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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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.

[panthyrr.livejournal.com]

The therianthropy reference may have been way off-base, but something you said in your post triggered me to ask. Curiosity more than anything else. :)

But back to the subject: I self-identified as a furry for quite a while...it was the only term I had. Actually, back in the early nineties it was your writing that made me realize "Hey, I'm not all on my own out there. Humanoid animals that aren't cartoony? Wow!"

Now, here's the thing. Fursuits: while I can appreciate the time and effort that went into them (I have a friend that makes amazing masks and suits), and I can understand that they're a way for the person within the suit to show how they feel inside, I'm not turned on by them. Amazed and/or amused by them, yes...aroused, no.

I don't call myself a furry anymore simply because it's difficult for people to pin down what's meant when the term is used. Some furries identify with animals. Some furries bang plushies. Some furries wear fursuits and have sex. Some wear 'em and _don't_ have sex. Some furries are only into it for the art. It's hard to say "I'm a furry because I enjoy furry art and fiction." without somebody (furs as well as nonfurs) completely misinterpreting it. So, I take the easy (and perhaps less-accurate) route of simply saying "I'm a fan of furry art."

[solarbird]

Oh, okay. I thought you were getting this kind of reaction from some subset of the fandom, not the general zeitgeist. Carry on.

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.

[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?

[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.

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.

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

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

That might well be a real crux of the problem, there's just been such a huge influx with how easy it is to 'get online' that it's brought along an equally-noticable herd of 'anything for attention' sorts coming in. We've suddenly got rather fetishistic sorts willing leaping into the Hollywood mill and getting ground up, apparently.

[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.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

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

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

I mean, why the Hell does the wikipedia page have a subsection on "Sex and Furry Fandom" anyway? I don't see than in the Doctor Who fandom, or the Tolkein fandom pages.

A big part of it is simply that sex is a significant element of the furry fandom, and historically always has been. Take a look at Yarf's chronology of furry fandom (http://yarf.furry.com/chronology.html), if you haven't before. A lot of the early works which are considered influential (Fritz the Cat and Omaha the Cat Dancer, for instance) were explicitly adult in nature. If anything, the fandom's gotten significantly tamer with time.

[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

[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.

[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?