well, you're, um, practicing drawing, right?"

I like to refer to us as the "greymuzzle crowd" now, since we look back at the roots of Furry Fandom and realize not all the turns that were made were ones we agreed with. But, I also think that parts of us have grown up, bought cars, houses, held down the same job for more than a year, ..well, you know, decided to also be responsible adults.

So, as I think several have stated, apparently we aren't part of the furry crowd anymore either. Welcome to the club. Coffee, tea and cookies will be served later.

Re: Weren't those the days...

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Yeah...as a furry, you should be able to express your animal soul, as it were, in a way that most suits you. For me, it was dancing. Cat and dancing just seemed to work together. For others, it's story-writing. Others still may find talking about their animal side their way to express themselves. I don't see anything wrong with that.

[tamino.livejournal.com]

I'm furry because there's a wolf inside me, who is, to varying degrees and in varying ways, "me". (sometimes not at all, sometimes a lot)

in that sense, furriness has to do more with shamanism than with any sort of sex.

When I first discovered your writing, somewhere in the 1992 - 1993 time frame, I loved it, not because of the sex, but because you showed a better world. You brought emotions, and the meaning of the word "family", into a very different, and more solid, kind of focus than I'd ever seen them in before.

Why is the sex such a big deal in all of this?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Rule 99.1 (http://xkcd.com/330/)

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

I've been in this fandom longer than just about anyone else here. And to put it bluntly, anyone who makes claims like that are complete shitheads. Ignore them, or better yet, laugh at them.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

I'd rather pat them on the head and say "awww, what a cute little newbie!"

[athelstan.livejournal.com]

You have written the best furry fiction. That's enough to be a furry, and enough to be a furry forever. Having done all of those ancillary things you mention above, and now live with out all of them. I still consider my self a furry. If you write more stories with furs in them you'll recover your furry roots very well. Though I think they are still there.

I can see your doubt because it's sometimes not enough to validate yourself. It's even more difficult when it seems like the definition has changed. For what it's worth I consider you a furry. Validation is tricky, and I would say not needed, but oh it is so nice to have.

Jeez, Elf

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

This isn't helping anything. You wouldn't have written a piece about how you don't feel like a Jew because you don't fit Heinrich Himmler's definition of a Jew. You'd have known that definition was irrelevant, and you wouldn't have given Himmler the publicity.

C'mon.

. png

Re: Jeez, Elf

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's not true. It's useful, as long as you have free speech, to point out where the Godwin are being daft. Besides, the first step to dealing with a problem is to identify it.

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

I think part of it is that, for reason that totally fucking escape me, furries are the niggers of the internet, and so, of course, the common wisdom about what constitutes a furry must support the position that there's nothing worse than a damn dirty furry.

As if any of the mouth-breathing frat boys that have taken over the intertubes wouldn't do Cheetara if the opportunity came up. Hypocrites.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Or the now completely legal Thunder twins:



Snarf!

[cheetah-spotty.livejournal.com]

Since the whole concept Furry Fandom revolves around is nothing primarily sexual, you don't have to worry about who or what you'd like to sleep with :)

The relationship between sex and furries is like between sex and everything else: It's a fundamental human desire, so you can find it everywhere, but actually very little really depends on it.

Additionally, being a "furry" is not much more than a label. If you share a strong appreciation for anthropomorphic animal characters with other, you could be a furry. If you want to call yourself that, is another thing. That would depend on wether you would like to be recognized as being part of the community or not.

About that you can argue. However, there is not really something like "THE" community. The fandom is a heterogenous cloud. Like the universe itself, it's denser around some points, and less dense around others. You might feel comfortable on one planet, but not on another, and still it's in the same galaxy.

The problem why you read so much about the stuff you wrote on the internet is, that we're living in a "attention society". The things you read most about are not really always the most prominent. They're just what everyone's attention is being drawn to, and that depends on the current dynamics, and not really on what would deserve one's attention.

For example, your posting here, has once more drawn the attention to the overstressed fursuit sex/zoophilia/plushophilia thing. And so does this comment. But it's really not what the furry fandom is primarily about. And i'm not just saying this because I think it SHOULD not be ... it really is not. I've been runing the biggest european furry convention for almost 10 years, I think I know pretty well what is going on :)

If you enter "woman" in google image search with the family filter turned off, it will primarily show you porn. About whom does you tell that something? Women, or non-women?

Now, if you do the same with "furry" ... you get my idea?

[cheetah-spotty.livejournal.com]

Oh, and talking about definitions and labels ... the german/french public TV station "arte" once asked be to give them a definition of "furry" in less than 2000 characters. That's what I came up with:

The Furry Fandom is a world wide community of people who share an extraordinary appreciation for anthropomorphic animal characters. The concept of creating charaters that share both human and animal characteristics has always been part of human culture, from early cave paintings to Walt Disney's 'The Lion King'. The community as it exists today started as an american science fiction and comic fandom spin-off in the mid 1980s, when a couple of fans decided to go against the notion that "Funny Animals" are just for kids. Furry Fandom is "Funny Animals taken seriously". With the arrival of the internet in the early 90s, the phenomenon spread over the globe like a wildfire. Furries (short for "Furry Fans") share the fantasy of worlds inhabited by creatures that combine the best traits from both worlds, sentient animals who can walk, talk, think, hate and love, just like us. How would it feel to have a cat's whiskers and claws? What lives would we live if we could strip our cumbersone human bodies, and run like cheetahs, fly like eagles, or hunt like wolves? Unlike other fan communities, the Furry Fandom is not about things that come from the outside, like a product, a gerne or a person. It's about things that come from deep within us: Creativity, fantasy, sprirituality, sensuality, the urge to question our identity and see the world from a different angle. The ways to express your "furryness" are countless. Artwork, literature, puppetry, costuming, theatre and music are both created within the community and gladly absorbed from today's pop culture. The Furry Fandom is a thriving and ever-expanding community of a few thousand individuals in Europe, and tens of thousands world wide.

