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CN Furry fandom: a deeper view
2 years ago
General
Well, this came to me while I was browsing the Reddit "furry_irl" for the first time last week. I came across a video of someone fursuiting before a McDonald's in China. One of the comments said that China is actually more acceptive of furries, which triggered some thought. I've always been a bit obsessed with certain cultural differences between China and the West, so naturally this aroused my interest. This matter about the furry fandom in fact offers some insight into how China and the West treat certain parts of life. So, more blabbering!
After some thought, I think the Reddit dude is actually correct. We ARE more acceptive of furries here in China, manifested by:
I told my roommates I was a furry and they didn't really have much to say about it, like it was nothing special, as if I just told them what I had for supper, as opposed to "that's weird", with the latter being the common response I am led to believe would be common in the West.
Most people either don't know what furries are, or find them cute. If people around my age see someone fursuiting, they'd most likely say "Oh loo, a furry, cute!". Some even consider furries to be a sub-fandom of the whole anime thing, which is wrong. In fact, our attitude towards "weebs" are worse than ours towards furries.
Anti-furries, naturally , do exist, but they are just people too obsessed with Warhammer 40K and dislike femboys for their lack of masculinity, as well as the other rather radical parts of the furry fandom. They are usually the guys wearing military cosplays at anime-cons. Still, it's more of a joke rather than real hate.
Summery: people here are generally not averse to furries, even if they may not like them.
I have conceived of a few reasons for this:
1. Our fandom is mostly SFW. By this I mean, like 95%. Since posting and spreading NSFW content on social media is against the law here, our art and content contain very little or no kinky stuff, being suggestive at most. Ergo, no artist will promote themselves as a "NSFW artist", and most commissions they do are just normal art. This, plus the fact that their are great numbers of underage teens (like me) in the fandom, takes away, as I understand it, what furries get disliked for the most in the West: an overly intrusive demonstration of sexual stuff. I mean, I pretty sure most if us don't hang yiff on our walls. This, however, did not prevent us from gaining the reputation of being a group of horny people. Basically, when people think of furries here, they do not misinterpret us as a fetish group, but just plain cosplaying, just a bit different, and therefore are not left with a bad first impression. No, we don't have an equavlant of e6**.
2. Our fandom is mostly straight. My country is still quite conservative when it comes to LGBT+ stuff. I mean, while homosexuals without doubt are a objective presenece in our country, they are still in the "invisible" state, as in no one really cares, and we just let them be, and don't wave banners of rainbows on parades. (Actually, even if protests and demonstrations are technically our rights in the Constitution, god knows what would happen to you tried it, so that's one point for "democracy".) The public isn't very acceptive of LGBT+ activism, so if we were to be as radical as you guys are, we wouldn't be that welcomed. However, we also have the reputation of acting very gay. Some say in our fandom "9 out of 10 furries are gay". Not sure if that's true, and whether those people are just acting gay for fun or genuinely like the same sex. Some live up this, I have to say.
There are, of course, pros and cons to such characteristics.
Pros:
A SFW fandom has a better atmosphere for minors like me. We don't call ourselves furry "degenerates", just furries. Too much NSFW content just sometimes annoys you, and I learnt this the hard way. (Don't ask. I was curious.)
Having people not think you're weird is a pretty big perk already, right?
Cons:
Less fun. Sadly, just less fun. You can't just go up to a furry and say "knot", then both laugh. We're missing out on a lot of stuff. We have much less furry terminology and in-jokes, and few exclusive furry horny jokes. There is also conflict between our strict internet regulations and human desire: many of us still desire to see NSFW content, and with this being the internet, we turned, instead, to the international furry fandom. Yes, many of us CNfurs are consumers of "imported" (But you have to find it on your own) NSFW content. This is why you can sometimes see people translating furry erotica (or asking someone to do it), one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life. So yes, some of us still use e6**, just that reaching it is a bit difficult. Sadly, we don't a site like FA were we could just gather and express creativity, so we're are quite scattered. For this I love FA very much.
We don't explore a lot of stuff. I'll be short on this. We are all pretty shocked by the tags on e6**. We don't explore this part of our mind that much.
In a grand conclusion, I have found further proof of the following opinion on certain cultural differences between China and the West.
In China, sex is seen as a discreet part of our lives and we do not go about talking about it too often, doing so would be a bit impudent, and such judgement increases with age. It's not that we don't enjoy a few horny jokes, but for the most part adults keep it private and tend to not...bring it into the open too much. Westerners, however seem to take a more open approach towards such affairs and see it as a part their lives that is more or less normal, and they seem to explore in the realm a lot more than we do.
This has been, so far, my speculations. Please correct me if I got anything wrong about you guys, because I'm still not very clear about this.
And, if you had the patience to read to this point, I thank you with my entire heart. I hope this has been entertaining.
Till more thoughts pop up...
After some thought, I think the Reddit dude is actually correct. We ARE more acceptive of furries here in China, manifested by:
I told my roommates I was a furry and they didn't really have much to say about it, like it was nothing special, as if I just told them what I had for supper, as opposed to "that's weird", with the latter being the common response I am led to believe would be common in the West.
Most people either don't know what furries are, or find them cute. If people around my age see someone fursuiting, they'd most likely say "Oh loo, a furry, cute!". Some even consider furries to be a sub-fandom of the whole anime thing, which is wrong. In fact, our attitude towards "weebs" are worse than ours towards furries.
Anti-furries, naturally , do exist, but they are just people too obsessed with Warhammer 40K and dislike femboys for their lack of masculinity, as well as the other rather radical parts of the furry fandom. They are usually the guys wearing military cosplays at anime-cons. Still, it's more of a joke rather than real hate.