Does the sex fit in there? Certainly. Did I need to draw attention to it in order to give a definition that fits the largest number of people considereing themselves a furry? I say no.

(Sorry for bombing you with so much text :) I'm just very bored today, and I feel strongly about the subject.)

[bbw-seska.livejournal.com]

Probably another one of those responses you could live without, but hey, it's just another opinion right :)

I never knew anything about furries, nothing at all untill about a year or 5 ago I stumbled onto some stories written by, well, you.
Did some researching and found out that eventhough I love your writings, I'm not what the majority of information on the interweb describes as a furry. I don't wear suits, nor do I feel the urge to have a sexfest with people dressed in them. Yes I always did wear kitty ears if I could, but that was half fun, half me feeling like a cat (felines are just the only animals I identify with).
And with all the japanese anime out there that has a ton of catgirls in it, wearing those ears never made me look to awkward.

It's weird isnt it...
How you have to explain antropomorphic feelings (thats what I call it eversince that episode of CSI (http://www.csifiles.com/news/260903_01.shtml) aired that pretty much condemned Furries into obscurity here) to people that don't get it and at the same time you feel as if you have to defend yourself against the "hardcore plush people" that think you and your feelings alone aren't enough.

It's like proving my family that paganism doesn't mean satanism and at the same time have the hardcore Gardnerians in my neck checking if I'm 'of ye olde religion' enough.

From the reactions here though I think you probably found a good base of people reading your LJ alone that know what you mean. Try and figure it out with them instead of mirroring it to the people that are more concerned about the general appearance then what it means to them ;)

[bikerwalla.livejournal.com]

I'm in the fandom, have been for a month shy of 15 years -- and all I ever needed to do was show up on MUCKs and talk to people, then go to conventions and hang out. I consider myself a furry, even though none of my boxes are ticked on The Great Checklist.

Wikipedia is a reference, not a source of information. Ever since the trolls found furries, they've been trying to make us out to be the worst group of people ever -- which means imbuing all of us with Those Foul Perversions, and Those Ludicrous Beliefs. It sounds a bit too much like Rush Limbaugh throwing another log on the fire: "Oh and look what ELSE those good-for-nothing liberals believe! Apparently there's a grade school teacher in Nebraska that has scheduled 15 minutes of her class for mandatory hug time. Folks, we're going to have to stamp out this lovey-dovey nonsense, so be sure to let your congressman know what you think of this liberal garbage!" And all of a sudden, people have a new brush to tar Those Evil Liberals with, because one crazy news report is now added to What Those Liberals Think And Do Because They All Think With One Brain.

Whew. Anyway, don't believe the hype. Articles about the fandom are not the fandom. Speaking as myself, I would be happy to see you write more quality smut. I'm sure some people I know would agree with me. :)

[arucartoonguy.livejournal.com]

I once tried to make an analogy along the lines of what if what happened to Furry fandom (the jump-to-conclusions about fursuit/plushy sex) had happened to Football and the "pat on the butt" from one player to another.

It would mean that it would be automatically assumed that you were a hardcore spanking fetishist to like Football, had a video of "NFL Spank Inferno" hidden in your sock drawer, and a homemade football uniform with special ass-less spanking trousers.

[nyssasemephit.livejournal.com]

I donno, too many people try to define the 'furry thing' as this or that. I think you can be a passive fan, without being 'involved.' Not everyone that goes to a scifi con dresses as a klingon, or even has a desire to.Furry started as an anthropomorphic fandom, and under that definition, you are just as furry as the fursuiters, da?

[javarod.livejournal.com]

Laughs, "Sounds like I'm not furry either, 'tis a shame. Not that I care, I'm into what I'm into, if I don't measure up in someone else's eyes, too bad for them."

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

Granted I don't know much about it, but doesn't the whole furry thing imply there's at least a homo sapiens level of sentience in the furry being?

[areitu.livejournal.com]

I've been in the fandom for a while, though there are veterans who've probably been in it since the first furmeet.

I've met people who avoid other furries, barely look at the art and barely chat with others, on the internet or in person and consider themselves furries. I've met people whose friends are all furries, live with furries, look at, and buy furry art and date furries, but vehemently deny they are a furry themselves. For some, it's spiritual, for some it's social. Some say it's fantasy, some say it's sci-fi. There will always be confusion as to what it is, what it represents, and what it means.

As far as I can figure, you are only a furry if you explicitly declare yourself as such.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

Been reading through the comments here and I'd actually like to talk to you about this some time. Specifically from a different angle though. Like, are there any correlations between being Furry and having totem animals? Some of it sounds kinda similar, but while I can strongly identify with Jaguar a sexual aspect just seems very odd.

You have some of the most interesting posts...