Summery: people here are generally not averse to furries, even if they may not like them.
I have conceived of a few reasons for this:
1. Our fandom is mostly SFW. By this I mean, like 95%. Since posting and spreading NSFW content on social media is against the law here, our art and content contain very little or no kinky stuff, being suggestive at most. Ergo, no artist will promote themselves as a "NSFW artist", and most commissions they do are just normal art. This, plus the fact that their are great numbers of underage teens (like me) in the fandom, takes away, as I understand it, what furries get disliked for the most in the West: an overly intrusive demonstration of sexual stuff. I mean, I pretty sure most if us don't hang yiff on our walls. This, however, did not prevent us from gaining the reputation of being a group of horny people. Basically, when people think of furries here, they do not misinterpret us as a fetish group, but just plain cosplaying, just a bit different, and therefore are not left with a bad first impression. No, we don't have an equavlant of e6**.
2. Our fandom is mostly straight. My country is still quite conservative when it comes to LGBT+ stuff. I mean, while homosexuals without doubt are a objective presenece in our country, they are still in the "invisible" state, as in no one really cares, and we just let them be, and don't wave banners of rainbows on parades. (Actually, even if protests and demonstrations are technically our rights in the Constitution, god knows what would happen to you tried it, so that's one point for "democracy".) The public isn't very acceptive of LGBT+ activism, so if we were to be as radical as you guys are, we wouldn't be that welcomed. However, we also have the reputation of acting very gay. Some say in our fandom "9 out of 10 furries are gay". Not sure if that's true, and whether those people are just acting gay for fun or genuinely like the same sex. Some live up this, I have to say.
There are, of course, pros and cons to such characteristics.
Pros:
A SFW fandom has a better atmosphere for minors like me. We don't call ourselves furry "degenerates", just furries. Too much NSFW content just sometimes annoys you, and I learnt this the hard way. (Don't ask. I was curious.)
Having people not think you're weird is a pretty big perk already, right?
Cons:
Less fun. Sadly, just less fun. You can't just go up to a furry and say "knot", then both laugh. We're missing out on a lot of stuff. We have much less furry terminology and in-jokes, and few exclusive furry horny jokes. There is also conflict between our strict internet regulations and human desire: many of us still desire to see NSFW content, and with this being the internet, we turned, instead, to the international furry fandom. Yes, many of us CNfurs are consumers of "imported" (But you have to find it on your own) NSFW content. This is why you can sometimes see people translating furry erotica (or asking someone to do it), one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life. So yes, some of us still use e6**, just that reaching it is a bit difficult. Sadly, we don't a site like FA were we could just gather and express creativity, so we're are quite scattered. For this I love FA very much.
We don't explore a lot of stuff. I'll be short on this. We are all pretty shocked by the tags on e6**. We don't explore this part of our mind that much.
In a grand conclusion, I have found further proof of the following opinion on certain cultural differences between China and the West.
In China, sex is seen as a discreet part of our lives and we do not go about talking about it too often, doing so would be a bit impudent, and such judgement increases with age. It's not that we don't enjoy a few horny jokes, but for the most part adults keep it private and tend to not...bring it into the open too much. Westerners, however seem to take a more open approach towards such affairs and see it as a part their lives that is more or less normal, and they seem to explore in the realm a lot more than we do.
This has been, so far, my speculations. Please correct me if I got anything wrong about you guys, because I'm still not very clear about this.
And, if you had the patience to read to this point, I thank you with my entire heart. I hope this has been entertaining.
Till more thoughts pop up...
to each their own I suppose...
Vix
Thank you Vix!
I think it can be subjective anyways. I want Vix to give his own perspective on this too. ^^
And porn is a little like a drug. It's meant to result in the biggest increase in dopamine and so on. While erotic is more artistic. Porn also can get more extreme, because just like with drugs, people can become resistant to it and need a bigger stimulus to give them the high. That's a big factor in these extreme things out there, I think.
Oh, and besides I agree with the thing about this content being annoying sometimes. It can be quite boring and very repetetive and at the same time is completely everywhere. Just like a cheap product and not anything related to art.
And it might seem like I'm against porn in this comment, but I'm not really. I just think it could be rarer and more original and interesting when you see it, instead of it being everywhere and repetetive. :P
Ah, and I saw that I often write to you in a quick and low-effort way and you on the other hand always try to write properly and without mistakes. I wanted to say sorry for that! I appreciate you taking your time whenever writing to me. Otherwise I wouldn't mind any sort of mispellings anyways, haha.
Vix
And, no need to apologize hehe ^^, it's perfectly fine, actually I find informal and less correct writing to be more genuine sometimes, with less pretense OwO
Difficulty of enforcement...well, we certainly have a way of enforcing particular laws and being slightly lenient about other ones here (this one being more or less the latter), as well as developing odd charges to remove undesirable people, it's just one of the characteristics of my country, not a very good one though. (We have one that basically means "going around looking for trouble", and people use its ambiguity to do...things. New weirder charges have been introduced recently too, I can only laugh bitterly.) Indeed it is not that easy to enforce such laws, since you are basically working against human genetics, so there are always ways...that said, we at least keep the major social platforms clean, even if we can't purge the entire internet. Even if we did, we could always just find ways to access the internet outside of our own relatively segregated internet domain.
Yea, I am curious also about how my country will change, something I'll play a small part in, actually, hehe. Some say for the worse, some say for the better. Time will tell...
Yes, I would love to hear your insight on American furries! I am a bit, well, childishly fascinated by these things